A Small But Big Ship of A Subject

It Doesn't Matter Where You Are From, America is for Everybody

A small but big ship of a subject is immigration; a subject that I have been wanting to write about for while. It’s an issue that I don’t know a whole lot about, but enough to write about it. Immigration has always been interesting to me especially now since I am married to one. My wife Fabiola and her parents are immigrants whom all came from Bolivia and her father decided to venture to California first where he stayed there for a couple of years to make sure that the Land of the Free and Beautiful is what he was looking for. Well, two years later the rest of his family came, his wife, brother and his daughter, Fabiola when she was only three years old. They have been citizens and paying taxes ever since 1981. My first interest in immigration came to me when I discovered that I was a descendant of not, not just a few immigrants, but of 400 immigrants and more that I have discovered yet. Most of them came to the American Colonies and only a few of them came over when America became during the Victorian years. 

The oldest immigrant I can trace back to is surprisingly on my mother’s side, Capt. Isaac Chapline who arrived on the ship “Star” in 1610 in Jamestown, Virginia. He was born in 1584 and died while lost at sea on 8 Dec 1628. He was at first an officer in the British Royal Navy before he came over and there is a rumor that in 1622 he actually went all the way back to England to get his wife Mary Calvert, yes Calvert of the future Calvert family of Maryland. Capt. Issac first appears as a witness for Sir Geroge Yeardley, Governor of Virginia in a lawsuit against the governor by a man named Nathaniel Cawsey. After the lawsuit, Chapline was appointed as a member of the Commission to Hold Court for the Upper Parts of the Colony of Virginia. Then in 1628 in Virginia, the House of Burgess ordered that John Chaplain, a relative, was given a commission that granted him all of the goods of Ensigne Isaac Chapline, who was supposed to be cast away up the sea. Isaac was also a Member of the House of Burgess during his lifetime.

Isaac’s wife Mary Calvert was born in 1586 to Leonard Calvert and Mary was the sister of one of the more famous Calverts; The Right Honourable George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, Secretary of State. The Honourable Leonard Calvert, 1st Proprietary-Governor of Maryland (1606-1647) and, The Honourable Philip Calvert, 5th Proprietary-Governor of Maryland (c.1626-1682). If Old Capt. Isaac never went back to get his wife, she would have never been part of the first European family to have settled and found the state of Maryland; and on top of that, I might never have been born to help people with learning differences.

Let's fast forward the clocks to the American Revolutionary War. A poor immigrant named James Swan immigrated in 1756 from Fife, Scotland to the American Colonies and set up as an apprentice with Thaxter & Son in Boston, Massachusetts. When the American Revolutionary War came he was eventually raised to the rank of Colonel and had become friends with the following people: Benjamin Thompson (1753-1814), who later became Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, FRS; Gen. Henry Knox, 1st United States Secretary of War, 2nd United States Secretary of War and 1st Senior Officer of the U.S. Army (1750-1808); The Hon. Perez Morton, the two time Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and the Massachusetts Attorney General (1751-1837), President John Adams (1735-1826), President George Washington (1732-1799), President James Munroe (1758-1831), Gen. Dilbert du Motier, more famously known as the Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834) and many others who ran in that crowd. He made his wealth by privateering during the war; and he made so much money that when America was looking to pay off their debt to France for their help of ending the war, it was Col. James Swan paid it off with his own money. 

It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are from, people have been immigrating to America for a new life one way or another and every once in a while, there is an immigrant or there are immigrants that come to America and change it forever, for the better. That reason seems like a thought and idea if you will, that is now in the mists of pasts. Now people are immigrating to this country for reasons none of us ever foresaw. They are coming over to simply survive because either the crime in their country is too over shadowing or because of climate change. People are still coming over here for a new hope and/or to make a better life for themselves, but it seems like the idea of coming over here has changed; now it’s not just to immigrate from their countries but to escape their countries. No matter what country we are from, we are all descendants of immigrants one way or another; even if your family has been in a country for more than a thousand year; and yes, even the Native Americans are descended from immigrants. About 20 thousand years. At one point in time  there was a land bridge that is now known as the Bering land bridge. That is the land bridge that people from what we know call Asia, used to cross over to America; those people that crossed that ancient land bridge are called Native Americans. This country was founded on immigrants that actually started about 20,000 years ago and people are still immigrating to the United States of America. 

The following quote is from the website American Immigration Council about the law of immigration in America. “U.S. immigration law is based on the following principles: the reunification of families, admitting immigrants with skills that are valuable to the U.S. economy, protecting refugees, and promoting diversity. The body of law governing U.S. immigration policy is called the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The INA allows the United States to grant up to 675,000 visas; the INA sets no limit on the annual admission of the U.S. citizen’s spouses, parents, and children under the age of 21. In addition, each year the president is required to consult with Congress and set an annual number of refugees to be admitted to the United States through the U.S. Refugee Admission Program. Once a person obtains an immigrant visa and comes to the United States, they become a lawful permanent resident (LPR). In some circumstances, noncitizen already inside the United States can obtain LPR status through a process known as “adjustment of status.” Yes, that's a big quote or as my in-laws would say, muy grande. I wanted to quote that because it seems that at least the last administration did not really obey that law. Immigrants are being sent back to their country even though they have been in the U.S. for some years and have obtained an “adjustment of status.”

What we need to do is to build facilities like the old Ellis Island, obviously with modern technology and have them along our borders to help people check in to our country. We could use the detention centers that we have already built, and change the order that the immigrants are treated in a much more humanitarian way. For example, instead of telling them there is a toilet to drink water out of for water, we should give them bottles of water. America is a melting pot.