Irish were Latinos of their day

The Denver Post ^ | 4/01/2006 | Bob Ewegen

[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.

[seamusnh]

The Irish came to the US from 1847 to 1860 fleeing the genocide that was the potato famine. As stated above they came here legally. Many were single young men who joined the army and fought mostly for the North in the Civil War. A Confederate general was quoted after the war that they may have won if they had had more Irish on their side... After the war, many of the Irish worked to build the trans-continental railroad. If the Civil War had been a stalemate or the railroad not built, what is now the US could have been 2 or 3 separate countries. Makes you think what would have happened in WWI and WWII...

My parents came here legally in 1948 from Ireland. They came on a plane with their documentation, health report, TB xray, etc. Other than the fact that they are from a foreign country, they have nothing in common with the criminal illegal aliens in the US today. Drawing the comparison is offensive....

[Irish_Thatcherite]

It wasn't genocide, it was a famine - hence the name Potato Famine.

[freedumb2003]

It wasn't genocide, it was a famine - hence the name Potato Famine.

I guess this famine targeted Irishmen in a desire to wipe them out ;)

When I was a kid, they called it the potato "blight," but I guess times change...

[abigailsmybaby]

lol Only in Calaveras County is frogs a race.

[Irish_Thatcherite]

LOL!

The British weren't angels wrt the Famine, but to call it genocide is misleading - I think if they really wanted to kill us all off, they wouldn't have relied on the 'spuds'!!

[freedumb2003]

I think if they really wanted to kill us all off, they wouldn't have relied on the 'spuds'!!

They would have attacked the BEER and WHISKEY (/Murphy on my Mom's side) ;)

[Irish_Thatcherite]

Nah, that would have caused an uprising!! ;)

[Polybius]

And just what "race" are Mexicans? Do you mean ethnic group?

Mexicans classify their own population as 60% Mestizo (Indian-European mix), 30% pure Indian and 10% white.

Mestizo 60 % (Indígena y español), indígena 30%, y 10% blanco

For Europeans, being French or Spanish or German or Italian or Polish is a matter of different ethnic groups within the same race.

In Mexico, however, race is a central part of the Mexican cultural identity and they embrace the race issue with their concepts of "La Raza" and the concept of "Mestizaje".

The Mexicans honor a certain Gonzalo Guerrero as "The Father of Mestizaje". Guerrero was a Spanish sailor who was shipwrecked in 1511 and was captured by the Mayans. While some of his shipmates were used as human sacrifice, Guerrero was spared and, as the time passed, "went native" and took the daughter of a Mayan chieftain as his wife. Mexicans now honor the children of that marriage as the "first Mexicans".

Guerrero is therefore considered the "Father of his Country"........literally.

Statue of Gonzalo Guerrero, his Mayan wife Zazil Há and their children, "the first Mexicans"

It is ironic that the forces of Political Correctness in the U.S. never use the terms "Mestizo" or even "Mexican". Instead, the tern "Hispanic" (pertaining to the ancient Roman province of Hispania) is used. The Mexicans are therefore stripped of their unique racial identity that they themselves honor in Mexico.

[proudCArepublican]

I can understand an Irish man/woman more than someone speaking spanish that refusing to learn the language and it is not a right that you get to come here and we had a method to check them health wise frankly I am getting real sick of how hard the mexicans work I think it is safe to say we all work hard, why dont 1 million Americans go visit President Fox and stay in Mexico refuse to speak spanish, force the schools to teach the United States History, get on the welfare system etc etc do you think this man would give us what we have given his people I think not

[joanie-f]

The only characteristic shared by the Irish immigrants of the mid-1800s and the Latino army that is pillaging the southern U.S. is their species. What the Irish brought with them, in terms of character, intention, work ethic, and spirit, when they entered this country (not to mention their methods of gaining admittance) sits on an entirely different (non-intersecting) planes from the Latino illegals of 2006.

I don’t have to list the innumerable differences. Others have done so extraordinarily well earlier on this thread. (Besides, doing so would cause me to revisit the intense anger I experienced when reading this drivel-filled article. I spit lots of nails, and haven’t yet cleaned up the first batch of them, so don’t want to risk creating a second.)

Mr. Ewegen is one of two things: (1) the product of modern American education (which is a possibility, if he is younger than forty) … in which case, he may simply be a sheep, obediently bleating out the indoctrination line that has been force-fed him by his teachers (particularly his college ‘journalism’ professors, for sure) … or (2) a card-carrying leftist, intent on seeing to it that those of his political bent re-gain political power in the next two elections, and continue to increase their voting base as a result of more and more illegitimate citizens eventually becoming quasi-legitimate voters.

In this extremely disturbing video, Jose Angel Gutierrez, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, speaking to an enormous throng of illegal immigrants, advises, ‘We are millions! We just have to survive! We have an aging white America. They are not making babies. They are dying. It’s a matter of time. The explosion is in our population!’

His views are seconded by Art Torres, Chairman of the California Democrat Party, who observes, ‘When I hear the question, ‘Why do you fight so hard for Affirmative Action?’ I tell my white colleagues, ‘You’re gonna need it!’ (Translation: it won’t be long before his ‘white colleagues’ are a minority in America).

So which is it, Mr. Ewegen? Are you simply ignorant of the character and work ethic possessed, and the willingness to endure prejudice unlike any you have ever experienced or envisioned, that the Irish immigrants of the mid-1800s reflected? Are you unaware of the integral part they played in making America the beacon of liberty and justice that she once was? Are you unaware of the fact that illegal immigrants in America 2006 represent the wicked antithesis of such a people?

Or are you of the same mind as Professors Gutierrez and Torres? Are you using your pen, combined with lies of ideological convenience, in an attempt to see to it that, through an eventual dramatic and deadly shift in the fabric of the population of this country, ultimate and despotic power is placed in the hands of those who no longer bear any allegiance to our republic?

Either way, Mr. Ewegen, you and your kind are to be avoided as a source of credible information.

Previous thoughts on this incomparable tragedy in the making.

~ joanie ….

[Minuteman23]

Well said as always, lass.

You're right that the bottom line is a power thing, but isn't it interesting that both parties think it's to their advantage to allow this criminal behavior to continue? One party's going to be disappointed, and our country is going down the toilet in the mean time.

Best to you, Joanie.

[wtc911]

Not annoyed. The practice of using 'we' to refer to those who preceeded us legitimizes those who seek to retain victim status generations after harm was done to their ancestors...eg; "We were sold into slavery" or "We had our lands stolen". These comments always are followed with. "by you". And we of course are always that "you".

[seamusnh]

While the potato crop failed and it was the main staple of the Irish diet at the time, the other crops did not fail and certainly the livestock were not affected. At the time of the "famine", the English continued to export crops and livestock from Ireland to England. At the same time, Parliament debated on what to do about the "Irish problem". Of course Ireland was not independent at the time so this distancing of Ireland was an interesting way of disowning the situation... Maybe it is just semantics, but a million people died as a result. If it happened today it wouldn't be called a famine....

[joanie-f]

Totally off-topic …

Posting this here (for you, and) because one of my FR buddies (bud-ettes) who was recently banned needs to hear this as well ... not sure she can still read her pings or receive PMs and I lost her e-mail address in the move of computers last December. :(

I met our daughter at the Hippodrome in Baltimore last night for a Michael Bublé concert. She had seen him in concert at Constitution Hall last month, and insisted that I see his next east-coast concert (even went so far as to buy the tickets herself. :)

(Go to the website and, once it loads (give it a few seconds), click on the song titles at the upper right until you get to ‘Feeling Good’ … then sit back and enjoy.)

I left Baltimore last night completely unaware that there is a place called Iran, or a gruesome invasion occurring across our southern border. It seems to me that, in times like these, we all need an occasional evening’s ‘escape’ in order to retain our sanity.

I thank Mr. Bublé for providing me mine. :)

~ joanie

[Irish_Thatcherite]

There is a big difference between negligence and systematic extermination, it was the former rather than the latter - that's why people in this country refer to it as a "The Famine" rather than "The Irish Holocaust".

I think today it would still be called a famine rather than genocide - a simple distinction here, there is no such thing as a natural famine - it is always through Human hands, Ethiopia in the 1980s is a prime example. We call it a famine if the authorities are irresponsible and negligent, willfully or otherwise, and genocide if they kill deliberately.

[Minuteman23]

He sounds like a young Sinatra.

You have Email.