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A nation of immigrants: This is a convenient
myth developed as a response to the 1960s movements against colonialism,
neocolonialism, and white supremacy. The ruling class and its
brain trust offered multiculturalism, diversity, and affirmative
action in response to demands for decolonization, justice, reparations,
social equality, an end of imperialism, and the rewriting of
history -- not to be "inclusive" -- but to be accurate.
What emerged to replace the liberal melting pot idea and the
nationalist triumphal interpretation of the "greatest country
on earth and in history," was the "nation of immigrants"
story.
By the 1980s, the "waves
of immigrants" story even included the indigenous peoples
who were so brutally displaced and murdered by settlers and armies,
accepting the flawed "Bering Straits" theory of indigenous
immigration some 12,000 years ago. Even at that time, the date
was known to be wrong, there was evidence of indigenous presence
in the Americas as far back as 50,000 years ago, and probably
much longer, and entrance by many means across the Pacific and
the Atlantic -- perhaps, as Vine Deloria jr. put it, footsteps
by indigenous Americans to other continents will one day be acknowledged.
But, the new official history texts claimed, the indigenous
peoples were the "first immigrants." They were followed,
it was said, by immigrants from England and Africans, then by
Irish, and then by Chinese, Eastern and Southern Europeans, Russians,
Japanese, and Mexicans. There were some objections from African
Americans to referring to enslaved Africans hauled across the
ocean in chains as "immigrants," but that has not deterred
the "nation of immigrants" chorus.
Misrepresenting the process
of European colonization of North America, making everyone an
immigrant, serves to preserve the "official story"
of a mostly benign and benevolent USA, and to mask the fact that
the pre-US independence settlers, were, well, settlers, colonial
setters, just as they were in Africa and India, or the Spanish
in Central and South America. The United States was founded
as a settler state, and an imperialistic one from its inception
("manifest destiny," of course). The settlers were
English, Welsh, Scots, Scots-Irish, and German, not including
the huge number of Africans who were not settlers. Another group
of Europeans who arrived in the colonies also were not settlers
or immigrants: the poor, indentured, convicted, criminalized,
kidnapped from the working class (vagabonds and unemployed artificers),
as Peter Linebaugh puts it, many of who opted to join indigenous
communities.
Only beginning in the 1840s,
with the influx of millions of Irish Catholics pushed out of
Ireland by British policies, did what might be called "immigration"
begin. The Irish were discriminated against cheap labor, not
settlers. They were followed by the influx of other workers
from Scandinavia, Eastern and Southern Europe, always more Irish,
plus Chinese and Japanese, although Asian immigration was soon
barred. Immigration laws were not even enacted until 1875 when
the US Supreme Court declared the regulation of immigration a
federal responsibility. The Immigration Service was established
in 1891.
Buried beneath the tons of
propaganda -- from the landing of the English "pilgrims"
(fanatic Protestant Christian evangelicals) to James Fennimore
Cooper's phenomenally popular "Last of the Mohicans"
claiming "natural rights" to not only the indigenous
peoples territories but also to the territories claimed by other
European powers -- is the fact that the founding of the United
States was a division of the Anglo empire, with the US becoming
a parallel empire to Great Britain. From day one, as was specified
in the Northwest Ordinance that preceded the US Constitution,
the new republic for empire (as Jefferson called the US) envisioned
the future shape of what is now the lower 48 states of the US.
They drew up rough maps, specifying the first territory to conquer
as the "Northwest Territory," ergo the title of the
ordinance. That territory was the Ohio Valley and the Great
Lakes region, which was filled with indigenous farming communities.
Once the conquest of the "Northwest
Territory" was accomplished through a combination of genocidal
military campaigns and bringing in European settlers from the
east, and the indigenous peoples moved south and north for protection
into other indigenous territories, the republic for empire annexed
Spanish Florida where runaway enslaved Africans and remnants
of the indigenous communities that had escaped the Ohio carnage
fought back during three major wars (Seminole wars) over two
decades. In 1828, President Andrew Jackson (who had been a general
leading the Seminole wars) pushed through the Indian Removal
Act to force all the agricultural indigenous nations of the Southeast,
from Georgia to the Mississippi River, to transfer to Oklahoma
territory that had been gained through the "Louisiana Purchase"
from France.
Anglo settlers with enslaved
Africans seized the indigenous agricultural lands for plantation
agriculture in the Southern region. Many moved on into the Mexican
province of Texas -- then came the US military invasion of Mexico
in 1846, seizing Mexico City and forcing Mexico to give up its
northern half through the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Texas were then
opened to "legal" Anglo settlement, also legalizing
those who had already settled illegally, and in Texas by force.
The indigenous and the poor Mexican communities in the seized
territory, such as the Apache, Navajo, and Comanche, resisted
colonization, as they had resisted the Spanish empire, often
by force of arms, for the next 40 years. The small class of
Hispanic elites welcomed and collaborated with US occupation.
Are "immigrants"
the appropriate designation for the indigenous peoples of North
America? No.
Are "immigrants"
the appropriate designation for enslaved Africans? No.
Are "immigrants"
the appropriate designation for the original European settlers?
No.
Are "immigrants"
the appropriate designation for Mexicans who migrate for work
to the United States? No. They are migrant workers crossing
a border created by US military force. Many crossing that border
now are also from Central America, from the small countries that
were ravaged by US military intervention in the 1980s and who
also have the right to make demands on the United States.
So, let's stop saying "this
is a nation of immigrants."
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