Once upon a time, Columbus (Re)"Discovered" a New World. Europeans fled their nations to this New World, to seek mostly religious freedom not afforded them in their home nations, or to exploit the natural wonders of this New World. European nations and corporations colonized the New World. When there were famines in Europe, the people came here to survive.
Africans were enslaved and imported to do the heavy lifting in the agricultural regions.
The Spanish came and slaughtered the native people they found here. The land that the native people lived on for millenia was taken from them through the establishment of courts and land deeds, and they were forced to migrate to lands chosen for them that weren't so easy to exploit. When they left the reservations and their culture conflicted with ours, we massacred them
Chinese were imported to build the rail roads and then we enacted immigration laws to prevent any more from coming here.
We drew arbitrary lines in the sand and called them borders, which is fine. But now that we're here, we want to keep out people who want to come here for the same reasons our ancestors came. We made it onto the boat, time to bring up the ladder behind us.
These "illegals" are american indians. They and their families have lived here, in California when it wasn't part of the USA, in Texas when it wasn't part of the USA, in Arizona when it wasn't part of the uSA. They've lived here all along.
So we legislate it so they're "illegal" and want to put them back on their reservations.
Sure, we did a lot of bad things along the way, but this is still a melting pot. Our society is the product of those African slaves and their "contributed" labor. It's the product of those Chinese who built those railroads that gave everyone such prosperity. It's the product of those Indians, if you consider Illinois is an Indian word (for Onion) and most of the streets there are Indian words and names, or here in California the towns are named El Cajon and streets have names like El Camino Real.
And this is now, when the whole world is supposed to be much more enlightened. In those days, wars were fought until the enemy was entirely killed to the last man, woman and child. Today we try to avoid collateral damage because our view has changed to care about peoples. We enter into treaties with nations of the world (Geneva Conventions) to (try to) assure we treat one another with some minimal and reasonably enlightened sort of dignity in time of war or conflict.
It is an international crime against humanity to force the mass migration of people, so we're not going to be forcing 10M+ indigenous people to move out.
The constitution gives the govt. the power to regulate CITIZENSHIP. I don't see the point in refusing people citizenship who want it, or restricting the number for whatever reason. Though the government can (and should) place any reasonable QUALIFICATIONS on people to become citizens.
And that is just what the government is trying to do. The qualifications are pretty clear in this proposal - graduate from a high school here, attend at least 2 years of college or served in the military 2 years, and of high moral character (no arrests). Fine by me.
