A Facebook user wrote this:
“Everyone. And, I mean every single person in this country. Unless, you are of 100% Native American/First Peoples decent, has ancestors that were immigrants. Whether they came by land, or sea, they immigrated to this land. Probably, in hopes of a better future. Whether by legal channels, or not, they were human searching for a homeland when theirs stopped feeling like one. They came to this place to have a better life.
“I know that’s what happened in my mom’s family. The war between the Protestants & Catholics drove them from their home. I am the 2nd generation, on her side, to be born in America. My gran-da was born in Ireland. My nana was born in Scotland. They both traveled to this country, separately, with their families in the very early 1900’s. Arriving at Ellis Island, & enduring the naturalization process, before coming onto the mainland. (The two of them met years later in Niagra Falls. That’s a whole ‘nother story.)
“My father’s family has been here for eons. We are Choctaw & have inhabited these lands for many – more than 2 – thousands of years. My 4th great grandfather was a tribe leader. My 4th great grandma was a healer & mystic, a kind of medicine woman. They walked the Trail of Tears from an area near Ft. Payne, Alabama. They were forced from their home by the/our government to, basically, a wasteland. The same government that decided genocide was better than honoring treaties & the spirits of other human beings.
“My point is, everyone deserves a chance to make something better for themselves & their future generations. And, no one should want to take that away from them.”
I hear this argument a lot and it makes no sense. Moreover, the conclusion does not follow from the premises however nonsensical they are.
American Indians are not originally from North or South America. They came across on boats or walked across a land bridge from Asia—where their ancestors had migrated to from Africa tens of thousands of years earlier.
A person born in the United States is not an immigrant by definition. He is a native. I am not an immigrant. I was born here. I am a native American. This is why I refer to American Indians not Native Americans, since the latter obscures the truth. It’s like referring to blacks who are born here as African American. They aren’t from Africa. They were born here. They’re black Americans. Elon Musk is an example of an African American, since he is a naturalized citizen from Africa. Trump just designated white South Africans as refugees. If they are naturalized, they will become African Americans. As it if they are South Africans. Race doesn’t have anything to do with it.
My wife immigrated here many decades ago. She became a citizen. She is a Swedish American, more broadly a European American. She can say she is an immigrant, but my children, both born in the United States, who have dual citizenship (since in her country citizenship is determined by blood, as it is throughout most of the world), cannot claim to be immigrants. They like to think about their Swedish experiences, but they are native Americans.
The slogan “America is a nation of immigrants” obscures the truth that the vast majority of people in the United States are natural citizens not immigrants. We can say that America is a nation with immigrants, but we cannot say it is a nation of immigrants. To argue that my paternal ancestors who came from Wales more than two centuries ago makes me an immigrant makes the ancestors of those who migrated here immigrants to Wales, since their ancestors migrated there from somewhere else (at the earliest approximately 12,000 years ago).
Human beings are a migratory species (see the above chart), but that does not make them all immigrants. The vast majority of people in the world are not immigrants. Even Africans migrated from place to place on the African continent to what are now recognized as different countries. What makes a person an immigrant is being a citizen of one country who moves to another country.
By the way, an eon is one billion years. Homo sapiens didn’t appear until around 300,000 years ago. The user’s father’s family has not been in North America for eons. Her father’s ancestors likely arrived in North America around 20,000 years ago when humans crossed from Asia to the Americas via Beringia.
All this clarified, how does it follow from these facts—either hers or mine—that everyone who comes to America deserves a chance to make something better for themselves and future generations? Apply to come to America. If America accepts the application, and you seek to become a citizen, there is a process for that. My wife followed the process. Everyone should follow the process.
However, not everybody in the world—or even most people in the world—can come here. We don’t have the space or resources. Besides, our standard of living, the integrity of our republic, the rule of law—all these depend on an integral nation-state with borders, a common culture, a common language, and a shared history. Nor can America send millions to go live in other countries. That’d be an act of colonization and I thought we’d all agreed that colonization of other people’s lands is oppressive and wrong. We can’t do anything about past colonizing projects and the erasure or distortion of their cultures, but we can do something about contemporary colonization projects now. And we should. The preservation of our republic depends on it.
freedom and reason 