A couple of days ago, I put up a post on Immigration and Citizenship. I know I did because it showed up on my Facebook page; but, now, it is gone. I have no idea how it happened, or, even, what exactly happened. The post just disappeared. Maybe it is hiding somewhere in cyberspace, maybe it it just gone. But I do know it once existed because the shadow is still there on Facebook.
Anyway, now that it is gone, I can safely saw that it was a great post. Accompanied by one of my favorite pictures.
One of the themes that seems to be emerging in this blog is that the greatness of the United States of America (hereafter known as America) is our openness to immigration and our acceptance and assimilation of immigrants. Not just in the past, but today.
About a month ago, there was an article in the Economist that started: A Ponzi scheme that works.…The greatest strength of America is that people want to live there. The article went on to talk about how quickly foreigners become Americans.
Yesterday, I saw an article in the Atlantic entitled How America Can Rise Again and, sort of in passing, it said The day before the dinner, three U.S. citizens
had been named the winners of the Nobel Prize for physiology or
medicine. The day after, three more would be named winners of the Nobel
Prize for physics. All the more impressive for America’s attractive
power, four of the six winners had been born outside the country—in
China, Canada, Australia, England—and had taken U.S. citizenship.
Yesterday, on the way to a class, Michele and I stopped for dinner. The choice was between Mexican, Vietnamese, or Chinese because they were the most convenient restaurants on the way. Since Michele had had Chinese for lunch and we had last gone to the Mexican place, we went to the Vietnamese restaurant. Not Nobel caliber, but very tasty. (Although I did not care for the "very American" Thomas Kincaid pictures on the walls.)
Long live the new America.