Bigots are always saying “but *my* ancestors were *legal* immigrants, unlike these brown people who just walked across the border!”.
Yeah? Really? So, how’d those ancestors become legal immigrants?
Hint: It was the same fucking way that my own ancestors became legal immigrants: they just walked across the fucking border.
Deal being, until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Act of 1882, there wasn’t a law anywhere on the books that kept you from entering the United States and becoming a citizen. You entered the United States, found a judge or magistrate somewhere to stamp your passport with an entry stamp, and five years later you took that passport to a judge or magistrate and turned it in for citizenship papers. That’s all there was to it. You just fucking walked across the goddamn border, and that was it. There was no such thing as a “legal” immigrant or “illegal” immigrant. There were just immigrants, who, five years later, became citizens.
You get these inbred redneck racist cretins who excuse their racist rantings with “well, *my* ancestors were *legal* immigrants” when their ancestors did the exact same fucking thing as the current immigrants — i.e., they just fucking walked across the goddamn border — and you know it ain’t about legality at that point. It was impossible to be an illegal immigrant back when their ancestors entered the country. There was no such thing as an illegal immigrant back then. All you had to fucking do was walk across the goddamn border and presto, you were a goddamn legal immigrant.
Nowadays, it’s pretty much goddamn impossible to legally immigrate to here from Latin American countries. For example, Mexico. A few years ago, 1.38 million Mexican citizens were waiting in line for a United States work visa or an immigration visa through a family member. But there were only 26,000 visas made available for Mexico that year. That’s a 53 year waiting list. Most of the people on that list are going to be dead before they actually get an immigration visa. The other Latin American countries have similar waiting lists, all of which basically boil down to, “we don’t want your kind here”.
To say that this is different from the way my ancestors came to America is an understatement. My ancestors from England and Scotland stepped off a boat, stepped across the border, and they were fucking legal. They did the exact same goddamn thing that all these recent refugees did — they stepped across a border — and that was all it fucking took, people. There wasn’t any such thing as an “illegal” immigrant back then. It was literally impossible to be an illegal immigrant back then. There was no such thing.
So saying your ancestor was a legal immigrant, when your ancestor came here before 1882, is ridiculous. There was no such as a “legal” immigrant back then, just as there was no such thing as an “illegal” immigrant back then. There was just immigrants, who, five years after stepping across the border, became citizens. That’s all it took — stepping across the border. Well, before 1882, anyhow. That was before racists took over our immigration policy, but that’s another story for another day.
– Badtux the Legal Penguin
Read Full Post »