Coming to America

They came to "a new world, one for which most were unprepared." It was "a mass migration on an epic scale." With "the modest goal of staying alive," they "came to America with few material possessions and even fewer marketable skills," and "flocked to the most difficult, worst-paid jobs they could find," usually as "laborers or domestics."

"A rural people," they were "Catholic, unskilled and poorly educated." Many were illiterate, and spoke little or no English. Some native-born Americans considered them "dangerous aliens," "remote from us in temperament and constitution," and "considered their poverty a sign of God’s censure." Critics claimed the "government’s assistance had made the…people worse instead of better," and condemned the immigrants as "lazy and careless, dim-witted, given to idleness and drink, under entirely different sanitary influences than the American population." "Decidedly unambitious and lazy," they would "rather take handouts than work." Anti-immigrant legislation often ensued, claiming that the immigrants, "unable to participate in the normal affairs of the community" would "erect a society within a society, to act together in their own way."

Sound familiar? Well, it might, but you may be thinking of the wrong immigrants. All these things were said about the Irish in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

I thought about this as I stood at the edge of Cobh ("cove") Harbor in County Cork, Ireland last month. It was almost 150 years to the month after my great-great-grandfather, Martin Burke, likely set sail from this very same port. Bound for America, he and others like him found life in America’s slums to be one of terrible hardship, disease, poverty and prejudice. "Nativists," as anti-immigrant forces were known, loudly declared that Irish immigration would forever change American life for the worse. They were half-right.

Irish immigrants did change America, but certainly not as those who hated and feared them predicted. Five generations later, the descendants of Martin Burke and millions of other Irish immigrants to the United States have made tremendous, positive contributions in every imaginable field of endeavor – government, business, religion, entertainment, literature, and the arts. Who can’t picture an admittedly stereotypical but also much-loved Irish cop, firefighter or priest? Who doesn’t admire at least one of our recent Irish-American Presidents, John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan?

As we prepare to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, as we remember the hardships, poverty and prejudice faced by Irish immigrants, will we also think of those who face the same trials today to better themselves and provide for their families? Will we welcome the Mexican day laborer, the Dominican housekeeper, the Guatemalan farm worker? Will we learn the lessons of history, and understand that the descendants of recent immigrants will almost certainly overcome the same obstacles our Irish ancestors faced, to make their own important contributions to our country? Will all of us, regardless of our choice of church or our ancestral heritage remember that we strengthen our faith and our nation when we care for "the least" of God’s children (Matthew 25:34), and welcome to American soil the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free?"