People of the World Still Come To America for Old Core Reasons
March 20, 2007

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

A few recent experiences on my daily routine have inspired this column and gotten me thinking again about an early 1990s US Commerce Department projection of the composition of the US population in the 21st century.

That projection estimated that by the year 2015 Hispanics, or Latinos, would be the largest minority segment in the US population, not African-Americans. It also predicted that Asians and Pacific Islanders would be the fourth largest minority until about 2050, at which time the white (European heritage) population was expected to become the largest minority, followed in order by Hispanics, African-Americans and Asia-Pacific Islanders. Native Americans would still be the smallest minority.

The projection was based not just on immigration, which has become a major concern to Americans of all colors and races, primarily because of the focus on the number of illegal aliens entering the country and the threat of more terrorist attacks on US soil. Also taken into account in the projection was the birth rate among the different population groups, a factor which had little to do with immigration.

What the projection meant in 1990 was the local, state and federal government agencies had to plan ahead to accommodate the changes and that the public at large with its various autonomous organizations also should anticipate change.

Some people, politicians and social agencies did plan while others did not. As might be expected, most average Americans paid as much attention to those projections as they do to any in-depth political or civic news.

Other Events
During the last 25 years or so, a number of other events around the world have contributed to accelerating the changes we find in our communities. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakdown of despotic governments all over Eastern Europe led to a sudden influx of immigrants from Russia, the Balkans and other Slavic nations. If you paid attention in your travels, you discovered that suddenly there were a lot of Russian cab drivers, waiters, sales people, and entrepreneurs.

In a way, it was like the wave of Vietnamese, Cambodians, Thai and Laotians who suddenly seemed to be everywhere in the 1970s and 1980s. With them came many exotic new restaurants offering the menus you might have experienced on your world travels. And they weren’t just from what I used to call Indochina, but from Africa and the Asian sub-continent.

In fact, if you were traveling in almost any major city in the late-1980s, your hotel registration desk might be staffed by someone from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or Ceylon. Your cab driver might have been a Russian or a Sikh, if not from the Middle East or Nigeria. Your waiter and/or busboy in the hotel restaurant were likely to be Vietnamese, or even from somewhere well south of Miami, FL. The nearby delicatessen was probably run by a Korean or Arabic family.

If you were visiting the West Coast then, or lived there, you noticed many Asians, many more than in the East. But now that has changed.

What prompted some of these musings was a visit to two different types of retailers on successive days last week in the Buffalo, NY-area and being waited on by Chinese in both cases. There were always a few Chinese in Western New York and Midwestern cities years ago, but they were a rarity except for a few large cities, or on visits across the Niagara River into Canada. Those earlier Asians were usually in the restaurant business. Today, there are a lot more Asian immigrants—not just second and third generations from earlier migrations. They now are more likely to be your retail store clerks, doctors, stockbrokers, teachers, accountants and occasionally skilled trades’ people.

Motivation
What does all this have to do with the Commerce Department projections or the illegal immigration crisis? Simply this; all of these new Americans—legal or illegal—are coming to the US for the very same reason people have been migrating to North America since 1607. They come to escape tyrannies of all sorts and they come for opportunity. They come for what the writers of the Declaration of Independence called “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

The things that brought people first to these shores and which drove the major thinkers of the 18th century to forge a new nation and a new system of government are the same things which still bring so many people to America from all over the world. Yes, I know, there are some who come with intent to do our nation harm, and there are some who come without any intention of ever abiding by our laws.

However, most people around the globe still see the United States as “the golden door” to the future, especially “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” They dream, they scrimp and save, and do everything possible to get here in the hope of personal liberty and opportunity—if not for themselves, at least for their children.

Thinking people everywhere, except in The New York Times editorial offices, most TV network newsrooms, Hollywood and some corporate boardrooms, look to this nation as the last great hope of humanity. The elitists who demean, downgrade and criticize almost everything Americans—and people elsewhere—hold dear would rewrite our Constitution and consign our Declaration of Independence to the scrapheap of failed government compacts.

There are a lot of things the elitists, modern day Illuminati and Marxists would change about America, including denying the right to life contained in the Second Amendment to the Constitution. They blame crime and violence on the very tools that can protect life, liberty and property. They ignore the failed experiments of the United Kingdom where not just guns are outlawed, but the very right to self-defense, where one is much more likely to be a victim of violent crime than in the US. They focus on US crime and aberrant mass murders as a warning to the world and as a way of denying that everyone still has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in America. The New York Times and its fellow travelers in the globalist cabal sow hate and downgrade America, painting a picture of our nation so bumbling and dangerous that it should discourage anyone from coming as a tourist, let alone as an immigrant.

Hope Prevails
But somehow, the real message gets through. People keep coming from every continent, and they keep coming for the same reasons that have inspired others for the past 400 years—since the first settlements in what became Virginia. They may get part of The Times’ message, but the promise of life, freedom and prosperity prevails.

While at a gun-rights rally in Niagara Falls, NY, not so long ago, I made some of these same points: that for all our problems with crime, poverty and intolerance, we are still—in the 21st century—the nation that opens wide the golden door that Emma Lazarus celebrated in her 19th century poem.

An African-American radio show host who was attending the rally came over to me afterwards and told me how right I was. He said he had been traveling in Senegal not long before and people expressed their hopes about coming to America. One man asked about crime and violence here and wondered if it was as dangerous as he had been told. He had obviously been frightened by the stories about guns and random violence in America.

However, the broadcaster said, in spite of the anti-American propaganda the man had been handed, the Senegalese asked with anticipation, “How soon can I come?”

The promise—not the guarantee—but the promise of life, liberty and opportunity was and is still the greatest motivation for coming to America—and for preserving our Constitution.
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