I am an immigrant in my mother's country of birth. She was an immigrant in my country of birth. She married my father who was studying law at Tulane University and immigrated with him to my country of birth when, upon completion of his degree, he returned to his native country. She always retained her American citizenship.
My mother's great-grandfather was born September 13, 1789. He died August 11, 1817. He is Brigadier General Andrew Pickens. Named Skyagunsta-Wizard Owl-- by the Creeks and Cherokees, in deference to, "the wise counsel and sense of justice he exhibited in all his dealings with and in behalf of ... them." He was the son of immigrants to this country, who, in turn, were the children of immigrants from another country whose parents, themselves, had emigrated from yet another country.
In her book, "The Fighting Elder – Andrew Pickens 1739-1817" , Alice Noble Waring, notes that,
Pickens' grandfather, William, was the first of the family to arrive in America. Probably after the fall of Limerick, William and his wife Margaret left Ireland and sailed to Philadelphia, where they joined a group of Germans and moved on to the western frontier of Pennsylvania. Some decades earlier, their forebears, Robert Pickens and his wife Ester Jane Bonneau, had fled from France after Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 to Scotland and from there they had gone to Ireland.
It seems that immigration and the quest for political justice and freedom runs deep through my family's veins-we are (I come from) an entire line of people, through entire generations, different centuries, several countries, and various nations who are connected to each other by blood and by the emotional journey of immigration and search for political freedom, religious tolerance, and political refuge. It is a history of separation from loved family members, from a beloved mother or father land in search for the hope of personal freedom in yet another land.
There were no immigration laws here, then, when William Pickens and his wife Margaret stepped on the shores of this country ... which, "for much of its history ... allowed unrestricted immigration..."
There was no CNN out there, then.
There was no, LOU DOBBS This Week, spewing out the poisonous gas of fear and hate against immigrants known then as Pioneers; today as immigrants. Or against the Catholic Church, Cardinal Mahoney, Bishop Jaime Ortega or the spirit of Lent as Lou Dobbs just did this past week.
Back then there was the Indian who is today known as the Native American, and who initially received the immigrants, those men and women known to history as Pioneers who, like William and Margaret arrived to these shores from distant lands, with an open heart and a welcoming hand until they felt threatened by the very Pioneers who wanted to take possession of their lands and dispossess them of their rights.. It was then that they then began to fight the Pioneers for the right to retain their lands.
Nonetheless, the Pioneers ran the Native American off of his lands, further into the wilderness, and dispossessed him of many of his rights. They made second class citizens out of the first citizens of these lands: the Native Americans. In these lands known today as the United States of America, and because of far better weapons, it was the Pioneer, the White Anglo Saxon Protestant, who prevailed over the Indian.
How sad that we are, a nation of immigrants which turned against the native people of the land, running them into pens and into the wilderness, a nation which today turns against the immigrants who come in search of the same promised land that our ancestors came looking for.
How ironic that so many of us are railing against them. Is it that our fear comes from a deep, buried sense of guilt over what we did to the Native American-the Indian? Perhaps, are we afraid that the new immigrants (or their numbers) will do to us what we did to the Native American: turn us into second class citizens?
How sad also, that today, night after night, Lou Dobbs, dresses himself in the cloak of righteousness and from the chair of his smoke stack, spews out to the airwaves the hot air of fear and hate which permeates the country against today's immigrant-most especially against those immigrants who come from South of the Border and who have a brown skin, very little education and no professional training.
How sad that night after night there is one, two, or three more hearts who begin to look at the immigrant through the eyes of hate and fear as planted in the nation by Lou Dobbs and the Lou Dobbs like mentality.
How sad that we are beginning to see the hearts and eyes of a nation which, fed by the likes of Lou Dobbs looks, fearfully and resentfully, at the new comers as illustrated by the recent words of a neighbor who said, "it is not that they are criminals like some make them out to be. It is that they are so different from what we all are." We, some of us, are frightened by differences that we don't understand.
How sad that Lou Dobbs ... needs to advance his cause by railing against Cardinal Mahoney, by spinning and reframing the Cardinal's exhortation for support of today's immigrant, into a mangling of the Cardinal and of the spirit of Lent, which is Love-to the point of Christ having offered Himself as a Sacrificial Lamb, into Dobbs' ...
"The Catholic Church can't resist temptation even during Lent. The temptation to be involved in secular politic and illegal immigration crisis and border security..."
Teresa Simon-Noble is a computer activist for peace. She is a former mental health clinician. A poet and a freelance writer. Her work has been published in several online publications.
to hear the voice of reason and so passionate at the same time. I tried myself to express the same in my recent article here 'Species 8472?' (cannot open it to show the path for some reason). As an immigrant, first generation I consider it an appaling insult of intelligence when Mr. Dobbs practically makes money on the 'manufactured disaster'. He looks like a Master- Vampire who sucks the blood of the people to become more and more rosy, that corporate puppet. In all that sea of stupidity and malice NONE of the real problems are addressed. For some time recently I prefer not to criticise bad articles but to praise the good ones. This one made my day.
Thanks, Teresa (if I may), kindly
Mark Sashine
by
Mark Sashine (50 articles, 19 quicklinks, 244 diaries, 3453 comments)
on Friday, March 2, 2007 at 1:03:48 PM
I just now went back and read your article referenced in the comment. It soooo resonates with me and as you see, with my perception of Dobbs and of immigration as he portrays it.
I like a lot what you say about DIALOGUE ... it is imperative--and I agree with you wholeheartedly. Dialogue (or what some call diplomacy would also be such a welcome piece to the so called "war on terror")
Dialogue, Mark, has been such an essential component of the things I believe in ... if only they (Bush,Dobbs, and all the rest could hear us)!
Your comment and your article have uplifted my spirits. thank you.
by
teresa simon-noble (56 articles, 17 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 81 comments)
on Friday, March 2, 2007 at 3:43:30 PM
2 comments
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