I don’t know much about how my family arrived in the United States. On my mother’s side it seems like everyone came via French Canada where my ancestors lived for many generations. My grandmother and mother are Michiganders. The LePort family can be traced back to the Appalachian Mountain region. I know of LePorts to whom I am related in Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia, but I’ve never met any of them in person. I presume someone knows how our family came here, but I don’t know the details, though our name leads me to believe we came from France.
While my country is far from perfect there isn’t a country in the world where I’d move in exchange for my citizenship here. I wouldn’t mind living elsewhere, but I am not interested in exchanging the benefits of being a citizen of the United States for the benefits associated with any other nation. I am thankful that my family migrated here.
When I was younger my best friend was a second generation citizen. I was raised in Napa, CA, which has a large immigrant community due to the vineyards there. My friend’s father came to the United States as a migrant worker. I was very close to his family and as a young man I realized that I was grateful to my friend’s father for doing all he could to come to this country. If he had not, I wouldn’t have met them. I came to identify more with my immigrant neighbors in the Napa Valley than the wealthy winery owners and others who had benefitted financially from the inexpensive labor offered by the immigrant peoples.
I remember one day when my father went on a very racist rant about “the Mexicans.” He made some statements about how they were “stealing our jobs,” which even as an adolescent I knew was a lie. I had seen the shacks provided to migrant workers as homes. I knew how many people had to live in a small space to survive and I knew that many of them were underpaid and overworked. These people had not come to this country to steal jobs. Instead, in a post-NAFTA world, they came to do the work that people like my father would never agree to do. They came to pick bunches of grapes for hours each day because Euro-Americans like my father wouldn’t do it for the wages offered, and without the inexpensive labor the wine industry couldn’t have made the profits necessary to make the Napa Valley into the tourist destination it is today (if you have a chance to watch the movie Bottle Shock, I recommend it since it does a fine job of depicting the valley before it became a “world-famous wine growing region”). I challenged my father many times on this matter and I don’t remember a single time where he said he’d be willing to do the work for the wages offered.
Today it was announced that our Senate passed a bill for immigration reform. I’m sure it is imperfect, and I know there is a chance that it is rebuffed by our House of Representatives, but it makes me hopeful. I find that our nation is better when it says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” This may be an exalted view of our national self, but it is better than one where people who have been given opportunity pour their resources into building walls along boarders that prevent others from having the same opportunity.
I understand that we must be as responsible as possible, but as a nation we have benefitted from the work of many people with whom we have withheld rights and opportunities. I am convinced that our nation will be a better place if we provide more hope to people who come here than if we tell them they are “illegal” within our boarders. As a nation we have the opportunity to humanize others recognizing that we live in a land of abundance and that most of us live here not because we were born here–the distinct claim of Native Americans–but because someone was given the opportunity to come here, stay here, and participate in the American experiment. When my family immigrated here it was an action that provided me with more privileges and opportunities than many people ever experience. I hope more people can make the same claim in the years ahead.
the archives near Emmaus 
My grandparents were immigrants. However, they were legal immigrants unlike most of those who will benefit from the Senate bill.
I don’t know if my family came here legally or illegally, but I am thankful that this was a country that allowed them to come.
Since ~1970, the Americans have created jobs and not kids, the Mexicans(with some exceptions) have created children and not jobs.
Everyone in the know knew we needed their labor. Yet, for this long, we didn’t develop a reasonable program to get them “work legal”. I suspect those “in the know” preferred it that way, so my question is WHY would they?
There’s an answer. Because that gave us the ability to use them like borrowed mules with 0 legal liabilities. Our employment types didn’t want a legal program because that enhanced the rights of the Mexican worker here and created legal liabilities for us. We preferred using them like mules.
Here where I live, we had a bridge job and 2 guys got killed. One was a yank and his wife got a nice cash settlement. One was a Mexican gentleman. Guess what his wife got? A bill to haul his cadaver down to Mexico.
That’s why our employment people prefer illegal immigration.
It’s a moral outrage. These are largely fellow believing Christian people and we’re so callous this is what we as a society prefer.
Just more evidence of how hard hearted the USA church is.
If there was a thimble full of justice in our collective hearts, we’d insist on a lawful way for those folks since 1970 to come and work here so we could track them and they’d have some legal protections.
Nope, we prefer this way because it leaves us with no liability. Guess what?
There is liability and the judge has a long memory.
Indeed, we’ve lacked justice and mercy in our treatment of those who come to this land.
Brian, you wield a broad brush. Have we lacked justice and mercy to all who come/came to this land? What are your sources for such a sweeping statement?
I didn’t say “all.”
Christians in this country tend to be the most ungrateful and show their ignorance most when talking about immigration. And how ironic…
I think Ephesians 2:11-13 explains my point best…
11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— 12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
It seems to me that the Christian should be well acquainted and have great remorse for those who are outcasts and set apart from society such as immigrants have been in this country. The grace which gives us life and which was offered to us even though we had not national birthright to it, was offered freely.
The American church can be so callous sometimes…
And I should say that I’m a 1st generation American born and raised to immigrants who overstayed their visas… With a sister who is undocumented and would benefit greatly from real Immigration reform.
I guess since I obtained my citizenship legally (by mere chance really) I should regard my family with disrepute because of their illegal status.
I apologize Brian for these somewhat harsh political comments, but there are only a few issues that get me going like immigration.
@Peterson:
There’s no need to apologize. I am aware that is has become absurdly difficult to gain citizenship in this country. I know a woman who works as a public representative for people who are facing deportation. I’ve heard stories about families being split apart with a mother or father sent away from spouse and children. I’ve read statistics on the cost of applying for citizenship and I know it is impossible to pay for the process on the wages earned by many who immigrate here or who live in nearby countries who’d like to come here for a better opportunity. Similarly, I’m aware that treaties like NAFTA have devastated farming communities in places like Mexico and our businesses that move to places like Mexico often abuse and exploit their citizens giving them low pay in dangerous environments. In many ways our system is rigged against the stranger and sojourner, and as a Christian who is a citizen of an affluent nation this concerns me as well.
As a Christian I find language in Torah regarding sojourners and strangers to be thought provoking. While I don’t think I should try to push this country to adopt the laws of ancient Israel (for there is much in Torah that I’d be horrified to see made into law here) I do find that those commands of compassion, sharing, and hospitality to point to the Gospel, which presents us with a Jesus who taught us to love our neighbor as ourselves. As much as it is possible (and I know I fail in this more than I succeed) I want to provide people who are suffering with a better opportunity, because if I were in their place, and they were in mine, I’d hope they’d try to help me. I wish more Christians processed their decisions in light of Jesus’ teaching on the First and Second Greatest Commandments.