Many Americans have the vague sense that their nation is being overrun with immigrants.

[pampango]

Minorities with funny names are coming to their country, thriving in their workplaces, snatching the coveted spots at their most prized universities. And now, one is president (if you agree with the 43%). And how convenient that, embedded in America's founding document, there exists an arcane technicality they can use to justify their passionate pursuit. People aren't pointing at the birther issue to rephrase their hatred of the president. They're pointing at the Constitution to hide their xenophobia.

In November of 2008, as I listened to a close friend relay her father's stories of Jim Crow segregation as tears welled up in her eyes, I was reminded of a debate I'd had a year prior. I couldn't believe that many months ago I'd argued, with the certainty I felt a lifetime of racist slights had entitled me to, that there was no way a black man named Barack Hussein Obama could be elected president of the United States. I smiled as I sent a conciliatory text -- "Well, I was wrong."

Some claim that this couched racism is evidence of how little we've progressed. I'd argue precisely the opposite. As the daughter of someone who once had rocks and racial epithets hurled at him by white children, I believe it is indicative of how far we've come that people would rather be labeled morons and conspiracy theorists than racists or xenophobes. And it is understandable, I think, to find a loud foreign accent to be more grating than a loud American one. It is understandable to return to your hometown and find the signs in strange languages to be disconcerting. It is understandable to be confused when people who seem so unlike you are flourishing here, where you grew up, particularly in dire economic times. And it is understandable to look at all of this unfamiliarity and feel a little bit scared.

We can scrutinize our ideas to confront our beliefs, or we can use our ideas to avoid them. For those who choose to do the latter, the cost to the national dialogue is high, but the personal cost is as well. Because as moments of great historical import seemingly propel the rest of us forward, they will be left more bitter and alienated than when they began. They will feel foolish as they're easily proven wrong. And worst, as the dust settles and everyone else prepares to move on, they will find that their anger hasn't gone anywhere.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/silpa-kovvali/bringing-birthers-into-th_b_856750.html

[elocs]

1. I bet the native Americans felt the same way, but it probably wasn't vague. n/t

[movonne]

2. love it...good one...

[Scuba]

6. +1

[Burma Jones]

3. The best thing we got going for us is that people still want to come here

If you don't get how immigration makes up strong, you need to think harder.

[undeterred]

4. I thought our nation was made up of immigrants.

[pampango]

8. I think many, including many teabaggers, look favorably at our history of immigration.

They just don't like today's immigration.

Of course that's exactly the same attitude as the Know Nothings had in the mid-1800's and the repubs had in the 1920's when they passed restrictive immigration laws in 1921 and 1924 and when they opposed the Democratic immigration bill of 1965 which greatly liberalized immigration rules.

For many folks it's not past generations' immigrants who represent the problem. (They might even wax philosophical about how our history of immigration makes us exceptional.) For them it is always today's immigrants (whether today is 1850, 1924 or 2011) who are a unique problem.

[pipi_k]

5. Ironic, isn't it?

That many who see the Statue of Liberty as an icon of America...as America itself... forget the inscription at its base.

[pansypoo53219]

7. i read a WWI book by an embedded write floyd gibbons-

and they thought we wouldn't fight. great old worn book i found at an estate sale. many out the american solders were RECENT immigrants, still willing to fight in their old land FOR AMERICA.
maybe if we welcomed them a little more. although we weren't exactly welcoming back then either.