Aneirin
Posts: 6121
Joined: 3/18/2006
From: Tamaris
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America, the land of hope and opportunity, is it still this, or has it become just like the lands that were left behind in the seeking of a new ideal ?
Locking Out the Immigrant
by Jacob G. Hornberger, June 1991 America of the 1800s was the most unique society in the history of man. People could engage in virtually any economic enterprise without permission of their public officials. People could become as wealthy as they want, and there was nothing the government could do about it. They could dispose of their money in any way they saw fit. And they could travel anywhere they desired without a passport or other evidence of governmental consent. This is what it once meant to be an American. This is what it once meant to be free.
But perhaps the most unique aspect of American society of the 1800s was that reflected by the Statue of Liberty: free immigration. For this was a society in which the citizenry prohibited their public officials from interfering with the right of people everywhere to come to the United States to live and work.
What was the result of this unusual society — a society without income taxation, welfare, social security, licensing, passports, subsidies, economic regulations, and immigration restrictions? The result was the most economically prosperous nation in the history of man! And this despite the fact that thousands of penniless immigrants, many of whom could not speak English, were flooding American shores every day.
But prosperity for the poor was not the real significance of our ancestors' policy of freedom of immigration. The true significance is a much more profound one. For the first time in history, oppressed and persecuted people everywhere had hope — hope that if they were able to escape the tyranny under which they suffered, there was a place which would accept them. America was a beacon — a beacon of liberty which shone through the darkness of oppression, persecution, and tyranny throughout the world — a beacon which lit the hearts of millions who knew that if they could just escape, there was a nation, albeit faraway, to which they could flee.
What went wrong, why is America not what it once was ?
Is it time the statue of liberty was taken down, despite it's association with freeing the blacks of America from the chains of captivity, for the lady represents something many on here revile against although their ancestors might have thought different.
But of immigration, is it so bad ?
Economist's think different ;
Locking out the immigrant
But if the present status is to be continued, America the land of hope and opportunity becomes no better than the lands the American ancestors left behind to seek freedom.
In which case where next for those that seek freedom to be themselves ?
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Everything we are is the result of what we have thought, the mind is everything, what we think, we become - Guatama Buddha
Conservatism is distrust of people tempered by fear - William Gladstone
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The land of Hope and Opportunity ? - 
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