The little girl sitting on her mother’s lap was my mother. This photograph was taken in Ireland, in about 1913, shortly before my grandmother and her children started the process of immigrating to America. My mother was born in 1910, and was approximately 3 years old in this photo; the other children are her sisters and brothers. My grandmother had 10 children.
My grandfather had died leaving a widow, 10 children, and a small farm, in County Longford. The story I heard as a child, was that he had a little too much to drink one night, fell of his horse, lay in a bog all night, subsequently got sick, and died. I am not sure that this is the truth, however, it is the story I remember. It was difficult for a widow with little or no money to arrange and pay for the transportation of nine children to America. My grandmother had decided to leave the oldest boy, John Joe, in Ireland to manage the farm.
Because she could not afford to bring all of the children to America, she had the four youngest girls placed in the Catholic Orphanage where they lived until my grandmother had saved sufficient money to bring them all to America, and unite the family, here in Brooklyn, New York, around 1924. My mother was just about 14 years old.
Some years later, around 1940, my mother met my father, another Irish immigrant, they married, and I was born in Brooklyn, in 1941. My mother subsequently had three more children, all girls. I was the oldest. My mother’s sisters all married, had children, and grandchildren, and great grandchildren. I got married, had two daughter’s, now four grandchildren. My family is now part of that immigrant population, and their decendents, who make up the citizens of this country.
Now I find it quite distressing, as I listen to the campaign rhetoric, mostly Republican, urging that we build a great wall along the Mexican border to keep immigrants out; that we deport 11 million other, alleged illegal immigrants; that we ban all Muslims from entering the USA. After all, we are all immigrants or the children, or grandchildren of immigrants. Just look in your family photo album, I am sure you will find a old, torn, black and white photograph of your grandparents or great grandparents when they first arrived in America. How could some of our fellow citizens scream “get out", go back where you came from to the children from Honduras who arrived on our doorstep in order to escape drug traffickers. How could we tell Syrian refugees trying to escape war in their own country that they are not welcome in America.
We need comprehensive immigration reform. Yes! with a path to citizenship. Of course, we should vet those seeking refuge here; we have no obligation to admit terrorists or criminals, but we cannot just turn our backs on everyone.
We must reject those seeking to be our next President who promise to build walls, or to deport every illegal immigrant.
We should all be reminded of the words of Emma Lazarus:
Give your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.