The ending of a post on A Day In The Life Of An Ambulance Driver, for the whole thing go to http://ambulancedriverfiles/2010-06/hunnert-percent-murkin/ :
“But these immigrants are not the ones we’re looking for. These people came here because America represented an opportunity. They live here, they work here, they pay taxes here, and they send their kids to college here.
They’re the people Emma Lazarus was talking about in that sonnet enscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty:
…”Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the tempest-tossed, to me,
I lift up my lamp beside the golden door!”
In other words, they’re Americans too, and they enrich this country with their culture and their presence. They represent the values this country was founded upon.
Me, I think I’m going to take my business elsewhere in the future. Maybe even learn to say, “Thanks, partner, have a good ‘un,” in Urdu.
I think it would be the American thing to do.”

Needless to say, he got a bunch of responses, some completely supporting his thoughts, some disagreeing. My response:

Where did your family come here from? Unless we are Native American, we are all immigrants. Some are more generations removed that others; personally I am two generations away on one side and go back to the Mayflower on the other. Our life today takes in parts of all of the cultures that make up our population, the heritage that each brought to this land with them. Don’t know about in rural Louisiana (my experience in that part of the world is limited to a delivery in New Orleans once and helping at an animal shelter after Katrina), but here in upstate NY we have German, Polish, Indian, Italian, Irish and many other ethnic festivals that are attended by people of many heritages. If the Indian and Pakistani people shouldn’t keep their culture, does that mean that Italians shouldn’t eat spaghetti, or Irish not celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? No, I don’t condone illegal immigrants, and hate extremist action by any side of the issue (my squad went to NYC and I saw first hand the sad pile of fire trucks and ambulances pulled from the WTC rubble). No, we may not have the same religious or cultural beliefs as many of them do. But, yes, the majority of them are here for the same reasons our forefathers came – to express and practice their beliefs and to improve their lives. And as long as they do it as our forefathers did (ok, hanging the witches is an exception to this whole thing) – peacefully and within their own community, where’s the harm to us? Education and understanding of differences, acceptance of people for who they are what is needed, not judgment of all by the actions of a few.