In 1798, Congress passed three “Alien Acts” based mainly on fears of Irish-Catholic, anti-immigrant sentiment. These new laws gave the president the power to stop immigration from any country at war with the U.S. and the right to deport any immigrant, and made it harder for immigrants to vote. Then, again in the late 1840s, a nationalist political group called the Know-Nothings sprang from a populist movement of poor whites who were dissatisfied with the two-party system and started the American Party, intent on preserving America’s culture by restricting immigration, especially from Catholic countries—including by Irish Catholics. They managed to get candidates elected into the highest political offices in America, including a president.


kleinbl00:

    But there is a simpler, less complex explanation for how this country eventually came to view the Irish as regular, good, American white people:

    They just did it.

picardfacepalm.jpg

There's an even simpler explanation: The Germans came. Then the Poles. Then the Italians. Then the Chinese. Those dirty immigrants? They may be taking your job but your kids are also playing with their kids. Then they're going to grow up and bitch about someone else taking their jobs.

All immigrants must be treated like absolute dogshit for one generation. Those are the rules worldwide. Kids born there get to be pissy about how their parents were mistreated but are generally orders of magnitude better off. Their kids? Those are full-fledged citizens. The trick is in who chooses your identity - yourself or the neighborhood. if you get to identify as a Chinese-American, you win. If your neighborhood identifies you as Chinese in America you lose.

Blacks are fucked under this system because few of them chose to immigrate, therefore their second-class status has been semi-perpetual. This is one reason why modern blacks favor better in the Commonwealth, although it isn't all wine and roses. Jews also fare poorly because they integrate less than other ethnic groups.


posted 2576 days ago