I listened the other day to the US assistant secretary for immigration saying how the USA is a nation of immigrants and still the world leader in supporting refugees and immigrants. She was trying to explain away the difficulty and long delay Syrian refuges will find immigrating to the USA. How Syrian refugees are finding some countries with so many barriers to their immigration is ironic if you know history. Syria, before the the USA and terrorist led conflict to overthrow the Government of Syria, the country welcomed refuges from other war torn countries like Iraq. It was estimated in 2007 that 1.2 million of Syria’s population of 18 million were Iraq refugees.

Traditionally immigrants to the USA, Irish, German, and Polish have received strong resistance from the contemporary USA citizens but have eventually been immigrated into the fabric of society. However, there are two groups of American citizen that were not immigrates who have never been fully accepted into the country. One group were the original habitats of this land, the Native America. They were killed in vast numbers from the day Columbus landed in Central America and the remnants still struggle. The other group is African Americans. They were brought here as slaves and despite emancipation and the great strives of civil rights movement many still live in poverty and daily face racial discrimination.

In fact, when I was listening to the government official talk about the USA being a nation of immigrants I realized that part of problem with African Americans still facing obstacles and racism other groups no longer face is that are Not immigrants.

When Haiti was the first nation where the African natives overthrew the Government of France led by Napoleon they immediate faced rejection and disdain from President Jefferson and the USA government. At one point the USA just overthrew the government of Haiti with military force and took control away from the Haitian people. The USA and Canada still keep control over Haiti. Some say they are paying for their sin of being the first nation in the Americas to win freedom from oppressors.

Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream of black children not being judged by color of their skin. In today’s USA we have moved, since his time, away from this dream and back toward slavery. If African Americans were just immigrants like my Grandfather from Syria, my father with his German heritage and my wife’s family from Italy everything would be okay. But African Americans, despite tracing their roots well before our families immigrated to USA, are not immigrants and suffer rejection, stigma and discrimination and racial injustice.

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