Archive for category: History

Debating Contemporary Immigration and the Uses of History

Paper Requirements
Essays should be 4 pages in length, not including the works cited page. Your essay should be double spaced, with one inch margins and 12-point font (Times New Roman). Put your name, class, and the date in the upper left hand corner of the paper. As this is a formal paper, use formal language. (i.e. avoid the use of first person, contractions, etc.) You will turn in your essay through Turnitin in Canvas. The final paper will be due no later than 11:59 p.m. on November 15, 2022. After that, I will deduct 5 points for every day it is late. All assignments must be submitted on the Writing Assignment #2 link on Canvas. No papers will be accepted via email. Please remember to cite sources for statements of fact or any statement not attributable to you.

The study of history informs how we think about society today. Comparisons with the past are an essential part of how policy makers and citizens debate key issues. For instance, one of the most controversial topics in American society is immigration, and many arguments hinge on comparisons to past generations of immigrants and how they were perceived at the time. For Part 7, “The American Age,” the issue of Latino immigration demonstrates how history influences contemporary political debates. For this exercise, you will be taking on the role of historian, and thus you should focus on evaluating the uses of history, not current immigration policy.

For this exercise you have two tasks:

Part 1: Compare the ways that history is used in the two secondary sources on contemporary Latino immigration.

Part 2: Using primary sources, evaluate the arguments of the two secondary sources.

Part 1: Comparing Secondary Sources

Each of the following secondary sources was written by a scholar of contemporary immigration politics. In these selections, the authors draw comparisons between the issues surrounding past generations of immigrants and the issues surrounding immigrants today. The first is from Dr. Jason Richwine, a contributing writer at the National Review and former senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. The second text is from Leo Chavez, a professor of anthropology at the University of California–Irvine. While Richwine is interested in assimilation, immigration, and national culture, Chavez is concerned with how immigrant groups are represented in contemporary discourse.

• Compare the views of these two scholars by answering the following questions. Be sure to find specific examples in the selections to support your answers.
• What issues that surround Latino immigration to America does each author address?
• What comparisons does each author make to historical immigration groups?
• In what ways might these authors respond to each other’s work?
• Based on what you have learned, what examples from American history can you think of that would support or refute each author’s argument?

Secondary Source 1

Jason Richwine, “The Congealing Pot” (2009)

They’re not just like the Irish—or the Italians or the Poles, for that matter. The large influx of Hispanic immigrants after 1965 represents a unique assimilation challenge for the United States. Many optimistic observers have assumed—incorrectly, it turns out—that Hispanic immigrants will follow the same economic trajectory European immigrants did in the early part of the last century. Many of those Europeans came to America with no money and few skills, but their status steadily improved. Their children outperformed them, and their children’s children were often indistinguishable from the “founding stock.” The speed of economic assimilation varied somewhat by ethnic group, but three generations were typically enough to turn “ethnics” into plain old Americans.

This would be the preferred outcome for the tens of millions of Hispanic Americans, who are significantly poorer and less educated on average than native whites. When immigration skeptics question the wisdom of importing so many unskilled people into our nation at one time, the most common response cites the remarkable progress of Europeans a century ago. “People used to say the Irish or the Poles would always be poor, but look at them today!” For Hispanics, we are led to believe, the same thing will happen.

But that claim isn’t true. Though about three-quarters of Hispanics living in the U.S. today are either immigrants or the children of immigrants, a significant number have roots here going back many generations. We have several ways to measure their intergenerational progress, and the results leave little room for optimism about their prospects for assimilation. . . .

First, the second generation still does not come close to matching the socioeconomic status of white natives. Even if Hispanics were to keep climbing the ladder each generation, their assimilation would be markedly slower than that of other groups. But even that view is overly optimistic, because of the second, larger problem with Hispanic assimilation: It appears to stall after the second generation. We see little further ladder-climbing from the grandchildren of Hispanic immigrants. They do not rise out of the lower class. . . .

So why do Hispanics, on average, not assimilate? Theories abound. Popular explanations from the left include the legacy of white racism, labor-market discrimination, housing segregation, and poor educational opportunities. Those on the right tend to cite enforced multi-culturalism, ethnic enclaves, and a self-perpetuating culture of poverty. . . . [T]he lack of Hispanic assimilation is likely to create ethnic tensions that threaten our cultural core. Human beings are a tribal species, and this makes ethnicity a natural fault line in any society. Intra-European ethnic divisions have been largely overcome through economic assimilation—Irish and Italian immigrants may have looked a bit different from natives, but by the third generation their socioeconomic profiles were similar. Hispanic Americans do not have that benefit.

Persistent ethnic disparities in socioeconomic status add to a sense of “otherness” felt by minorities outside the economic mainstream. Though it is encouraging that Hispanics often profess a belief in the American creed, an undercurrent of this “otherness” is still apparent. For example, a Pew Hispanic Center Survey in 2002 asked American-born Hispanics “which terms they would use first to describe themselves.” Less than half (46 percent) said “American,” while the majority said they primarily identified either with their ancestral country or as simply Hispanic or Latino. . . .

It is difficult to see how a unifying national culture can be preserved and extended in that environment.

Source: Richwine, Jason. “The Congealing Pot.” National Review August 24, 2009, pp. 37–39.

Secondary Source 2

Leo Chavez, The Latino Threat (2008)

This book grew out of my attempt to unpack the meanings of . . . [negative] views about Latinos. Rather than considering them in isolation, I began to see them as connected, as part of a larger set of concerns over immigration, particularly from Mexico and other parts of Latin America; the meaning of citizenship; and the power of media spectacles in contemporary life. The Latino Threat Narrative provides the raw material that weaves these concerns together.

The Latino Threat Narrative posits that Latinos are not like previous immigrant groups, who ultimately became part of the nation. According to the assumptions and taken-for-granted “truths” inherent in this narrative, Latinos are unwilling or incapable of integrating, of becoming part of the national community. Rather, they are part of an invading force from south of the border that is bent on reconquering land that was formerly theirs (the U.S. Southwest) and destroying the American way of life….

The contemporary Latino Threat Narrative has its antecedents in U.S. history: the German language threat, the Catholic threat, the Chinese and Japanese immigration threats, and the southern and eastern European threat. In their day, each discourse of threat targeted particular immigrant groups and their children. Each was pervasive and defined “truths” about the threats posed by immigrants that, in hindsight, were unjustified or never materialized in the long run of history. And each of these discourses generated actions, such as alarmist newspaper stories (the media of the day), anti-immigrant riots, restrictive immigration laws, forced internments, and acrimonious public debates over government policies. In this sense, the Latino Threat Narrative is part of a grand tradition of alarmist discourse about immigrants and their perceived negative impacts on society. . . .

Latinos have been in what is now the United States since the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, actually predating the English colonies. Since the Mexican-American War, immigration from Mexico and other Latin countries has waxed and waned, building in the early twentieth century, diminishing in the 1930s, and building again the post-1965 years. These migrations paralleled those of other immigrant groups. But Mexicans in particular have been represented as the quintessential “illegal aliens,” which distinguishes them from other immigrant groups. Their social identity has been plagued by the mark of illegality, which in much public discourse means that they are criminals and thus illegitimate members of society undeserving of social benefits, including citizenship. Latinos are an alleged threat because of this history and social identity, which supposedly make their integration difficult and imbue them, particularly Mexicans, with a desire to remain socially apart as they prepare for a reconquest of the U.S. Southwest.

Source: Chavez, Leo. The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation. Redwood City, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008. 3–4.

Part 2: Using Primary Sources to Evaluate Secondary Sources

When historians confront competing interpretations of the past, they often look at primary-source material to help evaluate the different arguments. Below is a selection of primary source materials relating to some of the historical issues surrounding immigration and assimilation raised by the two authors. The first document is excerpted from a short essay, one of the first works on demography, by Benjamin Franklin in 1751. The second document is an 1878 statement from the California State Senate to Congress requesting that Chinese immigration to the United States be restricted. The third document is an article by Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, a leading immigration restrictionist who was instrumental in the passage of such legislation in the 1920s. The final document is from the 1963 book Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City by sociologist Nathan Glazer and future U.S. senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. This book appeared just prior to the liberalization of U.S. immigration policy in 1965 and explores the assimilation of various ethnic groups in New York City.

Carefully read each of the primary sources and answer the following questions. Decide which of the primary source documents support or refute the authors’ arguments on immigration and assimilation. You may find that some documents do both but for different parts of each author’s interpretation. Be sure to identify which specific components of each author’s argument the documents support or refute.

• How does each document address the issue of assimilation and identity?
• Based on these documents, what pattern do you see in how Americans historically have responded to the arrival of new immigrant groups?
• Which of the primary sources do you think Richwine and Chavez would find most useful, and how might they use them to support their arguments?
• Which of the secondary sources do you think is best supported by the primary source evidence?

Primary Source 1

Benjamin Franklin, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc. (1755)

And since detachments of English from Britain sent to America, will have their places at home so soon supply’d and increase so largely here; why should the Palatine Boors [Germans] be suffered to swarm into our settlements, and by herding together establish their languages and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion? Which leads me to add one remark: That the number of purely white people in the world is proportionally very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians, and Swedes are generally of what we call a swarthy complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English make the principal body of white people on the face of the earth. I could wish their numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, scouring our planet, by clearing America of woods, and so making this side of our globe reflect a brighter light to the eyes of inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the sight of superior beings, darken its people? Why increase the sons of Africa, by planting them in America, where we have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all blacks and tawneys, of increasing the lovely white and red? But perhaps I am partial to the complexion of my Country, for such kind of partiality is natural to Mankind.

Source: Franklin, Benjamin. Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc. Boston: Printed and Sold by S. Kneeland in Queen Street, 1755. 224.

Primary Source 2

Senate of California to the Congress, “Memorial of the Senate of California to the Congress of the United States” (1878)

The State of California has a population variously estimated at from seven hundred thousand to eight hundred thousand, of which one hundred and twenty-five thousand are Chinese. The additions to this class have been very rapid since the organization of the State, but have been caused almost entirely by immigration, and scarcely at all by natural increase. . . .

The pious anticipations that the influence of Christianity upon the Chinese would be salutary, have proved unsubstantial and vain. Among one hundred and twenty-five thousand of them, with a residence here beneath the elevating influences of Christian precept and example, and with the zealous labors of earnest Christian teachers, and the liberal expenditure of ecclesiastical revenues, we have no evidence of a single genuine conversion to Christianity, or of a single instance of an assimilation with our manners, or habits of thought or life. . . . Neither is there any possibility that in the future education, religion, or the other influences of our civilization can effect any change in this condition of things. . . .

Above and beyond these considerations, however, we believe, and the researches of those who have most attentively studied the Chinese character confirm us in the consideration, that the Chinese are incapable of adaptation to our institutions. The national intellect of China has become decrepit from sheer age. It has long since passed its prime and is waning into senility. . . . Their code of morals, their forms of worship, and their maxims of life are those of the remotest antiquity. In this aspect they stand a barrier against which the elevating tendency of a higher civilization exerts itself in vain. And, in an ethnological point of view, there can be no hope that any contact with our people, however long continued, will ever conform them to our institutions, enable them to comprehend or appreciate our form of government, or to assume the duties or discharge the functions of citizens.

During their entire settlement in California they have never adapted themselves to our habits, modes of dress, or our educational system, have never learned the sanctity of an oath, never desired to become citizens, or to perform the duties of citizenship, never discovered the difference between right and wrong, never ceased the worship of their idol gods, or advanced a step beyond the musty traditions of their native hive. Impregnable to all the influences of our Anglo-Saxon life, they remain the same stolid Asiatics that have floated on the rivers and slaved in the fields of China for thirty centuries of time.

We thus find one-sixth of our entire population composed of Chinese coolies, not involuntary, but, by the unalterable structure of their intellectual being, voluntary slaves. This alien mass, constantly increasing by Immigration, is injected into a republic of freemen, eating of its substance, expelling free white labor, and contributing nothing to the support of the government. All the physical conditions of California are in the highest degree favorable to their influx. Our climate is essentially Asiatic in all its aspects. And the Federal Government by its legislation and treaties fosters and promotes the immigration. What is to be the result? Does it require any prophetic power to foretell? Can American statesmen project their vision forward for a quarter of a century and convince themselves that this problem will work out for itself a wise solution? In that brief period, with the same ratio of increase, this fair State will contain a Chinese population outnumbering its free men. White labor will be unknown, because unobtainable, and then how long a period will elapse before California will, nay must, become essentially . . . lesser Asia, with all its deathly lethargy?

Source: “Memorial of the Senate of California to the Congress of the United States.” Chinese Immigration; Its Social, Moral, and Political Effect. Report to the California State Senate of Its Special Committee on Chinese Immigration. Sacramento, Calif.: State Office, F. P. Thompson, Supt. State Printing, 1878. 60, 62–64.

Primary Source 3

Henry Cabot Lodge, “The Restriction of Immigration” (1891)

The nations of Europe which chiefly contributed to the upbuilding of the original thirteen colonies were the English, the Scotch-Irish, so called, the Dutch, the Germans, and the Huguenot French. With the exception of the last they were practically all people of the same stock. During this century and until very recent years these same nations, with the addition of Ireland and the Scandinavian countries, have continued to furnish the chief component parts of the immigration which has helped to populate so rapidly the territory of the United States. Among all these people, with few exceptions, community of race or language, or both, has facilitated the work of assimilation. In the last ten years, however, as appears from the figures just given, new and wholly different elements have been introduced into our immigration, and what is more important still the rate of immigration of these new elements has risen with much greater rapidity than that of those which previously had furnished the bulk of the population of the country. The mass of immigration, absolutely speaking, continues, of course, to come from the United Kingdom and from Germany, but relatively the immigration from these two sources is declining rapidly in comparison with the immigration from Italy and from the Slavic countries of Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia, the last of which appears under the head of Austria. . . .

Thus it is proved, first, that immigration to this country is increasing, and, second, that it is making its greatest relative increase from races most alien to the body of the American people and from the lowest and most illiterate classes among those races. In other words, it is apparent that, while our immigration is increasing, it is showing at the same time a marked tendency to deteriorate in character. . . . As one example of the practical effect of unrestricted immigration the committee [of the Fiftieth Congress to investigate immigration] cite the case of the coal-mining country: “Generally speaking, the class of immigrants who have lately been imported and employed in the coal regions of this country are not such, in the opinion of the committee, as would make desirable inhabitants of the United States. They are of a very low order of intelligence. They do not come here with the intention of becoming citizens; their whole purpose being to accumulate by parsimonious, rigid, and unhealthy economy a sum of money and then return to their native land. They live in miserable sheds like beasts; the food they eat is so meagre, scant, unwholesome, and revolting that it would nauseate and disgust an American workman, and he would find it difficult to sustain life upon it. Their habits are vicious, their customs are disgusting, and the effect of their presence here upon our social condition is to be deplored. . . . [I]n the opinion of the committee, no amount of effort would improve their morals or ‘Americanize’ this class of immigrants.”

Source: Lodge, Henry Cabot. “The Restriction of Immigration,” North American Review 152, no. 410 (January 1891): 28, 30, 32–33.

Primary Source 4

Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot (1963)

Perhaps the meaning of ethnic labels will yet be erased in America. But it has not yet worked out this way in New York. It is true that immigrants to this country were rapidly transformed, in comparison with immigrants to other countries, that they lost their language and altered their culture. It was reasonable to believe that a new American type would emerge, a new nationality in which it would be a matter of indifference whether a man was of Anglo-Saxon or German or Italian or Jewish origin, and in which indeed, because of the diffusion of populations through all parts of the country and all levels of the social order, and because of the consequent close contact and intermarriage, it would be impossible to make such distinctions. This may still be the most likely result in the long run. After all, in 1960 almost half of New York City’s population was still foreign-born or the children of foreign-born. Yet it is also true that it is forty years since the end of mass immigration, and new processes, scarcely visible when our chief concern was with the great masses of immigrants and the problems of their “Americanization,” now emerge to surprise us. The initial notion of an American melting pot did not, it seems, quite grasp what would happen in America. At least it did not grasp what would happen in the short run, and since this short run encompasses at least the length of a normal lifetime, it is not something we can ignore.

It is true that language and culture are very largely lost in the first and second generations, and this makes the dream of “cultural pluralism”—of a new Italy or Germany or Ireland in America, a League of Nations established in the New World—as unlikely as the hope of a “melting pot.” But as the groups were transformed by influences in American society, stripped of their original attributes, they were recreated as something new, but still as identifiable groups. Concretely, persons think of themselves as members of that group, with that name; they are thought of by others as members of that group, with that name; and most significantly, they are linked to other members of the group by new attributes that the original immigrants would never have recognized as identifying their group, but which nevertheless serve to mark them off, by more than simply name and association, in the third generation and even beyond.

The assimilating power of American society and culture operated on immigrant groups in different ways, to make them, it is true, something they had not been, but still something distinct and identifiable. The impact of assimilating trends on the groups is different in part because the groups are different—Catholic peasants from southern Italy were affected differently, in the same city and the same time, from urbanized Jewish workers and merchants from Eastern Europe. . . .

Conceivably the fact that one’s origins can become only a memory suggests the general direction for ethnic groups in the United States—toward assimilation and absorption into a homogeneous American mass. And yet, as we suggested earlier, it is hard to see in the New York of the 1960s just how this comes about. Time alone does not dissolve the groups if they are not close to the Anglo- Saxon center. Color marks off a group, regardless of time; and perhaps most significantly, the “majority” group, to which assimilation should occur, has taken on the color of an ethnic group, too. To what does one assimilate in modern America? The “American” in abstract does not exist, though some sections of the country, such as the Far West, come closer to realizing him than does New York City.

Source: Glazer, Nathan and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press and Harvard University Press, 1963. 12–14, 20.