Closing the Golden Door

"If ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." -- Shakespeare

"It pays to be ignorant."-- Early radio program theme song

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American  public." -- H.L. Mencken

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." -- Emma Lazarus, inscribed on the Statue of Liberty

"All they will call you will be deportees." -- Woody Guthrie

   We're seeing a new low in inanity perpetrated by political leaders in America. From the malevolent bluster of Donald Trump to the foreign policy ignorance of Ben Carson to the immoral demands by many governors and Congressional folk insisting that the Golden Door of America be closed to Syrian refugees, even to a proposal that a religious test be imposed on them to keep out those of a different faith. Ignorance triumphs.
   So what else is new. Such cancerous attitudes have infected the American body politic for generations. In the 19th Century it was bias against Irish and Italian newcomers, as well as Chinese. In the 20th Century the door was closed to many European Jews, most notably a ship carrying refugees from Nazi Germany, which was turned away, resulting in passengers being sent to death camps. During those same years, many American citizens of Japanese descent living in California were rounded up and sent to internment camps. Later in the 20th Century, Mexican laborers were corralled and deported. That same cry is being heard again in this 21st Century presidential election campaign.
   Anti-immigrant bias has long been a festering sore infecting many in America, despite the reality that almost everyone here is descended from people who came here from other countries. One exception would be the various members of Native tribes who were here long before Columbus, or the Vikings, or even Brendan the Navigator and his assemblage of Irish monks. There was even an effort to send many who were brought here as slaves from Africa, back to Africa, to a new country called Liberia (freedom), with a capital named after a U.S. president (Monrovia).
   "America for the Americans!" was the chant. But how long must a family be here until they qualify? In the final analysis, we are all children of immigrants, whether those newcomers arrived willingly, as refugees, or as slaves.