What it means to be an American Immigrant

This 1907 photo to me is a perfect example of what it means to be an American, immigrant or naturally born citizen. I think in this case it can be said that Teddy said it best.

Pass this one on to everyone you know, especially the misguided liberals and illegal's screaming about racism, hatred and how American really belongs to Mexico when they are not sided with about amnesty and freely given citizenship after they show their total disregard for the United States, our Flag, our Laws and our Votes against illegal immigrants.

This article really needs to be shared with everyone you know.

The year is 1907, 103+ years ago.
READ PRINT UNDER PICTURE!

Republican President Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt indeed wrote these words below, but not in 1907 while he was still President of the United States. The passages were culled from a letter he wrote to the president of the American Defense Society on January 3, 1919, three days before Roosevelt died.

Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN.

'In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American and nothing but an American...

There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.. And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.'
Theodore Roosevelt 1907

Every American citizen needs to read this!

"Americanization" was a favorite theme of Roosevelt's during his later years, when he railed repeatedly against "hyphenated Americans" and the prospect of a nation "brought to ruins" by a "tangle of squabbling nationalities."

He advocated the compulsory learning of English by every naturalized citizen. "Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or to leave the country," he said in a statement to the Kansas City Star in 1918. "English should be the only language taught or used in the public schools."

He also insisted, on more than one occasion, that America has no room for what he called "fifty-fifty allegiance." In a speech made in 1917 he said, "It is our boast that we admit the immigrant to full fellowship and equality with the native-born. In return we demand that he shall share our undivided allegiance to the one flag which floats over all of us."

Fact Checking, Sources and Further Reading

• http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/r/roosevelt-immigration.htm
• http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/troosevelt.asp
• Theodore Roosevelt on Americanism
  Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia (revised second edition), Hart and Ferleger, ed., Theodore Roosevelt Association: 1989
• Theodore Roosevelt on Immigrants
  Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia (revised second edition), Hart and Ferleger, ed., Theodore Roosevelt Association: 1989
• Theodore Roosevelt
  Passage quoted in biography by Edmund Lester Pearson
• To 'Possess the National Consciousness of an American'
  Passage quoted by Dr. John Fonte, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, 2000
• Timeline of Theodore Roosevelt's Life
  Theodore Roosevelt Association

Reagan Gets the Shaft in Textbooks

Expert: Reagan Gets the Shaft in Textbooks

March 11, 2010 - 1:45 PM | by: Shannon Bream

If you want to know just what your kids are learning from their history books, all you have to do is apply the "Reagan test," says Professor Larry Schweikart.

As the Texas textbook battle continues to simmer, Schweikart says the first thing he does to determine whether a book is politically slanted is to go to any section discussing President Ronald Reagan. What you'll find there, he says, will tell you everything you need to know, he says.

Schweikart says the majority of books he’s examined credit former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev with ending the Cold War, and not Reagan. That's “a joke,” Schweikart says. “I lived through the Reagan years, I remember.”

“The reason why textbooks get to where they are is because this is the world view of (a) the people who write the text books, (b) people who edit the text books, and (c) people who publish them,” the history professor says.

Schweikart says the textbooks' authors bring an inherently liberal viewpoint to their work.

“They all tend to come from New York, Boston, Washington and Philadelphia,” giving them a “drastically” different viewpoint from the rest of America, he says.

Aside from bias, there are factual errors as well.

One book -- Call to Freedom: Beginnings to 1877 (Holt, 2003) -- states on pages 53-54 that Christopher Columbus was "the first European explorer to land in the Americas."  But Norseman Leif Ericson actually arrived hundreds of years earlier – a fact that is stated on page 18 of the same book.

How about the Louisiana Purchase in 1803? The same textbook says that the Louisiana Purchase extended America to the Mississippi River, when it actually expanded all the way to the Rocky Mountains.

Another text, The American Nation: Beginnings Through 1877 (Prentice, 2003),  states that the city of New Orleans was settled by the French in the 1600s. But didn’t actually happen until 1718.

With this in mind, parents may be inspired to start digging into their own children’s books to see what’s inside. And experts say that's a great idea.

Gilbert T. Sewall, Director of the American Textbook Council, says: “The facts are often used to create an interpretation or reality that simply is at the very least controversial and may be dead wrong.”

Dr. Frank Wang, one-time president of Saxon Publishing, says there are serious “quality control” problems. Wang cautions that many books are thrown together on a tight schedule by a group of freelance writers, leaving them with little time or pride of authorship. He’s spotted errors touching on everything from the Statue of Liberty to the Korean War.

Sewall is also aware of the mistakes. “The problem with textbooks," he says, "is missing information, or distorted information.”

See what they learn in college!