Genealogical Glass Houses

This is a really obvious statement but I'll say it anyway. The further we get from an experience, the more likely we are to forget about it, how it felt or what its implications were. I've thought about this recently as I've watched politicians and others from both major parties discuss and fight about immigration.

For whatever reason, people opposed to other people entering this country, seem to have forgotten the experience of their own relatives and ancestors who left their homeland to discover this new country. Here we have people talking about 'merit based' immigration that most immigrants of the past would almost never have met. The people that most of us know as our own relatives usually didn't speak english. They usually didn't come with large amounts of money. They didn't have college degrees and wonderful work experience. In fact, many came with 7th and 8th grades of education. I believe people we can put on that list include the relatives and ancestors of Steven Miller, Donald Trump, John Kelly.

It seems to me that the 'merit based' system being discussed is really a code for people who look like, act like and think like the rest of us. This eliminates people of color, and people of limited means. So 'Making America Great Again' is really about keeping America as it was, a place for mostly white, eastern and western European immigrants.

There is certainly a question about why people like Trump, Kelly, Bannon, Miller and so many others feel the way they do? None of us can get into their hearts and minds but we can continue to remind them that Native Americans, Black slaves and poor and oppressed people from all over the world have made up the genealogical history of the United States of America. They may be fearful of the browning of America or they may just dislike people who are different. That is a shame. The last thing we need is a country that looks like and thinks like all of them. They have genealogical glass houses just like the rest of us and they should be wary of throwing stones.