FW:FW Unsolicited Emails Department -- 2006Letter from Rosemary La Bonte

Pros and Cons of FWD'ed Emails, and SNOPES,
Retrieved by Pat Darnell
----- Original Message -----
Subject: Fw: TEARING THIS COUNTRY APART
TO: Orange County California Newspaper
FW Messages: This is a very good letter to the editor. For some reason, people have difficulty structuring their arguments when arguing against supporting the currently proposed immigration revisions.

NOT printed in the Orange county Paper..... "Newspapers simply won't publish letters to the editor which they either deem politically incorrect (read below) or which does not agree with the philosophy they're pushing on the public. This woman wrote a great letter to the editor that should have been published; but, with your help it will get published via cyberspace!"

From: 'David LaBonte' "My wife, Rosemary, wrote ... letter to the editor of the OC Register which was not printed. I decided to 'print' it myself sending it out on the Internet. Written in response to a series of letters to the editor in the Orange County Register:
[SOURCE]
Dear Editor:
So many letter writers have based their arguments on how this land is made up of immigrants. Ernie Lujan for one, suggests we should tear down the Statue of Liberty because the people now in question aren't being treated the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry.

Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr. Lujan why today's American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer.

Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of Europe to come to the United States, people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in New York and be documented . Some would even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary rule in their new American households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home.

They had waved good bye to their birth place to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture. Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills and craftsmanship they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity.

Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. My father fought along side men whose parents had come straight over from Germany , Italy , France and Japan. None of these 1st generation Americans ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Americans fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan . They were defending the United States of America as one people.

[...]

And for that suggestion about taking down the Statue of Liberty , it happens to mean a lot to the citizens who are voting on the immigration bill I wouldn't start talking about dismantling the United States just yet.

(signed)
Rosemary LaBonte
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SNOPES [SOURCE]

Home --> Politics --> Immigration --> New Immigrants

Claim: Letter to the editor accurately contrasts immigrants from different eras.
Status: False.

Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2006] New Immigrants
Origins: On 31 March 2006, the Orange County (California) Register published several letters to the editor dealing with the subject of the immigration debate. One of those letters, by a reader named Ernie Lujan, was published under a heading of "Tear down lady liberty" and read as follows:

Illegal immigrants have been around since the early 1900's, except then they entered through Ellis Island in New York City. They came from countries such as Italy, Ireland, Germany, Poland and France. And now we accept them as true Americans.

Now these people whose ancestors came to this country to make a better life for themselves and their children want to build a great wall along the U.S. and Mexico border and deny these hard-working people the same rights that their ancestors fought so hard and died for.

If you build this wall then you must also tear down the great Statue of Liberty that sits in the New York Harbor.

This piece provides an apt illustration of the phenomenon that one can find in nearly every culture, in every era, a group of people who firmly believe that their civilization once experienced a golden age in which social conditions were much better (if not perfect), and modern society is an increasingly worsening corruption of that Arcadian past.

The trend continues today, as we commonly see responses to social, political, or economic issues that attempt to contrast the present with earlier eras, to hearken back to times when such problems were significantly ameliorated or simply did not exist.

Generally such reactions don't ring true, referring not to the way things really used to be, but to idealized, mythical visions of the past couched in absolute terms. So it is with this letter, which attempts to contrast the "modern immigrant" with immigrants of a century ago, finding the former sadly lacking by comparison. As usual, it references a black-and-white past that never existed.

Yes, many of the immigrants who streamed through Ellis Island into the United States around the turn of the century worked hard, obeyed the laws, did their best to learn English (and otherwise become assimilated into American culture), raised children who willingly took up arms to defend their adoptive country in times of crisis, and made their way in the world (and perhaps even prospered) with little or no help from the government or anyone outside their immediate families and circles of acquaintances.

What this piece illustrates is not so much substantive differences between "old immigrants" and "new immigrants," but rather the truthfulness of the proverb "*Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose." *[a saying that we simply have no translation for... but are willing to pass it on in this forwarded blog post... (ed.)]

Last updated: 26 July 2006
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This material may not be reproduced without permission. snopes and the snopes.com logo are registered service marks of snopes.com. Sources: Orange County Register. "Letters: The Immigration Debate." 31 March 2006.