Most notable is my awareness of my recent family history. Therefore, I think you're barking up the wrong tree. My point stands firm.
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.
A paultry sum compared to the billions we are being screwed out of now.
Nope, the Irish didn't want to make bits of America into part of Ireland, but they did and some still DO, fund the Sein Fein (sp? )/IRA...a TERRORIST organization.
And the Mexican La Raza/Reconquista types are seditionists-traitors here. What part of the Irish claimed the northwestern U.S. for Ireland?
They also caused and were the main murdering and ravaging participants of the DRAFT RIOTS...hunting down and beating and lynching blacks and setting an orphanage for black children on fire and killing many of those poor children.
And fully 40% of the prison population are illegals who prey on all Americans over a longer period of time and who represent larger numbers of violent criminals than the Irish ever were.
Again, my point is not to demean any group, but simply to point out that the current immigrant waves are not completely alien and different from all waves before -- some are, some aren't -- the previous waves had some good and some bad, and we dealt with it by various laws, just as we are debating about now.
Excerpt on return immigration:
You Can Go Home Again: Immigrants Who Went Back
By Donna Przecha
I thought like the author that immigration was a one way trip. But, 61% of the Southern Italians returned home.,and 37.8% of Northern Italians .
May 10, 2001 - - Perhaps I am naive, but I always thought the immigration story ended with a person coming to the United States and never returning.
Who Left and Who Stayed? Statistics by nationality are quite striking. According to a report in 1908 comparing the departures in 1908 with the arrivals of 1907, 61% of the Southern Italians returned home. Croatians and Slovenians (59.8%), Slovaks (56.1%) and Hungarians (48.7%) also had high return rates. The lowest rate, 5.1%, belonged to the Jews (categorized as "Hebrews"). This is understandable since they fled the pogroms to save their lives and had nowhere to return.
Surprisingly, when you think of all the nostalgic songs about their homeland, the Irish rarely went back — only 6.3%. Others with a low return rate were Czechs (7.8%), English (10.4%) and Scandinavians (10.9%). In the middle range were Germans (15.5%), Serbs and Bulgarians (21.9%), Finns (23.3%), Poles (33.9%) and Northern Italians (37.8%). Interestingly enough, the Irish and the Swedish were also groups with a very high percentage of woman immigrants.
Women had less incentive to return because they usually enjoyed greater freedom in America than they did at home. For example, in most countries, an unmarried woman — even one independent enough to travel alone to America, get a job and send money back home — was expected to live in her father's house until she married. Also, many decided that the working conditions were more favorable in America than they were at home. Swedish and Irish women, for instance, often went into domestic service (an occupation available only to single women). They often found that they were much more comfortable living as a servant in a wealthy home than they would be living on a family farm where they performed backbreaking work from dawn to dusk.
Immigrants who returned to their native countries after arriving in America often did so temporarily (like my grandparents did) but others returned home to live permanently. Historians, genealogists and government officials are generally more interested in those coming to the U.S. than those leaving, so information on return immigration is hard to find. And, since the US didn't start keeping records on departing passengers until 1908, there are not a lot of reliable statistics. Even those official numbers are less than accurate because they often indicate only that a person is leaving the US without mentioning whether the departure is permanent or just for a visit home. They also don't indicate if the trip is the first arrival/departure to/from the US or if the traveler made multiple trips.
This lack of detailed record-keeping has the potential to throw your research off-track if you aren't careful. For example, someone who permanently immigrated to America but made four trips home would show up in immigration records five times. On the other hand, return migration also has the potential to help you solve some mysteries. Sometimes you'll find an ancestor listed in records for a ship passage that doesn't fit with previous research. Keep in mind that this may simply be record of a second passage to America. A young man, for example, may have come to America alone the first time, then returned home to marry, and then entered the US a second time with his bride to settle down.
Who Returned? As many as one in three American immigrants may have returned to their home country either for a visit or to live there permanently.
We have more statistics relating to the huge migrations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although statistics on departing passengers were not kept until 1908, figures that have been developed by scholars reveal some interesting patterns. Several believe that, overall, as many as one in three American immigrants returned to their home country. In some years there was one departure for every two arrivals. (However, as stated above this does not mean the person was leaving permanently or that he had not made other trips.) During the depression of the 1930s there were actually more people leaving the US than entering.
There's a little Welsh in there too. Reading the family history, they certainly wouldn't have qualified for the peace prize.
Do you have a source for that stat?
The Irish were also the driving force behind the Roman Catholic Church; joined the police and fire departments; dug the canals and built the rail roads; fought to defend this country.
Justice Dept. Figures on Incarcerated Illegals
As Investors Business Daily reported in March 2005: "The U.S. Justice Department estimated that 270,000 illegal immigrants served jail time nationally in 2003. Of those, 108,000 were in California. Some estimates show illegals now make up half of California's prison population, creating a massive criminal subculture that strains state budgets and creates a nightmare for local police forces."
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/3/27/114208.shtml
Also heard on KABC yesterday morning on the Doug MacIntyre show. It is common knowledge that at least 40% of California's prison population is illegals and that number is probably low.
However if you want another source, here it is:
http://www.ej20.us/crime.htm<
Illegals Contribution to US Crime
Unfortunately, illegals bring crime with them, too: In Los Angeles, 95 percent of outstanding homicide warrants are for illegal aliens, as are 66 percent of fugitive felony warrants. The notorious 18 Street Gang has 20,000 members, of whom 60 to 80 percent are illegal aliens, according to the California Department of Justice and the Los Angeles Police Department, respectively. The Lil’ Cycos Gang, notorious for murder, racketeering, and drugs in Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park, was thought to be 60 percent illegals in 2002, and the percentage is higher now. (Source - Note that source is a PDF file and you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view it)
You don't think they just bring water with them, do you? . "90 percent of the meth (methamphetamine) manufactured in this country is manufactured by Mexican national (Mexican non-U.S citizen) drug organizations,"- Ron Gravitt, California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement's clandestine lab unit chief, Oct. 2000, Sacramento Bee Special Report. "Methamphetamine cases today account for 80% of the nation's police departments' drug investigations."- D.E.A. Report 1996.
Why are we not deporting them? In March 2000, Congress made public Department of Justice statistics showing that, over the previous five years, the INS had released over 35,000 criminal aliens instead of deporting them. Over 11,000 of those released went on to commit serious crimes, over 1,800 of which were violent ones (including 98 homicides, 142 sexual assaults, and 44 kidnappings). In 2001, thanks to a decision by the Supreme Court, the INS was forced to release into our society over 3,000 criminal aliens (who collectively had been convicted of 125 homicides, 387 sex offenses, and 772 assault charges). (Source)
Number of illegals arrested yearly on drug charges: Over the past five years, an average of more than 72,000 aliens have been arrested annually on drug charges alone. (Source)
Prison Population: According to Lous Dobbs, 33% of the prison population is made up of illegals. (Source)
Cost of illegals on California taxpayers: Taxpayers pay $750 million annually to house the 18,000 illegal aliens in California prisons. (Source)
World Net Daily
The cost of incarcerating illegal aliens in California's prisons and jails amounts to about $1.4 billion a year.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42474
Oh, ick! What a pretentious pimple of prose!!
It really doesn't matter about the Irish, whether they were good or bad, legal or illegal. What matters is today. People seem to think that just because something was allowed in the past, it should still be allowed today. Just because there were immigrants in the past, just because they were hated, just because they may have been illegal, just because they eventually assimilated, that means we must accept massive waves of illegal Mexicans today.
Well, we had a lot of things in the past that we no longer have today. Slavery, for one. A frontier, for another. The past is totally irrelevant. What matters is NOW, and the question is, should hoardes of invading, illegal Mexicans-- waving their Mexican flags, using taxpayer-funded services, and bragging about reconquista-- be allowed TODAY?
There are 5 recognized races: Negro (Sub-Saharan Africa, New Guinea, etc.), Caucasian (Europe, North Africa, Near East amd Middle East), Oriental (East Asia), East Indian (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, etc.) and American Indian (North, Central and South America). Most Mexicans are mestizos, a mixture of Caucasian and American Indian.
I will give you that in the context of 2006, that is correct. In a larger and classical sense however, there are three. It all depends on who is doing the recognition.
I went to the US Dept of Justice site and found the following.
"Among the 1.4 million inmates sentenced to more than one year at year-end 2003, an estimated 44 percent were black, 35 percent white, 19 percent Hispanic and 2 percent of other races. The percent of inmates who were racial or ethnic minorities has changed little since 1995.
I'm not saying we don't have big problems with illegals, but lets not exaggerate them either.
In everyone's family tree, you will find princes and paupers, clergymen and criminals.
(about 30 percent of the inmates in federal prison are not citizens)
The vast majority of incarcerated aliens have entered the United States illegally, rather than entering the country legally and remaining past the authorized period of stay. Sentenced illegal aliens are generally poorer, less educated, younger, more likely to be male and Hispanic, and less likely to have dependents than the incarcerated legal aliens and U.S. citizens.5
"...the Irish came here legally. That's technically true..."
And the point being...?
The Irish had one big advantage, they spoke English for the most part. I can't imagine areas of NY City in the 1860s with business signs in Gaelic.
That said IMHO all immigrants should learn English, if only to be polite.
First, I am NOT Irish CATHOLIC. Second, I don't recall other European immigrants treated as poorly as the Irish.
But I will grant you that the Irish were not slaves in America (like Africans), nor were they almost annihilated (as was the American Indian), nor were they treated as poorly as the asians (as were the chinese).
One thing the USA did do was to give us all the opportunity to be make a boatload of money. And money buys politicians HAHAHAHA. That's why we are not the same.
They spoke English. Irish Gaelic was banned by the British.
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