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<a href="http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/">
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/</a><br><br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=6 color="#C04D40">Stop Saying
This Is a Nation of Immigrants!<br><br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=5 color="#4E5F4C">by Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz<br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#2F3238">A
nation of immigrants: This is a convenient myth developed as a response
to the 1960s movements against colonialism, neocolonialism, and white
supremacy. The ruling class and its brain trust offered
multiculturalism, diversity, and affirmative action in response to
demands for decolonization, justice, reparations, social equality, an end
of imperialism, and the rewriting of history -- not to be
"inclusive" -- but to be accurate. What emerged to
replace the liberal melting pot idea and the nationalist triumphal
interpretation of the "greatest country on earth and in
history," was the "nation of immigrants" story.<br><br>
By the 1980s, the “waves of immigrants” story even included the
indigenous peoples who were so brutally displaced and murdered by
settlers and armies, accepting the flawed "Bering Straits"
theory of indigenous immigration some 12,000 years ago. Even at
that time, the date was known to be wrong, there was evidence of
indigenous presence in the Americas as far back as 50,000 years ago, and
probably much longer, and entrance by many means across the Pacific and
the Atlantic -- perhaps, as Vine Deloria jr. put it, footsteps by
indigenous Americans to other continents will one day be
acknowledged. But, the new official history texts claimed, the
indigenous peoples were the "first immigrants." They were
followed, it was said, by immigrants from England and Africans, then by
Irish, and then by Chinese, Eastern and Southern Europeans, Russians,
Japanese, and Mexicans. There were some objections from African
Americans to referring to enslaved Africans hauled across the ocean in
chains as "immigrants," but that has not deterred the
"nation of immigrants" chorus. <br><br>
Misrepresenting the process of European colonization of North America,
making everyone an immigrant, serves to preserve the "official
story" of a mostly benign and benevolent USA, and to mask the fact
that the pre-US independence settlers, were, well, settlers, colonial
setters, just as they were in Africa and India, or the Spanish in Central
and South America. The United States was founded as a settler
state, and an imperialistic one from its inception ("manifest
destiny," of course). The settlers were English, Welsh, Scots,
Scots-Irish, and German, not including the huge number of Africans who
were not settlers. Another group of Europeans who arrived in the
colonies also were not settlers or immigrants: the poor, indentured,
convicted, criminalized, kidnapped from the working class (vagabonds and
unemployed artificers), as Peter Linebaugh puts it, many of who opted to
join indigenous communities.<br><br>
Only beginning in the 1840s, with the influx of millions of Irish
Catholics pushed out of Ireland by British policies, did what might be
called "immigration" begin. The Irish were discriminated
against cheap labor, not settlers. They were followed by the influx
of other workers from Scandinavia, Eastern and Southern Europe, always
more Irish, plus Chinese and Japanese, although Asian immigration was
soon barred. Immigration laws were not even enacted until
1875 when the US Supreme Court declared the regulation of immigration a
federal responsibility. The Immigration Service was established in
1891.<br><br>
Buried beneath the tons of propaganda -- from the landing of the English
“pilgrims” (fanatic Protestant Christian evangelicals) to James Fennimore
Cooper’s phenomenally popular “Last of the Mohicans” claiming “natural
rights” to not only the indigenous peoples territories but also to the
territories claimed by other European powers -- is the fact that the
founding of the United States was a division of the Anglo empire, with
the US becoming a parallel empire to Great Britain. From day one,
as was specified in the Northwest Ordinance that preceded the US
Constitution, the new republic for empire (as Jefferson called the US)
envisioned the future shape of what is now the lower 48 states of the
US. They drew up rough maps, specifying the first territory to
conquer as the "Northwest Territory," ergo the title of the
ordinance. That territory was the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes
region, which was filled with indigenous farming communities.<br><br>
Once the conquest of the "Northwest Territory" was accomplished
through a combination of genocidal military campaigns and bringing in
European settlers from the east, and the indigenous peoples moved south
and north for protection into other indigenous territories, the republic
for empire annexed Spanish Florida where runaway enslaved Africans and
remnants of the indigenous communities that had escaped the Ohio carnage
fought back during three major wars (Seminole wars) over two
decades. In 1828, President
</font>
<a href="http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=25">
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#205553"><b>Andrew
Jackson</a></b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#2F3238"> (who had been
a general leading the Seminole wars) pushed through the Indian Removal
Act to force all the agricultural indigenous nations of the Southeast,
from Georgia to the Mississippi River, to transfer to Oklahoma territory
that had been gained through the
</font>
<a href="http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/34.1/thomson.html">
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#205553"><b>
"Louisiana
Purchase"</a></b></font>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#2F3238"> from
France. Anglo settlers with enslaved Africans seized the indigenous
agricultural lands for plantation agriculture in the Southern
region. Many moved on into the Mexican province of Texas -- then
came the US military invasion of Mexico in 1846, seizing Mexico City and
forcing Mexico to give up its northern half through the 1848 Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo. California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah,
Texas were then opened to "legal" Anglo settlement, also
legalizing those who had already settled illegally, and in Texas by
force. The indigenous and the poor Mexican communities in the
seized territory, such as the Apache, Navajo, and Comanche, resisted
colonization, as they had resisted the Spanish empire, often by force of
arms, for the next 40 years. The small class of Hispanic elites
welcomed and collaborated with US occupation.<br><br>
Are "immigrants" the appropriate designation for the indigenous
peoples of North America? No.<br><br>
Are "immigrants" the appropriate designation for enslaved
Africans? No.<br><br>
Are "immigrants" the appropriate designation for the original
European settlers? No.<br>
Are "immigrants" the appropriate designation for Mexicans who
migrate for work to the United States? No. <br><br>
They are migrant workers crossing a border created by US military
force. Many crossing that border now are also from Central America,
from the small countries that were ravaged by US military intervention in
the 1980s and who also have the right to make demands on the United
States.<br><br>
So, let's stop saying "this is a nation of
immigrants."<br><br>
<br><br>
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<img src="cid:6.2.5.6.2.20060530110653.02a7e728@freedomarchives.org.3" width=95 height=102 alt="[]">
<a href="http://www.reddirtsite.com/index.html"><font size=3><br><br>
</a></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=4><b>
<a href="http://www.monthlyreview.org/0504taylor.htm">Roxanne</a></b>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=4 color="#4E5F4C">
</font><a href="http://www.monthlyreview.org/1202dunbarortiz.htm">
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=4 color="#205553"><b>Dunbar-</a></font>
<a href="http://www.monthlyreview.org/0703dunbarortiz.htm">
<font size=3 color="#205553">Ortiz</a></b></font><font size=3> is a
long-time activist, university professor, and writer. In addition to
numerous scholarly books and articles, she has written three historical
memoirs,
</font><a href="http://www.reddirtsite.com/"><font size=3 color="#205553">
<b><i>Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie</a></i></b></font><font size=3> (Verso,
1997),
</font><a href="http://www.citylights.com/pub/catalog/BCoutlaw.html">
<font size=3 color="#205553"><b><i>Outlaw Woman: Memoir of the War Years,
1960–1975</a></i></b></font><font size=3> (City Lights, 2002), and
</font><a href="http://www.southendpress.org/2005/items/7417">
<font size=3 color="#205553"><b><i>Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the
Contra War</a></i></b></font><font size=3> (South End Press, 2005) about
the 1980s contra war against the Sandinistas.<br><br>
<br>
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