It’s one of those trite but true clichés: The United States is both a nation of immigrants and a country episodically devoted to discriminating against the newly arrived. The nation is now ensnared in what historian Richard Hofstader referred to as the politics of paranoia.
Authorities raid chicken processing plants in the south, rounding up undocumented workers but leaving the owners and managers untouched. Protestors decrying immigrant detentions at a private jail in Central Falls are harassed and injured by a correctional officer driving a truck, prompting an investigation from the Rhode Island attorney general. The Trump Administration wants to deny legal immigrants permanent residency if they use such safety net programs as food stamps or Medicaid. Kenneth Cuccinelli II, one of the president’s top immigration officials, said the famous Emma Lazarus poem emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty was referring to, “people coming from Europe.” There is a perverse irony to Cuccinelli’s plea for more white European immigration. A lawyer with an Italian surname, is he aware that the 1924 federal immigration restriction was aimed at keeping Italians and other southern Europeans out of The United States?
Anti-immigrant screeds have a long history in America, beginning with the exclusion of the Chinese in the 19th Century. “Remember, remember, always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists,” said President Franklin Roosevelt in a 1938 speech to the Daughters of the American Revolution. Roosevelt was a wealthy liberal WASP who was trying to keep the lid on that era’s anti-immigrant virulence. But even he couldn’t shape public opinion on the issue. And he wasn’t immune to expediency. Under FDR’s tenure, Japanese-Americans were put into internment camps and Jewish exiles escaping Nazism were turned away at American ports.
Since colonial times, immigration has been both blessing and bane for the country. Native Americans were slaughtered by European settlers. Then waves of immigrants seeking work, freedom and the path to a better life were roundly discriminated against by the Protestant majority.
The immigrant past ought to particularly resonate in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, two states that were anchors of immigration. Yet too often nowadays discussions of immigration are informed by little more than ignorance. In family legends and nostalgia, all their relatives came here legally, got jobs, stepped into tight-knit families and quickly learned English.
The reality was nothing like the nostalgic tales told at Thanksgiving dinners that give rise to some of today’s anti-immigrant screeds. The first Roman Catholics who came to our shores in big numbers were subject to hostility. Newspapers in both Boston and Providence published No Irish Need Apply ads. Catholic convents were burned in Boston. The Ku Klux Klan held cross-burning rallies aimed at Catholics.
Foreign workers from Ireland, Italy and French Canada were valued mostly as cheap labor for textile factories. Children were kept from school to work in factories where they lost limbs to machinery. Barriers to voting were erected to keep the newly arrived far from the ballot box. Eventually, the second and third generations would assimilate. Some would prosper, due to the free economy and the labor union. They would win voting rights.
Now the anti-immigrant campaign is on again. Some of this is coming from the White House in advance of the 2020 presidential election. The news cameras focus on what’s happening in the latest border or chicken-plant raid or the proposed crackdown on green card holders.
But in the country most of us live in, immigration again reshaping our nation and region. If you go to the hospital, don’t be surprised if the doctor treating you is an immigrant or here on a foreign visa. At least half the students in the Providence public schools hail from Latino backgrounds. Technologists from around the globe have transformed Boston into a world lodestone of innovation. Our nation isn’t going to be able to forge an immigration future until we reckon with our complicated past.
Scott MacKay’s commentary can be heard at 6:45 and 8:45 and at 5:44 in the afternoon. You can subscribe to Scott MacKay’s commentary as a podcast on Apple Podcasts.
