this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
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No, they weren’t all colonial genocidal settlers.
A not insignificant number were prisoners transported for life for as little as stealing break to feed a starving family. The crimes for which you could be sentenced to transportation increased massively during that period as judges took backhanders to supply the land grabbers with free labour.
Others were trying to escape horrors of war and famine, and were mis-sold the promise of a better life. Transportation costs were often paid by recruiting agents for land grabbers, telling people they would have a job for a few years to pay the debt off, then be given land. Neither actually happened.
The very, very few (let’s call them the 1%) saw the new world as an opportunity to get richer, and employed genocidal maniacs to reach that end, sure.
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willingly as in not because they were forced to flee or prisoners or slaves
And as I pointed out, a lot who went willingly were genuinely seeking a better life.
They weren’t genocidal as your sentence implies.
Anyway, back to the original point: everyone in America is an immigrant or a descendant of one, whether that’s from the original settlers 40,000 years ago crossing the Bering Strait or only a few years ago crossing the Rio Grande.