About immigrants

Ever wonder why some of our elected officials have it in for immigrants?

All of us could easily trace our citizenship back to the time that our forebears arrived on our shores.

In a sense we are all immigrants, some more mindful of it than others.

I have always wondered what my first immigrant families might have uttered when they first saw the USA.

My Lucas family came by sailing vessel to America in 1710.

They had escaped religious persecution in France and escaped to Germany in what would be a hardship journey.

The family was in Germany for only a short period, and upon hearing that a few acres of property would be given to immigrants who were willing to relocate to the colonies, they made their move.

Then the family, my “several” great grandfathers ago, his wife and five kids, made their way to England anticipating the voyage. They were assigned to their ship, but it was winter, and the sailing was delayed until spring. 

During the wait, those wishing to travel here suffered many hardships. My grandmother and one of the children died during the wait, so the family had been decimated before setting sail.  Many succumbed during the sea voyage. The family landed in New York, where they took up temporary residence before starting the trek west.

The story shows the suffering many of our immigrant families went through just to get here.

I believe this is one of the reasons our immigrant families have made such huge contributions to our society.

I only wish there was some written evidence of their feelings upon their arrival.

On my mother’s side, her mom came from Norway, arriving in the mid 1880s.The Statue of Liberty was in place at that time, and I can only imagine how she felt upon seeing it. The Statue of Liberty, designed by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, was a friendship gift from the people of France to the people of America, and dedicated on Liberty Island in 1888. 

Our country can be defined by the struggle our families made to get here and the hopes they had for their futures.

Many of our politicians forget this.

What we have done and threatened to do to immigrants makes us less as a people and threatens the reasons why our republic was founded in the first place.

If we could speak to our immigrant family members today and hear them share their stories of sacrifice and their dreams upon coming here, we wouldn’t have the immigration problems that have surfaced in the past couple of years.

We are all immigrants in a sense, and when we condemn new immigrants, we are only showing our ignorance and heaping ourselves with scorn.

Immigrants have made this country, and it is indeed a shame that some in political leadership are so unfeeling.

Immigrants from such places as Ireland, Poland and Italy have all taken their turn from our general public, having found themselves at the bottom of the barrel.

Those who hold our newcomers thusly should be the ones that receive the unwelcomes, because they diminish the rest of us.