Saturday, November 28, 2015

Immigration and Indiana



Unless you are a Native American the odds are you are or are a decedent of an immigrant and in many cases not because they wanted to flee to America. My parents came because if they stayed in their homeland a man by the name of Hitler would have had them murdered. In the 1700’s and earlier they came for religious freedom. We just had Thanksgiving with its roots in immigrants who came because of religious persecution.

 In the early 1800’s the Germans who were escaping economic problems and seeking political freedom and the great waves of Irish they came due to poverty and famine. By the late 1800’s we have Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian’s coming for freedom of religion and work.  In the 1930’s Jews who were under a death warrant from Hitler and early 1940’s if they could escape.  After WWII many people from a war torn Europe. In the 1980’s one third of the immigrants were Asian and Hispanics made up another 50% due to economic conditions and once again war. The primary reasons over the years have been religion, poverty  and war.
We are a nation of immigrants, our forefathers came not because they wanted to leave their homeland but in most cases they had too. So when our Governor puts up a barricade to three immigrants he is forgetting the millions of people who were immigrants who have built this great nation. He is forgetting his forefathers I am certain they too were immigrants. 

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Governor Pence I think you need to take a trip to New York Harbor and out to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. You seem to have forgotten.