Why stop at deporting Mexicans?
Police Van (a/k/a paddy wagon) courtesy of Wikipedia
We have heard much about Donald Trump‘s railing on an invasion of criminals from Mexico. In the Washington Post, Harold Meyerson reminds of us of our history as a nation of going after the dominant immigrant group of the day. He begins:
“Consider the paddy wagon. From the mid-19th century through the mid-20th, this was the common term for the vehicles in which police hauled convicts and arrestees to jails, courts and prisons. Consider, now, the origin of the term. The `paddies’ were Irish immigrants, who were flocking to the United States in the 1840s and ’50s, fleeing the great famine that had descended on Ireland. And the Irish, some right-thinking Protestant Americans believed, were inherently a criminal bunch.”
Sound familiar?
KJ