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IMMIGRATION: THE 250-YEAR PERSPECTIVE
Steven E. Levingston
Washington Post
July 29 2010
A federal judge on Wednesday opened the latest chapter in the tale of
Arizona's controversial immigration law, ruling on several provisions
in favor of opponents of the legislation. As the battle ensues, it
seems a good time to look back at U.S. immigration and ask, What's
different now? Peter Schrag, a visiting scholar at the Institute of
Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley,
explores the immigration debate throughout American history in his
book "Not Fit for Our Society: Immigration and Nativism in America,"
recently released by University of California Press. Schrag finds that
the fear and loathing Americans now have of newcomers isn't terribly
different from the sentiments long abroad in the land.
By Peter Schrag
The echoes are eerily familiar. Immigrants, legal and illegal, take
American jobs, undercut wages, bring crime and disease, and burden
medical and other social services. They don't learn our language
and customs; their kids drag down the schools. The arguments come
from radio and TV talkers, from FAIR, the Federation for American
Immigration Reform, from scholars like the late Samuel Huntington of
Harvard, and, of course, from politicians of almost every stripe.
But what they're saying today -- mostly about Latinos -- was said a
century ago about Italians, Slavs, Greeks, Jews, Armenians and Turks,
and, before them, about the Irish and the Germans, many of them
the same people from whom today's immigration restrictionists are
descended. The Chinese and Japanese, ironically, were to be excluded
because they worked too hard
Rep. Henry Cabot Lodge and other proper Yankee Brahmins said it
in 1890; some of the nation's great progressives said it; the
Know-Nothings said it. Even Ben Franklin said it back in 1751,
warning that Pennsylvania was becoming "a Colony of Aliens, who will
shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying
them and will never adopt our Language or Customs any more than they
can acquire our Complexion."
A century ago, Armenians had to go to federal court to be legally
regarded as white so they could be naturalized. Today a descendant of
Armenian immigrants, Mark Krikorian heads the Center for Immigration
Studies, among the nation's most influential anti-immigration groups.
We call ourselves a nation of immigrants, and so we are. It's long been
a cliché that the children and grandchildren of groups once deemed
unfit for our society have been among the most creative and energetic
contributors to our economy, our culture and our strength as a nation.
Immigration and opposition to immigration have long been woven around
each other like a double helix. We want them in good times and don't
want them in bad. We want immigrants as workers, as someone said,
but we get people.
And yet, there are also huge differences. We now live in a global
world where goods, capital and technology are supposed to flow freely
across frontiers but, in this country at least, labor is not. The
oceans are gone as effective barriers and so far the walls and fences,
the electronic gadgetry, and the huge increase in the Border Patrol
and other immigration personnel haven't deterred the flow of people.
On the contrary, by making it harder to cross -- more expensive, more
dangerous -- the enhanced enforcement has led many of those who once
shuttled seasonally across the border to stay here and send for their
families, thereby greatly increasing the population of illegal aliens.
And as we are learning, there are other unintended consequences as well
-- in off-shoring of jobs, in ancillary drug traffic and, as in the
reaction to Arizona's SB1070, in mounting foreign relations problems.
So we need new strategies to reduce illegal immigration -- through
rigorous enforcement of the labor and worker safety laws, which may
itself reduce the incentive of employers to hire and exploit illegal
workers, and, most of all, through development of the Mexican economy
and infrastructure, all conditioned, as the European Union did
with Spain and Portugal, on reform of Mexico's legal and economic
institutions. If the United States spent a fraction on Mexican
investment that it has spent in Iraq we might get a lot more for it.
From: A. Papazian
Steven E. Levingston
Washington Post
July 29 2010
A federal judge on Wednesday opened the latest chapter in the tale of
Arizona's controversial immigration law, ruling on several provisions
in favor of opponents of the legislation. As the battle ensues, it
seems a good time to look back at U.S. immigration and ask, What's
different now? Peter Schrag, a visiting scholar at the Institute of
Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley,
explores the immigration debate throughout American history in his
book "Not Fit for Our Society: Immigration and Nativism in America,"
recently released by University of California Press. Schrag finds that
the fear and loathing Americans now have of newcomers isn't terribly
different from the sentiments long abroad in the land.
By Peter Schrag
The echoes are eerily familiar. Immigrants, legal and illegal, take
American jobs, undercut wages, bring crime and disease, and burden
medical and other social services. They don't learn our language
and customs; their kids drag down the schools. The arguments come
from radio and TV talkers, from FAIR, the Federation for American
Immigration Reform, from scholars like the late Samuel Huntington of
Harvard, and, of course, from politicians of almost every stripe.
But what they're saying today -- mostly about Latinos -- was said a
century ago about Italians, Slavs, Greeks, Jews, Armenians and Turks,
and, before them, about the Irish and the Germans, many of them
the same people from whom today's immigration restrictionists are
descended. The Chinese and Japanese, ironically, were to be excluded
because they worked too hard
Rep. Henry Cabot Lodge and other proper Yankee Brahmins said it
in 1890; some of the nation's great progressives said it; the
Know-Nothings said it. Even Ben Franklin said it back in 1751,
warning that Pennsylvania was becoming "a Colony of Aliens, who will
shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying
them and will never adopt our Language or Customs any more than they
can acquire our Complexion."
A century ago, Armenians had to go to federal court to be legally
regarded as white so they could be naturalized. Today a descendant of
Armenian immigrants, Mark Krikorian heads the Center for Immigration
Studies, among the nation's most influential anti-immigration groups.
We call ourselves a nation of immigrants, and so we are. It's long been
a cliché that the children and grandchildren of groups once deemed
unfit for our society have been among the most creative and energetic
contributors to our economy, our culture and our strength as a nation.
Immigration and opposition to immigration have long been woven around
each other like a double helix. We want them in good times and don't
want them in bad. We want immigrants as workers, as someone said,
but we get people.
And yet, there are also huge differences. We now live in a global
world where goods, capital and technology are supposed to flow freely
across frontiers but, in this country at least, labor is not. The
oceans are gone as effective barriers and so far the walls and fences,
the electronic gadgetry, and the huge increase in the Border Patrol
and other immigration personnel haven't deterred the flow of people.
On the contrary, by making it harder to cross -- more expensive, more
dangerous -- the enhanced enforcement has led many of those who once
shuttled seasonally across the border to stay here and send for their
families, thereby greatly increasing the population of illegal aliens.
And as we are learning, there are other unintended consequences as well
-- in off-shoring of jobs, in ancillary drug traffic and, as in the
reaction to Arizona's SB1070, in mounting foreign relations problems.
So we need new strategies to reduce illegal immigration -- through
rigorous enforcement of the labor and worker safety laws, which may
itself reduce the incentive of employers to hire and exploit illegal
workers, and, most of all, through development of the Mexican economy
and infrastructure, all conditioned, as the European Union did
with Spain and Portugal, on reform of Mexico's legal and economic
institutions. If the United States spent a fraction on Mexican
investment that it has spent in Iraq we might get a lot more for it.
From: A. Papazian