America's greatest paranoia
Fear of immigration is misguided belief
Cynthia E. Bass
Sunday, April 23, 2006
San Francisco Chronicle
If America is a nation of immigrants, why is it that immigration
remains so hotly debated?
It's just a new version of a very old debate. Immigration has been
controversial in this country ever since its inception. At the heart of
the controversy is fear. The real problem with immigrants is -- and
always has been -- fear that these outsiders will overwhelm and
undermine the unique way of life that makes America great.
But why, if America is so great, should we see ourselves as so
vulnerable? For if history is any guide, this perception of cultural
vulnerability is, in the long run, always wrong.
Always? Yes. America has long been awash with immigrants, all bringing
in remarkably un-American ways of life and thought -- and, often,
language -- yet we never have drowned in this flood. All these
outsiders have ultimately become Americans, despite over two centuries'
worth of nativist predictions of imminent doom.
One of our earliest, and most outspoken, doomsayers was Ben Franklin.
He was very concerned about a certain nonwhite population he saw
overrunning his beloved Pennsylvania: The Germans! Disliking what he
labeled their "tawny" complexions, their refusal to learn English
(sound familiar?), and their "Germanizing" ways, he wrote: "Why should
Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of Aliens?"
Franklin's worries, of course, were groundless; not only did his "tawny
Aliens" rapidly turn into integrated -- and English-speaking --
Americans, but many of them soon became anti-immigrant themselves.
The first (of many) nationwide anti-immigrant protests came early in
the 19th century, in response to the first (of many) waves of Irish
immigrants, all fleeing the first (of many) potato famines. These
protests, by and large, were religiously based: immigrants from
Protestant Europe were tolerated, if not always welcomed, but the Irish
were Roman Catholic, which America emphatically was not.
These protests coalesced with the founding of the American Party --
also known, and deservedly so, as the Know-Nothings -- in the turbulent
years before the Civil War. The Know-Nothings were originally the Order
of the Star-Spangled Banner, a name derived from their ritualistic
reply when asked what they stood for: "I know nothing." Actually, they
stood for something quite specific: anti-Catholic immigration. They saw
the "hordes of Papists" (and hungry Papists at that) as a dangerous
threat to the "nature" of Protestant America, and thus to America
itself.
Furthermore, they asked, where would these immigrants' loyalties lie
over time: the United States, or in Rome, with the Pope?
The Know-Nothings ran for office, with some local success. San
Francisco had a Know-Nothing mayor, Stephen Palfrey Webb, for eight
months in the mid-1850s. (Perhaps Mayor Gavin Newsom hopes to absolve
the city of this embarrassment through his thoroughly pro-immigration
position.) However, they never succeeded in pushing through any
anti-immigrant legislation.
Irish Catholics continued to pour into the country. And just like the
"tawny" Germans, they too became thoroughly Americanized while
strengthening, not weakening, the American "nature."
After the Civil War, fear of immigrants took a nasty pseudo-scientific
turn, influenced by faux-Darwinist thought claiming "survival of the
fittest" meant the superiority of Western Europeans (and, of course,
us). Anti-immigrant sentiment now became more concerned with race than
religion. Attention shifted toward the Southern and Eastern Europeans
flooding our shores. Italians, Poles, Russians, Greeks: all were
proclaimed to be of a different race from Americans, incapable of (and
uninterested in) assimilation, and clearly about to swamp the "real"
America with their babble and babies. A popular poem of the time
captures all this: "O Liberty, white Goddess! Is it well / To leave the
gates unguarded?"
And on top of all this, moaned the nativists, were the Chinese, who
were so foreign -- their speech, their clothes, their religion, even
their food -- that they were perhaps not merely another race, but
another species. From the 1880s on, anti-Chinese laws, particularly in
California, became increasingly stringent, creating a "slammed door"
policy that remained firmly in place for decades.
Southern and Eastern European immigration was allowed to continue until
the 1920s. (It was argued that if we didn't let "them" in, who would do
the jobs "real Americans" never would do -- work in the slaughterhouse,
roll the cigars, stitch gloves in an attic for pennies a week?)
Between 1860 and 1921, over 30 million immigrants found a new home in
America, and so did their children and grandchildren.
For an example of precisely how many immigrants arrived every day, see
last Sunday's Chronicle with its reprint of its April 16, 1906, front
page, two days before the Great Earthquake. In just one day, the paper
reported, 11,839 immigrants entered the country.
Then, in 1921, the ax fell. A series of immigration restriction laws,
complete with quotas, tightly restricted almost all access to America,
from Angel Island to Ellis Island. The nativists sighed with relief; at
long last their ancient nightmare -- that immigration was about to
dilute the essence of America -- had been expunged.
The nativists were right that these new laws would greatly restrict
immigration (at least legal immigration); they did then and they still
do today.
But they were -- and remain -- very wrong in their fear that
immigration dilutes some sort of quintessential American identity.
Like the Germans of the 18th century and the Irish Catholics of the
mid-19th century, the children of those "inferior" Eastern and Southern
Europeans and Asians all eventually became thoroughly Americanized.
As we confront today's immigration issues, we should banish the fear
that America will somehow be transformed in an inimical way by today's
newcomers. By all means improve border security; and by all means
address illegality. But let's do both with a confidence that today's
immigrants -- both legal and illegal -- will, if given the chance that
the rest of us have had, become Americans.