Posted on 04/04/2006 5:34:55 PM PDT by neverdem
Today's rancorous debate over immigration has a parallel in the nativist reaction to the mass Irish immigration in the mid-19th century.
Spurred by the potato famine that began in 1845, 3.5 million mostly destitute Irish migrated to America by 1880 - about 7 percent of the population of 50 million. By contrast, today's 11 million unauthorized immigrants, of all nationalities, constitute just 4 percent of our population.
Contemporary immigration foes, like former Gov. Dick Lamm and Rep. Tom Tancredo, claim America can't absorb so many foreign-born without fatal damage to our economy and culture.
Yet, history shows we did just that. Today, there are 43 million Americans of Irish ancestry, a key element of the vibrant alloy that is America.
Today's nativists argue we can't compare today's illegal immigrants to the Irish, because the Irish came here legally. That's technically true, but the 19th century wave was just as uncontrolled, because America had virtually no bars to immigration in those days.
Kenneth Ackerman's book, "Boss Tweed: The Rise and Fall of the Corrupt Pol Who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York," details how the desperate Irish were welcomed at the docks by the political machine that provided the only social safety net in that era.
Tweed minions would help the newcomers find housing and work and, if there was an election in the offing, they would swiftly be naturalized as citizens in mass ceremonies by Tweed's judges, so they could vote for their benefactors.
Cartoonist Thomas Nast, who hated Irish and Catholics with equal fervor, pandered to the nativist bigotry by depicting Irishmen as drunken, subhuman brutes. The accompanying Nast cartoon depicts the role immigrants played in supporting Tweed by showing an Irish thug and a Catholic priest carving up the Democratic Party goose that laid the golden eggs.
But though the Irish were despised, they were still admitted through America's golden door. That's because Americans needed them to do our dirty work.
The first generations of Irish worked largely at unskilled and semiskilled occupations, but their children found themselves working at increasingly skilled trades. By 1900, when Irish Americans made up about 8 percent of the male labor force, they were almost a third of the plumbers, steamfitters and boilermakers. Their places at the bottom of the ladder were taken by newly arrived laborers from southern and eastern Europe.
Today, those dirty, low-paying, jobs are being taken by Latinos. But if history is any guide, the daughter of that Latina who scrubs your floor today may be the doctor who delivers my granddaughter's baby a generation hence.
To some, that is a frightening prospect. But I think Clio, the muse of history, would join with Lady Liberty herself to say:
Bienvenidos, Americanos nuevos.
Bob Ewegen is The Denver Post's deputy editorial page editor.
Well Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, there they go blamin' the Irish again....Saints Preserve us!
While I think there is some legitmacy to the comparison, I think this is where the critical difference is. My Scottish grandfather illegally crossed the border between Canada and the United States with some friends in order to secure work in the United States so they could immigrate legally. But my grandfather very much wanted to be an American and said that if he loved Scotland so much, he would have stayed there. I'd be a lot more welcoming to the Mexicans if I saw red, white, and blue at their rallies instead of red, white, and green. If you love Mexico so much, stay there and build up Mexico.
The "Draft Riots" had very little to do with the draft and everything to do with Democrat Party politics.
I'm in a car service (like a cab you call beforehand) the other night and the driver, from Dominican Republic, starts going off on all the prejudice against his people, yada, yada. Two seconds later, he starts laying into the Pakistani dispatcher -- "What the hell is wrong with those people!"
Classic immigrant story
That's 11 million (an estimate, by the way, and probably a low one) that are illegal on top of how many that ARE legal?
And the Irish came to become part of this nation. The illegals aren't here to assimilate into our culture and our laws.
My Irish grandparents came throught Ellis Island. Spoke the language, got jobs, paid taxes and became Americans. There is nothing similar to the mexicans stealing into our Country in the dead of the night.
Wetback is no more racist than Yankee...and neither are imho
They did once the Irish got here. lol
Oh yeah, the punchline: he started yelling in Spanish over the radio for the dispatcher to speak English!
I believe it ..
Just think, maybe if they had kept out the Irish, we would not have to be putting up with the kennedys all these years.
It's a joke for you libs.
Oh, you mean the Native types, eh? :)
Not those guys from Great Britain...
I'll also blame you for my next 2 pounds. Tonight, I made Irish Cream Bread Pudding with Irish Cream Sauce.
Do you honestly think that Mexico and a bunch of 20 year olds throwing rocks could take on the US Army on it's home turf?
Canada would have a better chance of grabbing off Maine. :P
"Once again, a lib attempts to turn this into a debate about immigration. It's about ILLEGAL immigration. I would wonder if he was stupid but he's not--this fudging is done intentionally".......you see you're just NOT enlightened. Laws in America are NOT supposed to apply equally to all...this is how libs/democrats deal...we'll leave you all alone and selectively apply law as long as you vote left. Ya gotta have a LOT of crooks/lawbreakers for this to work, so ya's gots to have lotsa laws...lotsa government etc. etc. etc.
"There came to the beach a poor exile of Erin,
The dew on his wet robe hung heavy and chill.
Ere the steamer that brought 'im had passed out of hearin'
He was Alderman Mike inthrojuicin' a bill!"
God bless the Irish. They became one of us, surely.
Why can't you f**ks understand the word ILLEGAL?
It ain't complicated.
Don't continue to be stuck on stupid, stupid.
I'll drink to that!
Putting a bottle of guinness in almost everything usually helps.
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