Immigrant Stories of Migration and contribution to be included in Museum

There is a memory gap in those who have migrated earlier to richer western countries. They come to see their adopted countries and the wealth within as their own and  newcomers are seen as those who want to come and rob them of their wealth. Some of them develop the close-the-door-behind-you-syndrone.  Older migrants are some of the most damaging advocates for those who seek a better life in the USA and Canada or other developed countries. Like the pioneers of the land, they too forget that it is immigrants who built USA and Canada and women played a big part in that and even today without the benefit of the cheap labour migrants provide to these countries, life will not be that easy for any of us.  It is because the farmers pay such cheap labour than we can get cheaper prices for food in the supermarkets.
We conveniely forget the contributions of immigrants and how they make life so easier for them. In America the rabid border dogs jump at poor people trying to cross the border to provide for their families. We begrudge them of that  and treat them as lepers. We forget the contributions of slave labour to American riches and all the others after them.  Those stories are not written up in history books but kept in the shadows of our historical closets. Every now and then they are brought out by an author with little impact.
The Ellis Island Immigration Musem has developed a project to bring the stories of all those who inhabit and contribut to American empire to the forefront in a mammoth project. It's time the stories be told in truth.
Scholars and exhibit designers have spent three years vetting American history for the missing tales. The new displays will show the smallest villages and largest cities changing with immigration but also the larger economic and political pressures driving the myriad decisions to move on. The nation’s zigzagging immigration laws, the virulent anti-immigrant prejudices and newcomers’ resilience will all be depicted through family histories.
Ideally, the museum will blur the narrative “they” — the immigrants — with the “we” who visit, as in Mr. Kraut’s bracing summary: “Without their talent and muscle, where would we be?”


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/opinion/16thu4.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha211