Illegal immigration debate brings out the worst in us

“Immigration has been an important issue for Americans since before the forming of the republic. Before the Revolutionary War, the colonies complained about King George III restricting the migration of Europeans to this continent. After independence was won, the same complainers started doing the same thing themselves.

Nativism has a long and shabby history in the United States, and every now and then it creeps out of the shadows and puts on a very public face. Thus, the current debate over illegal immigrants is nothing new. In the 1800s, concern about Irish Catholics, Italians, Germans, Chinese and other immigrants led to the formation of the Know-Nothing Party. After World War I and the Russian Revolution, there was the Red Scare which spawned an American version of political repression that resulted in so-called foreign radicals ”” immigrants from Russian and eastern European nations ”” being deported and Congress eventually adopting immigration quotas in the 1920s.”

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