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  • The Founding Immigrants

    The Founding Immigrants
    By KENNETH C. DAVIS
    Published: July 3, 2007

    Dorset, Vt.

    A PROMINENT American once said, about immigrants, “Few of their children in the country learn English... The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages ... Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”

    This sentiment did not emerge from the rancorous debate over the immigration bill defeated last week in the Senate. It was not the lament of some guest of Lou Dobbs or a Republican candidate intent on wooing bedrock conservative votes. Guess again.

    Voicing this grievance was Benjamin Franklin. And the language so vexing to him was the German spoken by new arrivals to Pennsylvania in the 1750s, a wave of immigrants whom Franklin viewed as the “most stupid of their nation.”

    About the same time, a Lutheran minister named Henry Muhlenberg, himself a recent arrival from Germany, worried that “the whole country is being flooded with ordinary, extraordinary and unprecedented wickedness and crimes. ... Oh, what a fearful thing it is to have so many thousands of unruly and brazen sinners come into this free air and unfenced country.”

    These German masses yearning to breathe free were not the only targets of colonial fear and loathing. Echoing the opinions of colonial editors and legislators, Ben Franklin was also troubled by the British practice of dumping its felons on America. With typical Franklin wit, he proposed sending rattlesnakes to Britain in return. (This did not, however, preclude numerous colonists from purchasing these convicts as indentured servants.)

    And still earlier in Pennsylvania, the Scotch-Irish had bred discontent, as their penchant for squatting on choice real estate ran headlong against the colony’s founders, the Penn family, and their genteel notions about who should own what.

    Often, the disdain for the foreign was inflamed by religion. Boston’s Puritans hanged several Friends after a Bay Colony ban on Quakerism. In Virginia, the Anglicans arrested Baptists.

    But the greatest scorn was generally reserved for Catholics — usually meaning Irish, French, Spanish and Italians. Generations of white American Protestants resented newly arriving “Papists,” and even in colonial Maryland, a supposed haven for them, Roman Catholics were nonetheless forbidden to vote and hold public office.

    Once independent, the new nation began to carve its views on immigrants into law. In considering New York’s Constitution, for instance, John Jay — later to become the first chief justice of the Supreme Court — suggested erecting “a wall of brass around the country for the exclusion of Catholics.”

    By 1790, with the United States Constitution firmly in place, the first federal citizenship law restricted naturalization to “free white persons” who had been in the country for two years. That requirement was later pushed back to five years and, in 1798, to 14 years.

    Then, as now, politics was key. Federalists feared that too many immigrants were joining the opposition. Under the 1798 Alien Act — with the threat of war in the air over French attacks on American shipping — President John Adams had license to deport anyone he considered “dangerous.” Although his secretary of state favored mass deportations, Adams never actually put anybody on a boat.

    Back then, the French warranted the most suspicion, but there were other worrisome “aliens.” A wave of “wild Irish” refugees was thought to harbor dangerous radicals. Harsh “anti-coolie” laws later singled out the Chinese. And, of course, the millions of “involuntary” immigrants from Africa and their offspring were regarded merely as persons “held to service.”

    Scratch the surface of the current immigration debate and beneath the posturing lies a dirty secret. Anti-immigrant sentiment is older than America itself. Born before the nation, this abiding fear of the “huddled masses” emerged in the early republic and gathered steam into the 19th and 20th centuries, when nativist political parties, exclusionary laws and the Ku Klux Klan swept the land.

    As we celebrate another Fourth of July, this picture of American intolerance clashes sharply with tidy schoolbook images of the great melting pot. Why has the land of “all men are created equal” forged countless ghettoes and intricate networks of social exclusion? Why the signs reading “No Irish Need Apply”? And why has each new generation of immigrants had to face down a rich glossary of now unmentionable epithets? Disdain for what is foreign is, sad to say, as American as apple pie, slavery and lynching.

    That fence along the Mexican border now being contemplated by Congress is just the latest vestige of a venerable tradition, at least as old as John Jay’s “wall of brass.” “Don’t fence me in” might be America’s unofficial anthem of unfettered freedom, but too often the subtext is, “Fence everyone else out.”


    Kenneth C. Davis is the author of “Don’t Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned.”

    Link: The Founding Immigrants - New York Times
    "Of all the manifestations of power, restraint impresses men the most." - Thucydides

  • #2
    Did you know German was banned from being spoken publicly during WW1 in the US?

    Try doing that to anyone today.

    Of course a fundamental difference between Mexican illegals and any other group of immigrants in the history of US is that their home is right next door and they can just go back home for a visit before coming back. Other immigrant groups sort of have to adopt the local culture in order to survive. Not Mexicans. They have everything in Spanish here, from their TV to movie to music to newspaper, not to mention entire blocks of merchants. They don't have to learn the local culture and can still live pretty well.
    "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

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    • #3
      The previous waves of immigrants were invited. The ones we're concerned about now have not been. It's as simple as f*cking that.

      -dale

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      • #4
        I wouldn't say they were invited. I think it's more accurate to say they followed our immigration process.
        "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by gunnut View Post
          Did you know German was banned from being spoken publicly during WW1 in the US?

          The British royalty went one step further and changed their "family" name from House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to House of Windsor!

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by dalem View Post
            The previous waves of immigrants were invited.
            -dale

            My ancestors weren't invited, we were run out of Scotland by Cromwell....

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            • #7
              Originally posted by gunnut View Post
              Did you know German was banned from being spoken publicly during WW1 in the US?

              Try doing that to anyone today.
              What?

              Let me get this right. Its wrong for the government to sponsor some speech (http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/pol...ke-heart.html), but its okay to deny others.

              What kind of 1st amendment do you think we have?

              Originally posted by gunnut View Post
              Of course a fundamental difference between Mexican illegals and any other group of immigrants in the history of US is that their home is right next door and they can just go back home for a visit before coming back. Other immigrant groups sort of have to adopt the local culture in order to survive. Not Mexicans. They have everything in Spanish here, from their TV to movie to music to newspaper, not to mention entire blocks of merchants. They don't have to learn the local culture and can still live pretty well.
              One day you would have us believe that Mexican women get all knocked up before coming over so they can anchor themselves once they're here in order to leech off our welfare state (http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/pol...eemption.html),
              and the next you make it sound like they're just visiting. Or at least, they should be, since their real home is right next door.

              Guess what. They're here to stay. With all their Spanish radio and Mexican customs and all the other baggage. Its not going anywhere as long as they're alive, because you're not moving 12 million people.

              All those beloved mostly-Protestant German immigrants, who were welcomed into the country for decades had lots of baggage too. Just before the turn of the 20th century there were about as many German speakers as English speakers. Of course their children all spoke English fluently. Which is how 99% of 2nd generation Mexicans speak it.

              Incidentally, would someone please describe this American culture which everyone must adopt? I'm afraid I might not fall in line...
              Last edited by FibrillatorD; 04 Jul 07,, 05:06.

              Comment


              • #8
                Were previous immigrants actually invited or were there no objection to their landing on US shores?

                The article is an interesting document. However, it is not unusual to find that those who have settled and carved a niche for themselves anywhere and have built up a common societal structure, would naturally be suspicious of any new ideas of new people arriving assailing their established way of life.

                Thus, the initial discrimination till the adequate numbers are there to assert their rights over those settled earlier.


                And so life goes on, till the next wave of immigrants arrive!


                "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

                I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

                HAKUNA MATATA

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by FibrillatorD View Post
                  Let me get this right. Its wrong for the government to sponsor some speech (http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/pol...ke-heart.html), but its okay to deny others.
                  Fib,

                  You've got an extra ")" in both your URLs. Kind takes the punch outta your indignation when your links don't work!

                  Just Kidding!
                  "Of all the manifestations of power, restraint impresses men the most." - Thucydides

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