On Friday, April 12, The New York Times ran an article on recent immigrants, with a top of the story focusing on a young man from the Democratic Republic of Congo who is learning to be a lobsterman in Maine.
A telling comment in the story was that while many of the immigrants have settled in certain cities, often to be near others or because they were bused there by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, today's immigration scene isn't necessarily economically advantageous. Many of the immigrants don’t end up in places that would benefit most from their labor. Obviously, it’s also not ideal for the migrants in search of work.
As my forthcoming book “Still Trending: A Divided America from Newspaper to Newsfeed” (due out Aug. 6 and available for preorder on Amazon at amzn.to/3uBG12W) notes, this often misplaced workforce isn’t a new phenomenon.
With the abolition of slavery in 1865, Southerners complained about the need for labor on their plantations and farms. The waves of immigrants coming to America’s shores tended to congregate in Northern or West Coast cities. However, the South wasn’t willing to settle for just any immigrants.
A letter from “M.G.” in the Bossier Banner of Bellevue, Louisiana, on June 11, 1914, typified this viewpoint. It said, in part:
“We need a class of people who will assimilate with our people, make this country their home and work for its welfare.
… The brave and hardy English, German, Swede, Irish, and most of the other Northern European inhabitants make desirable citizens in our country. In the first place our ancestors, the founders of our present Constitution and Government, were immigrants from these countries and came here to be free in every manner, especially in their religious rights.
… But, we do not seek all the immigrants from Europe, nor do we wish those from Asia and Africa. Such immigrants as the Italians, Sicilians, Greeks and Jews are very undesirable. They are not home builders or land tillers, they do not makesatisfactory workmen for our lumber mills, which are numerous in Louisiana, Mississippi and the other Southern States …”
Sound familiar? Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump recently repeated what he basically has said previously when he told a group of potential millionaire donors in Florida:
“These are people coming in from prisons and jails. They’re coming in from just unbelievable places and countries, countries that are a disaster. And when I said, you know, ‘Why can’t we allow people to come in from nice countries,’ I’m trying to be nice. Nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”
Interestingly, a letter from “Long Cane” in the Abbeville Press and Banner, of South Carolina, on April 2, 1873, accuses the North of basically promoting what some people nowadays probably would call REVERSE “replacement theory.” The letter said, in part:
“Editors Abbeville Press and Banner:
Go to Europe and you will find the same discouragement — mis-representations of the South, circulated through any railroad train, public inn, thoroughfare, or place of amusement — going to shew (sic) that the condition of the poor European immigrant is ten degrees lower than that of the veriest slave. The North is at the bottom of all this — knowing that if immigration sets in here we too will become great and powerful.
What the North fears most now is manufacturing at the South, and she knows that without immigration, the South must go on producing cotton, to be manufactured elsewhere.”
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