Xenophobia

We are all foreigners.

   Foreigners have long been blamed for economic problems, and fear of them has hatched many a plot to keep them out of a country in the hope that doing so would revive prosperity.
   In America, however, unless you are a member of one of the recognized tribes, you are a foreigner. But how many generations must pass before one can claim to be a "native"? Even members of the tribes are descended from people who migrated here across a land bridge from Asia to Alaska and then southward.
   In Europe these days, European Union rules stipulate free movement of citizens from one country to another. In Britain, however, many blame current problems on newcomers, especially those from Eastern Europe -- people trying to escape poverty and economic distress by moving to a land of opportunity. Sound familiar?
   But even those in the UK are descended from immigrants, as far back as the Norman Conquest, with invaders whose members were in a sense Frenchified Vikings. And before that, the Anglo-Saxons migrated from northeastern Germany,  overpowering the Celtic peoples who had moved to the islands from what is now Spain.
   It turns out also that many of the monarchs of England were not themselves English. The Norman (Norse-man) conquerors spoke French, the Tudor monarchs (e.g. Henry VIII) were Welsh, the King James who followed Elizabeth had been king of Scotland for a dozen or more years before he united the two kingdoms, the King William who presided over the rebellious Irish was imported to England from Holland, the Hanoverians were German (e.g. George III, at the time the American colonies declared their independence, barely spoke English at all), and Queen Victoria and her children routinely spoke German at home, as a courtesy to her spouse, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
   The history of America, indeed the history of the entire world, is that of the movement of peoples from one region to another for a host of reasons, ranging from a search for opportunity to a goal of conquest.
   In the American Southwest, non-Hispanics are trying to block the movement of people from Mexico into areas they consider "theirs." They seem to have forgotten that Texas -- and areas that are now states -- used to be part of Mexico, and the non-Hispanics in Texas immigrated to that area and fought a war of independence in the mid-19th Century.  
   Sidelight: A federal court has overturned a law in Arizona that required people to carry documentation to prove their right to be in that state, and therefore were not illegal immigrants.
   But how many people routinely carry documents proving their citizenship? A driver's license isn't enough. And many spend their entire lives in America without a passport and don't carry a certified copy of their birth certificate with them at all times.