Illegal aliens, migrants, undocumented immigrants, open borders: these are the words and phrases in today’s headlines – but we forget that the Pilgrims we so admire today didn’t arrive that way. In fact, as historian John Kuroski points out, the original illegal immigrants were the Pilgrims, whom we venerate every Thanksgiving with table decorations and turkeys.
The Pilgrims arrived uninvited, with no documentation to show the authorities (various Indian tribes) and no visible means of support or even survival – nor did they speak the local languages. The romantic story is that the Indians gave the Puritans their first Thanksgiving meal. But, as Kuroski notes, “from religious extremism to child abuse to their brutal treatment of the Native Americans, the Pilgrims who founded the Plymouth Colony were far more ruthless than you think”.
What happened, continues another historian, Bernard Bailyn, “is a legacy of brutality in intercultural relations that developed during this period, the overwhelming legacy of which was, of course, slavery”. Bailyn concludes in his book “The Barbarous Years” that “the rules for chattel slavery were set”. And somehow history has sanitised our view of the immigrant Pilgrims.
Famed journalist H.L. Mencken was not fooled; he defined Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone somewhere is happy”.
The legacy of brutality imposed on undocumented immigrants today began long before the current crop of politicians. As the History Channel has noted, “The tradition of separatism inherited from the Pilgrims gave American social and political life the brash individualism and political fractiousness so evident – and dangerous – today”.
To stop the onslaught of immigrants, who are human beings, politicians have used tough-guy symbols and solutions: “build a wall,” “how about floating coils of razor wire in the Rio Grande?” “more Border Patrol agents with guns”, “U.S. military on the riverbanks”, “watchtowers”, “motion sensors”, and even, lately, “invade Mexico”. All that seems to be missing is a minefield along the border, like the East Germans did with the Berlin Wall.
OK, remember that the Cubans were the immigration nightmare of the 1980s. Because Cubans were fleeing a communist dictator, they were given a pretty free pass by the US State Department. Some 350,000 Cubans were kicked out by Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro (who said he flushed the toilet) and many were taken in by the Cuban diaspora.
As a former refugee from communism, I decided to become a sponsor. I stood in line to get them papers, work permits and then jobs. Within a year they were self-sufficient, and all it took was for someone to step forward.
Part of the solution to the current immigration mess is to get people work permits. It only takes 15 minutes to fill in the forms, but there are not enough officials. This from the Customs and Immigration Service on 20 April: ‘The USCIS backlog for naturalisation applicants now exceeds half a million. Wait times are long and vary widely across the country. As of January 2023, field offices reported completing 80 percent of cases in 12 to 24.5 months, depending on the location.”
But no politician seems willing to comment on this. Instead, the focus always seems to be on the physical requirement to keep immigrants out. You do not get headlines like “Politician solves immigration crisis by hiring more clerks”.
With work permits in hand, there are thousands of projects these immigrants could be doing. The US has 46,876 miles of highways lined with litter that needs to be picked up. It’s a start, at least, in dealing with the millions of immigrants.
