Reforms should respect immigrants' contributions

Another person who writes about how people want to emigrate to a country and close the door behind them. We don't seem to learn, we keep repeating the same things over and over. DP

Patricia Rodriguez-Nassar, GUEST COMMENTARY

Contra Costa Times : I am a naturalized citizen of the United States, and therefore an immigrant. My grandfather also was an immigrant like myself, an immigrant from Spain in Peru.

I arrived in the United States in 1969, and like everybody else, I have seen the changes happening in our country. I love the United States very much, and I believe that it truly has a great government system.

If we look at history, we know that migration and immigration are as old as time.

If it was not so, we would all still be in Africa, where we all come from.

Migration and immigration are intrinsic to the survival of humankind. I would say it is pretty much like natural selection and the subsequent evolution.

Past and present migrants and immigrants have had to travel in search of food, for political and religious reasons, familial duties or economic factors.

Migration and immigration will only cease at the end of times.

Migration and immigration bring people with different idiosyncrasies, and it is natural for the ones who arrived first not to like it.

This response to things foreign happens everywhere. For example, mixed-blood Peruvians from the big cities resent and despise "the Indians" that come from the villages in the Peruvian Andes.

The citified Peruvians do not like the ways of the pure-blood Indians, descendants of the Incas.

Be sure to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.