Immigrants: Double Edged, Double Tongued
Gianni DeVincent Hayes, Ph.D.
June 30, 2005
I read that an American theme park wanting to open in another country essentially had to dispense with its American features for that nation’s culture. Fine, but then why build an American park? Before I go on, know that I am not opposed to immigrants, minorities, alternative groups, or any cultural/religious/political differences – as diversity richly adds to our country. But do know that I am disturbed at how we Americans are being made to act and speak “politically correctly” for and to every group in existence when we are first Americans!
My father emigrated from Italy at age eleven. He did it properly; he did it legally. He rode a boat that would challenge even today’s strongest. Landing at Ellis Island, the clerk, who didn’t understand Italian, bestowed her own version of my dad’s surname upon him and all his future generations; he accepted it, adapted to it. While in middle school, he worked menial jobs to help his parents get ahead, though they did not understand English but tried to learn it through my father’s childhood experiences with others. My grandparents worked diligently to assimilate into our society to become all the more better “U.S. patriots.” After fulfilling the strict Naturalization rules of the 1930s, my father proudly celebrated his victory of becoming an American citizen.
He seldom found schoolmates, co-workers, druggists, grocerers, or doctors who spoke Italian. He didn’t have the luxury of picking up directions for, say, assembling a coffee table for my mother, or sleds for my brother and me. No literature was written in both English and Italian, or English and any other language, for that matter. He never demanded to be accommodated as a foreigner during his school years, or when working, or when in any other situation where he stood alone as a minority. He trudged to school daily, sweated at a railroad job before he was old enough to work, earned his high school diploma (GED while in the Army), and served his country as a medal-earning Merrill’s Marauder. He recognized that he was the one desiring to live in a country that was not his by birth, and nor did he expect others to cater to or care for him because his minority status made him an exception. He asked for no sympathetic considerations from his neighbors, his employers, the government. Wanting others to welcome him because he was an outsider made him feel all the more responsible for conducting himself properly, learning the English language, getting a job, respecting and demonstrating a good work ethic, integrating and adopting the mores, rules, and values of the new land. He knew he had to succeed on his own, be accountable for his own choices and actions, and to convey those virtues to his children.
Part of his blending into the New World of America was attempting to not stick out as a guest but rather to embrace the people, their ways, and become a productive citizen. He never commanded special treatment or attention to his beliefs, his ethnicity; or thought he was entitled to individualized classes with private tutors to learn the language and understand the textbooks. Nor did he demand a translator to help him fill out forms, or express himself, or explain the meaning of TV shows, or what someone said. He did not presume that he should be automatically included in American activities. I can’t imagine him getting together a group of Italians-Americans or other immigrants to protest an American parade as a way of dictating that his culture be represented. In fact, he mastered English so well that you had to listen closely to detect an accent. Yet he was taunted for being an alien, slammed for being “dissimilar.” He knew it was his job to fit in. His goal of wanting to become them -- not making them become him -- never wavered. He and my mother and relatives never taught my brother and me or our cousins the beauty of the Romance language lest it “mark” us; it wasn’t considered beneficial for American-born children to be bilingual. Instead, homogeny brought opportunities in the land where anyone could become anything they wanted with honesty and sweat.
What happened? Suddenly we’re worrying about saying or doing something wrong to anyone with backgrounds contrasting ours. We feel compelled to supply literature in multiple languages; to give special consideration in hospitals, churches, courtrooms, even theme parks for those not of our soil. When we Americans are told that we cannot tout something strictly American, that it has to give way to other customs, something is wrong.
We are overcome by illegal immigrants—those who cross our borders and transverse the seas to come to America for the good life but yet have no intention of giving back to our nation what they have taken (health care, jobs, education, welfare) without even being U.S. citizens. We are rapidly losing our American identity, customs, traditions, and sovereignty in an attempt to please everyone. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) estimates that “in January of 2000 there were 7 million illegal aliens living in the United States”[1], and today, just five years later, there is about 20 million, according to “official government estimates that claim that 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens reside in the United States and that 700,000 new illegals enter and stay every year. Based upon the analysis presented here, it is likely that in mid-2005 more than 20 million illegal aliens [will] presently reside in the United States, with roughly 12,000 additional illegal aliens entering every day.“[2] Other information highlights that “By 2010, 14% of the total U.S. population will be illegal aliens; 59% of illegal immigrants [will] live in or near poverty, [that] illegal immigrants have an illiteracy rate 2½ times greater than U.S. citizens, [and that] 11½ percent of Mexico's total population lives in the U.S. (11,500,000+ out of 104,959,594) [3]
Not only do the migrants enter our country illegally to set up temporary homes to reside in while they work at stolen U.S. jobs but they also ship their salaries back to their homeland, while not keeping the money floating in the States. Additionalyl, immigration specialist Frosty Woodbridge states that these illegals also display little to no respect for our culture or our land, as our borders are filled with tons of litter and human defecation, as well as trails of slaughtered cattle and other animals. Woodbridge also offers that if this isn’t enough of a problem, then consider the number of vehicles stolen across the borders by illegals and the number of drivers and passengers who have been maimed or killed by their recklessness. The price of death by greedy illegals is only part of the cost, as we Americans must then pay for their hospital care, wrecked vehicles, and a host of other immeasurable expenses, simply because they take what is not theirs, and they have no insurance, thus demanding that we care for them. Sadly, there are many Americans who can’t afford medical or life insurance for themselves, and so they go without medical attention, but yet they are made to pay for strangers in their country who have no right being there. The operative words are “illegal” and “un-American.”
So here’s a thought: Let’s start by making English the national language. Let’s make wannabe Americans understand that they are not entitled to our native-born rights and privileges until they meet regulations after living here long enough to study for and pass U.S. citizen tests, done the old fashioned way – not by a blanket amnesty [4]. If becoming a citizen the way my father did, as did those of other ancestry, worked for our country then, [5] why can’t the quota and registration continue to work? [6] Passing a wand over our nation’s ports and magically turning illegal aliens into U.S. citizens – thus increasing our nation’s population -- only adds to the problems we already face in renovating our infrastructures, feeding our homeless and those at poverty level, providing health care and social assistance, creating jobs for our unemployed, and in increasing our imported goods and fuel. A massive and non-researched increase in population at this point in our country would take its tool on Americans, both on an individual and a collective basis. Consider that “the number of apprehensions [illegal immigrants arrested] jumped sharply to a high of 1.6 million in fiscal year 2001” [7] alone . . . and this doesn’t into consideration all those “illegals” President Bush would like to miraculously turn into American citizens.
So . . . what to do? Let’s require immigrants to be sponsored by an American relative or friend, and that they must have a job waiting for them -- just as was required when my father and his generation immigrated to America. Let’s find a solution for foreigners who buy no insurance but instead rely on Americans to care for them, pay their hospital bills, their pregnancy care, their welfare . . . and then want the right to vote. Let’s get the word out that our Constitution is great the way it is, that it does not allow for a foreign-born to become a United States president – and should not be amended to accommodate those desiring so – and that if our Constitution makes opponents unhappy, then they should seek another country more to their liking. Let’s make a point of understanding that the agenda of FTAA (Free Trade Areas of the Americas) and the CAFTA is, quite simply, to open all our U.S. borders to eliminate “nationalism,” and that such an organization is no better than NAFTA and GATT – all four of which aim to form a type of American EU in order to more easily slide in a one-world government. [8] Let’s share this vital information with others so we’ll know how to fight back but have help as well in doing so.
Let’s also take a serious look at hiring aliens when Americans can do the same job; and let’s review the visas, passports, green cards of those who have been in this country too long and are not productive to our society. Let’s bury the sins of our fathers’ fathers’ fathers -- those who treated others so scandalously -- and instead start anew without the past always hanging over our heads, never letting us forget, and thus preventing solid, trusting co-existence. Let’s stop minimizing Americanism and gratifying every single minority and alternative group just to please them. We are a “Constitutional Republic,” built on democratic values where majority is supposed to rule. Giving up the Lord’s Prayer in school, as an example, because one woman complained is not majority rule. So let’s go back to the good ol’ days when our Bill of Rights counted for something for legit American citizens. Let’s make minorities and immigrants recognize that just because they are on our United States soil, they should not expect preferential treatment. And most of all, let’s remind, in a most tactful way, those who come to our country that they are, after all, obliged to fit into our customs and not visa versa.
Our melting pot is a glorious and unique character of our nation, so let’s do continue to embrace visitors and citizens-to-be but let us also remember that united we stand, divided we fall.
1] http://www.cis.org/topics/illegalimmigration.html. Center for Immigration Studies.
2] U.S. Desert Invasion; Section 6. http://www.desertinvasion.us/data/invasion_numbers.html
3] Compilation of illegal immigrant stats; http://www.laughtergenealogy.com/bin/header/immigrants.html
4] MSNBC: Bush seeks legal status for illegal immigrants :www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3887721
5] Sec. 1151. – “Legal Information Code: Worldwide level of immigration: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/8/1151.html
6] Sec. 1152. - Numerical limitations on individual foreign states: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/8/1151.html
7] . MSNBC: Bush seeks legal status for illegal immigrants: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3887721
8] “Stop the FTAA.” http://www.stoptheftaa.org/faq/1 .html
2005 Gianni DeVincent-Hayes, Ph.D; All rights reserved. All materials are copyrighted. Do not reproduce any part of this without the permission of the author.
Dr. Gianni DeVincent Hayes, Ph.D is an internationally recognized author of 14 royalty-published books and over100 articles and short stories in highly circulated and commercial newspapers and magazines, such as PARADE, US, PEOPLE, REDBOOK, WOMAN’S DAY, GAUNTLET, and many others, not counting her short stories. one of her novels,”22 Friar Street,” has been under a movie option, and her novel on cloning, “Thy Brothers' Reaper” (aka “Lucifer’s Legion”) also had been optioned by a movie company. Hayes has a doctorate in writing/comparative literature /humanities, with a concentration in eschatology (Bible prophecy and politics), and also has earned two masters in education and science. Her bachelor’s degree is in liberal arts, biology/chemistry; and certification has been achieved in writing at several universities, including the University of Rochester, NY, and bread loaf of Middlebury College. She speaks worldwide and has appeared on dozens of national radio and TV shows. Currently she is completing a full-length book on “Globalism and the Loss of Sovereignty” in all aspects of our lives – from parenting and education to religion, economy and politics. See www.thenazarzine.com to learn about her religious/patriotic site. You can reach her at giannihayes@creative-services.biz or at info@thenaz.us. She is working on a third website on the art of writing. She has her own radio show, “New World Order Disorder,” on www.theamericanvoice.com, Wednesdays, 9:00pm, EST, and an additional show, at another radio station titled, “End Times Apocalypse—ETA” on Monday nights, 7:00pm, EST at http://www.live365.com/stations/reaamericaod.
To book her for speaking engagements, write her at giannihayes@creative-services.biz or at info@thenaz.us.
My father emigrated from Italy at age eleven. He did it properly; he did it legally. He rode a boat that would challenge even today’s strongest. Landing at Ellis Island, the clerk, who didn’t understand Italian, bestowed her own version of my dad’s surname upon him and all his future generations; he accepted it, adapted to it. While in middle school, he worked menial jobs to help his parents get ahead, though they did not understand English but tried to learn it through my father’s childhood experiences with others. My grandparents worked diligently to assimilate into our society to become all the more better “U.S. patriots.” After fulfilling the strict Naturalization rules of the 1930s, my father proudly celebrated his victory of becoming an American citizen.
He seldom found schoolmates, co-workers, druggists, grocerers, or doctors who spoke Italian. He didn’t have the luxury of picking up directions for, say, assembling a coffee table for my mother, or sleds for my brother and me. No literature was written in both English and Italian, or English and any other language, for that matter. He never demanded to be accommodated as a foreigner during his school years, or when working, or when in any other situation where he stood alone as a minority. He trudged to school daily, sweated at a railroad job before he was old enough to work, earned his high school diploma (GED while in the Army), and served his country as a medal-earning Merrill’s Marauder. He recognized that he was the one desiring to live in a country that was not his by birth, and nor did he expect others to cater to or care for him because his minority status made him an exception. He asked for no sympathetic considerations from his neighbors, his employers, the government. Wanting others to welcome him because he was an outsider made him feel all the more responsible for conducting himself properly, learning the English language, getting a job, respecting and demonstrating a good work ethic, integrating and adopting the mores, rules, and values of the new land. He knew he had to succeed on his own, be accountable for his own choices and actions, and to convey those virtues to his children.
Part of his blending into the New World of America was attempting to not stick out as a guest but rather to embrace the people, their ways, and become a productive citizen. He never commanded special treatment or attention to his beliefs, his ethnicity; or thought he was entitled to individualized classes with private tutors to learn the language and understand the textbooks. Nor did he demand a translator to help him fill out forms, or express himself, or explain the meaning of TV shows, or what someone said. He did not presume that he should be automatically included in American activities. I can’t imagine him getting together a group of Italians-Americans or other immigrants to protest an American parade as a way of dictating that his culture be represented. In fact, he mastered English so well that you had to listen closely to detect an accent. Yet he was taunted for being an alien, slammed for being “dissimilar.” He knew it was his job to fit in. His goal of wanting to become them -- not making them become him -- never wavered. He and my mother and relatives never taught my brother and me or our cousins the beauty of the Romance language lest it “mark” us; it wasn’t considered beneficial for American-born children to be bilingual. Instead, homogeny brought opportunities in the land where anyone could become anything they wanted with honesty and sweat.
What happened? Suddenly we’re worrying about saying or doing something wrong to anyone with backgrounds contrasting ours. We feel compelled to supply literature in multiple languages; to give special consideration in hospitals, churches, courtrooms, even theme parks for those not of our soil. When we Americans are told that we cannot tout something strictly American, that it has to give way to other customs, something is wrong.
We are overcome by illegal immigrants—those who cross our borders and transverse the seas to come to America for the good life but yet have no intention of giving back to our nation what they have taken (health care, jobs, education, welfare) without even being U.S. citizens. We are rapidly losing our American identity, customs, traditions, and sovereignty in an attempt to please everyone. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) estimates that “in January of 2000 there were 7 million illegal aliens living in the United States”[1], and today, just five years later, there is about 20 million, according to “official government estimates that claim that 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens reside in the United States and that 700,000 new illegals enter and stay every year. Based upon the analysis presented here, it is likely that in mid-2005 more than 20 million illegal aliens [will] presently reside in the United States, with roughly 12,000 additional illegal aliens entering every day.“[2] Other information highlights that “By 2010, 14% of the total U.S. population will be illegal aliens; 59% of illegal immigrants [will] live in or near poverty, [that] illegal immigrants have an illiteracy rate 2½ times greater than U.S. citizens, [and that] 11½ percent of Mexico's total population lives in the U.S. (11,500,000+ out of 104,959,594) [3]
Not only do the migrants enter our country illegally to set up temporary homes to reside in while they work at stolen U.S. jobs but they also ship their salaries back to their homeland, while not keeping the money floating in the States. Additionalyl, immigration specialist Frosty Woodbridge states that these illegals also display little to no respect for our culture or our land, as our borders are filled with tons of litter and human defecation, as well as trails of slaughtered cattle and other animals. Woodbridge also offers that if this isn’t enough of a problem, then consider the number of vehicles stolen across the borders by illegals and the number of drivers and passengers who have been maimed or killed by their recklessness. The price of death by greedy illegals is only part of the cost, as we Americans must then pay for their hospital care, wrecked vehicles, and a host of other immeasurable expenses, simply because they take what is not theirs, and they have no insurance, thus demanding that we care for them. Sadly, there are many Americans who can’t afford medical or life insurance for themselves, and so they go without medical attention, but yet they are made to pay for strangers in their country who have no right being there. The operative words are “illegal” and “un-American.”
So here’s a thought: Let’s start by making English the national language. Let’s make wannabe Americans understand that they are not entitled to our native-born rights and privileges until they meet regulations after living here long enough to study for and pass U.S. citizen tests, done the old fashioned way – not by a blanket amnesty [4]. If becoming a citizen the way my father did, as did those of other ancestry, worked for our country then, [5] why can’t the quota and registration continue to work? [6] Passing a wand over our nation’s ports and magically turning illegal aliens into U.S. citizens – thus increasing our nation’s population -- only adds to the problems we already face in renovating our infrastructures, feeding our homeless and those at poverty level, providing health care and social assistance, creating jobs for our unemployed, and in increasing our imported goods and fuel. A massive and non-researched increase in population at this point in our country would take its tool on Americans, both on an individual and a collective basis. Consider that “the number of apprehensions [illegal immigrants arrested] jumped sharply to a high of 1.6 million in fiscal year 2001” [7] alone . . . and this doesn’t into consideration all those “illegals” President Bush would like to miraculously turn into American citizens.
So . . . what to do? Let’s require immigrants to be sponsored by an American relative or friend, and that they must have a job waiting for them -- just as was required when my father and his generation immigrated to America. Let’s find a solution for foreigners who buy no insurance but instead rely on Americans to care for them, pay their hospital bills, their pregnancy care, their welfare . . . and then want the right to vote. Let’s get the word out that our Constitution is great the way it is, that it does not allow for a foreign-born to become a United States president – and should not be amended to accommodate those desiring so – and that if our Constitution makes opponents unhappy, then they should seek another country more to their liking. Let’s make a point of understanding that the agenda of FTAA (Free Trade Areas of the Americas) and the CAFTA is, quite simply, to open all our U.S. borders to eliminate “nationalism,” and that such an organization is no better than NAFTA and GATT – all four of which aim to form a type of American EU in order to more easily slide in a one-world government. [8] Let’s share this vital information with others so we’ll know how to fight back but have help as well in doing so.
Let’s also take a serious look at hiring aliens when Americans can do the same job; and let’s review the visas, passports, green cards of those who have been in this country too long and are not productive to our society. Let’s bury the sins of our fathers’ fathers’ fathers -- those who treated others so scandalously -- and instead start anew without the past always hanging over our heads, never letting us forget, and thus preventing solid, trusting co-existence. Let’s stop minimizing Americanism and gratifying every single minority and alternative group just to please them. We are a “Constitutional Republic,” built on democratic values where majority is supposed to rule. Giving up the Lord’s Prayer in school, as an example, because one woman complained is not majority rule. So let’s go back to the good ol’ days when our Bill of Rights counted for something for legit American citizens. Let’s make minorities and immigrants recognize that just because they are on our United States soil, they should not expect preferential treatment. And most of all, let’s remind, in a most tactful way, those who come to our country that they are, after all, obliged to fit into our customs and not visa versa.
Our melting pot is a glorious and unique character of our nation, so let’s do continue to embrace visitors and citizens-to-be but let us also remember that united we stand, divided we fall.
1] http://www.cis.org/topics/illegalimmigration.html. Center for Immigration Studies.
2] U.S. Desert Invasion; Section 6. http://www.desertinvasion.us/data/invasion_numbers.html
3] Compilation of illegal immigrant stats; http://www.laughtergenealogy.com/bin/header/immigrants.html
4] MSNBC: Bush seeks legal status for illegal immigrants :www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3887721
5] Sec. 1151. – “Legal Information Code: Worldwide level of immigration: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/8/1151.html
6] Sec. 1152. - Numerical limitations on individual foreign states: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/8/1151.html
7] . MSNBC: Bush seeks legal status for illegal immigrants: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3887721
8] “Stop the FTAA.” http://www.stoptheftaa.org/faq/1 .html
2005 Gianni DeVincent-Hayes, Ph.D; All rights reserved. All materials are copyrighted. Do not reproduce any part of this without the permission of the author.
Dr. Gianni DeVincent Hayes, Ph.D is an internationally recognized author of 14 royalty-published books and over100 articles and short stories in highly circulated and commercial newspapers and magazines, such as PARADE, US, PEOPLE, REDBOOK, WOMAN’S DAY, GAUNTLET, and many others, not counting her short stories. one of her novels,”22 Friar Street,” has been under a movie option, and her novel on cloning, “Thy Brothers' Reaper” (aka “Lucifer’s Legion”) also had been optioned by a movie company. Hayes has a doctorate in writing/comparative literature /humanities, with a concentration in eschatology (Bible prophecy and politics), and also has earned two masters in education and science. Her bachelor’s degree is in liberal arts, biology/chemistry; and certification has been achieved in writing at several universities, including the University of Rochester, NY, and bread loaf of Middlebury College. She speaks worldwide and has appeared on dozens of national radio and TV shows. Currently she is completing a full-length book on “Globalism and the Loss of Sovereignty” in all aspects of our lives – from parenting and education to religion, economy and politics. See www.thenazarzine.com to learn about her religious/patriotic site. You can reach her at giannihayes@creative-services.biz or at info@thenaz.us. She is working on a third website on the art of writing. She has her own radio show, “New World Order Disorder,” on www.theamericanvoice.com, Wednesdays, 9:00pm, EST, and an additional show, at another radio station titled, “End Times Apocalypse—ETA” on Monday nights, 7:00pm, EST at http://www.live365.com/stations/reaamericaod.
To book her for speaking engagements, write her at giannihayes@creative-services.biz or at info@thenaz.us.
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