There have have always been nativism movements in the United States. Seldom has been as blatant as it’s been the past year and a quarter. In February 2018, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director L. Francis Cissna announced that the agency changed its mission statement from:
“USCIS secures America’s promise as a nation of immigrants by providing accurate and useful information to our customers, granting immigration and citizenship benefits, promoting an awareness and understanding of citizenship, and ensuring the integrity of our immigration system.”
To now:
“U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers the nation’s lawful immigration system, safeguarding its integrity and promise by efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland, and honoring our values.”
The aspirational angle has been lost.
By contrast, “During the 1940s, America basically underwent a nationwide sensitivity training program. Zoe Burkholder, a historian of education, writes… that a ‘forced tolerance’ movement had begun frothing a decade earlier as educators feared that scientific racism—the pseudoscientific ‘Master Race’ theories brewing in Germany—could waft overseas.” A reasonable worry, evidently.
Thus the story about the Superman pic shown. (Hey, wasn’t he an illegal alien?) What I do know is that the current regime’s attitude is troublesome.
Fran Rossi Szpylczyn notes: “The part where Jesus says to welcome the stranger is not a suggestion, it is a directive.”
The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein writes that Ronald Reagan “not only celebrating the concept of welcoming people from all sorts of places during his kickoff of the fall campaign, but arguing that it was immigrants who helped build the country and it was the dream that they embodied that was what made America great.” The GOP icon didn’t believe in nativism.
In other words, the US Needs ‘sh*thole’ countries, not the other way around. “America’s prosperity and security are greatly dependent on the goodwill and cooperation of other nations, developed and emerging markets alike.”
That would include chain migration, or family reunification.
Read former President Obama on immigration from September 2017
A pastor friend of mine noted recently, “I am thinking this morning of good people, great Americans I know, who have come here from Haiti, [various African countries], Pakistan, Philippines. These Americans contribute to the greater good of the US… [they] have worked hard, learned to live in an often-less-than-friendly new place, raised strong families, and sent their kids to college so they can also contribute to society… You ARE the American People.”
As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting.
The Weekly Sift guy nailed it when he wrote about The Real Immigration Issue: “‘Illegal’ immigration has always been a red herring. The more fundamental question is whether the United States will continue to be a country dominated by English-speaking white Christians.” Will nativism continue to push back?
For a brief historic perspective, read Becoming a Citizen: Naturalization Records, 1850 – 1930
For ABC Wednesday
A raging topic of discussion these days.
Great choice for N.
Happy ABCW!
The only real Americans are the now called “native Americans” Even Trump’s grandfather immigrated from Germany in 1885. Maybe he was on the same ship as my uncle’s grandfather who immigrated from Hamburg to NY and ended up in North Dakota. I think Trump slept during history lessons. And the slaves ??? they weren’t immigrants they just were a merchandise shipped to “America” and bought by immigrants ! I have learned a lot when I stayed with my aunt and uncle in Madison.
I think it is a very sad thing that this still is point of discussion…Overhere in The Netherland we have lots and lots of immigrants… It frightens me to be honnest who many people are racists… whilst we all are the same, people, gods childeren.
Have a splendid, ♥-warming ABC-Wednes-day / -week
♫ M e l ☺ d y ♪ (ABC-W-team)
http://melodymusic.nl/22-n
We’ve gone through so many cycles of nativism, I hope this is the last one. I hope there really are a majority of people who won’t stand for that selfish, hateful thinking.
Another fascinating and informative post ~ this time for N~ thanks,
Namaste,
A ShutterBug Explores,
aka (A Creative Harbor)
why is nativism still a thing? shouldn’t it be globalism? having reread the book ‘Number the Stars’ for the letter N, I will keep hoping..