Immigration Nation......
Jul 5, 08:23 PM by Darryl Crum
In the conversations I’ve had with Native Americans, I’ve been astounded to find that virtually all of them preferred not to be called Native Americans. They preferred to be identified by their individual nations, e.g., Sioux, Cherokee, Choctaw, etc. It is their testimony to the fact that they choose not to be classified as immigrants to this continent.
This brings up an interesting point. Unless you are one of them, unless your lineage somehow predates history in this country, and you live in the United States, you are recognized as being either an immigrant or the descendant of an immigrant. My family has lived on this continent since the 1600’s and in researching my lineage, the one point that keeps me anchored is the fact that I am the descendant of immigrants, people who came from a variety of nations.
Immigration is migration, and it has been happening every since our early ancestors picked up their bones and stones in Africa and began to spread across the surface of the earth. As a species, we are migratory and we will continue to be so. Perhaps if the time span for the human model is short, migration can be seen as immigration and can be classified as being either legal or illegal. But as the time span of the model expands, it simply becomes a matter of global migration. As the Earth’s climate changes, we will be forced to migrate even more; and as long distance travel becomes more available and more affordable, global migration will increase voluntarily. That being said, who cares?
In this country, it seems a lot of people care. They care enough to go stand on our southern border in brain melting heat with near-vigilante intent of keeping illegal immigrants out of this country. (I would like to make the point that it is a lot cooler on the Canadian border, and the beer is better, but I don’t think that’s the goal.) I believe they are wrong, as wrong as they can be, and I would love to take the high road and say I admire their willingness to sacrifice for a cause they believe in. The trouble is, I can’t. I cannot find it in my soul to admire anyone who is willing to sacrifice so much for a senseless ideology.
