More Misinformation from the Media:
We are a nation built by industrious and brave immigrants who created a better future for the next generation of Americans. Our ancestors made enduring sacrifices traveling to an unknown land to freely practice their religion, to earn the fruits of their hard labor and enjoy the benefits of a free and safe society.
We remember these brave immigrant stories along with the dark side of the American narrative—centuries of slaves helping to build a nation’s economy, Jim Crow laws keeping us separate, internment of innocent Japanese whether or not they were U.S. citizens, and now border detention centers.
As at the time of our nation’s founding, we still strive to recognize every human’s inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These stories, the inspiring and dark ones, must be remembered to further our progression and realize the ideals set forth in 1776. – Commentary: We are a nation built by immigrants—Are we now in the process of repeating our past, or will we learn from our nation’ history?, The Salt Lake Tribune, For The Tribune, 7/8/18 [Link]
Fact Check: This article expresses the falsehood that “immigrants built America.” Actually it was settlers mostly from Britain as well as other European countries who laid the foundation of this country and create its essential character. They were not immigrants, people who leave one country and take a new nationality in another country. The British settlers moved from one part of the British Empire to another to develop what was initially an untamed frontier.
This is not to minimize the subsequent and numerous contributions of immigrants, but it is a necessary corrective to the false narrative that immigration is the overriding key to American identity—a narrative commonly used to manipulate sentiment about immigrants in order to prevent rational discussion about immigration policy.
Another such tactic is guilt manipulation, usually by citing the past shortcomings and failures of America and imply that refusal to embrace mass immigration is just a modern version of those lapses. The authors mention Jim Crow and the Japanese internment camps, and suggest that resistance to mass immigration is “repeating” that past. In truth, opposition to immigration had nothing to do with injustice to blacks and Japanese-Americans.
One indeed can make the case that the supporters of mass immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries inflicted injustice on black Americans. Prominent black leaders such as Frederick Douglas, Booker T. Washington and A. Philip Randolph urged the government to limit mass immigration so that jobs would be available for blacks who needed jobs. Those pleas went unheeded as unscrupulous businesses interests made cheap labor their top priority.
Immigration enthusiasts typically ignore the negative impact of immigration on America’s poor and working class people. Their “pursuit of happiness” doesn’t seem to matter to the enthusiasts whose hearts bleed almost solely for immigrants.
The notion the Tribune writers imply, that every human on planet earth has an equal and inalienable right to come to America is patently absurd. If we open our gates without restriction to the world, a tidal wave of population would swamp us. In that situation we would become just as wretched as any of the countries sending us their people. Who would gain in that situation?
Immigration enthusiasts seem to take great pride in their self-presumed morality and “compassion.” But what is compassion if it is not balanced by other virtues such as truth seeking, prudence, and the taking of responsibility for the practical consequences of one’s beliefs? Without these balancing virtues, compassion becomes nothing more than emotional self-indulgence—and those who practice it have no claim to moral authority.