Media Device #6

This is a video that represents the Immigration debates going on in the United States. This particular video is interesting, because it takes modern issues, and puts them into historical pictures. The visual is the Native Americans, and the Pilgrims but the dialect is talking about putting up a fence, and keeping people out. It talks about sending "them" back to their native country, or making them learn the language of the "natives". They use terms of the 21st century such as "crackers" when referring to the white people. The author shows a different side of the Pilgrimages such as what would happen if the Natives were to just accept the white people, they lived in "harmony" and immigration was/would never be a problem in the United States.
Ronald Takaki connects this Video to chapter 2 we read in a different Mirror. In this chapter he talked about the voyages over to the United States in search for a better life, after Columbus discovered the new world. The Indians appeared to be a threat; they wanted to defend their land that was being taken over by the "white" people, other wise known as the Europeans. This could be argued that this is how the United States currently feels about the Immigration of specifically Mexicans to the United States.
This video is a bit of an irony to me. What people are arguing about currently about how "we will soon be a minority in our own country" or how If they are going to live here they should conform to our way of living. Did anyone ever consider that this is exactly how WE came to the United States? The Europeans did not DISCOVER this land, the Natives were clearly already here, and they just developed it out of force. I think some people don't necessarily make that connection between history and current problems. I think people are afraid of change, and afraid of difference. White people (overall) want things to be the same, they are not open to change or diversity, or else immigration wouldn't be an issue. When people talk about specifically Mexicans taking the jobs of current American citizens, it almost makes me want to laugh. These jobs are low wage jobs, and are available to EVERYONE... who makes the effort to get the job. People know the jobs are out there, and still don't go and get them. This is one of very few topics that frustrate me when discussing it, and I feel that this video portrays it PERFECTLY.