Friday's Post column entitled America's party being crashed since the first settlers left England was simplistic at best and prejudicial and racist/classist at worst. When Mr. Yonker jokingly refers to America being a stable party state
he is ignoring the plight of the Native Americans and other ethnic and socio-economic minorities who essentially built and continue to build the backbone of this country, with our amber waves of grain and majestic mountains. What is astonishing to me is that very early in his discourse, he admits that the first Europeans were essentially gate-crashers. They were the first to give out invites to the happening party over here. I don't recall hearing whether they were invited in the first place. So who are they to be revoking the open invitation inscribed on the Statue of Liberty? Whatever opinion one may have about our current administration, I feel that this country, our citizens and our elected leaders are being very hypocritical. Unless and until we ask Native Americans (and Chicanos in the Southwest and Western parts of this country) how they feel about immigration, I think we should be keeping an open mind. As I read Mr. Yonker's words, a quote from a movie came to me. It was from Bobby, and in the movie, one of the Chicano workers in the hotel where the assassination occurs says, We didn't cross the border the border crossed us. And for anyone who paid attention in high school American history, these words should have a ring of truth; a good portion of the land west of the Mississippi belonged to Mexico for years after the Louisiana Purchase; most of what is now the American West was part of Mexico until quite recently in our 200 year history as a nation. I find it very convenient that this fact is so easily forgotten in our flag-waving, patriotic demands to close the borders. What saddens me even more is that the struggles of many non-Western and/or Northern European immigrants have been forgotten or ignored. Barely a century ago, America was restricting immigration from new immigrant countries in favor of those emigrating from old immigrant nations. That is, they restricted the numbers of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Immigration from most of Asia was completely outlawed. In the 1850s, the Know-Nothing movement served the single purpose of attempting to limit or halt all together the immigration of Irish Catholics.-
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