The history of America has always been about immigration. Fiercely motivated and hardworking people from all over the World have been willing to give up their homelands and travel very long and dangerous distances for the opportunity to pursue their own personal American Dream.
Immigration is who we are as a Country, and throughout history, Immigration has been our Greatest Strength.
Just like your ancestors did, my own ancestors came to America in many ways.
Three of my direct ancestors were Pilgrims on the Mayflower in 1620, and several of my direct ancestors came to America from Africa on slave ships in the 1600’s and 1700’s, and others came from everywhere in between.
And all of my ancestors, just like all of your ancestors, fit this fiercely motivated and hardworking description exactly.
In fact, 400 years is a very long time for families to expand, and so you and I will have had many of the same ancestors throughout these past 400 years, which means that you and I are related, and so you and I are Family.
The reason that all these many millions of people throughout the past 250 years, (for the past 400 years if we include the American colonies), have been willing to give up their homelands and risk their lives to come to America is because our Country’s Core Belief is that Every Person, Every One of Us, is Equal, that All of Us are Free, and that Each of Us is allowed to chase Our Own Personal American Dream for Ourselves and for Our Families.
Throughout these past 250 years, as a Country we have not always lived up to Our Core Belief, but our pursuit of Our Beautiful Core Belief has always continued relentlessly.
Whenever our Core Belief has ever wavered, then it has only wavered because of fear when people have become afraid.
Most of the time, this has been a fear of the unknown that includes a fear of how change will affect their own Lives and their family’s Lives.
This fear of the unknown leads to wars because of a lack of trust and communication, it leads to groups of people being willing to give up some of their freedoms to authoritarian governments because they think the authoritarian government can protect them from some other group of people who does not think exactly the same way as they do, and with immigration this fear leads to people being afraid that new people moving in will negatively affect and change their Lives.
The fear of immigration is a natural human emotion that has been going on since time began.
This natural human fear of new people moving in who are different from us, shows itself in many situations, from new people and tourists moving into a close-knit small town, to groups of immigrants moving into a Country.
It is natural for anyone who has been living in that small town or in that Country for a period of time, to worry about how the new people moving in are going to affect their Lives.
The history of immigration in America shows a continual flow of new groups of people moving into America, with each new group of people being first met with fear from the native people, a fear that gradually diminishes over time by the new people earning the trust of the longer-term native people, and by some of the stronger and braver heroes within the native people stepping forward to stand up for and help the new people to be treated fairly and Equally by everyone.
Today’s fear of immigration in America is focused on groups of people from certain countries who are currently moving into America, while in past decades and centuries the groups of immigrants who were feared in America came from Ireland, or Germany, or Italy, or Poland, or from many other places at various times throughout America’s history.
For example, with immigration we can look back at the turn of the century in 1900, when President Theodore Roosevelt often discussed the hyphens he did not agree being used for Irish-Americans, or Italian-Americans, or German-Americans.
President Roosevelt thought that every person should consider himself or herself an American, and that the use of hyphens created divisions within America that made other Americans wonder whether in a crisis these newer groups of people would support and be loyal to America or to the country their ancestors came from.
This emphasis on hyphens by President Roosevelt displays a combination of all the immigration elements I have discussed here, including trust, communication, and fear.
In today’s political environment, our politicians are so polarized and divided that they battle over almost anything, and immigration is one of the largest and most intense battlefields.
Immigration has been a constant political battle for many years because there have been uncompromising politicians on both sides who have been taking extreme and polarized viewpoints without showing any willingness to work together with the other parties to find Solutions that will Benefit Everyone.
The primary Republican point of view for the past several years has been that it was very wrong for the immigrants who crossed our border illegally, to then be allowed to stay in America while they wait for their immigration hearing that will take at least two or three years to occur, with most of the costs of their stay in America being paid for by the American taxpayer.
This Republican viewpoint also takes the position that it is very wrong for the immigrants who did not follow the correct legal process when they came into America, to then be allowed to jump ahead of the immigrants who followed our immigration laws correctly, because this has caused an unfair delay for our immigrants who have gone through the proper legal procedures with their citizenship applications.
Likewise, the primary Democratic point of view is that our immigration system is not working quickly enough or efficiently enough when we have outstanding immigrants getting stuck in our immigration system process for up to ten years, oftentimes forcing immigrant families to be split apart for these ten years.
I can see and understand both points of view, and therefore the truth and the solution is a combination of both viewpoints like it always is.
The political battles we have seen in recent years have been caused by the fact that our politicians on both sides have not shown they are willing to work together to look for and create a compromise that is a Win-Win for everyone.
Instead, we have watched as one political group took an extreme political position that allowed ten million immigrants to enter America without following legal protocols, while the other political group has taken the polar opposite political position that has been focused on removing as many immigrants as possible, including some immigrants who have been following the legal process correctly.
In their effort to remove as many immigrants as possible, this political group treated almost all our immigrants with extreme disrespect, rudeness, bias, and sometimes even inhumane unkindness, including treating many immigrants this way who have followed the correct legal process and so are legally in America.
There is never an excuse for anyone to treat any person or family the way that many of our immigrants and immigrant families have been treated.
Let us take a look at both of the polarized viewpoints.
An estimated 10 million immigrants were allowed to enter America over a three-year period without requiring that the immigrants go through any of the normal legal entrance protocols.
Allowing millions of immigrants to enter without going through a required immigration application and processing led to many difficulties in America for a variety of reasons.
These difficulties included:
– Billions of dollars in costs that American taxpayers have paid to take care of all the immigrants while they have been staying in America to wait years for their court hearings.
– The large amount of illegal drugs that have crossed our border which have killed so many of our Amazing and Wonderful young people.
– The potential increase in terrorism that might occur inside our Country because with such a large number of new immigrants coming into America in such a short period of time, and with our entry system not being as organized as it should have been which allowed new immigrants to move to unknown locations around the Country, then our immigration offices did not have enough time to be able to verify the identities and backgrounds of some of the immigrants when they arrived at the border.
In addition, there have been millions of illegal entries across our border by people who intentionally evaded our border guards, and therefore were not processed through our entry system. This has occurred far more often than normal because our immigration personnel have been so busy trying to deal with an overwhelming number of immigrants.
As a result, this migration of such a large number of immigrants has also been very difficult and damaging for most of the immigrants, themselves, because they have suffered many hardships along the way that have included loss of life, assaults, crime, debt owed to cartels, families being separated, more than 85,000 immigrant children going missing, child trafficking, and child slave labor.
Therefore, it has been very neglectful for our politicians to have allowed this situation to occur, not only because of the hardships it brought onto America, but also because of the hardships that it brought onto the immigrants, themselves.
On the other side of the immigration dilemma, some politicians have been accused of not being willing to pass new immigration laws that will improve our immigration policies so that a larger number of immigrants are allowed to legally enter America every year through a fast, efficient, and smoothly operating immigration process.
This viewpoint is also correct because there is no question that we need to vastly increase the speed of our immigration process, and that we need to vastly improve our immigration laws because we have a huge number of tremendous people who want to immigrate to America, and who would be fantastic American Citizens, but who are currently having to wait for many years to work their way through our immigration process.
As a result, just as with all debates and issues, we need to take into consideration the viewpoints of everyone, compare all these viewpoints with the facts, and create a Win-Win Solution that displays Respect, Fairness, and Understanding for all the different viewpoints and perspectives that People have.
Any Solution requires that we first need to get control of the problem so that the situation does not get worse, because getting control of a situation needs to be the first goal in any crisis.
If your boat is filling up with water because it has a hole in the bottom of it, and the water is eventually going to cause your boat to sink, you do not deal with the situation by just trying to bail the water out of the boat faster than the water is coming in.
This would not be the best strategy to use because the water might keep coming in faster than you can bail it out, and it could also turn out that you would need to keep bailing non-stop forever to keep from sinking, which would not be physically possible.
Therefore, the first thing you would need to do is to fix or plug the hole. This would keep the situation from getting worse. Then you would start to bail the water out.
With this same kind of thinking, it was logical and necessary for the government to get control of our border situation by stopping any additional immigrants from entering illegally at our border.
Controlling the border stops illegal immigration, reduces the amount of dangerous illegal drugs that enter our Country, reduces the threat of terrorism in America because it stops most potential terrorists from getting into America, keeps immigrants from being harmed by all the dangers of walking thousands of miles to cross our border, and keeps our wonderful immigrant children from being harmed and suffering from trafficking and child slave labor.
A 2024 bill in Congress suggested that America allow up to 5,000 immigrants per day for seven consecutive days, which is 35,000 immigrants every week and 1,825,000 per year, to cross the Southern border illegally before the President would have the option to stop any additional entries.
And the bill was worded so loosely that even the 35,000 immigrants entering illegally every week would not have been a requirement for the President to take action against, but instead would have just been an option for the President to enforce if the President wanted to.
Therefore, the bill was actually meaningless because it included no commitment at all by the President or by anyone to enforce it.
In addition, even if the bill was enforced at 35,000 immigrants per week, this would still have added up to 1,825,000 immigrants per year, which would not have been much less per year than the number of immigrants who had been illegally crossing our border for the previous three years.
Therefore, this attempted bill was not making any real effort to slow down or reduce the number of immigrants who were illegally entering our Country. It was more of just a political maneuver to make voters think that something was being done, even though nothing was actually being done.
As a result of the large number of immigrants entering illegally, many of America’s states, cities, and towns became completely overwhelmed with the number of immigrants who our Country and our taxpayers needed to provide with housing, food, and necessities.
Even cities like New York were financially overwhelmed with trying to find housing in hotel rooms for such a large number of immigrants at the same time.
Therefore, in the overwhelming situation that America had gotten ourselves into, having a congressional bill that allowed a minimum of 5,000 more immigrants to enter illegally every day would have only continued to make the situation worse.
As a result, this proposed policy did not begin to deal with the border situation because it was allowing the water to continue to come into the boat without fixing the hole in the boat.
In contrast, if we stopped the illegal entry of immigrants across our border, then this would allow us to begin to focus our efforts, focus our manpower, and focus our resources on taking care of the immigrants who are already in our Country.
Stopping more illegal entries would also allow us to put our maximum efforts into finding all the 85,000 immigrant children who had disappeared throughout our Country, many of whom would have been forced into trafficking and slave labor since they entered America.
Then, while we are taking care of our current immigrants, my strategy would be to sit down in friendship with our congresspeople from both political parties, and in good faith and thoughtfulness work out an immigration policy that is a fair compromise for both parties and for all our current immigrants.
A compromise that is also fair for all future immigrants who want to come to America to pursue the American Dream, just like most of our ancestors have come to America in their and our pursuit of the American Dream.
The fact is that our immigration system prior to all the millions of illegal border crossings was not working like it should have been.
For example, I have good friends from Guatemala, who as a family have been split apart for nearly ten years, with the father legally working and living here in America, and with the mother and their children living in Guatemala, while they have been trying for ten years to work their way through our immigration system.
Every Christmas my friend travels back to see his two sons and his wife for a few weeks.
For the rest of the year, he works very hard on his own here in America so that he can send money to Guatemala to take care of his family.
My friend told me that there are two main reasons why his family is still trying to work their way through the immigration system process.
The first reason is that our U.S. immigration rules required that he earns $46,000 per year before he can get approval for his wife and children to move to America, and the second reason is because he is having to pay an immigration lawyer $15,000 to complete and file the immigration applications for his family.
The immigrants who have entered illegally have been allowed to jump ahead in line of my friends who have been going through our immigration system in the correct and legal way for the past ten years.
This story is an exact example of why we need an Immigration solution that is fair and benefits everyone.
And just like all solutions on any subject, the immigration solution we need is in the middle between the two extreme viewpoints of our politicians.
As another example, I am friends with a family from Mexico, where the wife and mother of two beautiful young daughters is an American citizen, and the husband and father of both young daughters is from Mexico and is married to his American citizen wife.
The wife and husband applied for the husband to become a citizen several years ago. However, the final approval had not come through yet when the husband was stopped in his car for no violation of any kind on his way with his two daughters to the convenience store at the end of the road.
The agents who stopped his car arrested him, and left his two-year-old and three-year-old daughters crying in the back of his car.
Fortunately, he was able to call his wife, who got to their daughters before the agent’s car that the father was arrested in had driven away.
However, for more than a year, this upstanding man who is married to an American citizen and has two young American daughters, has not gotten to see his wife and daughters again, and their two young daughters have been forced to go for more than a year without seeing their father.
Following his arrest, he was first transported to an immigration detainment location in the Everglades that was nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz, and then he was deported back to Mexico without ever seeing his family or being seen by a court.
He is not currently allowed back into America, and he is waiting for an American immigration court hearing that could take another ten years before a decision is made whether he will ever be allowed to come back to his wife and daughters.
No human being or family should ever be treated in this way by anyone, and especially not by us, The United States of America.
We are supposed to be the good guys. We are supposed to be the kindest and most thoughtful and most caring people and Country in the World, who saves the World in times of crisis and treats every person and every family with love and kindness.
However, somewhere along the line our Country has gone in a direction that we could not have imagined just a short while ago.
We need to treat Every Person in America, and Every Person in the World with Love, Kindness, Thoughtfulness, Care, and Absolute Respect.
Every Person in America is Equal to Each Other.
Every Person in the World is Equal to Each Other.
We are all Equal and we are All the Same, and so we should All Be treated Equally.
That is the First Thing I Would Do!
I would treat Every Person in America Equally, and I would treat Every Person in the World Equally, and I would Always treat Every Person with Love, Caring, Kindness, Thoughtfulness, and Absolute Total Respect.
And then I would have us all work together to Create and Design a Solution that was Fair For Everyone.
As a third example of our current immigration system, I have another friend who is from Australia, but who has lived and worked in America for more than 35 years since he was 17 years old.
My father helped him by taking him to join the U.S. Marines in 1990.
My father met with the U.S. Marine Recruiter on his behalf, and the Recruiter told my father that he would become a U.S. Citizen if he volunteered and served in the Marines.
As a result, my friend chose to enlist, and he served for four years in the U.S. Marines, including serving during active duty in Afghanistan.
Following his service, he honorably retired from the Marines, and for the past 30 years he has lived and worked in the United States, been married to an American citizen, and has American children.
However, it turns out that the U.S. Marine office made a mistake on his service papers when he retired, and the Marine office forgot to show on his papers that he had become an American citizen through his military service for America.
As a result of this paperwork mistake, 30 years later, and despite his marriage to his American wife and his American children, the U.S. government has now ruled that they are going to deport him back to Australia, where he has never been for more than 35 years since he was 17 years old.
How can this possibly be the correct decision for a man who has served our Country in the Marines, who has been married for decades to an American citizen, and who has American children?
But this is just another example of our Country losing its way, and turning away from the kindness, thoughtfulness, caring, and respect for others that we, as a Country, have Always shown in the past.
This change in Our Country has been caused by the extreme polarization that has occurred between our politicians and between our political parties.
Instead of either political side being fair and reasonable and compromising with each other, one side has been choosing to take a completely extreme position on an issue, for example by allowing ten million immigrants to enter America illegally.
And so the other political side has responded by choosing to take the entirely opposite viewpoint with a completely opposite extreme position. For example, by being very mean and biased against all immigrants, and by deporting as many immigrants as they possibly can no matter how unfair they are being, and no matter how many people and families they hurt.
Therefore, this immigration battle between the political parties is exactly like every other battle going on in today’s political environment because it has two political sides who are both refusing to show enough respect for the other side to listen to them, who are both refusing to appreciate and understand that the Truth and the Solution are Always in the Middle and a Combination between the viewpoints, and who are both refusing to compromise and find middle ground that will lead to a Successful Win-Win situation for Everyone.
In contrast, I would show Respect, Kindness, Thoughtfulness, Care, and Love toward Everyone.
I would Listen Very Carefully to Everyone and to Everyone’s Viewpoint.
And as a result of this Open and Respectful Discussion, we would Find A Way to Create and design A Win for Everyone.
In moving forward toward this Solution, with the illegal border entries now reduced, then we can focus our attention on working to solve the situation with the 10 million immigrants who are inside our Country.
By stopping any more illegal entries, then this will also help to protect Our American People by reducing the entry of illegal drugs, and by reducing the likelihood of potential terrorists getting into our Country.
Having control of our border also benefits the immigrants, themselves, because it stops the immigrants from being harmed on the long journey.
But, at the same time, we also need to improve our immigration system, and make our immigration system faster and more efficient so that we are able to process legal immigrants far more quickly than our system is currently able to do.
As we improve our immigration system, and as we treat our immigrants nicely and with great care, we need to appreciate, though, that immigrants also have a responsibility to us and to America.
If our immigrants truly want to become American citizens, then it is very important for them to make the effort to learn about the history and about the government of our Country.
It takes time for any immigrants, no matter how outstanding they are as people, to become comfortable and grow into our American culture so that they truly become American citizens.
When we look at the history of immigration into America in the 1600’s, 1700’s, 1800’s, and 1900’s, we see that immigrants back then were not given anything. The immigrants to America were expected to work hard, provide for themselves, and become a valuable citizen of our Country.
The immigrants throughout our entire American history have been willing to work very hard, they have been willing to overcome many obstacles and challenges, and they have been willing to develop themselves into citizens of the United States because they wanted so much to become American citizens.
The immigrants from the 1600’s, 1700’s, 1800’s, and 1900’s wanted to become American citizens so badly that they were willing to overcome whatever hardships they needed to overcome so they could start a new and Better Life for themselves and for their families.
Our current society has forgotten that almost none of the people who moved to America were Europeans with money, and instead, most of the immigrants who came to America throughout 1600’s, 1700’s, and 1800’s were indentured servants when they arrived.
In our current culture, we often make the mistake of thinking that the people who founded America were middle-class and upper-class people from Europe. However, this is not true. The vast majority of people who founded America were actually lower-class immigrants from Europe who were willing to work very hard to create and build their American Dream.
The tremendous work ethic of our immigrants to America is the primary reason that America became the Greatest Country In The World.
Our society has forgotten the many hardships that our ancestors had to endure, because in addition to slavery that was horrendously wrong, between 50% and 67% of our immigrants who came to America from Europe in the 1600’s, 1700’s, and into the 1800’s, came to America as indentured servants.
The reason that most of the immigrants to America came as indentured servants is because they did not have enough money to pay for a ticket to travel on the ships from Europe to America.
Since our immigrants could not afford to come to America, then European businesspeople and ship owners in Europe purchased their tickets for them, with the contractual obligation that our immigrants had to work for free in America for between 4 years and 7 years, working for people and farms in America without being paid for their work.
The European businesspeople and ship owners would make their money to pay for the immigrants’ ship voyage to America by selling working contracts for these indentured servants to businesses and farms in America, which was really payment to the ship owners for each immigrant’s ship ticket.
The immigrants then had to work for the 4 years to 7 years for free in order to more than pay back the businesspeople and ship owners for the cost of the immigrants’ ship ticket to America, and for the immigrants to pay the businesspeople back for the cost of the very minimal food, clothing, and housing the immigrants were given while they worked in America.
Entire families came over to America from Europe, and every family member, including the children, had to serve as indentured servants to pay back the cost of their ship transportation.
Indentured servants were treated like they were below other people, and they were forced to work very difficult labor jobs, usually on farms, for very long hours without pay for at least the first four to seven years.
During their years of working, they had to live in very difficult and impoverished conditions, they had minimal food and clothing, and they were not allowed to get married without permission from their boss that was called their “master”.
They also rarely were ever shown their indentured servant contract in advance, and were rarely even shown their contract while they were working in America, and so the horrendous conditions they were forced to live in for those 4 years to 7 years was not what they had been told the conditions would be when they were in Europe before they agreed to come on the ship.
The European businesspeople and ship owners would lie to the immigrants in Europe in order to convince or trick the immigrants to agree to become indentured servants, and often they even kidnapped the European immigrants so that the immigrants did not even make the choice to come to America and become an indentured servant.
If the indentured servants tried to run away, or if their master said they had done something wrong, or if a female indentured servant became pregnant, then the master could add many additional years to the indentured servant’s contract without any legal authority.
And since the indentured servants had no legal help, then the masters were almost always able to do anything they wanted to lengthen the indentured servant’s contract.
The indentured servants were looked down upon by society, and so they often had to deal with and protect themselves from discrimination and bias.
Any children who were born to an indentured servant could also be taken away by the “master” to fulfill a 4-year to 7-year indentured servant contract for up to 31 years later. Which meant that indentured servant contracts often lasted for more than one generation.
According to many historians, a large number of the original African Americans who arrived in America between 1619 and 1660, such as my own ancestors who traveled by ship from Africa to America in the 1600’s and 1700’s, were also considered indentured servants, just like the immigrants from Europe were.
The economic and labor structure that brought about slavery and indentured servants was caused by the fact that America had a very large amount of land, and the farms on this land were required by law to send their crops to Europe. However, there were not enough people living in America to work such a large amount of land.
Therefore, farm owners in America struggled to harvest the amount of crops that Europe required of them, and so the American farm owners and businesspeople could not take care of their farms and harvest enough crops to fulfill these requirements unless they found a way to bring in inexpensive labor.
As a result, slavery and indentured servants became more widespread and even had some similarities with each other. Neither of them were paid any money, and both were given only enough food, clothing, and inadequate housing to survive on.
However, slavery was far worse and continued for generations, while indentured servants would initially only be required to work for between 4 years and 7 years, after which they often had their indentured servitudes extended for longer if the “masters” of the indentured servants forced their indentured servant contracts to be extended.
In studying this history of America, it is very interesting to know that up to 67% of our European Ancestors had extremely difficult lives, first of all in Europe that caused them to either want to or be forced to travel to America on a very treacherous and dangerous ship crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, and then to have to work for free as indentured servants for an average of between 5 and 9 years while they lived in very difficult conditions with limited food and limited clothing.
Even after their indentured servant years ended, they had no money of their own to try to start a new Life with, and they had to try to find a job and make their own way to travel to whatever region of America that they wanted to move to.
There have actually been times throughout American history where slaves and indentured servants felt so closely attached to each other that they fought side-by-side in their efforts to secure a better Life for themselves and for their families.
Then, after our African American ancestors and our European ancestors had survived these difficult conditions, if they were ever given their freedom, then both groups of our ancestors had to find a way to survive on their own without a house or a job to pay for the food and necessities they needed for themselves and for their families.
Therefore, throughout history, immigrants to America have not been given the luxuries that our government was giving to the immigrants who arrived in America between 2021 and 2024.
Throughout American history, none of our ancestors or immigrants were given free housing in fancy hotels, or free food, or free transportation and flights to wherever they wanted to go in America, or free credit cards, or free cell phones, or free laundry service, or free maid service, or free medical care, or automatic jobs.
All of our ancestors and immigrants throughout history had to have such a tremendous desire to become an American citizen that they were willing to take on all these very difficult challenges and hardships after they arrived in America.
Most of our current immigrants entering America recently are just as nice and kind as people, are just as skilled, and are just as willing to work hard, as the immigrants who helped to build America in the 1600’s, 1700’s, 1800’s, and 1900’s.
However, if we make the mistake of providing all the current immigrants with free transportation anywhere they want to go in the Country, if we provide them with a very nice hotel to stay in, with free food, free maid service, free laundry service, free credit cards, a free phone, free health care, freedom from being prosecuted for crimes in sanctuary cities, and free everything else, then we are actually giving the immigrants free luxury vacations in America instead of giving them an opportunity to pursue their American Dream that they have to work for.
When we are giving the current immigrants everything for free, then we are going to attract a far different group of people immigrating to America than the extremely hard workers who very passionately wanted to become American citizens that we were attracting in the 1600’s, 1700’s, 1800’s, and 1900’s.
It is human nature for people to value something more, and to cherish something more, if they have had to work hard for it,
When people are given everything without having to work for it, then not only do they take the gifts they are given for granted, but they also often do not even value or respect what has been given to them.
That is what we often began seeing in the recent immigrant situation. America, the American people, and the American taxpayer had been tremendously kind by giving the current immigrants an opportunity to come into our Country, and then by giving the immigrants so much and so many gifts.
However, many of these immigrants did not seem to appreciate, value, or respect what they had been given. This lack of appreciation, value, and respect is because they did not need to put in hard work or effort to receive all these gifts, and because we did not ask them or require them to do anything in return for these gifts.
This situation reminds me of when I was the head coach of my championship-winning American football teams in Europe.
We won three National Championships and two European Championships consecutively, and at the beginning of every season I would bring the Championship Trophies into the team meeting room where I would talk with my team.
I would say to them that if our League or the other European countries walked into our room and gave us another beautiful Championship Trophy for this year before our season even started, then that trophy would not have any value to anyone and would just be a hunk of metal.
The trophy given to us without us earning it would only be worth whatever the scrap metal in it was worth.
I would say to them that a Championship Trophy is meaningful and valuable because of what it Represents.
A Championship Trophy Represents every minute of hard work and hard training that we have ever given of ourselves throughout our entire Lives, on the practice field to get better, in the weight room to get stronger, in a meeting room to become smarter and better prepared, on a dark field at night running on our own in the freezing cold to get faster and to get in better shape, and on a game field when you are losing and the chips are down, when your back is up tight against the wall behind you and you have to find that something that you can’t even define, that you didn’t know even existed, deep down inside of yourself.
To Somehow Find A Way To Win.
That is what a Championship Trophy Represents.
A Championship Trophy Represents Each And Every One Of Those Minutes, and Each And Every One Of Those Special Moments.
And that is what an American Citizenship should Represent, also.
A person should have to work to become an American Citizen. Because if they have not worked and given of themselves to earn the right to be a Citizen, then being an American Citizen is just a piece of paper that they do not appreciate, value, or respect.
It would be as meaningless as a hunk of metal that was sitting on a shelf.
The immigrants from the 1600’s, 1700’s, 1800’s, and 1900’s became so incredibly valuable to the building of America because they came to America for the right reason.
They came to America to live and work hard in freedom as they made their own way in their pursuit of their American Dream.
And most of them achieved their American Dream for themselves and for their families.
But if we give everything to the immigrants for free, without requiring them to put in the work that previous generations of immigrants have had to put in, then we are going to attract many immigrants who are not here for the right reasons.
Instead, some immigrants will be attracted to America because they know they will be given everything for free here, allowing them to have it easier here than they had it in their own country.
In addition, there is no doubt that there are many current immigrants who are willing to work very hard, just like our ancestors and immigrants throughout history did.
However, because in recent years we were allowing 9,000 immigrants to come into America every day, including 7,000 immigrants entering every day across our Southern border, which totaled 3.2 million and 2.4 million new immigrants per year nationwide and across our Southern border, then America’s economy and employment system cannot provide 9,000 new jobs every day to anyone, much less 9,000 new jobs every day to immigrants who often are not yet able to speak or write English.
Many of the jobs in America in the 1600’s, 1700’s, 1800’s, and 1900’s were labor and farm jobs. Entry level labor and farm jobs at that time did not require as much language understanding, speaking, and writing as our current jobs require because most jobs now require some specific skills beyond just the willingness to work hard physically.
Therefore, when we allow more immigrants to enter the United States than our businesses and our economy can provide jobs for, then we are creating a situation where it is impossible for most of the current immigrants to have the opportunity to obtain a paying job.
If our immigrants have no chance of getting a job because there are far too many immigrants arriving every day, then we are not giving immigrants the chance o pursue their American Dream, and we are also creating a situation where the only option we have is the very bad option of using our taxpayer money to provide these immigrants with everything for free, like what was happening recently.
As a result, the pace of immigration is the most important factor in any immigration policy or law.
In the 1600’s, 1700’s, 1800’s, and 1900’s, the pace of immigration was far slower than it is now because transportation methods were much slower and less frequent.
There were not many passenger ships that sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe in the 1600’s, 1700’s, 1800’s, and 1900’s.
However, now there are many hundreds of flights every day coming from all around the world to cities across America, and there is a 1,954-mile border between the United States and Mexico for immigrants to cross over that our government was giving free transportation from to anywhere the immigrants wanted to go.
Therefore, the transportation limitations in the 1600’s, 1700’s, 1800’s, and early 1900’s were a natural limitation on our immigration numbers.
In addition, our immigration office back then knew exactly when each ship was going to arrive, and so the immigration office would be fully staffed and ready to process immigrants into the U.S. at the times when the ships were arriving, which resulted in a very efficient and cost-effective system and process.
Also, it was not possible back then for an immigrant to get off the boat and avoid the port of entry to get into America without first going through the immigration office processing.
All of these natural limitations on the immigration numbers in the 1600’s, 1700’s, 1800’s, and early 1900’s are no longer limitations in today’s world.
Instead, we have many hundreds of flights every day from all around the world that arrive to a very large number of airports across the United States. We also have a 1,954-mile Southern border that is far more easily accessible to people now than it was in the 1600’s, 1700’s, 1800’s, and 1900’s, a 3,525 border with Canada that is more easily accessible than it used to be, and coastlines that are more accessible by privately-owned boats.
Therefore, with all of these many challenges facing our United States Immigration System, then we need to implement and enforce some rules so that we can manage the speed of our immigrant entry.
By managing the speed of our immigration entry, then we have the time to verify who every person is so that we are not letting in the wrong people, and this speed of entry also allows our immigrants to have the time to learn about our history, civics, and government, which helps them to have a greater understanding of our American culture and become more passionately connected to America.
Controlling the speed of our immigrant entry also provides the needed time for our economy to grow and expand that allows our number of job opportunities to be equal to the number of our immigrants who need jobs.
Therefore, controlling the speed of our immigrant entry provides every immigrant with the opportunity to work, which makes it far better for our immigrant and for our immigrant’s family, and which also keeps our taxpayers from having to pay all the costs for everything for millions of unemployed immigrants since our immigrants will all have a job and be able to provide for themselves.
When we allow too many immigrants to enter too quickly, then none of these necessities are achieved, and we end up with immigration chaos in our Country that costs our American taxpayers billions of dollars, just like what was allowed to occur recently.
It is also very important for everyone to appreciate the fact that when we allow immigrants to enter the United States illegally, but we still allow them to be placed into the regular immigration approval system, then this is not fair to the immigrants who have applied for immigration legally and properly.
As the old saying goes, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”
Giving entry into America and immigration status to immigrants who have entered illegally is not a free decision because doing this harms the immigrants who have applied for immigration in the legal and correct way.
In fact, we have recently had so many immigrants who have entered America illegally, but been put into our immigration system anyway, so that the time it takes for legal immigrants to obtain citizenship has often increased from two or three years, like it used to be, to ten years like it is now.
Therefore, allowing many millions of immigrants who have entered illegally to jump in front of our legal applicants would cost most of our legal applicants to have to waste several years of waiting in line. And that is not fair, either.
In conclusion, with the stopping of illegal entries, then we can focus our attention on helping the immigrants we already have to get settled in and become an important addition to our Country.
We also need to immediately sit down with the congresspeople from both parties to negotiate and design immigration policies that are fair for everyone involved, including fair for our immigrants.
As we find, discover, and create the perfect immigration system for America, we need to understand and appreciate that the two overriding factors we need to focus on are the need for our immigrants to be willing to work hard and overcome challenges in order to become an American citizen, and the speed of entry of our immigrants.
We are not going to attract the correct kind of people to America if we treat them like they are on a free luxury holiday.
Instead, we want immigrants to come to America who are willing to work hard, just like our immigrants and ancestors who founded and built America have done throughout the past 250 years.
Regarding speed of entry, transportation limitations during the 1600’s, 1700’s, 1800’s, and for most of the 1900’s, created a natural restriction on how many immigrants could arrive in America.
Current transportation methods are so advanced that our immigration system becomes overwhelmed when large numbers of immigrants are arriving all along our borders every day year-round.
Therefore, we need to have laws and restrictions that restrict illegal entry into the United States, and we need to have a fast and efficient immigration process timeline that matches the number of immigrants that our economy and employment system can provide the correct number of jobs for.
As a result, when our Congress and our President decide on how many immigrants we are going to allow into America every year, we cannot make this decision based upon the ideological thinking of some of our politicians who are willing to let everyone in because they think they are being nice to the immigrants.
At the same time, though, we cannot unfairly restrict the number of immigrants we allow in, like some of our politicians have been accused of.
The solution, as Always, is in the middle between these two extreme viewpoints.
And so, we need to find the sweet spot in the middle, which is the number of immigrants that our immigration system can safely process in a year, and that our economy can provide immigrant jobs for that do not take any jobs away from our American citizens.
Therefore, after we have determined the maximum number of immigrants we can both process and provide jobs for, then we have a starting point from which to work.
From this starting point, if some of us want to increase the number of immigrants that we allow into the United States every year, then we cannot just make laws to let the immigrants in, and we cannot just choose to not enforce laws like recently happened for a few years.
Instead, if we want to increase the number of immigrants we allow every year, then we need to choose to put government funds into the upgrading of our immigration system, and we also need to increase the capability of our economy to provide these additional immigrants with jobs that do not take jobs away from our American citizens.
Increasing immigration without being able to process them at the speed of entry, or without being able to provide them with a job that does not take a job away from an existing American citizen, creates weaknesses and hardships on both the immigrants and on our American citizens.
However, if we upgrade the speed of our immigration system, and if we expand our economy so that we can provide an increased number of jobs to immigrants, then we have the option of being able to increase the number of immigrants that we can bring into America.
After we have set our immigration targets and our goals, it will be very easy for us to monitor how we are doing because all we will need to look at are three numerical measurements.
These three measurements are the waiting times of immigrants in our immigration system to receive their citizenship, the unemployment rate of immigrants in our economy, and the unemployment rate of our American citizens who were working before recent immigrants arrived.
Based upon our evaluation of these three metrics, we will have the option to increase immigration numbers if we have short waiting times, and we have low unemployment for immigrants, and we have low unemployment for our American citizens.
Or, we will have the option to decrease immigration numbers if we have long waiting times, or higher than desired immigrant unemployment, or unemployment of our American citizens is increasing because of the influx of more immigrants.
A third option we would have is to allocate more government funds to improve the immigration numbers that both our immigration system and economy are able to handle efficiently.
It could even be that we can create a system so efficient that in times when our economy is not doing well and unemployment rises, then we can respond by reducing immigration by a specific amount, and when our economy is doing great and unemployment is very low, then we can respond by increasing immigration by a specific amount.
In summary, the issue of immigration is not an ideological issue that two groups of politicians should be fighting over like our government has been doing in recent years.
Likewise, the issue of immigration cannot be based on what our politicians emotionally think is the right number of immigrants to allow into America.
Our immigration issue should be completely logical and mathematical.
The number of immigrants that we should allow into America is equal to both the number of immigrants we can process quickly and efficiently through our immigration system, and the matching number of immigrants that our economy can provide immigrant jobs for without taking jobs away from our current American citizens.
This is not an unknown magical number that our politicians should be fighting over.
It is a logical and mathematical number that allows America to gain the incredible value of outstanding immigrants coming into our Country, while also providing every immigrant with the opportunity for them to Pursue their American Dream for themselves and for their families.
We Can Do This!
Because we are the Most Outstanding Country in the World!
Throughout history, we have Always been the Kindest and the Most Loving People in the World to Immigrants who have come to our Shores in the Pursuit of their American Dream, and America has greatly benefited from Giving Our Love to immigrants because Our Immigrants have always worked very hard alongside our American citizens who were already here to Build America into the Most Outstanding Country in the World.
