In Michigan, there's very little being said about immigration. There is a myriad of reasons for this, without a doubt. But as I found the record of my great-grandparents passage through Ellis Island in 1910, the issue of immigrant rights suddenly became much more real to me. I am about as WASP-y as they come, and it's easy for others like me to disregard the immigration debate as a Latino or Middle Eastern issue, but my trip here today made me realize it is anything but. For probably the first time I really thought long and hard about what it must have been like for those 12 million people that streamed through this great hall, the hope, the fears, the sacrifices made, all for the promise of a chance at the American Dream, something exemplified by our very own Henry Ford.
I still don't have the perfect solution or answer to this debate that rages on in the halls of government and hearts of millions of us from coast to coast. I'm not sure that many of us do, but I do think we should consider the very history that shaped who we are and even more importantly why we are before we make any future policy decisions on such a complex issue.
Perhaps the most fatal flaw of the human race is the repeated failure to learn and commit to memory the lessons of the past.
1 comment:
Lucy--I see your stuff at Mich Lib and you do a great job.
A history question I should probably know the answer to, but don't. Did those 12 million Ellis Island immigrants have permission to enter/come to the US before they showed up? Did they have an invitation or fill a particular career need requested by the US Govt? (I assume no to both questions.) How many were turned back to their home countries?
Ellis Island was a portal for entry at the time. It appears that we do not have this portal now and that is a significant factor to the "illegality" of many of our recent immigrants.
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