Comments on: Coming to America

by: Sam

Thu, 04 May 2006 16:53:41 +0000

Anonymous -
You are exactly right. Education is always the key. I felt heartsick during that time the family farmers were getting no help or understanding for their plight. I knew it would come to this, but back then no one seemed to care. My point about the hard work was that a farmer would be willing to do it on his own farm - as you say, loves to do it on his own farm - but not on someone else’s farm. That’s where this, in my opinion, tragedy all began - this supersize me economy. I hate it. I loved the family farms in our country and thought they were the healthiest path for our nation on every level. When I think about how much times have changed, I could cry. I wish we could take back parts of our nation and set them aside for family farms and craftsmen, and other productive members of our citizens.
But my question still stands, we’re in it now. What are we going to do about it? Go backwards or forwards or in some direction as yet unknown?
We’ve got lots of educating to do. Is it too late? And who is going to do it?
And look at Mexico - a nation of poor villages and farmers who can no longer make a go of an ancient tradition for self-support. That’s tragic to me, too. Is NAFTA an evil thing to be changed? Or is it similar to the Industrial Revolution (globalization) where we still need to blindly feel our way?
In the meantime, heaping abuse on the poor is not worthy of us.

by: Anonymous

Thu, 04 May 2006 04:59:34 +0000

Well, Sam, since I come from a family who used to farm, I can tell you that farmers don’t usually quit farming because it’s hard work. Most farmers love the life. The problem is small farmers have almost never been paid fairly for their labor; people have always expected them to work for next to nothing. Agribusiness has clout, small farmers have none.

What’s the answer? Well, since the powers that be depend on the ignorance of the electorate to enable them to pass things like Right to Work laws that weaken labor, I would think that the first step would be to educate people. I wouldn’t count on that happening, though when people seem to be so proud to be know-nothings and want everybody else to be just like them.

by: Sam

Wed, 03 May 2006 19:55:25 +0000

Anonymous -
You have a point. I remember those days well, and they made much more sense to me.
Another thing, though, is that the family farm is no longer the main source of our food. Bigger corporations took over and they use— guess who? Now that the farmer and his family are not out doing the sunup/sundown, backbreaking work in such numbers, do you think you could get anyone who wasn’t a first generation laborer for this job?
The first generation comes, full of eager desire for anything.
Second generation obtains more education and wants a better life.
Third generation? That’s most of the rest of us.
The question is, can we go backwards now? Or forwards? If we had to be smarter about our need for labor, we would probably invent in more labor saving devices.
I’m askin’! What’s the answer?

by: Anonymous

Wed, 03 May 2006 19:37:27 +0000

“Would we pay the prices that goods would cost if they were produced by non-immigrant workers who were paid decent wages?”

Well, we used to. We had homes that weren’t filled with junk. We had TV’s that were repaired over and over again. We wore clothes that had the union label or we made them ourselves; our closets weren’t jammed to overflowing. My mother used to darn socks. And I’m not 100, only 53. Those non-imigrant workers who were paid decent wages? They were US.

by: Lynne

Wed, 03 May 2006 11:10:17 +0000

Great essay, Barbara!

I used to work with a woman from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her Spanish ancestors arrived there 450 years ago, give or take a few. Far longer than most of the rest of us. She is also numbered amongst the Latino population.

The mixtures of cultures is what makes this place so great.

by: Sam

Wed, 03 May 2006 05:00:47 +0000

Julie O, Donna - You’re truly in striking distance of what’s at the base of this whole mess. I think that’s why we have such a horrible time solving this issue - NAFTA (corporations) is at the root of most of it. Worry over inflation (”not on my watch” Bush), drugs and corruption in Mexico (and here), an indigineous population’s natural questioning over the meaning of “borders,” U.S. citizens’ insecurity over our “identity.”

Maha - loved your post. It gives wonderful perspective to the whole issue of who and what American was and is. It should be required reading for everyone.

Bonnie - I had one ancestor come over on the Mayflower and one meet the boat (as my family likes to joke). Lots of pride in our Indian heritage now, but no one wanted to talk about it during the generation involved. Americans have always been schizoid about it, haven’t they? When you shared the discrimination suffered by your ancestors and family regarding language, it brought to mind what my former boss (still my dear friend) would tell me about her own childhood experiences. She grew up in the 1940’s in LA as Mexican American. She broods to this day over the treatment she received as a school child when she and her classmates were punished for speaking Spanish during recess. This feeds in to much of the “attitude” that is displayed by some hispanics (they’ve heard all these stories, you know). And when you think about it, a majority of them of them are mostly of “Indian” heritage.

by: Donna

Wed, 03 May 2006 02:07:07 +0000

At one point in time, maybe 10-12 years ago, Douglas County [south of Denver] was the fastest growing county in the United States. National Geographic did an article on it which included wide shot pictures of new housing tracts which seemed to go on forever, hiding the original landscape. All the earlier folks who moved to the front range suddenly realized that their own reasons for moving there [ living in view of and with access to beautiful mountains] were going to be defeated if more and more folks kept moving in. And, so they were right. Today, if a Denver area suburbanite wants to take off to the nearby mountains for a weekend, there’s the reality of bumper to bumper traffic and exhaust fumes to contend with as the congested traffic slowly climbs up the mountain grades.

That potential of living space congestion is my admittedly selfish concern about millions of new folks coming to live in the United States. But just as in the case of Douglas County, Colorado……where should the line be drawn on population density and who should draw it? How can we [who are all descendants of immigrants, Bonnie’s folks excepted] decide to cut off the flow of new immigrants? Who wouldn’t dream of living in a beautiful place or of being able to move to where there’s income security?

I really like Julie O.’s points in post #17. The disparities of living conditions around the globe are fostered by and made chronic by unchecked multinational corporations who play countries against each other.
Too, I think we have to grapple with America continuing to offer contradictory messages to those who cross our borders: 1] come and you’ll get a job, 2]come and you’ll be a criminal. This is sort of like making a ‘no food’ rule for these folks while setting out bowls of food in front of them.

by: Swami

Wed, 03 May 2006 01:50:25 +0000

There are second- and third-generation Americans here who don’t know what a fruit cobbler is, for example.

Is that a shoemaker who lives an alternate lifestyle?

by: Swami

Wed, 03 May 2006 01:21:37 +0000

I think the immigration issue is bogus also.. I don’t see much difference between Hitler scapegoating the Jews for the ills of Germany than the present targeting of illegals as a diversion to the ills of America.

by: No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Tue, 02 May 2006 23:56:54 +0000

On the other hand there are some Welsh words that have been so thoroughly expropriated by the English that no one ever realizes they are Welsh any more. E.g. the word “British” originally meant Welsh, and the name “Welsh” meant foreign - the English called the Welsh foreigners in their own land. Also the whole King Arthur and Camelot myth cycle was of Welsh origin but today people think of it as quintessentially English.