Reply #162: The Irish were often forced here

[justice1]

My family arrived in the 1600's, after Oliver Cromwell destroyed the country. The English used many of the same arguments to bring the Irish here, that companies use today.Their argument was the colonies needed the cheap labor. The Irish lacked immunity to ward off diseases in the America, as well as poor treatment, resulted in a high mortality rate.

Interesting that their contracts were to be about 6 years in length, sound familiar? The colonies started passing laws making it more difficult to ever fulfill their contracts. An example, women had their contracts extended for becoming pregnant.

It was about this time, they started transporting Africans to the colonies. The benefits of the Africans is they didn't have to "seasoned", they had better immune systems, and the second was they were easy to identify, should they run away. Laws continued to be changed which led to slavery.

There are to many similarities between the past and present. If a person is to come to the U.S., they need a path to citizenship. I suggested it before, we have a ceiling of 70,000 asylum seekers a year. We have only been taking in about 50,000. I suggest a lottery system, for people who live in third world countries using the difference. The government would know who was here, and the immigrant would have resources available to them, making the transition easier.