History on Me

Immigration in America Most Americans place their pride in being apart of a country where a man can start at the bottom and work his way to the top. We also stress the fact that we are "all created equal" with "certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." (Jefferson 45) During the early 1900s white Americans picked and chose who they saw fit to live in America and become an American. "Those that separate the desirable from the undesirable citizen or neighbor are individual rather than race." (Abbott 307) In the 1900s the desired immigrant was one who spoke English and customs who were similar to ours. Whereas an undesirable was one whose "customs he (Americans) understood, whose language is quite unrelated to English, the American finds "strange" and even "suspicious"." (Abbott 307) The biggest debate today would be what could the individual/race can contribute to the American economy. "The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas and form new opinions." (Crevecoeur 26) With Crevecoeur's definition anyone with half of a brain could be an American. This statement is basically contradicted by everything that is American. American society only wants people that can contribute to our economy. For decades people in America were sure of two things concerning immigrants. They came for the opportunity to build a better life for their families and they would not seek nor would they accept a handout. The drive and attitude of immigrants who came to America during the nineteen twenties through the nineteen sixties built strong work ethics that created our now famous American melting pot. But for the past thirty years a runaway welfare state has poisoned our good intentions. Well meaning but misguided entitlement programs gave billions of dollars in free handouts to a deluge of new immigrants as the floodgates opened and annual immigration levels more than tripled. "An estimated 150,000 undocumented Mexican immigrants enter the United States each year. Their labor--in Florida orange groves, Georgia onion fields, Las Vegas hotels and Oregon nurseries-has filled growth in many parts of the American economy."