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.”
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Anti-Irish immigrant cartoon. |
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Italian immigrants - unlikely to speak English. |
