Go ahead and celebrate the Irish — and Mexicans and Muslims

A friend called while I was feverishly pecking away at this column. Before he let me go, he asked what I was writing about. I told him: Irish American Heritage Month. It set him off.

He described showing up at the office Friday to find an assemblage of coworkers decked in 40 shades of green. As an American with Irish roots, he felt torn. He appreciated the St. Paddy’s Day pride but wondered about celebrating one wave of formerly despised immigrants while some in this country are vilifying and discriminating against those trying to get here now.

“You know, a century ago, there was another group of immigrants that was getting blamed for every damn thing, and that was us,” he told me. “Back then, we were the devil. But we were actually the heart and soul.”

“I may quote you on that,” I told him, realizing he’d just given me my windup.

Let me explain. Despite the red hair, my roots are German. To be honest, I’ve never felt much of a connection to St. Patrick’s Day, and I didn’t realize we had an Irish American Heritage Month until this one came around. This year is different. There’s profound hypocrisy in the Trump administration celebrating the contributions of Irish immigrants as the president pursues a travel ban that keeps out doctors, scientists, students and others because they hail from predominantly Muslim countries he views with suspicion. He praises Americans whose ancestors were once considered wretched as he instructs immigration officials to deport otherwise lawabiding husbands and wives, separating them from U.S.-born children, because they lack paperwork our German and Irish ancestors didn’t require.

“Yesterday’s pariah is today’s patriot,” as Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole wrote in an op-ed published last week in the New York Times.

The words of visiting Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny last week rose above platitudes and rivers of green beer. In a speech, he noted that St. Patrick, born in Britain, was an immigrant. He asked President Trump to help undocumented Irish living in the United States, reminding us that white immigrants also are here illegally.

And in describing the unimaginable hunger and desperation that drove many Irish here during the Great Hunger in the mid-19th century, he reminded us that even the penniless have promise, if given a chance. Who’s the outsider?

That promise, that chance, are what set this country apart. That’s why my ancestors came, and probably yours, too, if they didn’t arrive on slave ships. And if a day donning green or a whole month of celebrating all things Irish help us to remember, then sure, I’ll drink a pint of Guinness to that.

But here’s the problem: some people don’t want to remember. Some people don’t want to admit how much their ancestors had in common with today’s immigrants. Because if we’re all foreigners, or descended from foreigners, then who’s the outsider? Who’s the enemy?

That distinction is vital to those who see the world in black and white.

It makes no real sense in America — a country founded by people from someplace else.

I understand the tendency to think that today’s immigrants are somehow different, that they’re slower to assimilate, poorer, less loyal, a greater threat to American culture, crime rates and the economy.

But all those claims, and more, were made against the Irish. Some people in the 1840s saw the mass migration of Irish as an elaborate plot by the pope to infiltrate America. They were blamed for spreading disease and for taking jobs of the native-born.

About the only thing the Irish didn’t have in common with many of today’s immigrants was skin color. And the fact that they were never called “illegal.” As a 2014 Boston Globe piece pointed out, that’s because the notion didn’t exist.

“People are shocked when I say before World War I, there were no green cards, no visas, no quotas, no passports, even. Really, you just showed up. And if you could walk without a limp, and you had $30 in your pocket, you walked right in,” Mae Ngai, a legal and political historian at Columbia University, told the Globe. 19th-century sarcasm

As today, a nativist movement took root back then. The secretive, antiimmigrant, anti-Catholic Know-Nothing party got a foothold in some parts, but one northerner, Abraham Lincoln, famously explained in a 1855 letter how their values didn’t mesh with America’s.

“How can any one who abhors the oppression of Negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people?” Lincoln wrote. “As a nation we began by declaring ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it, ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ ”

When it came to that, Lincoln continued, he might prefer to emigrate to a country that made no pretense of loving liberty: “to Russia, for example, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

Gotta love that 19thcentury sarcasm.

So, yes, Trump is right to recognize the vast contributions of the Irish in a country where tens of millions have roots. The president is right to note that they were “tilling the farms of Appalachia, working the looms of New England textile mills and building transcontinental railroads.”

But he’s wrong not to connect the Irish experience with those working comparable jobs today. He’s wrong not to emphasize the strength that comes from our diversity. ‘Every one of them’

Don’t take it from me. Take it from a member of his own administration. His secretary of Homeland Security, John Kelly, who just last month told an NPR host that “of course” America can still afford to be a multicultural, pluralistic society.

“The strength has been the melting pot,” he said. “So I like to think everyone in this country should consider themselves Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. Everyone in this country should consider themselves Jewish at Hanukkah. Everyone in this country should consider themselves ...”

“Muslim on Eid?” the host interjected.

“On Eid. Every one of them,” Kelly agreed.

Kelly sounded sincere. But it’s hard to mesh his words with his duty to carry out Trump’s travel ban, among other policies. Acting on an actual security threat is one thing. In the absence of that, a ban on legal residents and visitors, and raids on undocumented immigrants with no criminal records smell of pure discrimination.

The same discrimination we honor the Irish for overcoming. While we’re sharing in the pride of that struggle, let’s share in the lessons. The lies told about the Irish weren’t true, and neither are the ones told about Mexicans or Muslims today.

Someday, we’ll realize this. A future president will surely issue a press release recognizing the contributions of MuslimAmericans or perhaps declaring South Asian Heritage Month.

That day will come. But it shouldn’t take a century.