Know Nothings and Immigrants: Some Things Never Change

[pampango]

In truth, she was just one of 2.5 million immigrants who fled starvation and poverty in Ireland to come to America. They were not welcomed with open arms. What they faced was hostility. The anti-immigrant feelings were even more blatant than those we see directed at Mexicans today. Employers openly stated "No Irish Need Apply" when they offered jobs. These immigrants were poor, mostly uneducated and perhaps most terrifying of all, Catholic. This "threat" spread fear among American Protestants and a mass movement, the Know Nothings, came into existence. The name came from a promise by members, that if asked about the organization, they were to say they "know nothing" about it.

These anti-immigrant activists organized the American Party, and successfully ran candidates around the country, pledged to stamp out the evils of immigration. The complaints that were made about Irish immigrants are pretty similar to those we hear today about Mexican immigrants. The xenophobes insisted the Irish were lazy, prone to crime, drank too much, and were stealing jobs from good white Americans. And, of course, they were also Catholics, in cahoots with the Vatican to take control of the United States and stamp out Protestantism, for good measure.

All my immigrant ancestors came to America during a time when immigration was bureaucratically simple. This is what so many anti-immigrant Americans forget, when they talk about how their "ancestors came to America legally." Of course, they did. Back then it was easy to immigrate legally and damn hard to immigrate illegally. The hardest part of immigration during the 19th century was the boat trip...

What baffles me is why the modern Know Nothings, with their Tea Party rallies and anti-immigration rhetoric, assume their perceptions are so much more accurate than their compadres in the 1800s. Personally, I suspect that these modern advocates of closing the immigration door are no more likely to be correct. History does repeat itself, or at the very least, bad ideas continue to come back, over and over, just with different labels attached. And the bad ideas are no more correct, a century later, than they were during the first round of this debate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-peron/know-nothings-and-immigra_b_995402.html