In recent weeks, news articles and Opinion columns in LNP | LancasterOnline have covered the topic of immigration.
A column by The Washington Post’s Marc Thiessen published Jan. 7 is an excellent example (“Immigrants aren’t poison — they’re America’s lifeblood”). Thiessen refers to the fact that the United States is a “melting pot” of cultures, religions and races, unlike any other nation on Earth.
The topic of immigration has been one of importance in our country from the beginning. A bit of historical context might be in order. No anthropologist has ever found evidence that human life began anywhere in the Americas. That means that every human living in the current United States is either an immigrant, the child of an immigrant or the descendant of an immigrant.
Historically, persons who could trace their ancestry to the group characterized as white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (mainly those from western and northern Europe) have had the least difficulty fitting into the United States.
The first Africans were brought to North America as enslaved persons in 1619; that group faces discrimination even to this day. Most of the original immigrants, Native Americans, were rounded up and placed on reservations. Immigrants from Ireland and southern and eastern Europe were generally not welcome because they were often Catholic or Jewish. A law was passed in 1882 to keep out Chinese laborers. During World War II, the United States rounded up persons of Japanese ancestry and placed them in internment camps. After 9/11, Muslims were not welcomed in many places.
Why would we think that today’s immigrants would receive any different treatment?
Thomas Mellinger
West Lampeter Township
