(Chapter 13) Immigration

          The most I know about my ancestry is that almost all, if not all of my ancestors came from somewhere in Europe.  If one were to check way back and find out exactly where my ancestors came from, I would be considered mostly German with large portions of French and Finnish in me as well.  There is a good chance that I might also be parts Norwegian, Swedish, Polish, and Estonian among other things.  I find this is all very common among the typical "white" American today.  
           What's more interesting about my family is the amount of immigration and emigration happening more in my generation.  People from my mother's side of the family more recently have a strange fascination with other countries.  Some find specific foreign countries enticing, whereas others travel more often until they find one they enjoy the most.  My mother's sister has always loved Japan, and after college, she finally visited there.  She fell in love with a Japanese man, married him, and became a citizen of Japan.  They have since had one baby girl, who is half American and half Japanese.  One of my mother's uncles (that is younger than her sister) moved to Ukraine.  He fell in love with a Ukrainian woman, married her, and has also had a baby girl.  One of my mom's brothers traveled around for years living in Ukraine, Thailand, Japan, the Philippines, and more.  He finally found a woman in the Philippines that he married and built a house for.  They have had a boy and girl together in the Philippines, but has since moved back to the United States.  Their children, however, have never been in the United States, and live with their grandmother in the Philippines.  My mom's other brother lived in the Philippines for a while as well until he found a wife and brought her back to the states.  They got married in both countries as the others did, but have lived here since.  They have had two baby boys and only live a town away from me.  
          In all, I have two half-Filipino cousins here in the US that I get to see fairly often, two half-Filipino cousins that I have never met in the Philippines, a half-Japanese cousin in Japan that I have met only twice, and a half-Ukrainian second-cousin that I have never met in Ukraine.  I have thankfully, met my Ukrainian great-aunt, my Japanese Uncle, and both my Filipino aunts though (who are now both American citizens).  I can only hope that someday I will be able to visit all of my cousins. 

These are the three of my beautiful cousins that I have gotten the pleasure of meeting.

The first two are my half-Filipino cousins that were born and live in America, and the last one is my half-Japanese cousin that lives in Japan.

(Oh and the white, European-looking one is me.)

          I believe that citizens today view immigration as volatile partly because of the media, and also partly out of ignorance.  Also, nobody ever wants to take any blame for any problems, so they will routinely look for someone else to put it on.  Immigrants just make an easy target for the arrogant.  Too often, people watch shows like Border Wars where illegal immigrants from Mexico are hunted down and kicked out of the country, and they assume that that is how all Mexicans got here.  Then they also go on to assume that they are the cause of all of our country's problems.  It isn't just Mexicans either.  Many Americans also ignorantly assume that all Muslims are terrorists and shouldn't be trusted which is an absurd accusation.  Commonly, Americans also (falsely) worry that immigrants aren't paying taxes and doing "their fair share" when in fact most are.  It all comes down to wrongly assumed stereotypes, and people being mislead by the media and pop culture.