We’re all immigrants...

We’re all immigrants.

Unless you’re Native American, you came from somewhere else. Europe. South America. Asia. Africa. You name it. Your ancestors crashed this place, looking for something better than they had. They came in quiet or they came in loud. They were welcomed or they were reviled. They brought with them little more than what they were wearing, and the willingness to bear any burden. Or they were dragged here, in literal chains.

Most of us are generations into all this by now. Fully assimilated, which generally means we no longer feel hypocritical for bemoaning the arrival of new immigrants, who are surely not coming here “the right way”, which is the same exact thing said about our own ancestors 150+ years ago. The Irish were met with “no dogs or Irish allowed” signs in the windows, and shoved into hovels nearly as appalling as anything we were fleeing from. They were blamed for everything from rising crime rates to yellow fever epidemics, with cartoons often depicting them as having demonic tails. It wasn’t very subtle, although racism rarely is.