[ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up

[Stefano Vaj]

On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 3:55 PM, MB <mbb386 at main.nc.us> wrote:
> Americans perhaps see the way immigration worked *in the past* in the USA - ghettos
> of immigrants who were eager to partake of The American Dream, therefore trying to
> assimilate (with older folks' reservations about language/culture/religion being
> "lost").
>
> IIUC the immigration into Europe at present is of people who do not particularly
> wish to assimilate, just to have the advantage of living in A Better Place than
> their homelands.

In fact, it should be remembered that the US knew at least *two*
radically different models of immigration, the first being that of
original settlers and subsequent newcomers arriving only a little
later, whose ideas, language and ethnicity was pretty close to theirs.

While immigration in Europe from the Middle East and North Africa
certainly belongs to a third kind, it should perhaps be pointed out
that the "first immigration" did not try in the least to assimilate
and integrate in the Native American societies, values and culture,
let alone respect its legal systems! It destroyed if for good.

And yet probably some of those immigrants were decent, ordinary folks
like you and me... "People just like everybody else.  Moms, dads, kid,
jobs; love, hate, joy, grief, and irony, lots of irony.  Same as
always." :-)

-- 
Stefano Vaj