The History of Immigrants to America

 When Donald Trump recently announced he was running for president, many people, including me, couldn’t believe what Donald Trump said about immigrants from Mexico. “They’re bringing in drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists and some, I assume, are good people.” Of course, you know the backlash he suffered from his comments – Univision and NBC said they would not televise the Miss USA pageant, which he partly owns. Businesses like Macy’s and others refused to sell his line of clothing anymore.

As much as his words offended me and many other people, there are those who agree with him. Anti-immigration has long been a part of American politics. In fact, I heard his poll numbers rose slightly, and he may get a place on the Republican debate panel which has to limit its numbers since so many Republicans are running for President in 2016.

 

Immigration has always been a problem in our country. Benjamin Franklin worried that too many German immigrants would swamp America’s British culture. John Adams wrote “A free government and the Roman Catholic religion can never exist together in any nation or country.” Catholic churches and convents were burned in Boston and Philadelphia. Sound familiar?  Only today it is black churches in the south.

 

In the 19^th century when Irish were suffering a famine from the potato blight and immigrated to the United States, they were looked on with suspicion because they were Catholics in this largely Protestant country at that time. They were also considered drunks. The nativist American or “Know-Nothing” party had amazing election victories in 1854 in Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and New England, especially Massachusetts, where they won every statewide office including the governorship and both houses in the state legislature. What was their platform?  It was an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant ticket.

 

Later when the Italian immigrants arrived in the late 19^th century they were even more unwelcome, as well as those from anywhere in eastern and southern Europe. At the turn of the last century, the intolerance of Jews from Poland and Russia was even worse. The Ku KluxKlan? They not only went after the blacks, but also Catholics and Jews.

Somewhere around 1920, s state department office listed the 120,000 Jews who had entered the country as “twisted, unassimilable, filthy, and un-American.” One would hope in today’s world such prejudice would no longer be common, but today those same earlier fears are about immigrants from Latin America and Asia.

Many people worry immigrants are taking jobs away, costing our country money, but contrary to popular myth, immigrants do not push Americans out of jobs. They tend to fill jobs that Americans cannot or will not fill, mostly at either the high or low ends of the job market. They’re found in high-skilled fields like medicine, physics and computer science, or in lower-skilled jobs such as those found in hotels, restaurants, domestic service, light manufacturing, and, of course, working in the fields or chicken processing plants.

Immigration is an integral part of the American experiment. We are a nation of immigrants. Each wave of new immigrants has kept our country demographically young, enriched our culture. (Think pizza, tacos, stir fry and Celtic music to name just a few things.) And immigration has added to our productive capacity as a nation, enhancing our influence in the world.

It has also given the United States an economic edge in the world economy because immigrants bring innovative ideas and entrepreneurial spirit to the U.S. economy. Immigrants also raise demand for goods as well as the supply. And they are not a drain on government finances. A National Academy of Science study found that the typical immigrant and his or her offspring will pay a net $80,000 more in taxes during their lifetimes than they collect in government services. For immigrants with college degrees, the net fiscal return is $198,000. Since the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, it’s difficult for newcomers to collect welfare so immigrant use of welfare has declined along with overall welfare rolls.

Yes, we need to control our borders, but we shouldn’t turn our backs on those who come here to live the American Dream.

I Googled American Immigration and immigrants who made a difference and I found too many to list them here. Many were singers, actors, musicians, artists, doctors or scientists. And, of course, one name will always stand out and that’s Albert Einstein, a Jewish immigrant.

When you think about it, aren’t we all immigrants or descended from immigrants except for the Native Americans?

* The above information largely came from an article by Mark Shields, columnist with www.creators.com and a regular columnist in my local newspaper. Also from a commentary “Immigrants have enriched American culture and enhanced our influence in the world” by Daniel Griswold, that appeared in Insight on Feb. 18, 2002.

What have immigrants contributed to our culture that you appreciate?

What country or countries did your family immigrate from?