HispanicVista Columnists
Immigration: A Long View
By Richard N. Baldwin T. /HispanicVista.com
   May 9, 2005

   
    
     Immigration has been with us a long time, in fact as long as the history of man itself. A year or so ago, the National Geographic Magazine mapped the history on the migration of man from the original "Garden of Eden" in Africa to the dispersal all over the world. And, of course, there is the statement at the base of the Statue of Liberty museum that reminds us that we, or our ancestors, are all immigrants the Western Hemisphere. This is especially true in North America.  The massive immigration that occurred after the discovery of the "New World" brought profound impact on those civilizations that were in existence before their arrival. Sometimes I make a bad joke to my wife: "While your ancestors walked over the Bering Straight, my ancestors came over on the Mayflower".
     In North America, for the greater part, the Indian civilizations were just wiped out. And after that, from time to time there have been "waves" of immigrants, driven by various reasons that brought them to the New World shores.
     When my mother, who was raised in Texas, came to Chicago, she commented that the Jewish people in Chicago were completely different from the Jewish that she was familiar with in Texas. The Jewish in Texas were mainly from the rural Russian "Pale" and were escaping religious persecution in Russia. The Jews in Chicago were mainly from urban areas in Northern Europe.

    Masses of Irish, escaping the "potato famine" did needed work in the East, building canals and the railroads. But I also remember a verse from an old "Irish Work Song" that went: "In 1846, I was in an awful fix, they pelted me with stones and sticks, for working' on the railway". It was the old story: the earlier people felt that they were in danger from loosing their cultural values from all of those Catholic immigrants who worked so cheap. And, as the old saying goes, the Irish later "blended in" by becoming policemen and politicians.

     In later history, the wave of Germans into the Midwest caused cultural shocks in Chicago. Economic reasons and also political unrest drove most. The political leaders of Chicago put a tax on beer (directed at the Germans) to let them know that they were not welcome. The Germans rioted and stormed south to the central area. They were met by police and a number of Germans and police were thrown into the Chicago River and drowned. But in the long run, the German work ethic and the imported technology that they brought went a long way to make Chicago the "Toolmaker of the World".

     In the West, during the railroad building era, "cheap labor" was imported from China to do the job. If you remember, the Northern Pacific Railroad used as a logo the Chinese "yin and yang" symbol on their trains. The aftermath of this was a wave of anti-immigration laws directed at Asians.

     Later, in Colorado, farmers discovered sugar beets as a source for sugar. But they needed labor to do the hard work in the fields. They tried Chinese who did do the work, but saved up their money and purchased land to become competitors. They tried Native Americans but found out that they did not have the "work ethic" required. They tried Japanese, but they were worse than the Chinese were. Then came the Revolution in México. Mexicans, fleeing the revolutionary period migrated north to what at one time was sparsely populated México. The Mexican labor worked out because they only wanted to work and live in peace. And that was the start of the "Mexican input" to Colorado.

     In all of these waves of immigrants there was a cultural reaction and a period of adjustment of acclimation that followed. But, in the long run, it worked. In the early days, there was no "legal" or Illegal" immigration, they were just there. Now things are more complicated and, of course, the war on terror presents another aspect. But do you remember what happened to the Japanese that lived on the West Coast in World War II? If you looked Japanese, you had problems. Even Japanese-American citizens were herded up and put into concentration camps.  And this was while their sons were fighting for the US in Europe as the Nisei.

     On the other hand, have you noted the percentage of Hispanic names of the killed and wounded in Iraq? We see their funerals down here as they are shipped home for the "final trip".

     My point of all this is that once again we have an immigration wave going on in the US, and from México (again). And, as usual, it is driven by economic reasons from both the origin and the destination. As usual, it takes some time for the US to cope with it and try to bring an orderly process into play. But in the long run, it will be coped with and the US will pick up a little more "foreign" culture just as it did from the Germans, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, Poles, Africans, Scandinavians, Russians, . . .  need I go on?

     The bottom line is that it is just this diversity that makes the US the great country that it is. And the fact that they can absorb all of these diverse cultures and make it work.

     That is one of the greatest achievements of the United States, least we forget.
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Richard N. Baldwin T., a HispanicVista.com (http://www.hispanicvista.com/) contributing columnist, lives in Tlalnepantla, Edo de México. E-mail at: R1041643422@aol.com