Reply to Fairfax County Public Schools -- Article on Demographic Changes

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I wonder how all the fear-mongering and bigotry against immigrants, especially Hispanic immigrants, compares to that leveled against my Irish-Catholic ancestors in the 1840s?  Plus ce change, plus ce la meme chose, n'est ce pas? [/quote]

Laws then and now please?

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Major laws

1790 - Naturalization Act of 1790 placed no restrictions on immigration, but limited citizenship to white persons only. 
1875 - Page Act limits immigration of "undesirables,' largely aimed at Asian indentured laborers, Asian women and people who would be considered convicts in their own country.
1882 - Chinese Exclusion Act banned immigration from China. 
1917 - Immigration Act of 1917 further restricts immigration from Asia 
1924 - Introduces nationality quotas in response to increased immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe.  Needed to keep out the PolacksDagos and Chinks.  Oh, and let's not forget the Jews.

But beyond the laws, is the sentiment of so-called "nativist" sentiment.  More than 5 million Irish immigrants came to America between 1820 and 1920.  In the early 19th century, their presence stoked "nativist" passions among Protestant "native" Americans who feared that their large numbers, poverty and religion threatened to undermine America's economic, political and social order.  Most Irish immigrants fleeing the An Gorta Mor in Ireland were unskilled peasants.  They sought out work as laborers and were viewed as a threat by "native" workingmen.  They crowded together in rooming houses and tenements in slums that bred disease.  They drank... a lot, and many of them were not native English speakers.  Native Protestants feared their religion - Roman Catholicism - fearing that the Irish were loyal to a foreign potentate who was against the American ideas of democracy and self government.  Political cartoons of the era depict Catholic bishops as crocodiles and the Irish with simian features.  In response to Protestant mobs threatening Catholic Churches in New York, Archbishop John Hughes surrounded his cathedral with armed Irish men.  The Know Nothing Movement of the 1850s coalesced largely around anti-immigrant and anti-Irish sentiment.  Abraham Lincoln criticized them thus: "We practically read it [the Declaration of Independence] to mean all men are created equal except Negroes.  When the Know Nothings get control, we shall read it to mean that all men are created equal except for Negroes, foreigners and Catholics.  When it comes to this, I shall prefer to move to some country that makes no pretense of loving liberty - to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be take pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."

I see the same anti-immigrant sentiment today, with the Tea Party being an heir to the "nativist" bigotry of the Know Nothings.

NINA

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