“A ship is always safe at the shore – but that is NOT what it is built for.”
― Albert Einstein
Or: “Take a chance – Columbus did.”
– Les Ebeling
Virtually all Americans are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. My father’s family came from Germany in the early 1890’s. My great grandfather owned a commercial ship. One of his jobs was to ferry produce from the fertile plains of Friesland to markets in England. His older sons came to Chicago, America earlier in the decade. He and his wife planned to bring the younger children (one of which was my Grandfather) later. They planned to leave after the completion of his last voyage which was a mission to bring a load of peas to London. Unfortunately, the ship was lost at sea. (I always believed that Great-grandfather was lost in great sea-battle, valiantly going down with the ship. Reality can really be downer sometimes can’t it?) So, my Great-grandmother was faced with the prospect of traveling to the New World on her own, transporting several small children while grieving the loss of her husband.
A portion my Mother’s family emigrated from London after the Great Fire of 1666. He was a vicar whose church was burned to the ground. He struck out on his own heading for Massachusetts and settled on the banks of the Charles River. I have often wondered how all of those “vicar-skills” applied to that wild part of the world once he arrived. But apparently, he survived or else I would not be here.
It would have been so much safer for them to stay home. I am certain that somehow, they would have gotten by. Travel was so risky, there were so many unknowns, and how would they live in this new country called America?
American’s are inherently risk-takers. That is our genetic make-up. If courage and risk-taking weren’t in our blood, we wouldn’t be here – our ancestors would have stayed in their homelands where it was safe. How did all this work out? How did they overcome the odds to make it here? How did they make America great? I think that these factors were critical:
• They came to a land truly laden with milk and honey. The natural resources compared to where they were staggering – timber, minerals, and the most fertile farmland in the world. But those natural resources still had to be captured and utilized by PEOPLE – hardy, industrious, optimistic people who worked hard and sacrificed to make their dreams come to fruition.
• They came to a land with a system that made it possible for us to become the richest and most powerful country in the world. This was a system that rewarded risk takers but preserved order by the force of reasonable laws. By the way, I don’t think that this was the system glamourized by the “Tales of the Old West” – fierce, unyielding cowboys who single-handedly carved out a living with their six-shooters. I’m not anti-cowboys; I just think that our real heroes are shop keepers who invested their last resources to set up shop and then patiently worked long and hard to make their risky adventure have a successful end. Or homesteaders who set out to till the land on the prairies that had never been cultivated braving the dangers of weather and starvation.
So, what is my point? These people who are coming to America now – are they vastly different than us and our ancestors? I would argue that the vast majority of them are not. (I am not naïve – I believe there are some who come here with ill intentions. We MUST vet our new citizens to separate this pernicious minority.) But the vast majority is coming from poverty and war and discrimination just like our ancestors. And by the way some are coming with the idea that they will return to “the Old Country” as my Grandfather and many other immigrants thought. And let’s be clear about this. We NEED them just as the land needed our ancestors. Simple demographics tell us that our birthrates will not supply the human resources needed to power our economy in the future. But beyond that we need their spirt – the willingness to risk EVERYTHING – their fortunes and their very lives – to have a chance to live in this country. And when they are here, they will invest their sweat and blood to make their way here as our ancestors did. And then they will never leave as I will never leave, because America is the greatest country in the world.
This nation was built by men who took risks — pioneers who were not afraid of the wilderness, business men who were not afraid of failure, scientists who were not afraid of the truth, thinkers who were not afraid of progress, dreamers who were not afraid of action.
– Brooks Atkinson