Nation Of Immigrants

Weisberger’s “history” of American immigration brought a tear to my eye. I’m crying because so much of it is bogus history. Some “historians” insist on repeating a modern-day immigration mythology, woven since the mid1950s. When will the public ever hear a historically truthful and meaningful account of the impacts and politics of the history of American immigration, based on its actual contexts and time frame?

Weisberger’s version of American history is designed to reinforce a modern-day political notion that immigration restrictionists can have no moral standing. It’s the “see, look what someone said about your grandmother” strategy, and it’s really designed to ensure that all Americans will think only one way about immigration, his way.

Weisberger understates the proprietary nature of the original colonial establishments, and neglects to mention the disastrous effects British migration had on New Amsterdam in the 1660s. But his real fault is to say that “immigration helped bring on the Revolution and to give it a surprising new meaning.” The clause he cites from the Declaration of Independence was a “kitchen sink” argument thrown in by Thomas Jefferson when he was listing grievances with King George. It was hardly the key basis for causing the Revolution.

Weisberger never mentions the fate of the Indians or of anyone else displaced by succeeding waves of migration. Nor does he mention the fact that we’ve admitted more immigrants in the past five years than during the entire period from 1607 to 1850 or that immigration will add the equivalent of the current population of Japan to the United States in the lifetime of young Americans. Whoever voted for that? Who wants that? It’s just business as usual, I guess, and the increasingly frantic American public is just imagining that somehow something’s changed. This country will pay for the myopia of people like Weisberger with more of the dismal future that is now unfolding before our very eyes.