Not That You Asked (9780307822215) by Rooney Andy

Author:Rooney, Andy [Rooney, Andrew A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82221-5
Publisher: Random House Digital
Published: 2012-07-11T04:00:00+00:00

A Nation of Exiles

Considering all the talk about illegal immigrants, not many of us know much about immigration. I got through high school without being certain of the difference between “immigration” and “emigration.”

The process of giving a person from one country official status as a citizen of another is called “naturalization.” It’s sort of a funny thing to call it. You’d think it might be called “unnaturalization.”

Those of us born here in the United States know how lucky we are. I’d hate to be outside trying to get in. The requirements for naturalization are so complex and vague that there isn’t anyone who can tell you what all the rules are. I tried to find out and ended up with three fat volumes of double-talk law, very little of which I understood.

Do you, by any chance, know where most people came from to get here? There are some surprises. Here are some of the numbers on immigration to the United States from 1820 to 1981:

—The most immigrants came from Germany, 6,998,000. A relatively small part of that number can be accounted for by Jews who fled Nazi Germany.

—Italians were second, 5,310,000.

—There were 4,693,000 Irish immigrants and almost as many Canadians. I don’t think of Canadians as immigrants.

—There were 4,319,000 immigrants from Austria.

—I was surprised to see that 3,395,000 people came from Russia.

—England accounted for 3,198,000 immigrants but that doesn’t include two of my grandparents. They came from Scotland.

—The only other country exceeding a million was Sweden.

—The big surprise to me was France. During those years there were only 757,000 immigrants to the United States from France. I find that amazing when you think nearly 7 million came from Germany.

—There were 594,000 people who came from China but that statistic has to be qualified. While many Chinese came here before we had strict immigration rules, all Chinese were barred from entering from 1882 until 1943, when we opened that golden door again to them.

In another few years these statistics will change. The pattern of immigration has changed drastically already. Few people are coming to the United States from Europe today. Great numbers are coming from Mexico and Central America.

The mystique of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island is a thing of the past, of course. Anyone coming here now flies. No one comes in by boat unless they’re running drugs, and more people are sneaking across the Mexican border every year than ever came in legally past the Statue of Liberty in a year.

The laws for entry into our country are not only complex, no one agrees on exactly what they should be. Congress has a new bill pending but it’s brought up a major argument. Some people don’t want to let anyone new in; others want to let everyone in.

Do you know the people who object most to the aliens who are sneaking in this year? It’s the aliens who sneaked in last year. Last year’s aliens are the ones who’ll lose their jobs because the new ones will work cheaper in worse conditions.

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