Who are These People and What Are They Doing Here?

I just received yet another email about the evils of today’s immigrants and the scourge they are upon our land. I’m not a great debater. I don’t usually broadcast my opinions. My point here isn’t to piss anyone off. I just want to state my view of the issue. Part of my family has been here since the 1600s, and I’m a third generation Californian, so I figure I have a right to my opinion, at least that’s my excuse. This is not a simple issue, so I’m going to give you some background, to tell you who I am and to explain my position. I come from four distinct families, and I’m going to introduce them to you.

My mother’s mother’s mother was an orphan who came to New York from Germany sometime in the mid-1800s. She married another German and they took a clipper ship around Cape Horn to Northern California, where they bought land, established a ranch and had 11 children. German was spoken at home, but they were good citizens and paid their taxes and farmed their land and got along with their neighbors, who were originally German, French, Portuguese, Mexican, Dutch, Italian, African, Scots-Irish and English. My great-grandmother’s sons went to Europe in WWI and killed Germans in the name of the America that was their home. Many of them were decorated members of the Rainbow Division. Still, it was a time that few of them would speak of, and those that did always had tears in their eyes. Maybe it was just the horrors of an unspeakable war, but I’ve always wondered if they knew they were just kids in uniforms, wondering if it was their own family wearing the other uniforms.

My mother’s father’s family was German and Scots-Irish. Scots-Irish means they were Scottish emigrants who were given land that had been taken away from the native Irish by the English invaders. The potato (now THERE was a nasty immigrant!) famine took care of most of them, so they came here because there was no place else to go. They also became good citizens, marrying German immigrants in Pennsylvania, then traveling across this country in covered wagons. The story is that they picked up a little Klamath Indian baby on the way, and she became my other maternal great-grandmother. I don’t know if it’s true, but I like to think so.

My father’s mother’s family was Irish, English, Welsh and Scottish, and came over sometime in the early 1800s. My dad’s grandmother was born in Missouri in 1865, and married and lived in the part of the country where people were (and are) still proud to call themselves Rebels and Confederates before they call themselves Americans. They eventually moved north and west and ended up marrying into my father’s father’s family.