Reading Rick Perlstein's "Invisible Bridge", it occurred to me re: refugees...

[YoungDemCA]

...that the current controversy over resettling Syrian refugees in the U.S. is eerily similar (in many respects) to the controversy over resettling refugees from Vietnam in the 1970s.

Here's an excerpt:

Some of the South Vietnamese who made it to the United States were preliminarily resettled at Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida panhandle - in defiance of a hastily assembled petition got up by residents of the base's host city, which was called Niceville. A radio poll that found 80 percent of Niceville's residents didn't want them. The Associated Press reported, "Children in one school joked about shooting a few." High school kids spoke in class of plans to organize a "Gook Klux Klan." Students in a twelfth-grade psychology class told their teacher they were worried the refugees would try to convert them to Communism.

"Disease, disease, disease, that's all I've heard," complained a congressman representing another relocation site, the San Diego County Marine base, Camp Pendleton, of the phone calls he was getting. "They think of the Vietnamese as nothing but diseased job seekers." In Arkansas, at Fort Chaffee, which admitted twenty-five thousand refugees, the compound was so well guarded that a radical journalist compared it to the "strategic hamlets" the U.S. used to build in South Vietnam. A recently returned veteran told him, "I don't like the people personally. I didn't see anything worth saving and I don't now." The protest placards real "GOOKS GO HOME."

In Detroit, a black autoworker told the New York Times, "People are losing their cars, houses, jobs. Let them stay there until we do something for people here." In Valparaiso, Indiana, a salesman asked, "How do you know we're not getting the bad guys? You can't say for sure. Nobody can, and Lord knows we've got enough Communist infiltration now." President Ford implored, "We can afford to be generous to refugees" as "a matter of principle." Mayor Daley responded, "Charity begins at home." The Seattle City Council voted seven to one against a pro-settlement resolution. California governor Jerry Brown said Congress's refugee bill should be amended with a "jobs for Americans first" pledge. Explained Harvard sociologist David Riesman, "The national mood is poisonous and dangerous and this is one symptom - striking out at helpless refugees whose number is infinitesimal."

- Rick Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and The Rise of Reagan, p. 431-432.

Just swap out "Vietnamese" for "Syrians", change the racial slurs, and swap out "Communism" for "terrorism", and you have the same damn controversy. History repeats itself.

[dem in texas]

1. What goes around comes around.

Last year I read a book (The Graves are Walking) about the Irish Potato famine of the 1840's which had a big effect on me. In this book you see the same attitudes as mentioned above. At that time, the US put a $5 a head entrance fee to try to keep the Irish out. People said they were dirty, disease ridden and would work for lower wages. If you want a good read, I recommend this book because there are so many other parallels to what is happening today, including how the conservative British Parliament handled the crisis, (let the free market reign, forget about all the people dying of hunger).

[jwirr]

2. I suspect that if we looked at the refugees from the Nazis

in many countries were treated the same way. It does not speak well of us.

[Wounded Bear]

3. It particularly strikes me as disingenuous...

how people who would routinely vote against "doing something for people here" will say "Let them stay there until we do something for people here."

Hypocrisy at its finest.