immigration

I was reading Trevor Royle’s tome about the Crimean War (I have a character weakness for military history) when I stumbled on the American “Know Nothing” movement of l854-1856. My Lou Dobbs bell rang. The Know Nothings were a bunch of American “nativists” ….. people who thought the country was being overrun by immigrants, in this case Roman Catholic immigrants who, on orders from the Pope, were stealing our breath.
It was all very confusing……the Know Nothings were for a while, formidable……taking over the state of Massachusetts in 1854, electing Mayors in several cities including San Fancisco and Washington D. C. The two-party system was collapsing in a poisonous brew of jingoism, religious hatred and slavery….. The country was barely 78 years old and already we were in the business of excluding disagreeable newcomers. But the republic survived…..and the Know Nothings disappeared into the larger soup of this democracy.

This immigration stuff isn’t easy and not given to easy solutions. Lou Dobbs whines each evening…..avenging embattled border guards and dusting off the old Know Nothing rhetoric. One does worry about the illegals swarming across the southern border today, often taking entry level jobs. Is there room? But wait a minute….who’s really out of a job? They say unemployment is at a all-time low. My question is…..how do these desperate folks really differ from those Irish and German immigrants in the middle of the 19th Century who cleaned our homes and built our railroads?

Just a thought.