by Edward Hall

Created on: February 10, 2010

The question of whether a migration, conquest or war was right or wrong depends on whether you are the conquers on the conquered. In point of fact, human migration itself is morally neutral. The moral issue of migration depends more on what you do when you get there than how you went.

History is largely the study of migrations, conquest and wars. "They stayed home and picked peaches." Makes for a very short and dull history text. Migration has happened through out our history and will continue to happen long after we find our final resting place. At present we are having a great debate precisely on that subject concerning our neighbors to our south.

They seem to be coming here in droves, they don't seem to want to ask our permission, when we tell them no they still won't stop and now they want real jobs. We are outraged. We act like it some new phenomena and that we are the victims. No one mentions that Spanish farm labor has been a fact of American life for years. I doubt an Anglo hand has picked a Tomato in California in fifty years.

Is the Illegal Immigration problem imperialism? Probably not, it is more likely its just people who want to live better. Like our ancestors did when all of them got into those creaky wooden ships and came over here displacing the Native Americans. There is an anonymous quote that says, "When the Pilgrim fathers reached the shores of America, they fell on their knees. Then they fell on the Indians."

Of course that begs the question who did the Native Americans that we displaced conquer to take possession of this continent? Because there was somebody folks. There is inarguable evidence of a presence on this continent before the people we call Native Americans were ever here.

No, seen from the point of view of the early settlers of this country what they were doing was not wrong. Europe was crowded they were out of work and hungry. There was what they perceived as a lot of opportunity in the New World and they came to take advantage of it.

I am no apologist for government imperialism and the destruction of cultures. I am, however, a realist and I know that history tells me that when a more technologically advanced culture comes into contact with a less technologically advanced culture the less advanced culture will change. It is inevitable. I also have faced the fact that hungry people will eat if they can and where there is a disparity in needed resources human migration will naturally move to the surplus resources.

For instance, when you can make more in a day than you can in a week by walking twenty miles north people will make that walk.

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