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.
I reall should have been more clear. Being from California, we get the worst of it. The inmate population in California is 40% illegal. That is truly what I meant to say. That part is very much true.
" Those Irish immigrants started coming in the 1840s, long before Ellis Island. As I understand, we had no laws restricting immigration. "
"Prior to 1890, the individual states (rather than the Federal government) regulated immigration into the United States." ellisland.org
Getting back to the original point, I'd be willing to bet that back in say the late 1800s, the Irish probably represented 40% or more of the inmates in New York prisons. Those Irish street gangs in Five Points and the Bowery were a very tough and lawless bunch.
Table 12 at page 9 (I haven't figured out how to drag it over to this site) shows incarceration rates, by age, by race. For comparable age groups, Hispanic rates are generally somewhat (20-50%) higher than the general population, and about double the "white" rate.
Federal prisons have only about 10% of all prisoners, and would be expected to disproportionately contain violators of immigration, smuggling, etc. laws
the chart shows that Hispanics, amounting to about 12% of all persons in this country, are about 20% of all prisoners. However, since on average, Hispanics are younger than most other residents (85-year old immigrants from Poland or Italy don't commit many crimes, pace Uncle Junior), the age-comparable figures show the Hispanic rates are somewhat, but not enormously, higher than for the general population of the same age.
As for Italian Americans, their status was adversely affected by their Mediterranean subracial origins, a situation German, Irish, and Scandinavian Americans did not endure. Pay scales for Italian immigrants in the construction industry were lower than even those for African Americans. The relatively few Italian or Eastern European immigrants who attempted to find work in Southern cities and farms were often forcibly chased out. In New Orleans, several dozen Italian Americans were lynched as revenge for the murder of an Irish American chief of police. Despite the fact that the Catholic Church is headquartered in Rome, Irish Catholic clergy demeaned the devotional practices of their Italian co-religionists. In the Northeast, Irish dominance of the Democratic Party led many Italian Americans to choose the GOP. They evidently found the British Americans who controlled the Republican Party in the early and mid 1900s less hostile than the Irish Americans in the Democratic Party Even today, many Northeastern Republican political officials are of Italian ancestry, and the New York City borough of Staten Island, which is predominantly Italian American, is one of the few Northeastern urban counties that supported Bush in 2004.
As for the Scotch-Irish, who are predominantly of Lowlands Scots origin, with some Highland Scots, northern English, and "native" Irish mixed in, many of them first came to America as indentured servants. While their indenture was only for a limited period, usually seven years, their treatment by plantation owners was often quite harsh, in some cases worse than what African slaves received. They had a larger investment in those permanently in bondage, and as a result had more at stake in preserving their health. Additionally, they were less used to working in the hot, humid conditions that prevailed in the Tidewater South. Although many escaped illegally to the western frontier, there was a considerable death toll from disease and overwork. Neither the New England Puritans nor the Tidewater aristocracy thought well of the Scotch-Irish; both John Adams and William Byrd wrote disparagingly of these people, the latter likening them to Goths and Vandals.
The Mormons, though predominantly made up of native born Americans of English Puritan background, were also singled out for harsh persecution. The founder of the religion, Joseph Smith, was murdered by a mob in Nauvoo, Illinois. The local authorities and the militia failed to protect the Mormons from mob violence, including lynching and the burning of their homes and towns. The Mormons were chased out of New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, at which point the church leadership decided to leave the United States entirely for then-Mexican held Utah. Arguably, only the blacks and Indians received harsher treatment than the Mormons.
I fail to see where the descendants of "native" (Celtic and Norman) Irish received treatment worse than what those of German, Italian, and Scots-Irish origin, or what the Mormons received.
It does no good for the border argument to use false data. It's far too easy to it shoot down.
The Irish were seeking acceptance in the American Dream.
They were not comming to the USA to create Ire-zalan or force the USA to speak in a funny accent or create Irish studies programs to show how the acient Irish really discovered Alabama.
The Irish came to the USA to be Irish. The Irish celebrate St. Patty's day as an American Tradition as much as Irish.
There is no comparison between the looters of the illegal alien movement and the LEGAL IRISH IMMIGRANTS.
OK, say that was true, the 40% number are the illegals only. We aren't merely talking about an ethnic group in California's prisons. If you want to talk ethnic, the numbers of the hispanic population is much higher than 40%. Also, this is a multi state phenomena. If you look at the modern illegals in the prison populations of the southwest, it dwarfs any comparisons at all to the Irish of that time.
The only comparison one might take is the relative numbers of modern illegals vs. the latter Irish as a percentage of population, but even then we have had more than 20 or 30 years of continuous illegal immigration in ridiculous numbers in our time.
It has put an incomparable strain on the very fabric of the American southwest's culture, language, and society. To blythely state that the Irish were anything like a literal invasion of illegals accross our southern border is almost incredulous.
You are factually incorrect. Ellis Island operated from 1892 until 1924. The vast majority of Irish immigrants came to this country from about 1790 until 1870. The door was pretty much open and so just about all of them became legal residents simply by coming here.
That's because many of them already spoke a form of English in addition to their native language, and social services were pretty much non-existent between 1790 and 1870 when the vast majority of Irish arrived.
"The difference between the Irish and the illegal immigrants, though. The Irish came through Ellis Island and weren't sneaking over the border to get in. There's that whole legal thing again."
Exactly! And I never heard of Coyotes on Ellis Island helping them cross over either.
It does no good for the border argument to use false data. It's far too easy to it shoot down.
I was trying to find a reference of 27%, which I came across yesterday, and which would support the 30% that I referenced in my first link. The higher number was from reference# 5, which came from The Urban Institute which claims to be non-partisan.
"5 Rebecca L. Clark and Scott A. Anderson, Illegal Aliens in Federal, State, and Local Criminal Justice Systems, The Urban Institute, Washington D.C., June 2000."
But the Irish have better beer.
Granted. Since the writer of the article brought up the Irish, I was just trying to make a point about his apples and oranges comparison of immigrants then and immigrants now.
I'm one of the rare individuals who appreciate American beer for its taste and price. Long years of experience have taught me that I get just as drunk on domestic beer as beer made by blind monks who brew their brew in ancient casks using a recipe handed down for 1,200 years...
True that, didn't mean to insinuate the Irish had it easy, just meant they did it the right way.
I just don't care for the popular light lagers. I don't even really like lagers all that much, regardless. I'm an ale guy.
But I was replying to your comment of the Latinos having better food. So, I was really saying the Irish have better beer than Mexico. Which, I understand, some may disagree on.
Not looking forward to any Latino immigrants parallel with that particular event.
I know -- I was just kidding. There is one beer you might try -- a little "precious" to drink regularly, but it's pretty good -- Saranac. I believe they also make ale.
Ellis Island, which was only open from 1892 until 1924, didn't even exist when the vast majority of the Irish immigrated to the United States between 1790 and 1870. And while Irish didn't have "coyotes" to lead them across the border, they did pay middlemen to transport them across the ocean often upon the promise of a job. In fact, many of these middlemen were also paid by employers for delivering cheap Irish labor from abroad who were willing to work long, long hours, for very little pay, which is why many of the Irish ended up in Boston, New York City and the Hudson River Valley, Charleston, SC, Savannah, GA, New Orleans, and many of the cities that dot the Mississippi, including Memphis, and St. Louis. And this might come as a shocker to many people: While the vast majority of Irish immigrants were hard working and law abiding, Irish organized crime was very real and very violent.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.