As the great granddaughter of immigrants, I grew up with immigrant pride. My family told story after story about their immigrant relatives with pride. I enjoyed those stories. Now I am immersed in a family history project that finds me going back in time to understand the stories of my many ancestors. As I research I find myself looking for trends that resulted in strength, happiness, and overall good living. I am wondering how I might translate the lessons and lifestyles of family members past into my life today. The more I read, the more I realize that the many immigrants in my family's history brought a great deal of strength, imagination, and love to our family--they helped to make us a strong, adventurous and loving family. Their stories and the stories of their peers and family members speak of courage, collaboration, service, and family commitment.
It is curious to me that President Trump, the son of a poor immigrant woman, the husband to an immigrant wife, and the grandson of immigrants disdains immigrants and immigration so much. What warped ideas does he have about immigration? Why has he been such a blockade when it comes to immigrant respect, good laws that foster healthy, positive and humane immigration patterns and processes, and acknowledgement of the strength that immigration has brought to our country throughout time?
As a country, we have to do a better job when it comes to immigration.
First, we have to look realistically at what immigration has meant for the United States. While there are stories of immigration failures, there are many more stories of immigration strength, success, and contribution. Overall, immigration has been good for the United States, and unlike Trump propaganda, the statistics prove that.
Next, we have to recognize that our immigration laws are part of the problem--they confound humane, positive immigration patterns in the United States. I'm not an immigration expert, but in talking to some who know a lot more about the subject than me, I realize that we have to change the laws to make immigration more successful and humane in the United States.
And, we have to work with other countries to understand and work with immigration issues better. Immigration, in many ways, is the result of cruel, inhumane, irresponsible, and oppressive behaviors over time. Some countries where immigrants flee from have been weakened by the greed and inhumanity of people from other countries who exploited their resources, lands, and population for their own personal wealth without care or conccern for the country's welfare. Also, many who flee their countries suffer from climate-related problems, problems of unclean water, deforested lands, barren fields, and more that are results of poor worldwide resource management and not enough work to stem the effects of climate change. We won't solve big problems like this on our own as a country--we will only solve this by working with other countries to strive for a world where people are not forced to leave their homelands, but instead immigrate only when they desire a new place to live.
Ideally we would have a world where people can move about as they want to learn about and enjoy the many cultures, climates, and landscapes all over the world. Yet, I don't think we're there yet--instead we're at a point where we have to work with one another to use laws and policies to forward the best possible living for all people on Earth. What can we do to make that happen? How can we improve our immigration laws, policies, and work to recognize the opportunity that immigraiton can be for the United States and countries throughout the world.