Let’s keep this letter going until it reaches all the people in the good ole USA! We have a problem that is not
going away regardless of how many heads are stuck in the sand.
This was written by Rosemary LaBonte to the editors of a California newspaper in response to an article written by Ernie Lujan who suggests we should tear down the Statue of Liberty because the immigrants of today aren't being treated the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry. The paper never printed this response, so her husband sent it out via internet.
Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr. Lujan why today's American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer. Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of Europe to come to the United States, people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in New York and be documented.
Some would even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary rule in their new American households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home.
They had waved goodbye to their birth place to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture. Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills and craftsmanship they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity.
Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. My father fought alongside men whose parents had come straight over from Germany, Italy, France and Japan . None of these 1st generation Americans ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Americans fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan. They were defending the United States of America as one people.
When we liberated France, no one in those villages were looking for the French American, the German American or the Irish American. The people of France saw only Americans. And we carried one flag that represented one country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country's flag and waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what it meant to be an American. They stirred the melting pot into one red, white and blue bowl.
And here we are with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges. Only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules, one that includes the entitlement card and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country.
I'm sorry, that's not what being an American is all about. I believe that the immigrants who landed on Ellis Island in the early 1900's deserve better than that for all the toil, hard work and sacrifice in raising future generations to create a land that has become a beacon for those legally searching for a better life. I think they would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign country flags.
And for that suggestion about taking down the Statue of Liberty, it happens to mean a lot to the citizens who are voting on the immigration bill.
I wouldn't start talking about dismantling the United States just yet.
FOR THE WRONG THINGS TO PREVAIL, THE RIGHTFUL MAJORITY NEEDS TO REMAIN COMPLACENT AND QUIET.
LET THIS NEVER HAPPEN!
I sincerely hope this letter gets read by millions of people all across the nation!
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17 comments:
Hmm. My partner (Jewish) still speaks of his ancestors who came here five generations ago. He can tell you stories of the towns they came from, of how they entered this country -- not through Ellis Island, by the way. It's a giant myth that all immigrants came through Ellis Island -- and about what happened to them during their first generations in America, both the good and the bad.
One of my in-laws is a Greek-American. Same thing.
I have a friend whose family came here from France, three generations ago. They kept dual citizenship for their kids up until this generation.
My partner, by the way, teaches in the local schools, where many of the kids are immigrants. Plenty of their parents and older siblings are in the military.
tl;dr As always, RWD is full of shit.
Shorter version: We're bigots now.
The bigots in 1900 said the exact same thing about those immigrants as these people are saying about immigrants today.
Their ancestors said the same thing about the Irish in the middle of the 19th century.
Their ancestors ancestors said the same thing about the German immigrants in colonial america.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/newimmigrants.asp
To CharlieE: I disagree. We've always been bigots.
This kerfuffle over Ms. LaBonte's real Letter to the Editor is over 11 years old. The original letter was written and then sent out to various sites on the Internet in 2006. I have no idea if Mr. LaBonte sent out the letter with the photos we see here, but I suspect not. I suspect those have been added to gin & rile up the usual hatreds and animosities towards "the other."
Why do I disagree with CharlieE? Because Ms. LaBonte's treacley screed is highly inaccurate. It's her "opinion," to which she's well entitled, but it doesn't record historical facts. It's all very well to fetishize the past as this glorious golden time when everything was rosey and wonderful, except that it wasn't.
The current animosity towards immigrants because allegedly they don't speak English and assimilate into what's laughingly called US "culture" is something that's gone on since, oh, I don't know, since Europeans started coming here.
My background is German, and up through my grandparents' generation (my family mostly came over in the late 18th C, so had been here a long time) spoke German and mainly mingled in German enclaves. This after having been here for something like 7 generations. My great grandparents and grandparents spoke English poorly and with a thick accent. My mother and her siblings were placed in remedial English classes in school, and they were summarily directed by the school admin to NOT speak German at home. Hence, German has become a lost language skill in my family (except I can speak it credibly with some practice).
It's no secret that many immigrants to the US have faced loads of discrimmination, whether they had good English skills or not. Simply passing through Ellis or Angel (out on the west coast) Islands certainly did NOT make those immigrants any "better" or whatever than those who go through different, but equally rigorous, immigration procedures now. Often those immigrants ended up with European names because the people processing them didn't know how to spell their real names. This continues to this day, and I help Afghani refugees right now to get their names changed back to their correct names. It wasn't something that immigrants chose to do in order to show some kind of patrioticy assimilation. It was something that happened to them without them having any ability to change it.
I can remember growing up in the '50s and '60s where it was common to tell Polish "jokes" and to diss, mock and make fun of those who had immigrated somewhat more recently from Eastern Europe. And they were white! And typically Christian, although often Roman Catholic, which back then was a religion viewed with suspicion and distrust.
Yes, immigrants who arrived in the early part of the 20th C didn't take advantage of free lunch programs, other types of welfare, or labor laws... because they simply didn't exist back then. But let's paint a rosey picture of a fantasy fairy tale and then wallow in it.
... continued in next entry....
...continued:
Does Ms. LaBonte and RWD want to dispense with all Labor Laws and the protections that they provide to US citizens simply to insure that some dastardly current immigrant doesn't get to enjoy those protections? Yeah, right: just proves the point, doesn't it, that conservatives will happily do away with all sorts of rights and protections if it means some blacks or recent immigrants don't get to enjoy those rights and protections, either. Great idea, RWD!
So RWD found himself a photo of what looks like some Mexicans (whether in the USA or in Mexico, who knows?) flipping the bird. Yeah, right there is proof positive of how reprehensible these d*mn furrriners are!! AS IF I couldn't go out find dozens upon dozens of similar photos of white people doing the exact same thing. DUH. What does it even mean? That Mexicans know what the bird is? Wow. How awful./s
As for the flag photo? Who knows where that was taken. Probably overseas (unsure which other flag that is) where Team USA has likely bombed the living sh*t out of their country. Who can blame them? I don't. There's no way to prove that flag photo was taken in the USA.
So in conclusion: yet another day ending in "y" in conservaland.
Ms LaBonte is real, and her email is real, but the conclusions she draws are fatally flawed, highly inaccurate, and really don't depict reality in any way shape or form. Yes, I believe that Ms LaBonte is bigoted.
@delagar:
Are you homosexual? Why do you call your significant other your "boyfriend"?
Why call him your "partner"?
BTW - Is he an orthodox Jew that maintains strict kosher rules? If he is, then when he sucks your "meat", he better well not swallow your "milk".
When are y'all getting married? Great equal benefits under the law by getting legally married...go for it guy!!!! Taxes are due April 15.
*Why DON'T you call....oops.
Yeah, yeah, let's get all teary eyed about Ellis Island and make believe that all immigrants up to a certain date were all wonderful people that the local US citizens welcomed with open arms and everyone got along soooo well and everything was easy-peasy and everyone spoke English beautifully and had the correct names and no one was bothered by all those nasty dirty smelly Messican Moozlinz who would be super welcomed except they're ruining everything with them forcing good clean WHITE US citizens to give them lotsa handouts and Obamaphones and actually expect to be protected by US Laws that, after all, were only passed for the sole benefit of hard working WHITE Murkins and not stinky smelly lazy shiftless blahs and browns who never ever work and are all criminals and who only ever suck on the gubmint teat for generations and refuse to join the police force and never join the military or fight in our wars and they make life terrible for me because I have to pay taxes unfair.
See this picture of Mexicans grabbing their crotches and flipping the bird! Why I never! The very idea! Disgusting. No clean WHITE Murkin would ever dream of doing such degrading things. It's deplorable.
Stop calling me a bigot!!11!! It's hurts my feelings!
ferschitz: Plenty of the stories my partner has to tell about what happened to his family in their first generations here have to do with bigotry and hate. You're right, none of this started with Trump.
And none of it stopped a hundred years ago. When his father was in WWII, he busted a fellow soldier's jaw over anti-Semitic slurs.
Immigrants have never been welcome in the US, despite what the Statue of Liberty says.
Not the Africans (oh wait, special circumstances)
Not the Germans
Not the Irish (especially not the Irish)
Not the Poles (stupid, amirite?)
Not the Jews (holy shit, the fucking Jews are ruining everything)
Not the Italians (especially not the Italians)
Not the Chinese
Not the Japanese
Not the Mexicans
Not anybody.
'Pull up the ladder' has been the phrase du jour for each subsequent generation, as it will continue to be.
^^ This anonymous has it absolutely right. From the very beginning, nativists hated immigrants. (Your nativist being anyone whose parents, at least, had immigrated here.)
And every single time we've heard the "oh but these immigrants are different!" screeching. And every single time it's been another hate-filled bucket of propaganda.
Anonymous, you'll be interested to know that even with Africans, there was an argument against slavery on the basis of what bringing in so many of "those inferior people" and "those pagan races" would do to the character of fledgling America. Also, how "those women," being from the hot countries, where women had no control over their sexual appetites (a common racist belief at the time), would seduce the pure white men and corrupt the pure white family.
As an argument, it didn't get far, given how profitable slavery turned out to be, but it got made.
delagar is a DICK-A-LICK.
Do you have the hots for Ricky Martin....or does he not "do" anything for you? I see you are into Jewish men...well at least your "partner" is circumcised and hence nice an clean where it counts for you tongue and mouth.
Mike Hawk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrgpZ0fUixs
For your listening pleasure. Denis Leary.
Anal or Oral.
Which does delagar's Jewish partner prefer?
Thomas Jefferson was absolutely obsessed with that super tight vaginal grip of one of his negro slaves...the dude couldn't get enough of that love box.
You anonymous trolls sure are obsessed with sex.
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