My sixteen-year-old Chilean nephew was curious about what’s going on with ICE. In Chile, the word “conservative” is associated with capitalism, and the word “liberal” is associated with communism. He observed that Donald Trump says he’s a capitalist but doesn’t act like one.
I told him things are different here and labels have different meanings because we have a different history.
I could see he was curious, but I knew he had no interest in lengthy history lessons, so I said, “I can do it in 15 minutes. I can give you a 15-minute history lesson that will explain ICE and our current politics.”
“Can I use a timer?” he asked.
I said certainly.
I prepared the lesson, and my nephew started the timer. Here is what I told him.
The Story of Immigration in the U.S.
From the 1790 census, we know the following:
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- Based on 1790 census data, historians estimate that roughly 80% of the population was of European descent. Of those, the vast majority—as many as 90%—were British or Irish Protestants. Thus the vast majority of the population was Protestant or of Protestant heritage. (Purvis, T. L., 1984, and Finke & Stark, 2005)
- 18% were enslaved Black people.
- The other 2% were mostly free Black people.
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Native people were not counted.
The term WASP, coined by sociologist Andrew Hacker, stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. (The Angles and Saxons were Germanic tribes that settled in England in the 5th century. The word “English” comes from “Angles.”) Hacker suggested that “W” also stands for “wealthy.”
The early citizens of the U.S., and for most of our history the ruling elite, were WASPy.
I will now demonstrate that from 1790 until 1964, our immigration laws were designed to Keep America WASPy. At the same time, there have always been people opposed to the idea that the U.S. should remain WASPy.
Our first immigration law, the 1790 Naturalization Act, declared that only a “free white person” could become a naturalized US citizen.
The 1790 Naturalization Act didn’t define “white.” However, the U.S. Supreme Court later held that people from India were not “white.” The Court said that, for purposes of the 1790 Naturalization Law, “white” should reflect “the common understanding” of the word “white” in 1790, when the law was written and enacted. Obviously the early Americans intended “white” to refer to people from Northern or Western Europe. Thus “white” is a social construction. (From here on, I will use “white” in the sense of “Northern or Western European heritage”.)
The idea that American citizens must be white was therefore enshrined in law. The 1790 Naturalization Act has been called a “super statute” because of its enormous impact.
By the early 1800s, some people began floating the idea that Anglo-Saxons were a superior race. Slavery, racial segregation, and Nazism were premised on the idea of Anglo-Saxon superiority.
Between 1820 and 1860, 3.7 million immigrants arrived in New York Harbor. At the time the city’s population numbered less than one million. Most were poor, fleeing a catastrophe or a tyrannical government. For example, beginning in the 1830s, as a result of the great famine in Ireland, about 2 million impoverished Irish Catholics came to the U.S.—about a quarter of the entire population of Ireland.
Irish Catholic immigrants were viewed by the WASPy establishment as drunken, violent, and unruly. As a result, they were greeted with discrimination and violence. This cartoon from the mid-19th century shows the “usual Irish way of doing things.”
Political parties and other groups formed for the purpose of stopping the influx of immigrants. They called themselves “nativists,” by which they meant “native-born American,” or, more specifically, Anglo-Saxon. Given who the real Native Americans were, “Nativist” was an interesting word choice.
Nativists instigated violence against immigrants. For example, Protestants burned down St. Mary’s Catholic Church in New York City in 1831. In 1844, anti-Irish riots in Philadelphia left thirteen dead.
In the second half of the 19th century, a large wave of immigrants from China settled primarily in the west. Chinese laborers did most of the hard labor building the railroads.
Chinese immigrants, like the Irish, were viewed as dangerous, and were greeted with discrimination and violence. Article XIX of the California Constitution (1879) referred to Chinese immigrants as “dangerous to the well-being of the State.” In 1885, an all-white San Francisco public school used that provision to prevent a Chinese child from attending school.
This is from the Library of Congress:
Some Chinese women worked as prostitutes, so all Chinese women were characterized as prostitutes, and this stereotype served as a pretext to keep all Chinese immigrants out. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned all immigrants from China, was the first federal legislation that had a deportation provision.
The mid and late 19th century saw a large influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe who were mostly Jewish or Italian Catholics. Both groups were met with prejudice, discrimination, and hostility. The Immigration Restriction League, a Boston lobbying firm, used pseudoscience to “prove” that Southern and Eastern Europeans were “racially inferior” to Anglo-Saxons and posed a dangerous threat to the well-being of white people. Signs appeared on hotels stating, “No Jews and No Dogs Allowed.”
The Naturalization Act of 1906 declared that no person could be naturalized or admitted as a citizen who could not speak English.
The Immigration Act of 1924 entirely banned immigration from Asia and set strict quotas on the number of immigrants who could come from Eastern and Southern Europe.
Between 1923 and 1929, following an influx of Mexican immigrants, the “Mexican Repatriation” campaign began. As employment dwindled during the Great Depression, hostility toward Mexican immigrants grew. President Hoover announced a plan to ensure “American jobs for real Americans.” As a result, more than a million people of Mexican descent, about half of whom were American citizens, were forcibly deported.
Now compare the U.S. demographics in the 18th century to these figures from the 1950 U.S. census:
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- 89.5% of the U.S. population was white (up from 80%).
- People of Mexican / Latino origin were not counted separately from whites in the census, but they were about 2% of the population.
- 10% were Black Americans
- Less than 1% were other categories, including Asian.
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You can see that, for almost 200 years, as a result of immigration laws favoring white immigrants, white people in the United States increased their majority.
Then, in 1965, everything changed.
Among the changes was that the Democratic Party embraced civil rights and racial diversity. (This was no accident. It was the result of decades of work by people like Thurgood Marshall — but that’s another story that I’ve told elsewhere.)
In 1964, the Democrats won the election in a landslide giving the Democrats control of the White House and substantial majorities in both the House and Senate.
As a result, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 were signed into law.
The Immigration and Nationality Act abolished racial and national origin immigration quotas, opening the door to people from places other than Northern and Western Europe. The Act prioritized skilled labor and enabled immigrants from Asian countries to join relatives.
Within 2 years, the Chinese American population doubled. Mexico became the largest sending country. There was also a significant increase in immigration from Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, and Central American nations.
ICE was formed as part of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 in response to the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. The creation of ICE in response to the 2001 terrorist attack is interesting given that border security would not have prevented the attack.
As a result of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the U.S. demographics changed. In 2020, a mere 56 years after the Act was passed, here are the statistics from U.S. Census:
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- 57.8% of the population was “white alone, not Hispanic or Latino.”
- 18.7 % was Hispanic or Latino/Latina
- 12.1 % was Black
- 6% was Asian
- 5.4% were others
- Native Americans were less than 2%.
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The percentage of white people fell from almost 90% to 57.8% — and the number is still falling.
A lot of people welcome these changes. They see diversity as a strength, and they are comfortable with new groups coming to the United States. After all, unless we are Native American, we all came from somewhere else.
But a lot of people are alarmed to see white Anglo-Saxon Protestants losing their elite, dominant status. They think something essential about America is being lost. Here are a few examples:
Christian Nationalists: This description of Christian Nationalism is from Christianity Today: “Christian Nationalism is the belief that America is defined by its Anglo-Protestant past and we will lose our identity and our freedom if we do not preserve our cultural identity.“
White Nationalist groups claim that “whites” are the victims of “racial genocide.” They believe interracial marriage and immigration laws are part of a deliberate plot to “annihilate” the white race.
Organizations like Turning Point USA embrace The Great Replacement Theory, which similarly argues that allowing the immigration of non-whites and allowing interracial marriages is part of a deliberate plot to replace white people with others. They believe that non-“whites” have more children, which they also see as part of a deliberate plot to dilute the white race.
White Power Militias claim, among other things, that people who are not white are not, and never can be, “real” Americans. This is from the Patriot Front manifesto: “An African, for example, may have lived, worked, and even been classed as a citizen in America for centuries, yet he is not American. He is, as he likely prefers to be labeled, an African in America. The same rule applies to others who are not of the founding stock of our people.” (Founding stock = Anglo-Saxon.)
I have observed that in our history, big changes generate big backlashes. All these groups arose as part of the backlash against the rapid changes wrought by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
Today’s news about ICE is another chapter in an on-going story.
The resistance to ICE is also an on-going story. There has always been resistance to the idea the United States is, and should remain, WASPy. We even fought a Civil War over it.
Conservatism can include “laissez-faire” or “free market” conservatives. It can also include “status quo” conservatives, or people who resist change. Today, some groups who call themselves conservatives want to “conserve” the dominance of whites in the United States.
I stopped speaking. My nephew looked at his timer. I had some time left, and he seemed interested, so I added this:
I suspect that most of the people who support and defend ICE are driven by fear: fear of people who are different, fear of “others,” fears of losing something. When Trump blamed “bad Hombres” for the U.S. drug epidemic and promised to “get them out,” and when he characterized Somali immigrants as criminals, he was echoing the age-old idea that people who are different are bad or dangerous.
You might say that any pretense that the goal of ICE was to target “criminals” is disproven by the fact that ICE is targeting and grabbing school children as young as five years old. On the other hand, for people who fear “others” and who think entire ethnic, cultural, or racial groups are inherently bad, grabbing small children and expelling them makes sense.
Evolutionary biologists tell us that our forager ancestors were territorial and often made war on other groups. Chimpanzees, our closest relatives, are territorial and actively patrol borders. They even have wars.
It seems to me that if we use the more evolved parts of our brains, we know that people fleeing persecution or seeking a better life for themselves or their families are not inherently “bad.” Harsh judgments should be reserved for the conditions causing people to flee.
My nephew didn’t have much to say. He is, after all, a teenager and I was giving a lecture. See what happens when you visit Aunt Teri? So I printed out a copy of this blog post and gave it to him.
And now for something different.
The Family Liar
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