Speech #890182827

I include it with these remarks. My one regret is that the many graphic drawings which enhance its pages cannot be included with the text. The story of the immigrants who built America reads as follows: In 1748. 16yearold George Washington made his first trip over the Blue Ridge Mountains to work as a surveyor along the western frontier. One day he noted in his journal meeting an Indian war party. with two scalps--and later a group of immigrants who impressed the future Father of his Country as "ignorante * * * they would never speak English but. when spoken to. they speak all Dutch." There is a beautiful simplicity to this encounter. It sums up. in an offhand sentence. the whole story of the immigrants in America. The young man who made the observation was the greatgrandson of immigrants who had been driven to Virginia by poverty and religious persecution about 90 years before. The immigrants who spokes only "Dutch" were Germans. seeking refuge on the frontier for almost Identical reasons. So it has gone. from generation to generation. Each new wave of immigrants have come to America poor and unschooled and prospered until they came to regard the next wave as "ignorante." (Later generations added such unlovely names as mick. wop. yid. polack. spik.) John F. Kennedy. a great grandson of an immigrant from Ireland. wanted to stop. once and for all. this futile pattern. When he died he was working on a book which he called "A Nation of Immigrants." There are grounds for believing he got the idea. from his father. Joseph P. Kennedy. who once remarked. "I was born in the United States and so was my father.