The optics don’t look regarding how our nation is handling the immigration situation.
My ancestors came to the U.S. in the 1840s seeking a better life, more freedom from overreaching clergy and government, and a chance to own their own land. Their story has been repeated tens of millions of times since the 1620s.
Our nation’s history is one of immigrants. “History might not always repeat itself, but it usually rhymes,” Mark Twain said. Alas, every group or wave of immigrants has experienced animosity, repression, discriminatorv and sometimes violence.
When the Irish came on heels of the mid-1840s potato famine, they were not wanted. In east coast port cities where they arrived, signs in store windows read “Irish not served,” “Irish need not apply (for work)” and worse.
For generations, some Irish immigrants lived in big city slum districts and took work no one else wanted — cleaning homes and stores, in factories, rolling cigars and other piecework, hauling garbage, mucking out stables and removing dead horses from the streets. Others became firefighters and police officers — low-status jobs at the time.
It happened again when Germans came to this country, many trying to escape tyrannical rulers and church officials. Russians and Eastern Europeans, mainly Jews, came to escape the barbaric pogroms of czars and rulers.
In time Italians came here, escaping economic hardships and wars in their country. More recently we have seen a huge migration of people from Latin and South America, as well as poverty-stricken and war-torn Haiti.
All came to the U.S. to escape a dreadful situation at home and seek a better life for themselves and their children. They were willing to live in horrid apartments no one else wanted and work long hours for little pay.
The American ethos has long been to accept the desperate and extend a helping hand to those in need. Even when we have not done a great job of it, that is what we claim to believe.
A great challenge faced by new immigrants was and remains animosity from those who came in previous generations. In New York, riots against the Irish were common. A few years later, in Cincinnati and other places in the Midwest, the rioters turned on Germans. We have seen and know all too well of the brutality against Jews, Catholics and others. We still see it happening.
That anger results from fear. Of what? “They” will take low-paying, tedious, backbreaking jobs “we” don’t want to do? “They” might marry into “our” families?”
Fear is expressed with dire warnings about criminals and bad actors. Really? A fictional tale about a street gang or crime makes a good story. No one is interested in reading about the perseverance of the vast majority of those who came to this country.
For example, no one has made a movie about the Harner family who moved from Sweden to Aurora, Ill. They were bakers and like many first-generation immigrants lived above the shop. “We let our business build our home,” was a persistent message they taught others after they came to America.
We are seeing a lot of animosity aimed at our latest immigrants, and those optics are not good because they are not who we profess to be.
A new detention center was just built in the Florida Everglades surrounded by pythons and alligators. That alone is a bad optic. Even worse is when we see people grinning in approval that anyone who tries making a run for it might become dinner for a dangerous reptile.
Once we run out of illegal immigrants to detain or deport, and families to break up, who will be next? Once a lack of empathy is established as the new ethos, hatred always needs another victim.
One example of this was when the French Revolution got out of hand. First it was the king, queen and some members of the nobility, then it worked its way down the social hierarchy to working class people. It was a steady progression of hate.
The same thing happened a decade or so ago between two major tribes in Rwanda. It happened in communist Russia and Nazi Germany. In China, if someone is accused of having “wrong ideas” they lose many of their civil rights and freedoms until they have been rehabilitated in education camps.
Only the naïve will proclaim, “It Can’t Happen Here!” That was the title of a 1935 Upton Sinclair novel showing how easy it would be for an American president to imitate the rise of European dictators.
In it, a presidential candidate named Windrip rallies voters behind his promises of tremendous economic reforms that would bring prosperity to the people, using a populist message to whip up their fears. He promises to restore America’s greatness.
To enforce his message, Windrip has his own army of Minute Men who rough up members of the opposition. When necessary, they fix bayonets and storm into crowds of protestors.
Windrip wins the election, defeating both the Republicans and Democrats, then eliminates the power of the legislature and the courts. Just as the new president expected, the crowds go along with everything he says and does.
It is not long before Windrip turns on his own supporters, exiling or eliminating the men who helped elect him. Opposition reporters and editors are shipped off to concentration camps while others flee the country. Some simply disappear.
In time, people begin to realize that Windrip is a hollow blowhard and bully who knows nothing about economics nor how to lead a nation. A devastating civil war is the inevitable end.
Lewis wrote this novel about the 1930s Louisiana populist demagogue Huey Long, but scholars have repeatedly seen similarities, such as when FDR established prison camps for Japanese Americans, Nixon “masterminded” Watergate, on and on.
“Whether this is first day of the Apocalypse,” wrote a longtime friend recently, “or the first day of the Golden Age, our work remains the same — to love each other and ease as much suffering as possible.”
Let’s commit ourselves to doing the right thing.
