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.