No doubt about it, America is a nation of immigrants.  My ancestors are among them.  It wasn’t easy to get here.  They came here with nothing.  They weren’t particularly welcome when they arrived.  They worked hard, and they assimilated.  None of them really believed the stories of streets paved with gold.  They came to America to better their own lives, and most assuredly, they did.  But here’s the thing missing from today’s immigration debate – those immigrants came here in compliance with a strict set of laws regulating immigration.  You know, little things like making sure they didn’t suffer from a communicable disease or mental illness; and  actually checking to see whether they were violent criminals in the old country.  In those days, we wouldn’t take in someone who might become a public charge.  We weren’t worried about having to provide welfare, or food stamps, or Medicaid or Social Security, or disability, or workmen’s compensation, or healthcare subsidies, or Title Eight housing (need I go on?) because none of those programs existed when they came here.  We’re too progressive to worry about epidemics of disease or crime nowadays.  Yesterday’s immigrants also understood two basic facts which are lost both on today’s immigrants and on those who advocate for open borders –  they knew that they they were being taken in so that, by their work, they could benefit America; and they knew that they had to prove themselves so that they could become Americans.

We have lost our way, and not surprisingly, liberals are to blame.  You see, America was a melting pot – you came in from wherever, you assimilated and were reforged as an American.  Liberals were uncomfortable with that.  They preferred to call us “A Salad Bowl” where all immigrant cultures remained intact.  That wasn’t good enough either.  Someway, somehow, the liberal view of America has transformed.  They don’t see us a land of opportunity where new arrivals become Americans to strengthen the United States.  Instead, they see us as a land whose singular purpose is welcome as many foreigners as possible, no matter who they are, or how they got here, in order to remedy the ills of the world.  Once here, the new immigrant doesn’t have to prove himself to us.  Instead, we have to prove ourselves to them; mustn’t criticize, you know.  And, if a few immigrants run amok and murder some people, well, you have to take the good with the bad, right?  Wrong!

We have reached a point where illegal immigrants are more important to most politicians than American citizens.  There is only one word for that -INSANITY.  When you close an U.S. monument to American war veterans, and at the same time open public property to illegal aliens who want to protest in a place where they don’t belong, for rights they do not and should not have,  and which can come only from the very government they are seeking to destroy, something is terribly wrong.  I don’t blame the immigrants – it’s us – we must be nuts, and if we don’t stop the madness, we will lose the America built by yesterday’s immigrants.