Quote:
Originally Posted by Kathy63
You pose an interesting question. The beginnings of every nation do not obligate that nation to forever remain as it was in its inception. Austrialia was a penal colony. It began as a nation of criminals. Should Australia now be obligated to remain a penal colony for the world's worst criminals? Of course not. To even think such a thing is absurd.
The United States was NEVER a nation of immigrants. It was always a nation of AMERICANS. Americans who came here from all nations and all walks of life but who shared one thing in common, to be an AMERICAN. When those Americans came here it was with one mind. To shed old loyalties and embrace fully the American condition. It was easy for them to put aside their own nationality. They came intending to do just that.
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The United States started out, like all of the countries in the Americas, as a colony of some European power. For us, our political ancestors are English, the English were the colonial powers represented in the territories that later became the United States of America. It was the native Americans of North America whose land was colonized by the English and other European powers. But since the native Americans were not a single people and, in fact, suffered migration among themselves, they were in a poor position to describe European colonists as immigrants of any kind. Although, it would be hard to see why the natives would dignify colonization by calling it immigration, even though we do the same thing today with our own immigrant invasion.
Our political ancestors fought a revolution against the colonial English in a dispute over representation and human rights. They lay down their greivances in the Declaration of Independence. They proposed a new vision of society based on
citizenship and
representative government. In particular,
citizenship meant that everyone who lived as a citizen under a government of laws, not people, were equal under the eyes of the law.
Anyone who aspired to relocate into the United States aspired to citizenship. Without assuming the role of citizen, they could not participate in those basic roles that formed the working backbone of life in the United States.
And so it is today. Anyone who aspires to live in the United States outside of the institution of citizenship conspires against the United States and its hard won struggles against the old and degenerate order in Europe which continues to exist and has powerful representation in the United States and the Americas.