May 11, 2018: White House Chief of Staff John Kelly Flubs the Immigrant Question

 

5/11/18: At 9:02 a.m. I check the president’s Twitter feed. Not a tweet for the day to be found (or if he has tweeted it hasn’t been posted yet on the site I check). Even better, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly hasn’t said anything insulting about immigrants all weekend.  As a former Marine, I believe General Kelly is proving that the skills which make you a good combat leader don’t necessarily mean you’re going to have a firm grip on complex social issues. If you want stuff blown up, Kelly is your man. If you want someone to comment with insight on immigration, you’d probably do better with almost anyone else (except Trump).

 

The Washington Post ran an interesting article recently, comparing Kelly’s “keep-the-riff-raff-out” comments regarding today’s immigrants to the Kelly family tree. It turns out seven of his eight great-grand parents were immigrants. Three were from Ireland. Four were from Italy.

  

Since I taught American history for decades, I might note that Irish immigrants were almost entirely low-skilled (and starving) individuals when they fled their country in the face of the Great Famine. Nor were they welcomed to these shores . They were usually uneducated, spoke limited English, and, worst of all in the minds of many natives (not those Natives), they were Catholic. It was said repeatedly that the Irish would never be loyal to anyone but the Pope. 

Italian immigrants, arriving generally after 1900, were considered equally undesirable. They were “swarthy,” not of the “best racial stock,” according to some of the leading thinkers of the era. It was also said they brought crime with them – and, of course, some did. But every Italian male, according to nativist thinking of that era, was a mafia member in the making. 

For that reason, Kelly’s recent comments seem ignorant at best. We already know the president never reads a book. That means his ignorance is profound. Kelly seems little better. Asked about illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican border, he told reporters: “Let me step back and tell you that the vast majority of the people that move illegally into United States are not bad people. They’re not criminals. They’re not MS13.” 

So far, so good. Kelly sounded like he grasped the nuances that escaped his clueless Hater Boss.

 

Unfortunately, Kelly kept rambling: “But they’re also not people that would easily assimilate into the United States into our modern society.” 

These immigrants did not speak English well, he warned, as if he imagined his Italian great-grandparents did. Today’s immigrants, Kelly added, were “overwhelmingly rural people” from countries where “fourth-, fifth-, sixth-grade educations are kind of the norm…They don’t integrate well; they don’t have skills. They’re not bad people. They’re coming here for a reason. And I sympathize with the reason. But the laws are the laws.” 

That “the laws are the laws” is a tautology. 

That immigrants in the first generation have difficulty assimilating has always been the rule. Nevertheless, first-generation Irish helped build the nation’s canals and railroads. First-generation Italians went to work in coal mines and steel mills, working long hours for low pay. Today, first-generation Mexicans and Hondurans roof houses, groom golf courses, and nanny American-born kids. The second-generation Irish became policemen in Boston. The second-generation Italians, like the DiMaggio brothers, starred on the diamond. Second-generation Hondurans and Mexicans in the DACA program join the United States military (you’d think Kelly would notice), care for the sick in hospitals, and teach in our schools. 

We all need to stop freaking out over the “immigrant invasion.”

Anti-Irish immigrant cartoon.

Italian immigrants - unlikely to speak English.