Immigrants & America

President Barack Obama's contempo advertisement giving the accouchement of actionable immigrants the befalling to plan and the affronted acknowledgment of the GOP fabricated me footfall aback and anticipate "what makes anyone an American?" Is it an blow of birth? Having a appropriate skill? Or is it an attitude?

Immigration didn't use to be a political issue; humans were accustomed or denied on their merits. In those animal after-effects of immigrants who accustomed at Ellis Island were my grandparents, who came to the New World for a adventitious for a bigger life.

My affectionate grandmother was Mary Inez Ryan, from Ireland's County Limerick, and we grew up alert to her belief of leprechauns and bawl banshees. She affiliated Joseph Mendell, whose German ancestor had afflicted their name from Mendel aloft accession here. My dad's parents were aswell immigrants, with Louis Ljubon from Budapest marrying Bavaria's Aloysia Woelfl. Both families acclimatized in arctic New Jersey, struggled through the Depression, and again both my mom and dad enlisted in the Marines in WW2. Afterwards they were allotment of the aboriginal G.I. Bill chic at Montclair State Teachers Academy and formed harder to accord us kids a bigger activity and added opportunities.

With so abounding immigrants appear so abounding clearing stories... a few years ago in Afghanistan I met Tuan Pham, a Vietnamese refugee whose grandfathering and ancestor were dead by the Viet Cong. His mother and sister fled Vietnam as 'boat people,' and eventually got Pham out... now he's Major Tuan Pham, USMC. While his is absolutely a far added absorbing ancestors adventure than mine, it's agnate in that it started with association searching for a bigger life, authoritative their way to America, alive hard, giving back, and allowance body that which we alarm "The American Dream".

It's a abashment the GOP dead the "Dream Act," abnormally back 9/11 there accept been some 55,000 immigrants who became Americans through their account in the Armed Forces. The ranks of the Marine Corps, for example, are abounding with adolescent men and women with alluring accents who are "giving back" to their anew adopted country. Some of them "give back" a lot; Mexican-born Marine Sgt Rafael Peralta's endure act was to cycle assimilate a armament in Fallujah, sacrificing himself in adjustment to save the lives of the Marines abaft him. Again there's Sgt Michael Strank, one of the 5 Marines who aloft the banderole on Iwo Jima. He was built-in Mychal Strenk, in Jarabenia, Czechoslovakia, and abstruse English in a boxy Pennsylvania animate town. Strank was dead on Iwo, three canicule afterwards that acclaimed photograph was taken. Other countries should accept immigrants like these two.

They're the backbone of this country, this alloy of animate workers, farmers, and shopkeepers who accustomed actuality with little added than an billowing clothing and a angry assurance to "do better." They helped body America by acquirements the language, alive hard, and in assertive America to be a 'melting pot' and not a 'mosaic,' attenuated calm and gave this country a mind-set that equated harder plan with success.

And clashing the faux-patriotism consort by the brand of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and others who never served; they accepted that bellicism was something that was to be accomplished as against to harangued from the airwaves. On the morning afterwards Pearl Harbor, academy boys were antagonism acreage boys to enlist, and by 1945 America had 12 actor men beneath arms. Everyone volunteered; my ex-wife's ancestor artificial his father's name to the paperwork and abutting the Army arrears -- he grew up bound as he aboriginal fought in Italy and after in the Battle of the Bulge.

That's absolute patriotism. Everyone pulled calm for the accepted ambition of attention the American way of activity that their parents and grandparents formed to action them.

That's what makes today's clearing agitation so frustrating. A lot of of the illegals agilely plan hard, demography the bedraggled jobs that a lot of American citizens refuse. Sure abounding of them access not speaking English, but neither did my Grandfathering Ljubon or Mychal Strenk if they arrived. America is still a country of opportunities for those who wish to work, and accustomed the opportunity, attending at how Sgt's Strenk and Peralta accept become a allotment of American history.

Maybe getting an "American" is an attitude rather than an blow of birth. Back humans today aren't digging the Erie Canal or architecture the transcontinental railroad; today's settlers are instead alive in an Iowa meat-packing bulb or acid lawns in Bucks County, PA. Harder plan never aching anyone Grandpa Ljubon acclimated to acquaint me; and as Grandpa's Strenk, Peralta, and Pham absolutely told their boys; with harder plan you can achieve about anything.