American Dream: Do Immigrants Threaten Our Way Of Life?

Welcome back! Today I want to talk about the American Dream, the average American, and what that has meant in our history. We’ve all heard the phrase, ‘A Nation of Immigrants’ as a common description of the United States, but rarely bother thinking about what new arrivals to our shores went through and continue to face.

From the Dutch and British founding small colonial outposts on the Atlantic coast of North America, to waves of German, Irish, Scandinavian, Chinese, Italian, Jewish, Polish and other immigrants fleeing hunger and persecution in the late 1800s, to the waves of Asian, Latin American and Eastern European migrants we’ve embraced since the 1960s, looking to escape oppressive regimes or create a new life for their families, America has so often represented freedom, hope, and the promise of a brighter future.

Nonetheless, as much as we welcome, “Your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” as our Statue of Liberty proudly proclaims, we are a nation of immigrants that distrust, fear, and sometimes openly hate, every new wave of immigrants.

Our Founding Fathers were concerned about Anglicizing the ‘new’ German and French arrivals before they converted the English settlers to Catholicism. The Irish and Italians faced vitriolic hatred and violence upon arriving en masse to our shores. That’s not even mentioning the existence of legalized enslavement of fellow humans, or the continuous and persistent discrimination black, hispanic and Asian Americans have experienced throughout our history.

In spite of it all, every single nationality and ethnicity absorbed has persevered and contributed greatly to this country. Every people group has left a mark on our history, giving us new inventions and innovations, philosophy, scientific advancements, literature, music and food quintessential to the American experience today. Once distrusted and ridiculed, they are now an integrated part of the American mainstream.

And so it will be with every group after them. Be they Syrian refugees, a family fleeing Venezuela, or a college educated programer from India, America still strives to represent the best aspects of humanity. We’ve often failed to measure up to these values, and forget what our own ancestors went through to build a life here, but America has become one of the greatest nations on Earth for reasons beyond geography, religion or our form of government.

We are and will continue to be great because we embrace, “The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

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