Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

I believe it likely that many well meaning Americans don’t fully understand the powerful words above or the historical context of the anti-immigration hysteria that’s pervasive in this country today. After all, it’s not bigotry’s first assault on this country’s lofty ideals, as there have been other times when the denigration of an immigrant minority was the ammunition of choice for an elite class seeking to maintain their power and cultural purity. The similarities between the tactics and distortions of hate and exclusion that were used in the 1800’s and 1900’s and those in use today are eerily familiar. Unfortunately, it seems that in this case we may have not learned from history and unless the moral and compassionate forces that seek inclusion over exclusion prevail, we may be doomed to repeat it.

During the period of time immediately preceding the Civil War, there was a tremendous anti-immigrant backlash against the more than two million Irish who came to the United States seeking to escape the economic devastation and despair of the potato famine. Just like many Latino immigrants who come to this country today fleeing poverty and hunger, the Irish were disturbingly depicted by the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority of the time as dangerous invaders and racial outsiders that would change American culture forever.

A political party known as the American Party, or as they came to be known the Know-Nothings was even formed, with the anti-Irish immigrant movement their expressed reason-for-being. Its members argued that the nation's business owners needed to hire only true Americans and they fought to deny the Irish employment, believing erroneously that they took jobs from American workers, lowered wages and drained needed benefits from others. Sound familiar?

And just like today, they also used racial stereotypes to instill fear and hatred of the newcomers in Americans. The Irish were portrayed as filthy, lazy drunkards, a lethal charge at a time when Prohibition was rearing its ugly head, with I might add, significant political support. They also attempted to use economic fear to malign the Irish immigrants, a message that is pervasive in the anti-immigrant movement of today and more radical members of the American Party believed that the Irish Catholics intended to take over the United States. They accordingly supported and fought for new legislation that sought to bring to an end the immigration of the Irish to America. These included banning Catholics from being elected to public office and extending the period of naturalization from five to 21 years.

Thankfully this virulent and hateful anti-immigration movement eventually lost steam and fell apart, ironically, because the slavery issue irrevocably divided its members.

The next significant immigration surge occurred in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s when almost 14 million Eastern and Southern Europeans and Asians emigrated to the United States. There were Italians, Hungarians, Turks, Armenians, Poles, Chinese, Russians, Slavs and Jews.

Again, the white, protestant majority cried invasion and messages of hate and intolerance again spread throughout the land. Shamefully, one of the leading anti-immigrant voices of the time was President Theodore Roosevelt who told Congress in a 1906 address that the fast reproduction of these new immigrants, and the low birth rate among Anglo women, raised the specter of race suicide. Roosevelt charged that white women who did not have children represented criminals against their race. This from the leader of the country of inclusion, and freedom that was founded by immigrants freeing oppression.

Fanning the flames of hatred and bigotry even more, was the reality, just like today, that many of the immigrants didn’t speak English. To white, Protestant America the newcomers seemed culturally backwards, ignorant, and strange looking. Racially motivated attacks grew more common, complaining that the non-white immigrants lacked the work ethic, intelligence and morals necessary to contribute to our country. This gave rise to the renaissance of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups who became permanently attached to anti-immigration movements, while popular magazines and newspapers also openly gave credence and credibility to messages of intolerance and injustice. The journal Public Opinion said this at the time.

"These people are not Americans. They are the very scum and offal of Europe".

This fear-based bigotry rose to such a fevered pitch at the end of the century, that a series of immigration restrictions were passed with the expressed goal of preserving the nation’s racial purity. The Congress banned Chinese immigration in the 1880s and excluded laborers from most other Asian countries in a 1917 immigration law and the Immigration Restriction League led by Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge helped pass the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, which drastically cut the number of immigrants allowed in this country, particularly those from Southern and Eastern Europe. This had the effect of barring Jews attempting to flee the Holocaust from coming to America, with millions dying as a result.

Surges of immigrants seeking to immigrate to America are clearly nothing new and unfortunately neither is the homegrown hatred, bigotry and intolerance that often await them, as is the case today.

The Italian philosopher and humanitarian Giorgio Agamben speaks eloquently of human beings who when reduced to "bare life" have no rights at all. This is often the condition of immigrants who come to this United States today. As a nation seeking to retain it’s dignity and moral voice, it is imperative that we hold these immigrants to be precious valued human beings who are deserving of nothing less than our humanitarian compassion, empathy and assistance.

Otherwise, those poignant and inspirational words on the Statue of Liberty will be rendered meaningless.