Get out!!!

Welcome to the United States of America.  Now, get out!!!  

A sentiment that has gained a lot of support in the last decade.  Not one of our finest moments.  I'm sick of seeing it and have been told multiple times that since I'm obviously not (visually ambiguous enough I guess) that I can leave.  I served my country.  I have family with roots back to the 1820s.  I also am the daughter of a naturalized citizen.  My father came to this country from a British colony and relinquished his British citizenship because he loved this country that much.  My mother's father has roots in both the Deep South and the farm country along one of the Great Lakes.  I had family that fought on both sides during the Civil War, were decorated in the Great War (World War I) and have served myself.  I have family that came over at the turn of the last century, illegally if truth be told, because they had the money to come from Poland via Canada.  Yes, Polish.  Surprisingly, this country was not really happy to see the Poles, the Italians or the Irish immigrants who were fleeing Germans or starvation or societal unrest or just fleeing to a new country that was and still is young in ideas and fresh in its concepts.  The concepts of Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, even the Right to Bear Arms.  These are no concepts accepted everywhere in the world, and more importantly, they are not concepts accepted as a whole in the world.  You will not bare arms in Europe.  You will not speak freely in China or Russia.  You will not worship freely whichever religion you choose in a third of this world.  You will not have true elections in almost half of this world and therefore, you will not be represented.  The concept, the dream, to be American is so often now, as it was years ago, still an immigrant thing.  Yes.  Somehow, those of us born and raised here have such little appreciation for our Great Nation that we feel it's ours exclusively.  

When someone sees this shit (yes, I'm not asterisking that out for this blog) and chooses to share it, have they considered who are the children of immigrants?  I am descendant of homegrown American blood--second or more generation.  I am also descendant of an immigrant.  I served this Great Nation.  I'm offended.  What's more important is:  Why are they not?!?!  Have they considered who actually has been descendant of immigrants in the past?  Consider that unless we have Native American blood in our lines, we are ALL descendant of immigrants.  At the longest stretch of this "get out" sentiment is every single American--white, black, yellow, brown--European, Latino, Middle Eastern, Asian.  None of us, zero, zilch, nada are not ourselves descendant of immigrants.  Legal?  At the bare minimum, most of the oldest families here from European roots were fleeing religious persecution, where worshiping what they worshiped was considered heresy.   When any of us look at any of our neighbors, look at our parents, look in the mirror, there is not a single one of us other than the Native Americans that can honestly claim they were not of immigrants.  Amazing that anyone would even let those words "get out" come to their minds, let alone leave their mouths.  Michelle Bachmann herself should not utter the words.  

Can we shut down immigration?  Close the borders?  It's kind of the same thing as herding cats.  Money will still allow those who want to come here to come, much like my Grams' family.  However, except for wartime or drastic atrocities, people with money do not need to flee their current circumstances.  I'm sure that Russians with money and power could care less that the majority of the masses of the Russian people are suffering.  Religious persecution?  Means nothing to those with money in this world.  They just jut across to Western Europe and enjoy French wine and the Italian countryside.  Religious persecution hasn't changed in thousands of years much.  Religion itself might be the root of all evil.  It erects barriers between people, gifts the most loyal and faithful of it with a sense of entitlement and superiority over others, and very often becomes a point of contention where the beliefs divide.  Mormons are of Christian faith and yet most Christians are still leery of the Mormon branch of their faith.  These differences, these concepts of one being less than another, even the concept of forcing others to practice no faith as communism of old had, is horrible.  Of course, as anyone of true faith can tell you, no one needs to attend a church to maintain their faith, but that doesn't change that it isn't right.  Yet, that is what goes on in the Middle East, in Russia, in China.  Mexico is not safe for Americans to visit anymore.  Imagine living there?  It's not really safe for most that live there either.  I can't imagine anyone fleeing a country where drug dealers and corrupt government officials are still rampant.  (Feel the sarcasm?)  People for decades, have hopped on dingy boats, barely river or lake worthy let alone sea worthy, to come to the USA from Cuba.  The draw of Freedom is huge.  We are not the only country.  Italy is rescuing people fleeing the Middle East and Africa by droves as they do the same thing over the Mediterranean Sea.  We as Americans cannot figure out how to "fix" this border "problem", because frankly, we cannot imagine what the hell they are fleeing from.  It's all words to us, because our parents, grandparents, heck great great great great great grandparents had that same dream and wanted nothing less than for us to never know what the hell they went through...what these people go through every day of their lives.  

Most amusing to me is people who claim that America, that we have a "culture".  An American culture.  Is there such a thing?  In the sense that they are talking about?  Probably not.  Family gatherings where people cook a feast outside and celebrate various holidays are not exclusively American.  Pig roasts over a rotisserie is not exclusively American--actually it is rooted in European roots.  Cooking a pig in the ground is a Native American and Pacific Islands thing originally.  Even apple pie is actually a cross between French and German and Irish cooking.  Macaroni and cheese is a mix between English and Italian.  It's all Americanized but it's roots are not actually full blown American.  Soda pop?  While various flavors are, root beer and ginger ale have European roots and therefore, so does all soda pop.  What is ours then?  What is American?  Freedom is our culture.  The one thing that we held supreme from day one.  Freedom to vote and be represented.  Freedom to not pay a King.  Freedom to speak and worship and protect ourselves.  These are no longer exclusively American, but ironically, we are the only ones that still have them all.  In Europe, the governments own cameras, in some places on every street corner, their private lives only private in their own homes, and even then, not to the level of our privacy.  Our culture varies depending upon our family lineage, how long our ancestry has been part of the great Melting Pot's fabric, and of course, how we have interpreted and combined the two over the years.  In Downtown Greenville, SC, this weekend is a Greek Festival.  There are few places in the world that we celebrate all the various cultures in the world as we do in the United States.  We celebrate these other "cultures" because each and every single one of them has added to the fabric that makes us American.  

While so many in this country are so sure that one semester of high school US Government and a year of US History makes them experts in what is or isn't American, there is so much more than what we were taught, let alone what we forgot.  Think about it.  Most can barely remember how to calculate the angle of an isosceles triangle or the 6th President of the United States.  All stuff we learned then, but will still boldly claim that they "know" what it is to be American.  Yes....and sadly, no.  Ask yourself if you know the answers to these questions:  

1.  Who's 4th in line to the President?  Most people do not remember #3, let alone know #4.  
2.  Who set the precedent of only serving 2 terms as President of the United States?
3.  Who made the Louisiana Purchase?
4.  In what order did the first 13 colonies become States?
5.  What year did the State you went to high school in actually become a member of the United States?
6.  What States remained "neutral" in the Civil War?
7.  Where is the Mason Dixon line?
8.  What was the Missouri Compromise?  Who wrote it?  (Back when our leadership actually wrote their own legislation, if you even knew that.)
9.  What President served in the US Senate after his Presidency?
10.  How many Presidents have been impeached?
11.  What are the methods that an Amendment can be added to the Constitution?  
12.  What are the requirements to serve in the United States House of Representatives? 

Amazingly, most Americans cannot answer all of those questions correctly.  Yet, we learned them.  All part of those books that we received in high school, all required curricula, and more importantly, all part of the standardized testing even back to the 1970s.  Every adult reading this should know as long as they graduated high school.  What we forgot is far more than what we actually remember.  

My final argument that I wish people would consider is who the immigrants of the past are that they would tell "get out" now...what children they may have had that have contributed to the American fabric. 

The following people were born of parents that were not "American":

1.  George Washington and all of the Founding Fathers.  Yes, there was no America and all of their families were not technically of American origin or citizenry prior to forming this Nation.
2.  Lawrence Welk.  An every Sunday evening entertainment for so many.  He was born in the Dakotas of German parents. 
3.  Joan Rivers.  Russian parents.  
4.  Michelle Kwan.  US Gold Medalist.  Chinese parents.
5.  Larry King.  Russian and Austrian parents.
6.  Colin Powell.  Jamaican parents.  
7.  Alex Rodriguez.  Dominican parents.

How about famous naturalized citizens (by the way, naturalized citizens are required to be able to answer those 12 questions above):

1.  Albert Einstein.
2.  Van Morrison.
3.  Andrew Carnegie.
4.  My personal hero.  Nikola Tesla.  
5.  Alex Trebek.
6.  Eddie Van Halen.  
7.  Cary Grant.  
8.  Bat Masterson.  Yes, the famous cowboy and lawman of the Wild West.
9.  Joseph Pulitzer, as in Pulitzer Prize.  

I was a bit mortified and saddened as I tried to choose people for these lists that were artists, authors, political and religious activists who fled their countries in fear of imprisonment or death.  As Americans, even ones that might fear our own police, we can have no idea what it is like to be in fear where the behavior to be ostracized is not only sanctioned but encouraged, where our lives mean so little that no one will rise up and speak on our behalves if the state has decided to kill or imprison us.  Just because of our religion, our art, our writings or just because who our family happens to be.  Can you imagine?  I cannot, nor would I. 

I will not even entertain that any one of us has the right to tell another American, born and raised, to "get out".  Bluntly, we do not.  I won't tell the Americans telling others to "get out" to get out, other than to say, if you feel that strongly in favor of fascism, perhaps our Great Nation isn't really the right nation for you.  Any one of you telling anyone to "get out" might want to invest $30 in Ancestry.com.  You'll probably be in for a rude awakening.  You came from immigrants.  They were not welcome when they came, and any one of us could be told to get out based on that way of thinking.  This Nation was founded on Freedom.  So much that we fought two World Wars that had zero to do with us in Europe for that grand concept of Freedom.  We fought ourselves over it.  We send our sons and daughters to fight for it all over the world even today.  Get out?  Other than your freedom to say it, how does that represent the Freedom of this Great Nation?