Thanksgiving Is An American Holiday — It Is Not Immigration Day!

11/22/2012

Thanksgiving is a purely American holiday, started in the year 1621 by the Pilgrims, a group of people entirely white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. It has nothing to do with immigration.

But increasingly every year, the cultural establishment tries to make Thanksgiving about immigration.

Last year I wrote about a typical piece of “liberal hate-America snark “ — Paul Krugman in The New York Times celebrating Thanksgiving by calling the Pilgrim Fathers “illegal immigrants.” [Thanksgiving Is Un-American, ,November 23, 2011] See also the New Yorker cover from last year, right.

But the Pilgrims were not immigrants — they were either colonizers or invaders, depending on your point of view.

Of course “colonizers or invaders” might be a good way to describe some modern immigrants.

Here are just three recent “Thanksgiving Is really About Immigration” stories:

Thanksgiving Dinner Is About Immigration

How To Talk About Immigration On Thanksgiving, by Jen Hicks, CampusProgress.org, November 21, 2012

Students are being told how to argue in favor of amnesty with their unreconstructed parents and uncles at the dinner table. Includes arguments — provided by Angela Maria Kelley, the Vice President of the Center For American Progress — on how to “to shut down the anti-legalization voice” — at your parent’s dinner table.

Kids, these people are paying for your education — and they know more than you. They would also like you to have some kind of job when you get out of school — not have to have you live at home because some Dream Act kid took your job.

Thanksgiving Turkeys Are About Immigration

Editorial: Thanksgiving a good time to examine immigration policies, St. Louis Post Dispatch, November 21, 2012

If there’s a Butterball or some other mass-market turkey on your groaning board today, take a moment to think about Encarnación Bail Romero.

The Guatemalan immigrant, who lives in southwest Missouri, until a few weeks ago worked at one of the turkey plants that helped this nation’s poultry industry produce about 248 million turkeys in 2011. Of those, 17.5 million came from plants in Missouri, making it the fourth-biggest turkey-producing state in the nation.

Some of those turkeys made it to the market because Ms. Bail, and other workers like her, put in long hours of grim, stomach-churning work for little pay, all the while facing the threat of deportation.

Yes, another sob story — this woman was arrested in 2007, and her baby (an anchor baby, presumably illegitimate, since no husband is mentioned) was adopted by an American family because she was in detention. She’s trying to regain custody, but unstated here is that she could have left, with her child, immediately after being arrested.

Everyone in immigration detention is there voluntarily — because they refuse to go home.

Besides, there’s nothing about poultry processing that requires it to be done by Guatamelans — turkeys don’t need to be spoken to in Spanish. All that work could be done by Americans — and will be if employer sanctions are enforced.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch then goes on about the Indians and immigration: “The Wampanoag, we sometimes forget, were the majority population,” it says, quoting a 2002 Christian Science Monitor piece.

Well, at VDARE.com we haven’t forgotten that Wampanoags were the majority population.

And we haven’t forgotten what happened to them, either.

Finally, Thanksgiving Is About Greeks Coming Through Ellis Island

Column: Thankful for immigrant roots, By Alcestis ‘Cooky’ Oberg, USA Today, November 20. 2012

I don’t actually see this connection, but apparently it’s there. After a lengthy sob story about how early 20^th century Greek immigrants had to change their names for something people could spell/ stop having accents/ et cetera, Alcestis Oberg writes

Although my grandparents came through Ellis Island legally, I live in Texas and am surrounded by people who probably came here illegally. Frankly, their dreams are no different from my grandparents': to find work, more opportunity and a better life for their families. And, like my grandparents, they work hard as laborers, and then build small businesses as painters, carpenters and auto mechanics.

And that’s what immigration always comes down to: opportunity and hope. I can’t help wondering what my grandparents would have done if there hadn’t been an Ellis Island for them to come through legally, and to embrace citizenship as directly as they did 100 years ago.”

That’s easy — they would have gone to Australia, Canada, or Britain, all of which have thriving Greek expatriate communities.

However, apparently Mrs. Oberg is so grateful that her forebears came to American that she wants to share Thanksgiving — and America — with the entire world.

But Thanksgiving is an American holiday. It is not Immigration Day.

If you’re an American, be thankful for what the Pilgrim Fathers did. If you’re an illegal immigrant, Americans will thank you to go home.

A Happy Thanksgiving to all VDARE.com readers!

James Fulford is a writer and editor for VDARE.com.

Previous VDARE.Com Thanksgiving Coverage:

11/23/12 — The Fulford File | A Happy Thanksgiving To All VDARE.COM Readers! “Thank God There’s No More Of Us.”

11/23/11 — Thanksgiving Thought:
The National Question And The Demographic Diamond

11/23/10 — Will There Still Be An America To Give Thanks For In 2110?

11/25/09 — The Fulford File: A Happy Thanksgiving To All VDARE.COM Readers!

11/21/01 — Thanksgiving: The National Question Footnote

11/27/02 — Thanksgiving, Crazy Horse, Us

02/08/01 — TODAY’s LETTER: A Reader Comments on Multi-Cultist Holidays