I PITY THE POOR IMMIGRANT
Are we, as I was told in school long ago, a nation of immigrants? Or is there a separate “we” – people like me, whose ancestors came from western Europe – who get to call themselves the real Americans, and reserve the “immigrant” label for people who come from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, or Latin America?
Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in 1872, that “We Americans are all cuckoos. We make our homes in the nests of other birds.”
On the other hand, earlier this week, Fox News’s Laura Ingraham said, "The America we know and love doesn't exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don't like ... this is related to both illegal and legal immigration."
History would seem to be on the side of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Laura Ingraham’s opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, the most massive demographic change in the history of North America took place when successive waves of Europeans just showed up a few hundred years ago and made themselves at home on this continent.
To use Ingraham’s terminology, those early European immigrants foisted themselves upon the indigenous population – and killed any of them who had the temerity to object to the Europeanization of their territory. This process went on for nearly four centuries, until there was no more land to steal, and hardly any Native Americans left to kill. There is nothing in the historical record that suggests that the original inhabitants of North America voted to permit this genocidal land grab.
After 90% of the original inhabitants of the area that became known as the United States of America had been exterminated, and after most of the survivors had been herded onto reservations in the middle of nowhere, it became possible for Ingraham’s predecessors to assert that they were the real Americans, and complain about demographic changes they disapproved of.
Today, they’re even unhappy about one demographic change they themselves perpetrated. As they were exterminating the continent’s indigenous population back in the 18th and 19th centuries, people like Ingraham instituted yet another massive demographic change in America. In order to turn a profit, the Southern agrarian economy needed people who would do backbreaking labor for long hours with minimal compensation. Sadly, they discovered that very few of their fellow white folks found those kinds of jobs appealing. Who could have guessed?
Thus it came to pass that white plantation owners looked to Africa for a solution to their labor shortage. Over the years, they kidnapped just under 400,000 slaves from west Africa. There is nothing in the historical record to suggest that any of those particular undocumented immigrants voted to become slaves. Nevertheless, Africans who survived the Middle Passage became African Americans, like it or not. They maintained the plantation economy for decades, and began having children.
By 1860, there were over 4 million people of African descent in North America. Today, that number stands at 40 million. It’s safe to assume that none of them are part of the America Laura Ingraham and her viewers know and love. The Fox demographic is made up of people who believe that slavery wasn’t all that bad, and wish that the ungrateful descendants of those slaves would just go back to Africa.
From where I sit, the demographic history of America confirms Oliver Wendell Holmes’ analysis. Some of us may have ancestors who came over on the Mayflower. Others may have ancestors who arrived on a slave ship like the Greyhound, manned by the sailor who later composed “Amazing Grace.” Some of us have ancestors who fled the Irish potato famine, or religious persecution in Eastern Europe in the 19th century. Some of us have ancestors who fled political persecution in Asia or Latin America in the 20th or 21st century. But wherever they came from, if your ancestors arrived after 1492, they were immigrants.
The irony of Laura Ingraham’s anti-immigration stance is that she’s a classic beneficiary of chain migration. Her maternal grandparents were Polish immigrants who came to America in 1910 to live with a relative. They didn’t speak English, and they had no special skills. Her grandfather was a laborer.
Similarly, Donald Trump’s grandfather immigrated from Germany to avoid compulsory military service (foreshadowing Trump’s own Vietnam-era bone spurs). Trump’s mother was also an immigrant, as were two of his wives. There is considerable doubt that the current FLOTUS immigrated legally. But she was a model, which apparently confers upon her a legitimacy that a fruit picker or a construction worker simply doesn’t have.
Why, then, would Ingraham take such an anti-immigrant position? It’s hard to attribute it to the economic insecurity of the white working class. Ingraham reportedly makes $15 million a year, which seems pretty secure to me.
The most obvious explanation is that her remarks were straight up white nationalism. They aren’t that far from the infamous “14 Words” that white supremacists live by: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” Ingraham’s remarks even earned an endorsement from David Duke. That was a little too much for Ingraham, since Duke is, for the moment at least, persona non grata in the GOP.
Ingraham’s problem is that she broke the dog whistle rule. She forgot that she was supposed to use code words that the Base would understand but which she could deny indignantly if the mainstream media objected.
For the time being, Republicans aren't supposed to say what they really believe. Only Donald Trump gets to do that. But Trump has loosened the Republican id, and more of them are beginning to say the secret things out loud. He's brought out the latent bully in some of our friends, neighbors, and family members, and it's been painful to watch. As Rick Wilson says, everything that Trump touches dies.