Immigration March to Reverse Worker's Rights

May 1st, 2006, International Worker's Day:

As hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants and persons with mixed loyalties march in the streets of the U.S., a quote from President Teddy Roosevelt said it best: for U.S. citizens, born or naturalized, there should be no divided allegiance, and a standard language (English).

Of course the absolute irony of a march of illegal immigrants on May 1st, a worker's holiday, should not be overlooked. For what interests are they marching? To reverse the years of hard fought worker's rights? To reverse the work of Cesar Chavez and others? The right to work for little pay, under slave-like conditions? The right for the children of the last generation of immigrants (who are U.S. citizens) to be replaced by cheaper imported labor? How ironic! How misled!

"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...

There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

--Theodore Roosevelt, 1919