The question was why there was an explosion of “anti immigrant sentiment”, i contend that there isn’t any more anti immigrant sentiment than there usually is.
And of course at the time many white Americans (of North Euro descent) did not see Southern Euros as really “white.”
It’s an old problem. See How the Irish Became White.
Older than that, even.
Wow. I was familiar with some of Franklin’s writings re. “letting non-Anglos become Americans”, but calling the Swedes “swarthy”… :eek: Most of them barely get tans, by Southern European standards!
It was obvious. I’m just amused by the image of entire provinces emptying out just to work below American minimum wage.
“Tawny” is a rather charming old word, though: you almost never see a good case of tawniness in immigration discussions these days.
“Tawny Mexicans” also sounds much more appealing than “swarthy Swedes”, although to be honest it sounds even more like the heroine of a romance novel. “Tawnee Mexicance swirled her raven hair over her shoulders as she turned her amber eyes full on the insolent vaquero.”
Not just an explosion-a sudden explosion!
As opposed to a gradual or plodding explosion, I guess.
For illustration, Ross Perot grabbed a significant chunk of the vote in 1992, and opposition to illegal immigration was a huge part of his platform.
This issue didn’t just pop up last week. There have always been a lot of Americans opposed to illegal immigration- they’ve just been ignored by both major parties. The Democrats reflexively side with impoverished non-whites, while the GOP establishment loves them their cheap labor.
In fairness my OP title really does a poor job of asking the question I was aiming for, which is really why the issue has suddenly, now, become twice as politically explosive as it was before. Sentiment is something that does not change dramatically, so that was a poor choice of word.
At least according to the paranoid-Right, illegal immigration is part of the Obomination’s plan to institute socialism in America. Millions of soon-to-be-pardoned illegal immigrants will be added to the dependent class, expanding even further the federal bureaucracy. And as an added bonus, they’ll presumably all vote Democrat to keep the perks coming.
IOW, the paranoid-Right sees it as a reenactment of Ayn Rand’s parable of Starnesville and the Twentieth Century Motor Company.
You don’t even have to look at the paranoid right to see claims that “Obama wants them here because they’ll vote Democratic”. That sort of sentiment is everywhere, notwithstanding the present legal impossibility that these kids will get to vote (or the accuracy of the underlying assumption that illegal immigrants are natural Democratic voters.)
In that case it’s because of a recent upswing in the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border, who are allegedly swamping federal detention facilities.
Well, actually, he might have meant Finns.
Actually, both parties are divided on the issue. The Dem coalition includes labor interests who don’t want immigrant wage-competition, and the Pub coalition includes nativist paleocons who feel the same way with the addition of racial/ethnic prejudice. But that’s the bases – both parties’ leaderships are pro-immigration for the reasons you state, or at least they were, until the mostly-paleocon Tea Party became such a big deal within the GOP.
Racist bullshit.
Allegations of failure require a serious and honest effort in the first place. Neither has shown much interest in actually being multicultural.
You must view it through the lens that Ben Franklin was probably the snarkiest guy of his time over here. That quote fairly drips with sarcasm.
So, you serious, or was an attempt at comedy that completely whooshed me?
astorian, honest question, but did my comments on the large number of immigrants in Canada come as a surprise to you? It kind of seemed like you were assuming we didn’t have lots of immigrants up here, or that the country wasn’t multicultural.
No, your claims about Mexican immigrants being “foreign scabs” is racist bullshit.
I’m not sure why that is relevant to the issue we are facing in the US. For example, would Canadians be OK if we provided a safety corridor through the US so that all the illegal immigrants coming into the US could pass on to Canada and reside there?