236 years in the making, and still going strong. The United States of America, land of opportunity.
I believe that more than I believe just about anything. The U.S. is truly the land of opportunity. The evidence is in every city, town, and speedtrap from Boston to Topeka to Colton.
There are those who would call me an idiot for believing that, but their opinions mean nothing to me for I know they are steeped in ignorance and acrimony.
In my experience those who claim that the U.S. is not the land of opportunity it once was share several traits. First and foremost, almost to a man/woman they are at least third generation citizens. Second, they are ignorant, and third, they have absolutely no idea how lucky they are.
Now, I am not stating that the United States is the greatest country on the planet, because I lack enough experience with the other 206 sovereign states to make that definitive statement.
I've only been fortunate enough to live in and/or visit extensively the U.S., Scotland, England, France, Spain, Mexico, and Canada.
So why do I claim unequivocally that the U.S. is the land of opportunity if I have no personal experience with 97% of the rest of the world?
Immigration.
The U.S. is a net immigration state, despite all the rhetoric from morons on the left and right threatening to leave if ____is elected or if _______legislation is enacted.
That means there are more people arriving than leaving. A whole hell of a lot more.
The latest numbers I could find (okay, I only went one page deep on Google, but Zeus, it's a blog, not a research paper), shows that more legal immigrants became permanent residents of the U.S. in 2006 than all of the other 206 sovereign states on this blue marble combined. If you add the illegal immigrants...well, let's not beat a dead elephant.
Read that last paragraph again, in Dennis Haysbert's voice for a fuller impact.
In the futbol game of immigration, it's U.S.: 1, Rest of the World: 0
Whenever a friend, compatriot, person-I'm-sitting-next-to-at-the-bar, etc., tells me that the U.S. is not the country it once was, I always retort with the same question: Then why are large numbers of people from other countries doing everything they possibly can to get here?
The United States is a country of immigrants. Every single last person living in the United States can, if you go back far enough, trace their ancestral origins to another country (even those deemed Native Americans - their ancestors may have been here first, but they still came from somewhere else - but that's a whole 'nother kettle of discombobulated academic bickering).
People come to the United States from all over, and for many, many reasons. Seeking employment is a big one, of course, but so are safety and security, and to be reunited with family members.
Whatever the reason, every first gen immigrant I know personally (let me see...five Brits, two Brazilians, a lot of Mexicans, six Canadians, two Poles, two Indians (from India, not being politically incorrect), A lot of Russians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians (Denver, Colorado has large populations of Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, and I've met the Lithuanians through the Lithuanian-Americans of Colorado organization), A Libyan, a woman from Trinidad, a few Lebanese, two Iraqi's (both of them are Chaldean), three Pakistani's, a Jamaican (of Asian descent, we call him a Jamasian), one guy from South Africa, a family from Sudan, two guys from Venezuela, a girl from the Netherlands...there are more, but for the sake of brevity...) all are very happy that they made it to the States, and are living life as they want to, more or less.
Immigrants are what have made the United States great, and they are what keeps the United States great.
Immigrants are tough, determined, hard-working people who do whatever it takes to get from life what they want. An argument can be made that they are, in fact, the United States' greatest asset.
That may be a fairly brash statement, but allow me to elaborate.
When I lived in Scotland I would occasionally encounter people (just about all of them twenty-something in age) who would confront me with the exclamation "You Americans think you're the best at everything, well you're not, you suck at..." and then proceed to tell me how bad Americans are at soccer, providing healthcare, distributing wealth, etc.
I would listen to their diatribes and then ask them what firsthand experience they had had with the United States. Without exception, none of the people condemning the U.S. had ever had any firsthand experience with the U.S.
In fact, it was a rare event to actually met anyone in Glasgow who had much experience outside of Glasgow. I knew Glaswegians who had never been to London, which, as it's only 5 hours by train, blew me away.
The point is, those Scots who I met that would launch into disparaging diatribes about the U.S. were usually the same ones who had never ventured out of their little villages - had never left Springburn or Cambuslang for any destination further than Ibrox or Parkhead - in short, they had never left the comforts of home.
That sparked a thought in my wee brain.
The idea was not very clever, nor original, as I'm sure millions of people have gleaned this before: The U.S. is indeed a great nation, and it is a great nation specifically because of...immigrants.
We Americans, we're descended from people who decided to take a chance, to make a change in their lives for the better. Those people who would confront me about the shortcomings of the United States while I was living in Scotland were descended from people who did not possess those traits.
My grandparents (Mother's side) were immigrants from Lithuania. My great-grandparents (Father's side) were immigrants from Switzerland, Sweden, Norway and Ireland ( I am the epitome of the American mutt)
They were from very different parts of Europe, but they all had a few things in common.
All of them had incredible courage, incredible strength, incredible resolve.
Why do I state this? Think about what it takes to leave a place you know, and know well. Think about what it must take to give up the familiar - customs, culture, language, laws, religion, family, friends, job, etc., and travel thousands of miles away to a land where you will not fit in - you will not speak a common tongue, the culture, customs and conventions will all be incredibly different than what you have known your entire life, you have very little in the way of possessions or financial resources, you do not know another soul (except maybe a family member or two if you weren't the first to make the trek), you do not have a job, you do not have a home, you do not have...anything.
Except your courage, strength, and resolve. You have determined to take a chance on the land of opportunity, to make a better life for yourself and for your family. You know that anything, anything at all, will be better than the life you knew in...where ever.
How hard could life had been for those people in the countries of their origins? Well, if you consider that prior to the middle of the 19th century central and eastern Europe were still feudal societies wherein the peasantry was subjected to the conditional slavery known as serfdom, it was pretty damn hard.
Life under the boot heel of tyrants. In modern America, idiots on the left and right rant that is happening here, today, as I type this.
They have no clue, or they're trying to sell the clueless something (Usually a political agenda). Whatever the case, I sure wish there was some way they could be sent back to the land of their ancestors and made to endure whatever it was that spurred those ancestors to come to the U.S.
Those ancestors, those brave, determined souls, were unlike any of their countrymen who stayed behind.
Those who stayed behind, they did not possess the fearlessness, the resoluteness, to attempt to make their lives better no matter what the cost. Those who stayed behind were content to accept the status quo, to live in misery, poverty, etc., to live by the maxim "Such is life."
But not my ancestors, nor the ancestors of anyone else I know here in the United States. They refused to believe that living in abject impoverishment, living as slaves, was what they were fated to - they made the conscious choice to make their lives better, and thus the lives of their descendants.
Which is why the United States is still not only the land of opportunity, it is still a great, great country.
Immigrants made it and make it great, because when they discover the freedom of opportunity that's available, they grow, they thrive, they live their lives to the fullest.
It amazes me when I hear people here in the U.S. claim that every dry cleaners, liquor store or landscaping company is owned by immigrants - as if it's a bad thing!
Hey, they took the initiative. They took opportunity by the damn horns and did a full-on rear naked choke on it's ass. They earned their rewards.
Visit any flea market (visit the Mile High Marketplace - which, despite it's churched-up name, is still a flea market, and one of the cleanest in the world. Seriously, the bathrooms have attendants) and take a long, hard look at who it is that has gotten themselves up at the butt-crack of dawn, loaded up a truck or trailer with salable goods, and set up a small shop under a small pop-up tent.
90% chance it's an immigrant, earning his or her keep.
I know a woman who came to the United States hidden in the trunk of a car. Today she is a naturalized U.S. citizen, and the director of security for a very large corporation, and she is damn good at what she does.
I know people who were born and raised in this country who smoke glass pipes full of crack all day, sucking on the public tit and decrying the current state of the union.
I'm not blind to the problems of illegal immigration, but I do believe the U.S. needs to find a way to streamline the naturalization process for those who are contributing, responsible members of the community.
This country needs hardworking, dedicated, unwavering-in-the-face-of-adversity types. Those are the very qualities the majority of immigrants, legal & illegal, possess.
On that note, I better quantify that statement I wrote about the ones that stayed behind. I'm absolutely not inferring that all the people who stayed behind and put up with the tyrants, despots, etc., were scared, lazy, or otherwise. A lot of the ones who stayed behind helped overthrow the tyrants and despots, helped bring about a lot of the change that has made many of those country's health care programs, worker's rights, social freedoms, etc., the envy of the world.
America and immigrants...Fcuk Yeah!!
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