Immigration

Immigration

I am the granddaughter of immigrants--legal immigrants. Both my mother's and my father's parents arrived in the US from Italy at the turn of the 20th Century.

They were not poor people by the standards of the day. They were farmers and business people whose families were respected and influential in the place of their birth. They did not come to these shores seeking a hand-out; they came seeking the freedom which the US Constitution assured them would be theirs.

These hardy souls were not extended any "benefits" by the government upon their arrival--and they did not expect any. They demanded that their children study hard and distinguish themselves academically. They required their children to speak English.

One of my uncles was an outstanding athlete as well as being an honor student. Newspapers from his small Western Pennsylvania community as well as large metropolitan newspapers came to games to watch his amazing prowess on the football field and on the basketball court. He was offered scholarships to several institutions of higher learning, including Notre Dame, but his "Uncle Sam" needed him at the same time to engage in another kind of competition.

Several uncles--all children of Italian immigrants--served valiantly in WW II. They were proud to serve their country and to put their lives on the line for the nation that gave them freedom.

Two of these brave men passed each other as their army divisions marched in different directions in Italy where they had been sent to fight. They had only the opportunity to wave at each other as they passed silently. One of them did not return home.

My mother once asked her grandmother to send her a pair of gold earrings, something unattainable to her at that point in her life. Her grandmother, who grew olives and grapes on her farm and produced olive oil and wine for sale, sent four pair of the desired baubles to my mother--one pair for her and one pair for each of her sisters--in a flask of olive oil.

My mother and her sisters gave up those earrings when citizens were given the opportunity to donate their gold jewelry to be melted down and converted into cash for the war effort. Was it a scam? Perhaps, but to them it was a small sacrifice to make for the country that gave them freedom.

Immigration...

...I'm for it--but only if it's done legally. Legal immigrants come to contribute their resources, their skills, their lives if necessary, to the good of the nation that gives them liberty.

Illegal immigration is nothing if it is not the attempted theft of a nation.