There is considerable debate over immigration in the U.S. Conservatives would have no illegal immigration, and are resoundingly shouted down as bigots and historically ignorant. After all, the United States of America was founded by European immigrants who settled it without permission of the locals, and often with bloodshed. If you aren’t related to Sitting Bull or Red Cloud, you should shut up about this topic.
Yet this critique misses a fundamental American point. Reconsider the indigenous peoples, those pre-American Americans, those absolutely-not-Indians. They did not start on this continent, nor even in this hemisphere. Humans evolved in Africa and spread outward over the course of millions of years. Even the Native Americans immigrated here, without permission.
Without permission from whom, you ask?
From Nature. You can tell nature didn’t want them here because as soon as it realized what was happening, it melted or tectonically shifted their land-bridges away, preventing any further immigration for centuries. As for those who remained on her shores? What was Mother Nature’s immigration policy?
The mountain lion.
Or, consider the rattlesnake.
Or, consider the Grand Canyon, a 277-mile long drop into certain death.
Or, consider the winters so abominable they were worse than our Global Warming ones, and these natives didn’t even screw with the environment to cause them.
Nature has a long history of telling humans to get the fuck out. You think anti-Irish Immigrant sentiment was bad in the 1920’s? Consider that the incoming hunter/gatherer immigrants travelled all the way from Canada to Argentina, on foot, just looking for food. Nowadays you can barely muster the willpower to go to the fridge for another beer.
The modern disparity is because the modern world, and America in particular, has recognized that Mother Nature is an abusive drunk that should be respected. That fridge runs on power that is killing her, and uses the power to refrigerate artificial chemicals in the beer that is killing you. We have surpassed our creators by killing both them and us, and one hopes will one day fulfill the dream of deporting everyone from this mortal coil.