We are a country of immigrants.

since the beginning, this country has been populated with immigrants, sometimes waves of immigrants.Like the first wave of European settlers. They were accepted by the the indigenous Native Americans, but quickly it turned to resistance, as the settlers kept coming, with a different lifestyles, different laws and ways. There was a struggle to integrate into their existing society, but for the most part that didn’t happen. The indigenous people had to integrate into the settlers society, or die. Which they did. They came close to extinction. They were imprisoned, forced off their land, placed into reservations, had their children taken away from them. So although this example of a wave of immigration is not the typical, it does show that immigration is hard and assimilation is not easily granted.

another wave of immigration followed right on the heels of the first wave of colonial settlers, even considered the first wave, and that is indentured people or convicted defendants who have been transported to the new world as their punishment. Basically, they have to work off their debts to their creditors, or work off their debts to society for their alleged crimes. Without saying the word slavery, that was what most of them were. And most had no way to return to Britan when their debts were paid off. So they becam Americans. Absorbed into the growing colonial society as unwashed undesirable immigrants. The next wave of immigrants were the wave of Irish, escaping poverty and famine in their homeland and also escaping the British. There were too many of them and were not wanted by society. But the military did, and recruited them right off the boats as they docked and took them to the front lines during the civil war. The ones who were not useful to the military were housed in squalid apartments in New York and Boston, ghettos. They lived in poverty, in harsh conditions, treated poorly, they were the niggers of the day, hated, dispised and not trusted.they too were kept in ghettos. Eventually they moved west, and slowly integratedAnother wave of immigrants were the Chinese during the frontier years, and found jobs building the trans continental railroad. They lived in ghettos, China Towns, and kept to themselves. They were so foreign that Americans didn’t trust them, called them coolies, out west, they lynched them and blamed them for all sorts of real and imagined crimes. It took a while, more than 100 years, but they were finally able to break out of the ghetto and mingle with the population . There are still China Towns today in cities all over the country, still teeming with Chinese immigrants as well as long time residents and American citizens of Chinese descent. But now they are assimilated into our society, and accepted.

‘Another large wave of immigrants to our country was the forced African slave migration. At the time, it wasn’t thought of as migration, but it became that. They were considered a possession, like livestock, to be used to work on their farms, or in their houses. They were not considered citizens, or even as people equal to them. But after centuries of living here, they have been freed from slavery, and given equal status. Now they have been fully integrated into society, in fact have shaped our society. music, art, culture. Sports.

another large wave of immigrants has been Hispanics from Mexico, central and South America.They are in the news right now, an invasion, about 21,000,000 million illegal undocumented immigrants entering the country flaunting the laws, or overstaying their visas. A lot of them are people fleeing their oppressive regimes, like Venezuela, but some a lot are fleeing their countries because of drug cartels and crime. They are coming overland on foot. A very dangerous journey, battling rape gangs, crime, criminal gangs charging tolls, rough terrain and conditions. Most of them are desperate. The government is deporting them, they are hiding in place, scared. Some them have been here for years, working low income jobs, living in poverty to protect their family from having to go back to their home country. A lot live in barrios ( ghettos), which is rife with criminals and violent gangs. Slowly, as their children and grandchildren become Americanized and assimilated into society, they are accepted. This happens to every group of immigrants, the Vietnamese, and Cambodians, because of the Vietnam war. The Afghani’s, because of that war. They start off being unwanted and unliked by the general population, and slowly become assimilated, until they are American. We are a country of immigrants after all.