Kathleen Krull - American Immigration: Our History, Our Stories

to all the immigrants in my life

Contents

A merica is one very popular country. For centuries, ever since its start as a small collection of English colonies, it has absorbed people from every corner of the globe. Our country is made up of those people.

We call them immigrants. Immigration is one of the great, unique themes of American history. Today, American immigrants number more than forty millionAmerica has more immigrants than any other country in the world. Among people moving from another country in recent years, approximately one-fifth of them immigrated herean exceptionally diverse population, representing just about every country in the world.

And all these newcomers have stories. Many have escaped cruel, nightmarish situations in other countries. Others are in search of the American dream, a fresh beginning in a land where all things seem possible. People love America for its spectacular natural resources, its endless opportunities to make a better life. Perhaps most of all, families come here to provide a better future for their children, to put down roots and thrive on our freedoms. To them, America may not be perfect, but it represents an improvement over the past.

Immigrants at Ellis Island

Immigration is all about the people. They come here by choice, often going to extraordinary lengths to do so. Some are famouspeople like Alexander Hamilton, Annie Moore, Albert Einstein, to name a fewwhile most of them are not.

Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history.

Oscar Handlin, considered the father of American immigration history

One striking fact about the United States is that we are united not by ethnicity, as are most other countries. And its not religion or language or what we look like that we have in common, either. Nor is it ancient history that shapes us.

Instead, its our shared values. These values are based on our revolutionary founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. Its our idea of democracya system of government ruled by and for all kinds of peoplethat throughout our past made America a magnet and kept it united.

Our Founders who wrote those documents drew their ideas from the Age of Enlightenment (approximately 1688 to 1789). This was a movement in Europe toward using the scientific method instead of superstition to solve problems. The Founders were in love with Enlightenment ideasliberty, tolerance, the use of reason, progress, separation of church and state.

Muslims are Americans, Americans are Muslims. Muslims participate in the well-being of this country as American citizens. We are proud American citizens. Its the values that brought us here, not our religion.... This country is not strong because of its economic power or military power. This country is strong because of its values.

Khizr Khan, father of American army captain killed during the Iraq War

A special favorite was the Enlightenment resistance to an absolute monarchy, with kings and rich aristocrats telling all the other people what to do. Impatient to separate from the monarchy of Great Britain, our Founders used Enlightenment ideals to fuel their hopes and dreams for a new country.

Thats why they came up with our unifying, all-important documents. First, in 1776, was the bold Declaration of Independence (eight of whose fifty-five signers were born in another country). Then, after the Revolutionary Warand not without a lot of debatethe Founders spelled out how the new country was to work with all the provisions in the Constitution (1787), and the Bill of Rights (1791).

Declaration of Independence

The Constitution

Immigration was a sticking point with our nemesis, Great Britain. With the Royal Proclamation of 1763, Britain had discouraged newcomers, wanting to restrict our borders to make the colonies easier to control. The Declaration of Independence had as one of its main grievances that Britain was imposing limits on new immigrants. As a brand-new country, we needed not fewer people, but more. We needed people to work the land, build useful things, mine natural resources, create prosperity. And plenty of people wanted to come.

Native American Influence on the Declaration of Independence

A man of his time, Founder Ben Franklin alternated between dismissal of Native Americans and respect for them. He did admire the Iroquois Confederacy, which united the Oneida, Mohawk, Cayuga, Seneca, Onondaga, and Tuscarora nations in a democracy based on laws in common. Their centuries-old constitution, known as the Great Law of Peace, struck Franklin as a model for what the colonies could do. As Congress debated the Declaration, they invited some twenty Iroquois Confederacy chiefs to act as advisers. Ultimately, of course, the document excluded Native Americans (as well as African Americans), a contradiction to American ideals right from the start, reflecting the racism embedded in our society.

The place that America would become was foreseen in these three documents. The Founders anticipated our diversity of cultural, religious, and political beliefs. So they made plans for us to try to live together, without the deadly religious and ethnic conflicts ravaging other parts of the world. Unlike many countries that have restrictions on who they let in and how many, we have a long and overall successful history of taking in new people and integrating them.

The Enlightenment

It doesnt take much to rip off the politeness and the accommodation that really keeps diverse peoples working and living together.... I think we are living at a time when there is a deliberate assault on truth and reason. I think the Enlightenment was a pretty good deal, and it helped to provide the intellectual and philosophical underpinnings of our Founders. And I still believe that we are the greatest man-made invention in the history of the world, and we cant give up on that. And we cant get discouraged. And we have to figure out ways we are going to keep going.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 2017

In designing our documents, the Founders showed that they were well aware of what they were doing: limiting the powers of government for the purpose of reducing conflict and preserving peoples individual freedom.

As Founder James Madison stressed in 1788: In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sectsor various branches of religions. The key word is