Keith Ensminger: Does it really matter how our immigrant ancestors arrived?

We’re a nation of immigrants, legal or otherwise. My Irish maternal great grandmother snuck into the U.S. through Canada and landed around Alturas in 1875. She married into the Dorris family, who settled the town around 1870. She escaped the nativists then and wrote my grandmother about the loneliness of ranch life because everyone spoke Gaelic.

Immigrants came in waves after Reagan illegally funded civil wars in Central America and his contempt of government and law encouraged greedy business owners to hire illegals for next to nothing. Undocumented workers comprise 25 percent of the workforce in farming, 20 percent in landscaping, and 17 percent in construction. Many have been here for decades, like a Central American father I met as a teacher in 1984. He fled El Salvador because rebels or the government kidnapped kids going to school for child soldiers and slaves.

Americans encouraged undocumented people to settle here, hired them and they’ve lived and raised families among us for decades, contributing to our economy and culture. We’re better people than creating a refugee crisis that will rival the Middle East if Trump gets his way – as he did with women and small business suppliers he stiffed.

This story was originally published February 21, 2017 at 5:36 PM with the headline "Keith Ensminger: Does it really matter how our immigrant ancestors arrived?."