The New Yorker Thanksgiving cover takes on immigration

I don't agree at all with the emphasis on LEGAL. People are coming here for a better life, just as my own ancestors did. These new immigrants have just as much right to be here as the old immigrants and I don't think those of whose ancestors were able to get in to should use legality as a justification to close the door behind us.

legal in the USA no longer means just, if it ever did. Legal is defined by those with the power to pay, the lobbyists, the campaign contributers. Legal is defined by those with access, power and wealth. Legal is no longer just, if it ever was in this nation.

See the distinctly Catholic documentarian Michael Moore's CApitalism: A Love Story, the section with the final televised address by FDR, which was never televised, until now, in which FDR calls for a nation of just laws, and a new Bill of Rights, inclduing the rights to a home, a job, health care, etc. explicitly defined and codified. Instead our basic human needs are turned to profit for the bankers and well street, legally, unjustly.

Tell the planters in Alabama that immigration does not benefit them. Their fields are going rotting with the harvest unpicked, since it is now illegal to do so.

What?! American "Indians" were ilegally dispossessed of their own lands, that were granted to them by several treatys which were not respected... Thus not mentioning the fact of their being robbed of their ethnic identities by the silly mistake of Columbus, and that they were victims of every kind of cheating:

"In 1626 Peter Minuit bought Manhattan island from the local Indians for a load of cloth, beads, hatchets, and other odds and ends then worth 60 Dutch guilders. According to my Encyclopedia Britannica, 60 guilders in 1626 would buy you 1-1/2 pounds of silver. Naturally we assume this is troy weight, 12 ounces to the pound. Silver lately has been selling for a little more than a $4 per troy ounce.

Ergo Minuit got the core of the Big A for $72 in today's money. (Lest you think the price of beads has increased remarkably slowly in the last 350 years, you should know that the $24 calculation was made in the 19th century.)

There are some who would contend that $72 or even $24 for Manhattan was not such a hot bargain. These people are mostly Republicans. But let's do a few calculations. According to the New York Public Library, the assessed value of taxable real estate in Manhattan for 1990-91 was $47 billion. Assuming the land alone accounts for 25 percent of this, land values have appreciated from a half cent per acre in 1626 to $827,000 per acre today, an increase of roughly 17 billion percent. Not bad, you are surely thinking, even by the stringent standards of the GOP."

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/715/how-much-would-the-24-paid-...

That did occur to me, why would we support adopting the Native American immigration policy in light of what happened to them...Those who ignore the past are destined to repeat it.

It is quite obvious from your comments that your knowledge of the US government's relationships with Native Americans and Manifest Destiny is quite limited and in need of further education. You need to do some further reading on the subject. May I suggest "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown or "Of Utmost Good Faith" by Vine Deloria Jr. Bows and arrows were no match for repeating rifles, smoking a peace pipe was no match for the deceit and profiteering of 'Indian agents'. Native Americans were displaced because this country believed what General Sherman said, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." Do you really think we had a right to take land from those who had lived, hunted and fished on their lands for centuries? Do you think your ignorance is something you should be highlighting? One last thought, who are these 'Americans" you referred to in your comment.....Native Americans were 'americans' long before the Europeans came to this land.