GOD HAS BLESSED AMERICA

America is an undeniably imperfect place. This political cycle has highlighted much of our country’s lowlights. A growing and significant uneven distribution of wealth leaves many Americans struggling for the most basic of necessities. Along with the socioeconomic divide is the racial chasm that has historically oppressed groups struggling to accept seemingly dehumanizing tactics of law enforcement across the nation.

Equally undeniable, however, is how blessed we are as a nation relative to so many of the problems the rest of the worlds citizens’ contend with daily. We have beautiful topography. We have natural resources. What we lack, we have the financial and technological resources to acquire. We have an educational system that, while flawed, still provide people like myself, with little to no means, the opportunity to receive elite college and post graduate educations.

Our blessings are one of the reasons so many try to immigrate to this country. We are the land of opportunity. Now, I do believe that immigration does need to occur with some control and order. There are limits to some of our resources and the systems in place could not control an unlimited influx of people that would surely occur if we did not impose some types of restrictions.

What I do not understand is the demographic that so vehemently opposes immigration and the rhetoric that follows their opposition. Native Americans are the only people native to this country. Christopher Columbus did not “discover” America as a nation of people already inhabited the land. The pilgrims and the subsequent Caucasian settlers from Europe killed, to near extinction, all the native inhabitants in America. Africans were brought in and slave labor was complicit in developing America’s initial economic strength, stability and infrastructure.

The bottom line is nearly every American is of “immigrant descent”. So just because your people may have been here a little longer how can you be so violently opposed to others trying to come here for essentially the same reasons your ancestors did regardless of whether that was 400 years, 100 years or 50 years ago. Again I understand the need for order and even security in determining how people come here, but who are we to deny the dream and blessings that have been bestowed on all of us living here.

I am generalizing of course, but the staunchest objectors to immigration are a demographic that encompasses Caucasian, usually Christian, conservatives. Minorities are growing within this country, leading to estimates that as a group they will collectively soon be the majority. I understand the threat and the subsequent emotions that can come from an established group feeling that it is losing parts of the total control they have maintained…forever. However, the change is occurring and the numbers will eventually make minorities as a collective group, the majority.

I am not going to argue for or against anyone’s faith and its sincerity. I am, however, questioning how people who hold themselves out on a moral platform can deny the blessings bestowed on us as Americans to others, from far less advantageous backgrounds. Unless you are a descendant of a native tribe, you or your ancestors came to this country (minus of course slaves) from somewhere else for a better life. Who are you then to deny those same opportunities.

#America

#Immigration