Immigrant nation: a mixed history.

In the coverage of the popular reaction to the death of Princess Diana an interesting observation was made more than once. The demonstration of grief in England seemed to come from a people very different from the stoic and doughty British of World War II days described so movingly in the recitation, The White Cliffs of Dover. And indeed the Britons we saw on television seemed a very different mix. Dark skins mingled with the fair; floral tributes were brought by those wearing dreadlocks as well as by fair-haired Saxons. Together they gave way to emotion and voiced their sorrow without shame. It seemed evident that the English people had been changed, at least in part, by immigration.

We, too, are being changed by immigration. As Glenn C. Loury notes in the New Republic (August 25), "It is no great secret, that thanks to the rapid growth of America's Latinos and Asian population, whites of European descent stand to become a minority in this country sometime in the next century." Many of us remember the comely brown-skinned woman on the cover of Time some time ago. She was projected, in an issue on immigration, as the typical American woman of the twenty-first century.

The immigrants of the last quarter-century are merging quite successfully into our society. The rate of intermarriage is high. Loury also notes that over two-fifths of Hispanics and half of Asians in the twenty-five to thirty-four-years-old bracket had spouses from different ethnic or racial groups. (See Peter Feuerherd's "A New American Tribe," Commonweal, September 12.) And the values of the new immigrants are those historically prized in America - devotion to family and a strong work ethic.

Nevertheless these immigrants encounter hostility. They are accused of stealing jobs from native-born Americans and downgrading neighborhoods, among other things. Korean "mom-and-pop" stores have been attacked and boycotted. The Washington Post recently carried a headline: "Anti-Asian American Incidents Rising, Civil Rights Group Says." Although we are a nation of immigrants, such hostility to every new group has been common throughout our history.

In the very first years of the republic, Pennsylvania residents of English origin protested the influx of the German-born. Before mid-century, the Know-Nothing party accused the immigrant Irish of Romish plots. The Poles, Czechs, and others who later manned the mines and steel mills were objects of sneers and opprobrium. Asian-exclusion statutes, beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, were enacted well into the present century. Refugees from the Irish famine encountered "No Irish Need Apply" signs in Boston and New York. Italians were stigmatized as probable mobsters. Japanese-American citizens were forced out of their homes into internment camps during World War II. Hostility toward immigrants is long-standing.

Reviewer Stanley Karnow, discussing Joel Millman's current book, The Other Americans (Viking), says,

But as Joel Millman amply illustrates, the case against immigrants is flimsy. By nature they are a superior breed. Knowing that they face adjustment problems in a strange and probably hostile environment, they are nevertheless ready to leave their homelands in hope of improving their lives. And, while they often encounter difficulties, on the whole they contribute significantly to the American economy as entrepreneurs, craftsmen, farmers, and unskilled workers. Their crime rate is remarkably low, and contrary to allegations that they are a fiscal burden, they generate more tax revenues than they take in service (Washington Post Book World, July 20).

The effects of immigration have not always been quite as rosy as Millman describes and the success of immigrants in entering the economy not always quite as immediate. The story of the famine Irish is a case in point. It is only in the last few years that the Irish of Eire itself and the members of the Irish diaspora have begun to acknowledge the fact of the famine and to come to terms with it. "It is a great source of shame for many people," said Mary Robinson, Ireland's former president. "It shouldn't be. It is our history, in Ireland, in Boston. To learn from history, you must know it."

Unlike the sturdy Irish immigrants who arrived in the 1820s and 1830s, the refugees from the famine who flooded into East Coast cities in the 1840s were pallid, emaciated, weak, impoverished, and unskilled, according to Thomas O'Connor, Boston College historian and author of The Boston Irish. Many were ill with typhus, smallpox, and cholera. It is understandable that they were not wholly welcome. Nevertheless, they and their descendants transformed Boston, the most Irish of American cities, and other centers as well.

In a long and well-researched story in the Boston Sunday Globe (August 24) marking the unveiling of the first American memorial for famine victims, Kevin Cullen traced the transition of Boston from a city of Yankee reserve and elitism to a city where it has been said, "We're all a little Irish by osmosis." The Boston preference for "sports, politics, and revenge," its proliferation of pubs, and rough-and-tumble politics influencing the region's social order: All are marks of that transition according to Cullen - not all positive marks it must be said.

But historian O'Connor puts a more positive spin on the transformation: "The Boston Irish have become people of education, culture, and refinement. To a great extent, in their prolonged struggle for survival and achievement, they did turn Boston into an Irish city." For that reason he concludes that they have a special obligation to return to the city the benefits of the skills, the associations, and resources they have acquired, and thus help new immigrant peoples to share their advantages.

The way in which the Irish changed Boston and its region is perhaps the most dramatic story of immigration changing America. But there are many others. Millman, for example, credits recent immigrants with reviving New York. "Going into derelict ghettos, they have refurbished crumbling buildings and created middle-class neighborhoods." If we study the history of immigration we are certainly encouraged to acknowledge the changes newcomers bring and to welcome them as renewers of our strength as a nation.