TRANS-NATIONAL AMERICA!

We are all foreign-born or the descendants of foreign-born, and if distinctions are to be made between us they should rightly be on some other ground than indigenousness. The early colonists came over with motives no less colonial than the later. They did not come to be assimilated in an American melting-pot. They did not come to adopt the culture of the American Indian. They had not the smallest intention of "giving themselves without reservation" to the new country. They came to get freedom to live as they wanted. They came to escape from the stifling air and chaos of the old world; they came to make their fortune in a new land. They invented no new social framework. Rather they brought over bodily the old ways to which they had been accustomed. Tightly concentrated on a hostile frontier, they were conservative beyond belief. Their pioneer daring was reserved for the objective conquest of material resources. In their folkways, in their social and political institutions, they were, like every colonial people, slavishly imitative of the mother-country. So that, in spite of the "Revolution," our whole legal and political system remained more English than the English, petrified and unchanging, while in England law developed to meet the needs of the changing times.(pg 2)

What defies an American? Is it being born in america, our social status, if we know the history...WHAT?? America was built by immigrants. The first people who settled had to come from somewhere because america wasn't discovered until 1492.  As stated in the paragraph "They came to get freedom to live as they wanted. They came to escape from the stifling air and chaos of the old world; they came to make their fortune in a new land."(pg 2) Immigrants aren't a threat to us, Most of us are daughters, sons, wife,husband of an immigrant.  I agree with the passage in its totality because I being a daughter of immigrant parents understand where they come from. They see us as if we are an "infection." The situation in third world countries are horrible. People are starving, there aren't any jobs and they do what thy can so they could have a roof over their head. Us immigrants don't want to "take over" america or be looked at as an assimilation. All we want is to be "free" and live decently.

I chose this passage because it inspired me. Every word in the passage speaks the truth. Immigrants are looked as all the same. If one does something they want to put us in the same category. Some of us really do come because we have a family to support or because they have a "desire" to succeed in something.