Monday, January 7, 2008

" a legal immigrant from Puerto Rico" !!??

This morning I heard the above phrase during a news report from a local radio station.

My understanding is that Puerto Rico has been an occupied colony of the U.S. for many years, and therefore Puerto Ricans in any part of this land are not "immigrants".

Unless transplanted New Yorkers (such as myself) are "immigrants", too.

Is it possible to re-post this? I want folks to read the wonderful commentary sent on 4/29...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Nomi said...

I received a spam-bot type comment and deleted it...

Anonymous said...

hey nomi, you can't expect americans to know geograpy, especially rhode islanders, our world ends at the border, (although i have been to attleboro)

Nomi said...

I often meet people in Connecticut who believe that Rhode Island is part of Cape Cod. Adult people think this!

Mind you, don't ask me to define the boundaries of the Midwest!

Anonymous said...

It was a very famous "hispanic" poet that said: "La ignorancia mata a los pueblos, y es preciso matar la ignorancia". Mentioning this, let me say that according to history, the island of Puerto Rico was "anexada" to the United States at the end of the 19th century. With the signing of the San Juan Hills Peace Treaty (Tratado de las Lomas de San Juan)Spain signed the treaty with the United States after surrendering, and ending the Spanish-American War. As a "botin de guerra" Spain gave the following Spanish colony territories to the Unites States: Phillipines, Guam, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands. At this present time, Guam, Virgin islands and Puerto Rico are still (in 2008)territories (or colonies). The people from the USA colonies are citizens (in most cases they are granted this right) specially if the colonists would like to send then to their wars. In summary, Puerto Ricans are American Citizens as they serve and died in many wars since WWI and WWII, Korea, Viet-Nam, Granada, Gulf War, Afganistan, and Iraq wars (..it looks that I runned out of room listing so many wars). Regarding the word "Hispanic" this term was introduced by the USA census during the 1899 census, to separate Americans with "Spanish heritage" from Anglo-Americans during the Spanish American war. USA planned to place American citizens of Spanish descent in concentration camps, just like they did with the Japanese during WWII. Fortunately for us, the Spanish- American war was a very short one. One hundred years later, the American citizen of Spanish heritage is called "Hispanic" due to a century old census terminology and Puerto Ricans are called "immigrants" after almost a century of American citizenship. I think that is time to instruct and to teach well American history. After all, this is grade school history.

Nomi said...

Thank you, anonymous.

Please send me an email when you have a chance.

Thank you again for taking the time to comment...