Observations©

Donald S. Conkey

Date:  May 28, 2007  # 922 – Immigration    (836)

With both of Georgia’s United States senators, Chambliss and Isaksen, heavily involved in crafting the latest bill on immigration, regarded by many as ‘the amnesty bill,’ one begins to wonder if we Americans will ever be able to agree anymore on anything. The use of harsh and divisive rhetoric within the congressional ranks, and between the congressional leaders and the nation’s president is getting out of hand. But rhetoric is still preferred to roadside bombs and suicide bombers killing loved ones.

            It will be interesting to read the final version of this bill. My e-mails indicate there are many angry citizens opposed to this bill. I wonder if the orginal Native Americans were as angry as our citizens are today as they watched “illegal immigrants” invade “their land” years ago?

These e-mails cause me to ponder the days when millions of immigrants risked their lives to cross the violent oceans that separated America from its neighbors in Europe and Asia. Thousands of my ancestors were among those early immigrants to America. They carried eighteen months of necessities with them when they left their native lands. Is that any different than what is happening today? They came because America had become “A Beacon of Freedom and Economic Hope” to an enslaved world. They came for different reasons: some were forced out of their native lands, others came for religious freedoms, and some came simply to survive. And they came by the boatloads.

The issues were basically the same then as they are today. Their native land’s form of government did not or could not provide the freedoms that create the jobs needed to support a growing population. How many ever think about this important issue – a land free enough to create new jobs, with some becoming wealthy in the process, and equally important - all workers have the same opportunity to climb that same economic ladder, and, with a little luck – and a lot of hard work – become economically successful.

As a student of world history I have studied forms of governments on every continent since the days of Adam. And, without exception, the migration of people always was or became a major issue. People are constantly on the move looking to better their lives, be it today or anciently. Many times I found evidence that the hand of God was involved in ‘cleansing a nation’ or ‘in keeping a land isolated’ for a specific time in history. The role Columbus played in discovering America is an example of this evidence. The focal point of these examples was, in nearly all examples, the land now known as America

For instance, from records similar to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we learn of the Jaradites, a people led, like Columbus and the Pilgrims, across ‘the waters’ to this ancient land several millennia before either Columbus or the Pilgrims. Their records declare these people were to “come forth even unto the land of promise, which was choice above all other lands, which the Lord God had preserved for a righteous people.” A few paragraphs later this recorder wrote, to clarify, “For behold, this is a land which is choice above all other lands; wherefore he that possess it shall serve God or shall be swept off; . . .”

This particular nation later self destructed, as did several other nations who at first served the God of this “choice land,” but later, as they became wealthy rejected God’s prophets and counsel, as did the Israelites. One leader, prior to his death, declared to his descendants they would eventually reject the God of this “choice land” and would be swept off from it. Continuing, he stated that those who would sweep them off this land would later be the instruments in helping them return to “their land of promise” and that their “kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers; . . .” 

If we apply these words literally to the immigration issue foremost in the minds of most Americans these words seem to be coming to pass. The hardships of coming to America today are perhaps little different than they were 200 years ago. Crossing the border and making one’s way through the desert may be equal to six weeks on a boat crossing the Atlantic, and the living conditions may be similar, but the social services available to today’s immigrant, legal or otherwise, is far different than it was for my European ancestors coming to work in the coal mines of Pennsylvania – work that the “Native Americans” of that day would not do. Sound familiar?

Truly, the immigrants of today, who work hard for their daily bread, are literally being “carried on the shoulders” of “nursing fathers and mothers” when compared to the immigrants of the last two centuries.

Is it possible that the God that protected George Washington through many deadly battles to create this land of liberty is the same God shaping today’s “nursing fathers and mothers” immigration laws? Perhaps it is!