Thursday, July 11, 2013 1:35 PM
KOKOMO – “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to
breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these,
the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden
door!”
When my ancestors, Scots Irish immigrants from Ulster,
immigrated to America in the early part of the 18th Century, they were
not greeted by Lady Liberty and her famous poem. The statue had not been
erected nor the words of the poem written. However, they were welcomed
by a vast land whose siren call around the world could be heard by all,
“Come to America and be free!”
For centuries, the downtrodden
and oppressed from around the world have made their way to our shores
asking only one thing, an opportunity to work and live in freedom. The
flow of immigrants to our country has enriched our character and forged a
nation that has been stronger, more creative and more successful than
the other, generally homogenous, countries of the world. What country
would not be made stronger by a man who says, “I am going to take
everything that I have and move my family to the United States where
there is opportunity and freedom?”
Of course, for over 200
years, Americans have resisted welcoming new immigrants to their
country. They’ve feared that the new arrivals would threaten the
prosperity that they have come to know. Our nation, as great as it is,
has resisted immigration by Irish Catholics, Polish, Germans, Italians,
Jews and Chinese, to name just a few. We would have resisted immigration
of black Africans if they had not been forced to come here for the
economic benefit of the South. I don’t know if it is merely fear of
change, fear of the unknown or a natural tendency to fear anyone who
doesn’t look like us that has motivated Americans over history to fight
immigration. America has become a club that after trying desperately to
get in, we try desperately to keep everyone else out.