[MD] Immigration and moq

[Heather Perella]

Hey a steffes, Craig, and others, 

     Craig said:  "If the U.S. were underpopulated, I
would not object to the highest quality people
gravitating to the highest quality places.  But since
I consider overpopulation a major world problem, I
support measures which restrict immigration until
population is under control."


     I agree with you that world population by
humankind is a problem.  There are tons and tons of
people.  We wouldn't have to contend with many of the
issues we face today if so many people where not here.
 We could still have our modern society with lots of
creatures now either extinct or endangered.  
     Yet, ... yes a yet,... when populations grow
large, that's what they do - move/migrate/immigrate. 
European population was growing very large in the
times of discovery and colonization, including the
take over of North America.  Europeans relaying
heavily on a mercantile system needed more space and
consumers.  Colonists became a new market for goods
made in European factories and slave fields (cotton,
sugar cane, etc...)  
     A bigger consumer market meant a bigger pay off
for European industrialists.  More land conquered by
colonists, meant more babies, and more land to grow
more food to give back to Europe (especially the
England, which the French still had a large
agricultural base during the Colonial Period) so
Europeans could work textiles and trade the raw
materials back to the Americas in the form of fine
furniture, etc...  
     Many of the colonists where in need of jobs and
land of their own (or criminals in the case of Georgia
and Australia).  So for jobs and land, and that big
meaning, seven letter word - freedom Europeans could
work their way into owning their own land by working
in the companies that set up colonies in
Massachusetts, and Virginia, etc...  Remember it was a
bunch of business entrepreneurs that ventured into
Western Pennsylvania seeking to survey the land for
Virginia based company in which Governor Dinwiddy
(spelling?) himself was part owner of the company. 
These business personnel, whom top priority was given
to George Washington future first president of an
unrealized as yet new country in order to deliver a
letter to the French in the Western PA country.  The
letter said the French are to move out for they are on
British soil.  The French saw no such letter to be
true and followed Washington and the men with him back
south across the Allegheny River to a little place
called Jumonville, near a quick build fort called Fort
Necessity (all in current PA).  Washington and others
found out the French where moving south (which the
French say not for battle where they moving south),
but the British (and yes the Amerindians are here the
whole time on both sides) surprised the French at
Jumonville for the "Shot heard round the world".  What
historians will argue was the First World War - known
as the French and Indian War in the colonies and U.S.
to this day.  It was during this war that the colonist
began to realize their own potential in being a
society that needed not the British to control their
own colonial affairs and the seeds of independence
grew in strength after those first shots in 1754.
     Those colonial ventures, taken without direct
British approval from England lead the British into a
war that weaken their hold upon the future U.S.
colonies.  These colonials that went into Western PA
looking for land to survey so their growing population
could have more 'free' land (free isn't that a loaded
term at times) to give to their indentured servants
after they put in their allotted years in order to
have their own property some day in the 'New' World. 
Tobacco was big business then.  You had the land you
could make a fortune, gold mine, a!
     Well, here a growing population comes again,
looking for jobs, land, and freedom.  Are we going to
be able to stop them?  Did the Amerindians stop the
Europeans?  Aborigines stop the Europeans?  Who knows
Mexicans and other southern peoples could find their
golden city here, a?  The U.S. has streets of gold,
right?  
     History doesn't always repeat itself and history
never happens the same exact way.  I just thought this
similarity was worth sharing.  It was an excellent
question 'a steffes'.  I see the static quality, not
necessarily the correct or incorrect, but the static
quality of today's happenings on immigration.  Whether
this illegal immigration is good for the U.S. in the
long run?  I do know illegal is illegal we have laws
for this movement across the border.  The Amerindians
didn't have such laws so one could argue from a legal
standpoint that the Amerindians had no law to bring
such a legal problem to the courts they didn't have. 
So is this more than just a legal versus illegal
question?  Is this invasion?  Is the value of jobs,
land, and freedom still the force to reckon with, even
this long after the European Colonial Period?

 

SA
   
 

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