Migration

"They're coming to America." -- Neil Diamond

   Popular music is filled with songs proclaiming the wonderfulness of coming to America. Political candidates are fond of pointing to their immigrant roots, and praising newcomers who succeed. Yet many of these same politicians go to great lengths to endorse barricades proposed by nativist know-nothings to keep out those who "look funny" or those who "talk funny."
   Can you say "hypocrisy"?
   I knew you could.

   Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in the U.S. is above that of neighboring Canada and Mexico, as well as Australia and several countries in Europe. However, we don't hear of Americans emigrating to other countries that seem to have a labor shortage.
   For some, however, the migration has already started.
   Our Dublin correspondent reports that the unemployment rate of 15 percent in Ireland represents those who are out of work and still living in the country. It does not count the many thousands who have already started seeking employment in another country.
   Tens of thousands have left Ireland each year for the past few years, seeking employment in other countries. Some 80,000 left in 2010 and another 80,000 in 2012. Because they are no longer in Ireland they are not counted and are not included in the unemployment rate for Ireland. I do not know when they are counted or where they are counted. Many have gone to the UK, and others to Canada, some to Australia and others to New Zealand. A few have managed to go to the U.S. For those who have languages other than English a number of other countries can be added to the list.   The most recent figures available show an unemployment rate in Canada of 7.4 percent in September, below that of the U.S. (There's also far less gun violence in Canada., and no language barrier.) In Australia, the jobless rate is 5.1 percent, and in Mexico, the rate for the second quarter of this year was 5.0 percent. Granted, there is a language issue in moving to Mexico, but that would be true also of emigrating to Austria or Germany, where the unemployment rates are 4.5 percent and 5.5 percent.
   Consider this: In relocating to Australia or some parts of Britain, the American would be the one who "talks funny."

   It's an accident of history that English is the dominant language in the U.S. Depending on who won control of the early settlements, the American language could have been Dutch (New York and Northern New Jersey), Swedish (Southern New Jersey), Gaelic (Irish and Scots settlers in Appalachia), French (New Orleans and the Louisiana Territory as well as areas south of Montreal), or Spanish (most of the Southwest and Far West).
   Spanish is not a foreign language in America, and never has been, since Spanish-speaking settlers were here more than a hundred years before the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts. (And they were renegades, but that's another story.)
   Moreover, the Vikings were exploring North America some 500 years before Columbus, so if they had continued and expanded their activities, Norse would be the dominant American language.
   Or, if the peoples already here had succeeded in turning back the invaders, we all could be speaking Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Iroquois, Mohawk, Lenape of any of the dozens of other languages spoken by the Native American tribes.
   Consider also that observance of Columbus Day as a national holiday was a political ploy in 1937 by Franklin D. Roosevelt to gather up the Italian-American vote.