These people became what are now known as aborigines, or native Americans as we are so often taught is the politically correct term, although that suggests they were native to the lands when, in fact, they were just the first to move here. They emigrated from distant lands just as my ancestors emigrated from Ireland, England and Wales. They lived their lives, built their villages, grew crops, caught fish, and hunted animals just as we today go about our daily hunt for food and shelter.
What began as a small migration between 17,000 and 50,000 years ago grew into a population that by 1492 may have numbered as high as 100,000,000 people. Now, barely 500 years later, that population as been so decimated that, without knowing where one should search, it is difficult to identify more than a few communities, or to identify more than 18,000,000 aboriginal people.
Why did it take so little time for the aboriginal people to virtually disappear? First of all, they didn't understand the threat when the first Europeans landed. Second, they lacked the means of defending themselves from invasion. Third, and in my own mind, most important, they lacked cohesiveness between the various governments, or tribes, if you will, to put up a united front to the threat.
OK, where are we going with this?
Today, we face another invasion from outside our borders, and by our own laws, we welcome them. They come here because, like the aborigines, they are seeking a better life. Like the aborigines and the Europeans, they bring their own culture, but unlike the aborigines and Europeans, they are finding a well-established culture, properly maintained by sets of laws and governed from within by fifty separate states under a unifying federal government. That federal government has established a means by which people from other countries may enter the United States of America legally, and in reality, those means are not unattainable.
My Irish ancestors came to Canada , then down to the United States, not because of the an Drochshaol, or bad times as the potato famine was called, because Michael McNamara emigrated from County Clare some ten years before the potato rot. In general, they found themselves unwelcome and unable to get good jobs, so they took low paying menial jobs.. My great-grandfather was listed as being a night watchman in a lumber yard when he was 75 years old and I have a photograph of him driving a team of oxen. The Irish did things differently than those who came to these shores in the 1600's, though. They were soon able to assimilate themselves into the mainstream, and the son of that night watchman became a farmer, a plumber, an insurance agent and a respected local politician.
To those who are causing so much discussion by the way they come here now, I say this: it is far easier to come here legally than it is to always be looking over your shoulder - don't bring your way of life with you - it didn't work back there and it won't work here, and finally, become an American citizen, send your sons and daughters to school and the military, vote, pay taxes, and be assimilated into our way of life - it works.