Asian-American, Cuban-American, European-American, African-American, Mexican-American. . . different backgrounds, different cultures, but all united by the fact that when the hyphen is eliminated we are all Americans.
Over the years the United States has been called a nation of immigrants. The fact that we are a melting pot for so many different cultures, races, and religions makes us unique in the world. It is also what has helped mold our national character. For more than 300 years, various ethnic, cultural, and social groups have come to our shores to reunite with their loved ones, to seek economic opportunity, and to find a haven from religious and political persecution. They bring their hopes, their dreams, and, in turn, contribute, enrich, and energize America.
And yet, today, we are witnessing television shows that vilify newcomers as scam artists, news stories that showcase the growing backlash against immigration, and politicians and reporters who make no distinction between immigrants entering the country legally or illegally. Unfortunately, much of what we are reading, hearing, and seeing is based on fiction, not fact. So what is the true story?
Less than a million immigrants arrive in the United States each year. Of these, 700,000 enter as lawful permanent residents and another 100,000 to 150,000 enter legally as refugees or others fleeing persecution. Undocumented immigrants constitute only 1% of the total U.S. population and, contrary to popular belief, most of these immigrants do not enter the United States illegally by crossing our border with Canada or Mexico. Instead most immigrants here illegally, 6 out of 10, enter the U.S. legally with a student, tourist, or business visa and become illegal when they stay in the United States after their visas expire.
Most legal immigrants, about 8 out of 11, come to join close family members. Family-sponsored immigrants enter as either immediate relatives--spouses, unmarried minor children, parents-- of U.S. citizens, or through the family preference system, for relatives of permanent residents and siblings of U.S. citizens. While there are unlimited number of visas issued for immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, INS data shows that only around 235,000 visas have been issued annually in this category in recent years. The family preference system is far more restrictive and limits the number of visas issued in its four categories to a total of 226,000 per year. In addition, the waiting period for a visa can very long. For example, a sibling of a U.S. citizen who applies today to immigrate to this country could get a visa 30 years from now.
It is easy to see that family reunification is the cornerstone of our legal immigration policy. It is truly one of the most visible areas in government policy in which we support and strengthen family values. We acknowledge that family unification translates into strong families who build strong communities.
The second priority of our legal admissions system allows employers to bring in a relatively small number of skilled workers from overseas when there are no qualified Americans available to fill the job. This doesn't mean that we shirk our responsibility to educate and train those already here. It only means that we recognize the need to be able to attract talented and hardworking individuals from all corners of the world and to acquire often needed expertise and experience.
This concept is not new. Throughout our history we have relied on the strength, expertise, and special skills of foreign workers and immigrants to build this country. As early as 1610 Italian craftsmen were brought to the New World by the Virginia Colony to start the glass trade. In the mid- 1800s American manufacturers advertised in European newspapers offering free passage to any man willing to come to the United States to work for them. Immigrant workers have altered American life and their contributions were, and still are, significant to the economic growth of our nation.
Finally, American immigration policy fulfills our commitment to religious and political freedom. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," is not rhetoric, it is America's pledge to ensure that those brave men and women who face the prospect of ethnic cleansing, religious oppression, torture, and even death have a haven. Because this country was founded in large part by those who fled various kinds of political and religious persecution, it has become of our historical responsibility to serve as an advocate for human rights
...................................................................................................................................... impossibility is a word found only in the dictionary of fools
Mexican-American??? Euopean-American ??? Would it make sense to call people in Mexico - Spanish-Mexicans? We don't do thaat because they have a unique identity from Spain. Yet you bast arderize the Americans and disrespect our identity which you obviously don't even understand.
There is only ONE true AMERICAN. This is who we are...
A true American believes in FREEDOM, DEMOCRACY, CAPITALISM, JESUS CHRIST AS OUR LORD AND PERSONAL SAVIOR, and in the Supremacy of AMERICA over all other lands and peoples and our MANIFEST DESTINY to rule the universe.
If you believe in ALL these principles then you are an AMERICAN regardless of where you are from. If you do not agree with each and everyone of these, then you are NOT an American. This is our heart and our soul; it is not about where you are from. it is about where you are going.
GOD BLESS AMERICA AND NO ONE ELSE !!!!
This message has been edited. Last edited by: SonofMichael,
Impeach Obama ! ............................... SOM - THE VOICE OF REASON
freedom and jesus and i dont know what and god bless america and no one else????????
...................................................................................................................................... impossibility is a word found only in the dictionary of fools
...................................................................................................................................... impossibility is a word found only in the dictionary of fools
Originally posted by SonofMichael: Mexican-American??? Euopean-American ??? Would it make sense to call people in Mexico - Spanish-Mexicans? We don't do thaat because they have a unique identity from Spain. Yet you bast arderize the Americans and disrespect our identity which you obviously don't even understand.
There is only ONE true AMERICAN. This is who we are...
A true American believes in FREEDOM, DEMOCRACY, CAPITALISM, JESUS CHRIST AS OUR LORD AND PERSONAL SAVIOR, and in the Supremacy of AMERICA over all other lands and peoples and our MANIFEST DESTINY to rule the universe.
If you believe in ALL these principles then you are an AMERICAN regardless of where you are from. If you do not agree with each and everyone of these, then you are NOT an American. This is our heart and our soul; it is not about where you are from. it is about where you are going.
GOD BLESS AMERICA AND NO ONE ELSE !!!!
Oh, Boy. Talk about generalizations.
SOM, the United States is not homogeneous; the country represents most, if not all, the nationalities and ethnicities of the world. Thus, when one calls oneself an Asian-American, the individual recognizes their heritage and nationality. America is a nation, not an ethnicity with Asian representing their unique ethnicity that in turn made thes nation great, SOM.
Americans, including those whose will call themselves Asian-American, African-American, etc believe this nation is the greatest just as citizens from other nations believe the same for their country. Nothing new there.
As for religion, this country was founded for both religious and economic reasons. We tend to forget the harsh conditions of Jamestown when we think of Thanksgiving. Yet both played a significant part of our history. As for Capitalism, it can take many forms from a Laissez-faire perspective to a Keynesian perspective to a Monetarist perspective. Each is a version of "Capitalism" and I seriously doubt you know the intricacies of each econoic perspective. So, which one do you believe in SOM?
In Texas, the joke is we have two religions: the Bible and the pigskin (football). And in the South, the term "Yankee" is viewed more as a derogatory term than a slang for "American." So, are Texans true Americans then according to your extreme, myopic, limited perspective?
Finally, your contrite narrow minded attempt to an all or none dogma is truly reprehensible on how this nation was founded, SOM. The American Idea was one set forth by the Magna Carta, the Rights of Man, no one is beholden to their class, race, ethnicity, etc. We, as a natino have faltered to adhere to these principles, but we are forever improving our nation, for better or worse, with each election whether it is local, state, or national.
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." John Adams on Defense of the boston Massacre
We strive to be truer or freer or smarter or richer or perhaps just happier than our own parents were. The American Idea is about generations in reaction and reinvention.
Courtney E. Martin | November 5, 2007 | web only
The Atlantic celebrated its 150th anniversary this month by asking intellectuals and artists to write 300 words or create an image on "the future of the idea of America." The print edition featured, to my count, 47 such short essays and images, with just eight of them written by women. Most contributors, too boot, are hovering around AARP membership age. Ah, America, land of equality and equal representation.
Though I wasn't asked, and James Bennett probably doesn't give a you-know-what about my thoughts, I've decided to tell him (and you) anyway. Tom Wolfe didn't stick to 300 words (shocker), so I'm not either. Defying the rules is certainly one kind of American idea, after all.
* * *
My paternal grandfather had 27 brothers and sisters and grew up above a *****house in Iowa. He left home at 14 and spent the rest of his life as a traveling salesman, prone to fantastic successes shortly followed by grand acts of self-sabotage. My grandmother was a writer in her heart, but a bipolar mom in her house. My father, as a result, grew up answering the door for debt collectors and, in fact, took off his own braces with pliers when the money ran out.
He became a bankruptcy lawyer. All he wanted was to provide a sense of security for his family. I, his daughter, grew up with an abundance of security in a suburban Colorado neighborhood of unlocked front doors, bike rodeos, and summer enrichment programs. As soon as I had the chance, I high-tailed it to a big, dangerous city: New York, that is. Then I experienced September 11 from 100 blocks away. I now do little more ardently than argue that security is a delusion. And so it goes...
The American Idea is about generations in reaction and reinvention. It is about me reacting to my father and my country, just as he reacted to his father and his country. It is about daughters and sons, composing lives out of the decomposing traditions, abandoned dreams, and sometimes inspired examples of their parents. It is about border crossing -- national, psychological, generational.
In my paternal family, the border's name is security, and we seem to cross it back and forth with each generation. My grandfather abandoned all hope of being safe and "successful." My father reclaimed the notion with all his might. And I abandoned it once again, this time under different auspices. My grandmother didn't have the support or psyche to fulfill her dream of being a writer and, instead, became agoraphobic who was afraid of everything. Because of my feminist upbringing and my half-changed country, I am fiercely unafraid and have the benefit of having been so many places, learned from so many people. Now I write for her.
An undeniable part of the American Idea is the presence of dreams -- whether fortifying or pacifying. Unlike children in so many countries around the world where hubris and resources are scarce, American children hear early and often that their dreams are their birthright, that they should produce them and pursue them well beyond the point where their parents' dreams dropped them off. In fact, outsizing the dreams of your parents is thought of as fundamentally patriotic. Ambition may not have been invented in this country, but we have certainly trademarked it as our own.
In this way, the American Idea is like an intricate nest and we, its citizens, are the ones painstakingly building. We weave together the delicate threads of our families -- what we've been taught and seen modeled about what matters -- church, mosque, a paycheck, soccer, casserole recipes. We weave in interpretations of God and country. We weave in our worst failures, our most painful wakeup calls, our biggest, fattest dreams.
It is not our hands, but our times, that shape the nest. Social networking sites,, terrorism, reality television, electoral campaigns, sexual politics, the price of oil, and education. That is why each generation's American Idea is made up of the same "stuff" -- love, birth, work, play, taxes, death -- as their parents', but looks so different.
I have driven a Hybrid car the likes of which my grandfather never could have imagined, but I will never know the peace he felt while slowly climbing a mountain road in a boat of a car headed for his next stop on a Maxwell Coffee sales trip. I have had access to political theory courses my grandmother never could have hoped to experience, but I'm starting to believe I will never know what it is like to believe in a politician as wholeheartedly as she did JFK. We have all known the open road. All been fully engaged in the emotional pain and intellectual curiosity of being citizens. It just looks and feels so different in 2007 than it did in 1957.
Generation after generation, Americans strive to be truer or freer or smarter or richer or perhaps just happier than their own parents were. This is why immigration is such a quintessential part of our national character. America is the sum total of millions of children trying to either make their parents proud or prove them wrong, sometimes both. Some of these parents have traveled across great distances to bear or raise their children in a land where they know progeny is expected to progress much further than its source.
The American Idea is seeing what is and wanting more. Sometimes we mistranslate this into "things" -- gadgets, designer labels, vacation homes -- when, in fact, it means more authenticity. More joy. More fulfillment. When a little girl sits at the dinner table and watches her mother force a smile and say, through clenched teeth, "I'm fine," and that little girl decides never to be a domestic martyr in her lifetime, it is at that moment that a true American is born. She may steal away certain mementos from her mother's life -- her way of spraying the perfume and then walking into it, her love of classical music, her tenacity -- but leave behind the rest. She is doing the heavy lifting of aspirational imagination required to build a better life.
The American Idea is remix. It is collage. It is found object sculpture. It is radical love. It is never settling. It is living your mother's compassion but not her anger. It is emulating your father's joy but not his homophobia. It is self-defined faith. It is studying something your uncle would call horse ****. It is working with your hands in a way that your aunt would consider beneath you. It is rebelling and being rebelled against. It is surprise. It is, thank goodness, still mind-blowing potential. Generation after generation.
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." John Adams on Defense of the boston Massacre
Not to put the fly in the ointment but following this thread I remembered the Theodore Roosvelt speech from way back when. And I've found this fragment:
"Theodore Roosevelt Advocates Americanism, 1915
... There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts "native" before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.
The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.
For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish-American, or an English-American, is to be a traitor to American institutions; and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic."
And it's not that disagree with the fine sentiments of others but this "hyphenated American" business sticks a bit in my craw.
Excellent ! I was at Teddy Roosevelts house a few weeks ago in Oyster Bay, Long Island ! He was a great leader and embodies the spirit of America and what I am talking about. I am not as elequant as him, but I share the same beliefs. Maybe HIS words will help the rest of these filthy savages appreciate what America is really about for they seem very confused and stubborn.
GOD BLESS TEDDY ROOSEVELT ! GOD BLESS AMERICA AND NO ONE ELSE !!!!
Impeach Obama ! ............................... SOM - THE VOICE OF REASON
america is immigrants u stupid sonofmichael ,,,america to u is to set ur lazy a s s on the chair and watch tv ant popcorn...this is ur america,,and i know u like it bcoz u dont have to work bcoz ur a lazy person and all u guys do is just *****ing about ppl taking the jobs from the americans,what jobs r u guys talking about?immigrants created jobs and works in the u.s ,,some loser like u is only good on setting on hes computer and insulting the people who were the reason of making ur life better and making u a better person,,and iam not talking about illegal criminals,,ok,,there is a big difference between the illegal hard workers who's in the country to make a better life and support the'r family's and they keep ther nose clean,,and between ppl who criminals and gangs and jobless,,,we r not saying america should be an open country for everybody around the world,,but at least u should be greatefull and everybody should appreciate the good immigrants who helped to make america a better place ...and stop been an idiot and just talking from ur nose ,,,u dont know what r u talking about,,,and sorry if u messed ur tv show and ur popcorn sonofmichael.
...................................................................................................................................... impossibility is a word found only in the dictionary of fools
"An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani or Afghan.
"An American may also be a ! Comanche, Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as Native Americans.
"An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim. In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses.
"An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.
"An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.
"An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return.
"When Afghanistan was over-run by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country!
"As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation ! to the poor in Afghanistan. Americans welcome the best of everything...the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best services. But they also welcome the least.
"The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty, welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built America.
"Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 11, 2001 earning a better life for their families. It's been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 different countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.
"So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world. But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American." http://www.theflagpole.com/to_kill_an_american.htm
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." John Adams on Defense of the boston Massacre
Do not insult us real native Americans by calling us those things; there is only ONE AMERICAN as I have explained; there are NO hypenated Americans !! You are either an American or you are not. There is no middle ground.
Impeach Obama ! ............................... SOM - THE VOICE OF REASON
Originally posted by SonofMichael: Do not insult us real native Americans by calling us those things; there is only ONE AMERICAN as I have explained; there are NO hypenated Americans !! You are either an American or you are not. There is no middle ground.
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