Sunday, September 30, 2018

Immigration Phobia

There are people who are concerned that the demographics of this country are changing and that in the relatively near future the majority of the country will consist of people we currently consider minorities.

Its a pretty silly concern since in one way or another this has been the history of the country and populations that were once considered "unAmerican" like Irish or Italians among others, are now as mainstream as any.

We are a country that is diverse by its nature and our origins as a group of mostly English colonies is foundational and ingrained.

Yet we consistently go through periods where we decide that immigrants are going to destroy our society.

As early as the 1840s we had the Know-Nothings who felt we had to stop immigration to salvage our values.

It became a political force but soon splintered over issues like slavery and was pretty much gone by the Civil War, although of course the anti-immigration issue never really went away.

It is probably safe to say that the America of the time underwent major changes, one of which was the end of slavery and of course the millions of immigrants who came here.

This idea that the values of a particular time should be preserved forever is fairly common and we see it in some religious sects that refuse to use modern technology.

Most of us consider them somewhat quaint but then many of us want to glorify a particular period of American history and freeze it in time.

It isn't going to happen, the world isn't going to stand still and neither is the country.


No comments:

Post a Comment