“Immigrants we get the job done”
The Broadway musical Hamilton is a very unique piece, it is the story of Alexander Hamilton a founding father of the United States and is played by a cast of almost all people of color. However, the most interesting thing about the work is how the creator Lin Manuel Miranda relates Alexander Hamilton to himself and many people of color. In the play he shows Hamilton’s poor upbringing, growing up without a father, and his mother died at an early age. He didn’t come from a privileged home like many of his counterparts, he picked himself up from the bootstraps to rise to success.
One major emphasis that Lin Manuel puts on Hamilton to emphasize the relation to many people of color through showing that Hamilton was an immigrant. In a song from the musical, “Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)”, one of the most notable lines from the entire play is “Immigrants we get the job done”. In this line, he references that historically immigrants have played a major role in the development and prosperity of the country, that the country is made of immigrants. Furthermore, I believe the meaning is meant to take a position on the rhetoric related to immigrants and make a claim that immigrants today are essential to the rise of this country and have been historically. The fact is, Hamilton was also an immigrant who came to America where he was given an opportunity to leave poverty and make a name, it led him to help defeat British forces in the Revolutionary War and serve on the cabinet of George Washington.
This was something I found intriguing because my family is made of immigrants and in society today immigrants and given a bad rep. It shouldn’t be this way, this connotation of immigrants is backward when compared to immigration around our country’s founding. I feel proud when hearing “ we get the job done” as do many others who can relate.