The Real History of American Immigration Trump’s break with tradition may be good or bad, but it’s definitely different.
Joshua Zeitz on Politico puts President Trump’s “merit-based” immigration proposal in its proper historical light.
Zeitz sensibly claims that “to claim [as the administration has] that the current flow of `unskilled’ immigrants into the United States is `historic’—or a break from precedent—is to betray history.
The great immigration wave that delivered some 40 million newcomers to the United States between 1830 and 1940 was comprised largely of unskilled workers with minimal English-language proficiency. For every third- or fourth-generation white ethnic family, there is a stunning success story, but in the aggregate, their ancestors experienced little economic mobility in their own lifetimes. Many of them had little interest in even being American; they came to earn money and return home.”
He further notes that:
“If we’re going to have a discussion about immigration, we should be honest about our collective history. Today’s immigrants look a lot like yesterday’s. They resemble my great-grandparents, who came to the United States without a word of English or a practical skill, but full of grit, ambition and pragmatic hope. That’s very much an American story, and it has to be part of the current conversation.”
KJ