Letters: Anti-immigration: It's an American thing

WE LIKE to say that the United States is a nation of immigrants from everywhere who get along together - a melting pot that works. It's partly hard-won truth, partly comforting national myth.

Gingerly avoided are three immigration elephants in the room that we'd rather not think about: the almost 400,000 Africans brought here in shackles; the Native Americans forced on genocidal internal migrations; and the Japanese slapped into internment camps during World War II and stripped of their property.

But there are even larger numbers of other immigrants who have received a less-than-warm welcome.

Violence against "the wrong kind" of immigrants blossomed in the 19th century. There was a major anti-Catholic riot in Bangor, Maine, in 1834. Even earlier, Boston mobs in 1823, 1826 and 1828 attacked the homes of immigrant Irish Catholic laborers. Large crowds of rioters struck again with extraordinary violence in Philadelphia in May and July 1844, burning down three Catholic churches. It took the army, with cannons, to restore order.

And it wasn't just the Irish who were victims; German Catholics also came under attack in the 1840s and '50s.

"Nativism," the credo of America for native-born Americans, led in the early 1850s to the secret Know Nothing society (so called because members would say they "know nothing" about it). They came out of the shadows as the American Party in 1855.

As ridiculous as it seems today, what the rioters and Know Nothings feared was that increasing Catholic immigration would lead to control of the United States by the pope. Anti-Catholicism and anti-Irish feelings continued to be not-so-hidden factors in our nation's politics until John F. Kennedy's election in 1960, when they were finally put to rest.

Italians were welcomed in New Orleans in 1891 with the largest mass lynching in the United States: 11 men were hung, and hundreds arrested on trumped-up charges.

While there were laws in the 1700s about residency requirements for citizenship, there were no immigration statutes; we needed everyone we could get to settle the American continent. Though many were unwelcome, anyone could come. That is, until 1875.

That year, the Page Act, the first federal immigration law, responded to the growing number of Asian immigrants. It was followed by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. These began Washington's efforts to quiet rising national fears of the "Yellow Peril." The Chinese, much like today's Muslims, were considered too different culturally to ever be assimilated.

The 20th and 21st centuries saw a flood of 23 other statutes that set up barriers to immigration and citizenship. Many were designed to assure that "the character" of the United States wouldn't change: white, Protestant, British and Northern Europeans were always to be the majority in America. It hasn't worked.

In 2012, black, Hispanic, Asian and multiracial children were half of those under 5 years of age, and 37 percent of Americans were from these minorities. By 2010, Texas, California, New Mexico, Hawaii and the District of Columbia had become minority-majority jurisdictions. By 2043 it will be true of the entire country.

We have about 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, a quarter of our 40 million foreign-born residents; the great majority of the 11 million are Hispanic. As the most visible segment of the minority explosion, Hispanics in general are on the receiving end of the loudest attacks.

Protests today are not aimed at them simply as Hispanics: That sounds too much like prejudice. "Legality" has now become the focal point, but it's a euphemism for fear of fundamental social change.

The rallying cries today are "Secure the border," (meaning the one with Mexico, not the one with Canada) and "No amnesty" (meaning don't let all these Hispanics ever become citizens who might out-vote us).

Hispanics, already the country's largest minority, together with other minorities, will inevitably have a dominant voice not only in many local and state governments, but the federal government, as well. When it happens, it will again demonstrate that the real genius of the American nation is the ability to successfully evolve while preserving our basic institutions.

Anti-immigrant protests are an integral part of America's history. Like a virulent fever they run through our country's past and into our present. While today's fever grips us, it helps to remember that each time we've gone through this we've come out a step closer to realizing that quintessentially American vision: a truly unified nation of immigrants.