By Lori Lee
NDG Contributing Writer
Though the U.S. is known as a country built by immigrants, new arrivals have been repeatedly rejected by society. This is true not only in the U.S., but also in other parts of the world. The relationship is a paradox–the rejection of something that is so greatly needed.
Immigrants have shaped U.S. history, explains professor and social researcher Manuel Ortiz Escamez. During the 1830s and 1840s, Irish immigrants were a crucial labor source, helping to grow the U.S. economy. Yet, negative attitudes and stereotyping were supported by anti-immigrant literature, published works including essays by prominent inventor Samuel Morse.
According to Escamez, the Chinese were met with similar rhetoric during the 1850s and 1860s, these immigrants, largely responsible for building American railroads. Yet the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 would later ban laborer migration from China for a decade.
The “Great Wave” of immigrants came from 1900 to 1920, about a quarter million arriving by boat. They traveled weeks to reach the U.S. from Turkey, Greece, Romania, and Serbia during the Balkan Wars. Europeans also fled to avoid military service, as Mexicans migrated northward to avoid the Mexican revolution.
According to Escamez, these immigrants were needed due to an increased demand for cheap labor leading up to World War I. Despite this, anti-immigrant sentiment flourished, even though many immigrants served in the U.S. military. Some Germans even felt it necessary to hide their identities despite their disagreement with what was going on in Germany.
After the war, demand for labor plummeted, and the Great Depression prompted the U.S. government to address joblessness. According to INS records, Mexican immigrants were largely targeted with deportation, including a number of U.S. born Mexican American citizens.
The quota system, which began in 1921, restricted immigrants by nationality, while favoring Northwestern European immigrants, while limiting the possibilities for southeastern Jews to escape Nazi persecution, the Holocaust Encyclopedia reports.
The human rights movement, which began in the mid-20th century did make real attempts to bring change, explains Escamez. Eli Weisel, a survivor of Auschwitz, famously said “no human being is illegal,” a phrase that would serve as a rallying cry to those who believed the term “illegal alien” was dangerous.
During this time, legislation would attempt to redress depression-era deportations, bringing Mexican laborers in on limited contracts to meet agriculture labor shortages, according to Library of Congress records. In 1965, a preference system designed to unite immigrant families and attract skilled labor also brought immigrants from new parts of the world, including Asia and Latin America.
As much as the human rights movement moved countries around the world forward, differences in culture and religion would continue to clash. Samuel Huntington wrote of this in his “Clash of Civilizations,” which held that cultural and religious identities would be the main reason for post-Cold War conflicts.
The dissonance exists in the world today, evidenced by the recent election of the far-right AfD anti-immigration party in East Germany, as AP reports and in the current tug of war of immigration policies in the U.S.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, upheld by the Supreme Court following Trump’s attempts to push it out, provides only a sliver of rights to workers who are essential to this country, explains immigration outreach specialist Gustavo Gasca Gomez.
As a former farm worker, Gomez understands the struggles of migrant workers. The work is trying in the heat; it is dirty; and it is mind numbing, yet this work being done largely by immigrants, remains very much necessary to the country.
The workers are deeply affected by the ongoing political discourse, says Gomez, who is also a coordinator for the Stop the Hate Project.
In this historical context of discrimination, adds Executive Director for the Mixteco / Indigena Community Organizing Project (MICOP) Arsenio Lopez, when Americans, especially political leaders, use hate speech, they give a green light to it. They normalize it, and the speech can then be used, as it has historically, to oppress indigenous people.
