History marches on; Nativism marches in place
From Ampersand at Alas a Blog comes this great cartoon chronicling our long history of welcoming "your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore."
catagories:
immigration,
nativism
2 comments:
YES! LOVE IT! Big fan of this stuff... posted a bunch of links in the Tancredo post (2 below this one) to the History Project collection of anti-immigrant cartoons from the 1800's where the Irish are apes and Europeans & Asians are destroying this country. Anyone serious about immigration must check these out.
the EXACT same arguments used today are the ones they had a 130 years ago. Just substitute 'Mexican' for 'Irish' (in the same way that gay marriage opponents use the same arguments that were used against "inter-racial" marriage).
GENIUS!
The perpetual regeneration of xenophobia is one of the more demoralizing aspects of the immigration debate today. It's like Freddy Krueger or the creature in Alien--just when you think you're rid of it, it pops up again somewhere else. Based on historical patterns, we can anticipate that in 50 years, Americans of Mexican and Chinese descent will be busy demonizing recently arrived Malians or Kazakhs (I've used this before elsewhere, but if xenophobes can recycle their arguments, so can I).
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