14th Generation American

I am a 14th Generation American.  The majority of my ancestors came here in the 1600s - both Mom's side and Dad's.  I don't think this makes me more American than anyone else, but it does give me a relatively unique view of the Nation's history.

My family was on the Mayflower.  My family came to New Amsterdam from the Netherlands, well before the English got there and started calling it New York.  My family was Quaker and came over with William Penn.  My family were Methodist circuit riding ministers doing tent revivals throughout the South.  We fought in the French-Indian War; The Revolutionary War; The War of 1812; The Civil War (both sides); The Spanish-American War; WWI; WWII; and Korea - and that's just what I know about for sure.

I'm proud as hell of my family history, and I'm proud as hell of this country.  I'd be pretty ungrateful if I weren't.

And yet...

Because I'm what some people would consider a "Hippy Berkeley Liberal", I'm somehow not patriotic to some, and it's really starting to piss me off.

I'd like to start this blog by talking about the last member of my family to come to the US - she got here in 1884.  Christina White was my 2nd Great Grandmother, and was sent here alone by her parents from Scotland.  She was 7.  She landed in New York.  She was put on a train to Chicago, where she had a distant relative.  That relative put her onto another train to Colorado.  She had no family here.  She became a boarder.  Eventually, her father John came to join her and became an American citizen, but by then she was grown.

So...  That was 4 generations back.  Ellis Island hadn't opened yet, and wouldn't for almost a decade.

Perhaps you see where I'm going with this.  I hear vitriolic speech on the news about immigrants - especially kids, and I am utterly amazed at the depths to which this country's conscience has fallen.  There have always been newly arrived Americans that felt their generation should be the last one - that no one else should be let in after they got here.  Um...  So, do they realize that the entire reason we became a great nation is that the hardest working immigrants in the world came here and built it?  We are great because we welcome everyone.  "Give me your tired, your poor..." etc. etc...  All my ancestors were here before Ellis Island.  What if they had all said, "Nope, not so fast, foreigners.  Stay out."?  I'm sure some of them wanted to.  Even scarier, what if they said that AND succeeded?

But they didn't.  We're all here; we are the richest nation on earth.  And for as much as I love this country, I don't blindly feel that everything we've ever decided to do has been justified.  We sent the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears (even though the Supreme Court ruled President Jackson couldn't do it - how's that for unlawful executive action?).  We interned Americans of Japanese ancestry.  "We tortured some folks."  America went through a period of pretty significant international "interference" starting with the Panama Canal and running right through the IMF/WB.  There's a lot, but it certainly doesn't offset (in my mind) all the good we've done in the world.

Let's go back to G-ma Christina for a moment.  Her family wasn't running from oppression.  Her parents knew her life would be better here, and that was good enough for them AND for the USA.  Her parents didn't have to worry that people in Glasgow were going to rape her, decapitate her, and roll around town using her head as a hood ornament on their buggies.  They just wanted her to have a chance they hadn't.

And now we have kids coming to the border.  They are terrified.  And what do we say?

Well, most of us say "you poor little thing, let's get you some soup and a blanket".  But for some reasons there are other people who show up with threatening signs telling a bunch of traumatized kids to "go home".  Many of them don't have homes or families, you idiots.

Why do I have to tell you this?  Are you stupid?  OR are you fully aware of their struggle and choose not to care?  How do you expect often illiterate, Spanish-speaking kids to know our laws?  Or care?  Did we respect their laws when we decided to oust their democratically elected governments in favor of dictatorships because we felt those leaders would be more politically advantageous to us?  Nope.  But now failed governments (often installed by the U.S.) have yielded gangs and violence and often corrupt law enforcement that allow people to be terrorized.  But, no, don't come here where it's safe.  We won't help you.

Yeah... give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, or don't.