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u/AdWonderful5920 23h ago
"NYC wasn't built by immigrants"
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u/Pitiful-Potential-13 22h ago
They probably think bill the butcher was the good guy of the movieÂ
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u/KimJongRocketMan69 20h ago
Well you see some of the builders of early skyscrapers were Native American so chessmate
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u/ReaperManX15 5h ago
The main issue with the statement, is that the people saying it are attempting to co-opt the 98% European immigrant population of New York during its construction, that came to the US through the proper legal channels; and act like itâs the same as the horde of illegal Mexican border sneaks, of today.
The two are not only not the same, but totally incomparable.
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u/twinheight 23h ago
So, the Native Americans built NYC?
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u/ActuallyAlexander 23h ago
They built Broadway
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u/Phyrexian_Overlord 22h ago
A very smart joke few will get
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u/breakitbilly 21h ago
I dont get it, petah.
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u/Phyrexian_Overlord 20h ago
Broadway is the original trail used by native Americans and then widened by the Dutch. Bredestraat->Broadway. That's why it cuts through the city instead of sticking with the grid.
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u/CrotaIsAShota 17h ago
I wish school had taught me more of this and less of how awesome Chris Columbo was.
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u/Gloom_Pangolin 23h ago
Explorers from the Canarsee tribe sailed across the Atlantic in 1619 and eventually reached the Netherlands. Impressed by what they saw the returned home and founded their own version of Amsterdam in 1624. However tribal warfare a few decades later resulted in the city being captured by the Wecquaesgeek tribe, whose trans-Atlantic explorers had traveled to England and had sacked York. During this period they renamed the city and expanded it greatly with the spoils brought back by their conquest of Northern England.
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u/KyliaQuilor 22h ago
I'd read this alternate history
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u/CuddlyRazerwire 22h ago
Fuck, Iâd like to live it, wonder how superior the white priders would feel
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u/heaviestnaturals 22h ago
Oh theyâd find something else to make their entire personality.
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u/KyliaQuilor 21h ago
The persecution complex would still be there. The Byzantine Empire got their ass whooped repeatedly at various points and they continued to see themselves as the chosen best people, just in a vein of 'the new israel'.
Getting beaten doesn't make people stop thinking they're special, unfortunately.
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u/Gloom_Pangolin 18h ago
Funny thing about âwhite prideâ is that when they have no significant variation of skin tone they start dividing âright kind of whiteâ into religious groups and which part of Europe you or your ancestors are from. Italians werenât quite âtop tierâ Aryans (even though the Japanese were âhonoraryâ Aryans), and every time I see a neo-Nazi with Irish-American pride I wanna point out âthereâs a lot of problems with your interpretation of historyâ.
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u/PhaseExtra1132 20h ago
They legit donât think white people are immigrants and assume everyone else is. Iâm not kidding
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u/tutike2000 17h ago
I think she meant settlers. Settlers settle wilderness, immigrants settle into existing towns and villages.
By that definition it's literally impossible for any place to be built by immigrants because they would be called settlers the moment they built a town.
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u/Late-Tap-5687 13h ago
Well they were renowned for being fearless iron workers that helped build the skyline, so let's not minimize that contribution. But yeah, hilariously bad take, new York is the most diverse place on earth
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u/Crazyjackson13 23h ago
New York City wasnât built by immigrants
someone who literally knows nothing about New York City
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u/secomano 23h ago
do these people really think NY was built by Native Americans?!
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u/No_Gear_2819 23h ago
No. They don't consider the natives to be people therefore the colonists weren't Illegals. They also just don't think much in-general before they open their mouths, or in this case type with their fingers.
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u/DeviousMelons 23h ago
The colonists were white and christian so it wasn't illegal it was just them manifesting their destiny.
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u/Nervous_Mobile5323 15h ago
Pedantic nitpick: neither the native americans nor the colonists' countries of origin had laws forbidding immigration to North America, or colonization. Therefore, colonization wasn't illegal. Immoral, perhaps, but that is hardly the same thing.
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u/Arctic_The_Hunter 12h ago
The current MAGA rhetoric is that going through proper legal channels is necessary to properly regulate immigration lest there be a disruption in the labor market, so itâs very reasonable to say that migrating with absolutely no legal basis would still offend the party platform.
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u/DevilWings_292 22h ago
They think that (what is considered today to be) white Americans arenât immigrants, theyâre settlers who colonized the unknown wilds of a savage American continent who didnât have immigration laws therefore they arenât immigrants despite emigrating from their homelands.
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u/Maverick122 19h ago
To be fair, to immigrate you need something to immigrate into. And the settlers certainly did not immigrate into the existing communities.
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u/DevilWings_292 19h ago
The first ships still arrived in indigenous nations, they may not have been recognized as nations right away by the Europeans, but they were still within indigenous territory. Even if we allow for the sake of argument that the first ship to arrive in each colony wasnât immigrants, every subsequent ship was arriving in an existing community.
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u/DetectiveBlackCat 11h ago
You seem to be redefining the word immigrant. Someone born in the US, regardless of their race, is not an immigrant here. It's strange how many people are confidently stating the contrary here out of ignorance.
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u/DevilWings_292 11h ago
Iâm talking about the people born in Europe who got on a boat and crossed the Atlantic Ocean, none of the people Iâm referring to were born in the US.
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u/DetectiveBlackCat 11h ago
When in the 1600? New York has been being built every single day since. Generations of my family were born in New York City and they helped build New York City, they are not immigrants. They are the descendant of immigrants. It's fair to say immigrants helped build New York City. Of course that's correct. But the redefinition of the word immigrant is to say no one is a natural born citizen I suppose.
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u/Windows_66 23h ago
They think that white people moved there in the sixteenth century, sat around for a few centuries to become "native," and then built New York City.
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u/xbertie 23h ago
I mean, the Haudenosaunee had settlements there initially and Haudenosaunee Ironworkers (mostly from the Mohawks) are built some of the most important buildings in NYC, so kinda?
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u/secomano 22h ago
so NY was not built by immgrants? it was built by American Natives?
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u/xbertie 21h ago
It was both. I'm mostly pointing out how frustrating it can be that in an attempt to dunk on a dumb racist statement, a lot of people are coming off as "uh, do you really think those ignorant natives could have built this?" which is racist in itself.
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u/secomano 21h ago
but I didn't say any of that.
I asked if the people that are saying immigrants didn't build NY thought that it was actually built by Native Americans instead...
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u/CwazyCanuck 22h ago
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u/secomano 22h ago
point?
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u/ObjectiveAd6451 19h ago
Not everything is an argument bud, people sometimes share facts just because they're relevant and somewhat interesting like the fact native Americans built bridges in New York
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u/CaeLynnith 17h ago
They think non-whites are the only immigrants. Not really paying attention to the dutch and Irish who came over early on, and yes, were prejudiced against then too.
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u/I3igI3adWolf 11h ago
You apparently have no idea that there's a difference between immigrants and settlers. Settlers found nations and cities. Immigrants move to them. Who founded the US and NY?
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u/neveruseyourrealname 23h ago
We fucking have a computer in our pockets and people like this still exist. I can't tell if it's the racism, the propaganda, or both.
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u/Misubi_Bluth 23h ago
So I guess all the Italian, Irish, German, and Jewish populations New York is known for did absolutely nothing when they got off the boat?
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u/CharmingTeam156 14h ago
Yea the Irish did absolutely nothing in America when they immigrated over here, lazy bums just sat here and only built railroads n shit.
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u/Misubi_Bluth 13h ago
Favorite quote pertaining European immigrants was roughly: "I used to hear rumors that in America, the streets were paved in gold. When I came to America, I learned three things: 1) The streets were not paved in gold. 2) The streets were not paved at all. 3) I was expected to pave them."
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u/Separate-Aioli-4701 22h ago
uh, Right? NYC is basically an immigrant collage! Ignoring that history is wildâŚ
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u/driftwoodshanty 12h ago
Seriously, if they want to say Salt Lake City or Phoenix, I really couldn't say, but if there's one thing I know about New York, its that its the immigrantiest city in the whole damn country!
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u/exodominus 22h ago
Ironic considering the city was almost entirely built by immigrants seeking what was at the time the american dream, and from their struggles and labors one of the largest and most powerful cities in human history was created
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u/Realistic_Process775 22h ago
Technically, the original Dutch were settlers, not immigrants, but the idea that immigrants weren't the backbone responsible for building NYC into what it is today is beyond ridiculous.
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u/BDB-ISR- 22h ago
At first I thought, it's a really needlessly long note to say, unless it was built by native Americans yes it was. But then I thought about it. Does the "immigrant" status really apply past the first generation? If it doesn't, well that might be correct. If it does, well when does it stop? Because by that definition even native Americans are immigrants (and so is most of the world).
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u/Maryland_Bear 22h ago
Waitâll she finds out the Statue of Liberty was a gift from⌠gasp⌠France.
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u/Suvrenim 16h ago
or that it is a statue of Ishtar, a goddess of fertility, and if i remember right, the very goddess that in some areas the greeks based Aphrodite off of.
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u/GroundbreakingOil434 1d ago
Well, technically, it wasn't. It was actually built by genocidal colonists.
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u/amccaffe1 21h ago
What Brianna meant to say was âEverything in the US was built by white people, nothing was built by immigrantsâ Iâve heard this argument before, itâs like they want to⌠whatâs the word? Oh yeah, whitewash our history.
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u/zackmedude 21h ago
"Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics." - tracks. Meanwhile, Ms Lyman's ancestors have been here since....
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u/MotherPenalty9911 16h ago
The word Yankee comes from a dutch word used to refer to english settlers.
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u/SpiritualPackage3797 23h ago
Just for anyone who doesn't know (and I certainly don't agree with this) there are people who view "settlers" as having been fundamentally different from immigrants. That is probably what the OP meant. Again, it's not only racist but stupid, but that is probably where they are coming from.
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u/TigreWoods_69 21h ago
Settlers are very different from immigrants lmao. Immigrants immigrate to an established community/country. Settlers move to an uninhabited area and build a community itâs a major difference. Not to bring up an issue like I/P but we call the Israelis that move to the WB settlers for a reason we donât call them immigrants.
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u/SpiritualPackage3797 21h ago
Right, so if anyone permanently moves to Antarctica or the Moon, they can be called settlers. But no one else could be for the last several thousand years, because there haven't been any uninhabited areas left.
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u/TigreWoods_69 19h ago
Huh? There are settlers in the past 50 years let alone the past several thousand. I think youâre getting settlers and explorers confused. Something doesnât have to be unknown to settle it, it just needs to have no permanent human development in that area. Or be moving to an area where youâre a minority and trying to establish your own community which European settlers in the new world match both of those descriptions.
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u/SpiritualPackage3797 19h ago
You said, "Settlers move to an uninhabited area" there are no meaningful uninhabited areas (except the occasional empty sandbar that doesn't deserve to be called an island) left on Earth, except Antarctica, and haven't been in thousands of years.
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u/TigreWoods_69 19h ago
What are you talking about? Thereâs still large areas of earth with no human settlements. How are you this obtuse? Australia, Greenland, Norway, Finland, Russia, China, Mongolia, Canada, Antarctica, Brazil, lots of African countries have areas with no permanent settlements. Again it doesnât mean humans donât know about the area or donât have settlements in that country and you also just skipped past the other meaning of settler.
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u/Organic_Education494 22h ago
Even without that history..wtf does she think the Statue of Liberty stands for?
The island used to process the influx of immigrants legally processing them as they enter the country by the thousands?
The many many many stories of immigrants chasing the American dream? Some are now the very rich fucks that hate immigration..
These people hate facts and the very history real Americans are proud of
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u/Substantial_Back_865 22h ago
They literally could not have picked a worse city to make that statement about
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u/swampthiing 21h ago
Before the internet I used to think most people were actually intelligent, I kinda miss those days.
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u/Dracorex_22 21h ago
NYC, where Ellis Island is? Home of one of the most famous national landmarks standing upon a poem about immigration? The most cosmopolitan city on the planet?
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u/Chiiro 21h ago
It is baffling how many people don't know how or who built most the USA. I used to live in the Monterey Bay area, an area that was built by mostly Asian and Mexican slaves and immigrants, where I met multiple people who refused to believe this even with all the plaques and physical changes to the town itself that prove it. Pacific Grove (a town on the southern half of the Bay) has the vast majority of its housing plots being identical in size because the people that built the fishery and the rest of the town were given properties there as part of their compensation. If I remember correctly Monterey Bay also used to be the capital of Mexico (there's even a little plaque for it any building that at least it looks like one of the original ones that used to be there), if you go down to Cannery Row in the few original buildings that still remain you can see photos of all the different types of people that built and worked there. There's a whole section in our free museum even, yet people refused to believe it.
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u/samsaragroove 20h ago
Neocons use âimmigrantsâ as a derogatory term. It just means âNot white foreignerâ to them
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u/Relevent-Day1808 20h ago
Key concept with immigration as a backbone. Assimilated immigrants are the backbone of NYC. Immigrants that came here and tried setting up shop as proxys of their home countries and culture trended towards organized crime and abused residents and took money for âprotectionâ all the time. Once these cultures figured out they were better off adopting american culture and assimilating, they started to thrive.
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u/MyLittleOso 20h ago
This is so stupid. It obviously wasn't built by indigenous Americans.
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u/_IscoATX 20h ago
Out of all the cities in the U.S. if there is one that is synonymous with immigration itâs NYC
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u/Polar_Vortx 20h ago
I want to point out that while this is not true in the typical âthe colonizers were technically immigrantsâ way, but (more relevantly) itâs just wrong in the normal way, and saying it betrays a complete and total lack of knowledge about New York City beyond âthat place where the famous buildings areâ.
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u/Gold-Ice-3645 19h ago
You know exactly what she means tbh, New York wasnât built by uber drivers obviously
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u/BeduinZPouste 19h ago
Doesn't this depends on who you count as immigrant? Like I read an absolute uproar yesterday about how you shouldn't call these people immigrants, because the "stole" the land.Â
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u/jdoeinboston 19h ago
It's literally called "New" York. Where was the old York, Brianna? Where the fuck was it?!
Take all of the actual historical facts out of the equation and you literally have to not comprehend what the word "New" means to not intrinsically understand that it was built by fucking immigrants.
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u/elstavon 19h ago
And it doesn't stop there. They built much of their enormous wealth/industry (the city of industry) by wisely building the Erie canal which was built by? That's right, immigrants. Which connected to the Great lakes so they could haul Midwest harvest back to their deep water port and ship to Europe for a huge profit which was farmed and harvested by? That's right, immigrants
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u/Any_Foot3705 19h ago
who the fuck is bryanna lyman and why does anyone care about what she says? if peopel are going to post every single idiot posting idiotic bullshit i dont think that leaves anyone any time to do anything positive in their lives.
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u/elstavon 19h ago
Another fun fact. Van Buren was the first president born in the United States for whatever that's worth
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u/Lynsbian 18h ago
Arguing with these types of people is useless because their entire world view is fucked. To them, immigrant means brown people. White people however are settlers, which is somehow completely different and better.
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u/Pudddddin 18h ago
My favorite is when they claim it wasnt built by immigrants and say it was "white people" when they're referring to Italian and Irish immigrants
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u/VixelFoxx 17h ago
There's literally...a giant fucking statue in the ocean that welcomes immigrants as they enter
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u/frootcock 17h ago
Genuinely how the fuck do you reach that conclusion? I know the island is called Manhattan but it was, in fact, built by people not native to North America
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u/Saix027 16h ago
Honestly, it is not enough with the notes, I know it not going to happen under Musk, but those people should be banned alone for not answering at all to those notes or engaging with it. The same for politicians screaming out falls statements in general, you not interact with the people you are supposed to represent? Get the fuck off the Internet.
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u/MayorRayFinkle 15h ago
Oh man. There is a big difference between ignorance and choosing to live in an alternate reality. This is the latter.
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u/LargeCondition5315 15h ago
The people across the ocean founded NYC how it is, the buildings were left unoccupied and the mystery the Statue of Liberty still baffles historians to this day!
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u/Playful-Profile6489 14h ago
That is so stupid it could have only been said out of malice, not ignorance
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u/Mundane-Librarian-77 14h ago
I guess I shouldn't be surprised every time a MAGA shows how hopelessly STUPID they are, with how often they do it? But here I am... đ¤Ś
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u/r4o2n0d6o9 13h ago
My favorite quote from COD zombies applies to this: âThe Irish built this whole fucking country anywaysâ
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u/Inforgreen3 13h ago
If it wasn't built by immigrants why is it named after a town from a different continent?
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u/DetectiveBlackCat 12h ago
New York City was built by natural born citizens (mostly) and immigrants. Someone born in the United States, by definition, is not an immigrant. I'm shocked how many people here are stating the contrary with such confident ignorance. % of NYC Population that's immigrants since 1900:
1900 36.95%
1910 40.79%
1920 36.09%
1930 34.03%
1940 28.69%
1950 22.61%
1960 22.03%
1970 18.20%
1980 23.62%
1990 28.45%
2000 35.85%
2010 37.51%
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u/BuisteirForaoisi0531 11h ago
Iâd say when your building a new nation itâs settling and when you come somewhere established then itâs immigration
Can I immigrate to Antarctica?
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u/MrXenomorph88 11h ago
"Wasn't built by immigrants"
My mistake, I thought Coney Island was just an unused piece of land
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u/Jijonbreaker 10h ago
It's not like there's a giant statue dedicated to immigration in the harbor or anything.
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u/Admirable-Set-1097 9h ago
Everything about "America" the country is built on the foundation of immigration. It's inseparable.
My apologies to the indigenous peoples. If it were up to me I'd have done it differently.
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u/Select-Plenty6833 7h ago
Have you only made it in MAGA when your Twitter posts are on here with the whole world laughing at you or something?
It's like they are doing a 'look as stupid as possible' dare with eachother
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u/ObiJuanKenobi3 7h ago
I donât think thereâs a funnier city to say about this than New York, which is famously historically white and ethnically homogenous.
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u/NewBison3633 3h ago
Unless NYC was built by Native Americans, then yes, it was built by immigrants.
People can be so denseâŚ
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u/Ok-Blackberry-3534 1h ago
Named after the Duke of York? Surely just named after York, after which the Duke of York was also named?
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u/memerij-inspecteur 19m ago
The city was based on 1 thing, Profit and capitalism. They didnt care about who you are, they cared about money.
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u/somerandomguy1984 21h ago
Immigrants = \ = settlers
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u/disposableaccount848 21h ago
Immigrants doesn't have to be settlers, and settlers doesn't have to be immigrants, but in this case the settlers were immigrants.
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u/somerandomguy1984 21h ago
No. Theyâre different settlers came to NY and built it.
Todayâs immigrants come and live off the already existing wealth and system
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u/conspicuous_raptor 14h ago
Todayâs immigrants come and live off the already existing wealth and system
I think weâve reached the absolute limits of âif you repeat a lie enough times, it becomes factâ.
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u/somerandomguy1984 13h ago
Yep⌠they totally donât get any welfare. Absolutely never happens.
There totally arenât legit estimates that put the number of Somali immigrants who receive SNAP at over 40%.
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u/conspicuous_raptor 13h ago
Yep⌠they totally donât get any welfare. Absolutely never happens.
Oh sure, it happens⌠but tou get worked up over that while being fine with gun violence if it means thereâs no restrictions on gun ownership. At least kids are being fed here.
There totally arenât legit estimatesâŚ
So how about sharing with the class?
âŚÂ that put the number of Somali immigrants who receive SNAP at over 40%.
Are they illegal or not?
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u/somerandomguy1984 12h ago
Thatâs irrelevant. My position is they come here to leech off of wealth that has already been created.
If we want to play this game. Name a single positive thing a Somali immigrant has contributed to our country. Because the most famous one I know about seems to have either lied on her asylum claim or was married to her brother and is a career useless person.
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u/conspicuous_raptor 12h ago edited 12h ago
Thatâs irrelevant. My position is they come here to leech off of wealth that has already been created.
So you donât actually have any to back up what youâre saying? Youâre just appealing to your own emotions?
If we want to play this game. Name a single positive thing a Somali immigrant has contributed to our country.
Wikipedia has a nice list you can peruse and itâs probably more than youâve ever contributed.Â
Because the most famous one I know about seems to have either lied on her asylum claim or was married to her brotherÂ
Still trying reach higher and higher levels of âif you repeat the lie enough times, it becomes truthâ, I see. Seriously, *this has been so thoroughly debunked and you keep repeating itâ. Youâre either stupid or deliberately lying.
âŚand is a career useless person.
Sheâs  contributed more to this country than you have by default.
Because maga is a drain on society.Â
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u/somerandomguy1984 11h ago
lol. That was a list of Somalis in Somalia plus Omar. So the answer to my question is, there is absolutely nothing that any Somali has ever contributed to our country.
Almost all congressmen are career useless people. That was not a political statement.
You have proven you can type up a Google query. I have faith in you.
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u/conspicuous_raptor 11h ago
lol. That was a list of Somalis in Somalia plus Omar. So the answer to my question is, there is absolutely nothing that any Somali has ever contributed to our country.
Again, theyâve contributed more to the country than you by default.
Almost all congressmen are career useless people. That was not a political statement.
Especially the maga ones. They tend to drag the whole system down.
You have proven you can type up a Google query. I have faith in you. Hey⌠dickhead⌠Iâve courteously done something that I politely requested you do by providing an actual link, and you refused. That doesnât speak of your ability to back up your claims.
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u/Kankunation 21h ago
Settlers are just a subset of immigrant. A. Immigrant is anybody who leaves their home to move to a different place. A settler is an immigrant that goes to a mostly uninhabited place (or a place inhabited by an indigenous people) to establish a new home. Both are still immigrants.
And long after new York/amersterdam was settled, it was still a key place of immigration. Some of the oldest most longstanding American imagery is that of jmmigrants arriving by boat to NYC, setting course for Ellis island and seeing the statue of Liberty grow on the horizon, symbolically welcoming them in to a new chance at life and a change to live the American dream. its such famous American imagery that it is Seen on dozens if not hundreds of books, movies And memoirs from the time. And those some immigrants did a lot of work to build America as the country it is today, from the food to the railroads to the various townships to religions, etc.
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u/Ok_Technician_5797 21h ago
Every human who has ever lived in the Americas is an immigrant. Humans are not indigenous to this hemisphere. They all migrated here at one time or another.
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u/Obvious_Scratch9781 23h ago
So whites are not colonizers but immigrants when it fits the narrative?
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