American History, a Saga of Immigrants

I was disgusted by the racial remarks that appeared in several letters (April 23) concerning Vietnamese immigrants in Westminster. I could not believe the statements that were made in some of them. For one thing, it wasn’t an Italian who discovered America as Sal Giardino would like to believe. Amerigo Vespucci landed in South America, not North America. The earliest recording of an explorer landing on North America is of a Norseman, Leif Ericson, who landed on the east coast of North America 5 centuries before Columbus and Vespucci.

Giardino’s statement that an Italian has a greater right to be in this country is even more mythical. There is only one nationality that has a greater right than any other to be here, and they are the American Indians, but even they were immigrants from Asia.

We are all immigrant, and we all have to earn the right to be American citizens no matter what our ancestors did. As for Jennifer T. Moore’s statement about the Vietnamese immigrants taking over our country, only 404,000 Vietnamese have immigrated to the United States between 1820 and 1986. That is only 0.8% of the 53,122,000 people who have immigrated here over the same period of time. Plus, the Vietnamese immigrants are just as much U.S. citizens as we are, if not more.

Then there is Lily M. Lewis’ letter. She feels that since the United States is good enough to let the Vietnamese immigrants come here, they should have to abandon their culture.

The United States has a very diverse population, composed of people with many national, cultural and racial backgrounds, religious beliefs, customs, languages and traditions. These diversities cannot be restricted; we must put aside our differences and realize that we are all united by one idea, the fact that we are all Americans.

JOHN STEVENS

Dana Point