By Marty Schladen
With persecution, poverty, and climate change driving large numbers of migrants to the southern border, some in politics and the media are again pushing the panic button.
It’s hardly new. More than a century ago, a publication you would hardly expect was pushing an absurd conspiracy theory against a group about whom you probably know little.
Over-the-top claims about immigrants are not harmless.
For example, Ohio Secretary of State and U.S. Senate aspirant Frank LaRose posted this about the southwestern border on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter:
“This is an invasion. There’s no other word to describe it. If President Biden had the guts, he’d finish the wall and put pressure on our neighbors to the south to do something about it. But his vacation is more important!”
LaRose either doesn’t know or he ignores that the most common definition of “invasion” is “incursion of an army for conquest or plunder.” He also forgets or doesn’t care that when Patrick Crusius drove to an El Paso Walmart in 2019 and murdered 23 people, he said it was “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
Words have meanings. And they can have consequences, as it turns out.
In the 1890s, the same sort of irresponsible rhetoric was being used. Only then, it was the New York Times pushing it and its targets were French Canadians, who make up half of my ancestry.
The belief that white Protestants are the only true Americans has been stubborn, but it’s belied by some pretty basic history.
Native peoples, of course, got here first. Vikings made it to Newfoundland in 1021, but couldn’t make a go of it. Then, in 1519, Hernan Cortez began his conquest of what is now Mexico and began a great mixing between Europeans and natives that created the Hispanic peoples that Crusius and many others so ignorantly hate.
In 1607, the English founded Jamestown in what is now Virginia. And a year later, Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec and New France.
It might seem quaint now, but even after the United States was founded and the Constitution separated church and state, religion remained a major irritant between Protestant-led New England and Catholic-dominated Quebec. For example, a mob of anti-immigrant Know Nothings in 1854 burned a Catholic church in Bath, Maine where French Canadians and Irish parishioners worshiped, David Vermette wrote in a 2019 article in Smithsonian Magazine.
Then the Civil War came and New England’s dominant industry — textiles — lost its supply of southern, slave-grown cotton. The mostly Protestant workforce sought employment elsewhere, with many drifting off to the west.
When the war ended, cotton again flowed north, the factories reopened and Quebecois streamed south to fill textile jobs in hopes of a more prosperous life. And as they did, demagogues claimed there was a diabolical, hidden agenda — that the French Canadians planned to take over.
“In this climate, the supposed French Canadian Catholic subversion of New England became national news,” Vermette wrote. “Between about 1880 and 1900, as immigration peaked, it attracted coverage in daily newspapers; think pieces in outlets such as Harper’s, The Nation, and The Forum; articles in academic journals; and books in English and in French.”
The New York Times was a particular offender.
“It is next to impossible to penetrate the mass of protected and secluded humanity with modern ideas or to induce them to interest themselves in democratic institutions or methods of government,” it wrote of French Canadians on June 6, 1892. “They are almost as much out of reach as if they were living in a remote part of the Province of Quebec. No other people, except the Indians, are so persistent in repeating themselves. Where they halt they stay and where they stay they cover the Earth.”
Never mind that by 1892, covering the Earth was the profound opposite of what the Indians were doing. Especially when it comes to conspiracy theories, people believe what they want to be true.
The New York Times article gets even more fevered after that whopper. In the timeless fashion of the conspiracy theory, it makes contradictory claims and then races past the contradictions.
It asks readers to believe a people could be so unimaginative while simultaneously participating in a secret, sweeping plot. And it asks readers to forget the most obvious explanation for French Canadian or any other group’s migration: that they needed the money.
The story favorably mentions a piece written for the American Antiquarian Society by one Dr. Egbert C. Smyth. It claimed “this migration is part of a priestly scheme now fervently fostered in Canada for the purpose of bringing New England under the control of the Roman Catholic faith. (Smyth) points out that this is the avowed purpose of the secret society to which every adult French Canadian belongs and that the prayers and earnest efforts of these people are to turn the tables in New England by the aid of the silent forces which they control.”
The supposed plot was even bigger than described there. The goal, allegedly, was the Catholic subversion of New England, the Maritime Provinces and even some U.S. states to the west and to reestablish a French nation in North America. All to be silently carried out by people who were supposedly so stupid they barely knew they were alive.
In the event, it was silent indeed.
My first French Canadian ancestors to come to Columbus were here by the 1870s, there were arrivals thereafter and family ties between Quebec and Ohio were kept strong through my mother’s generation.
French continued to be spoken and there were regular visits between the two countries. I have pictures.
Yet I never heard a word about a plot to steal New England or Michigan or Nova Scotia. My mom was a deep lover of history, including her own, and I think she would have told me since I’m at least a half-member of the tribe.
Not surprisingly, the actual evidence cuts against the conspiracy theory. When the movement in Quebec to separate from Canada gained steam in the 1970s, my grandfather, who left Montreal in 1921, thought it was damned foolishness.
“Canada has two problems,” he’d say. “The French are all stupid and the English are all lazy.”
It might not have been the most nuanced analysis. I think he was expressing the traditional resentments the Quebecois harbored against the English since Wolfe’s victory in 1763. But Victor Bluteau clearly harbored no dreams of creating a new New France, much less of living in one.
I guess “they” hadn’t let him in on the plot, either.
What I do remember were vague resentments from an ancestor on the non-French Canadian side of my family. The New York Times article shows such resentments were quite a thing back in the day. I’m lucky they aren’t now.
Millions of others aren’t so fortunate.
Marty Schladen has been a reporter for decades, working in Indiana, Texas and other places before returning to his native Ohio to work at The Columbus Dispatch in 2017 and coming to the Ohio Capital Journal in 2020. He’s won state and national journalism awards for investigations into utility regulation, public corruption, the environment, prescription drug spending and other matters. This piece originally appeared in Ohio Capital Journal, which is part of States Newsroom, the non-profit that includes the Florida Phoenix.
PAUL FEELEY says
What a myopic comment on what constitutes an Invasion… Nice try …!!!
Britannica Dictionary definition of INVASION
1
: the act of invading something: such as
a : the act of entering a place in an attempt to take control of it
[count]
The enemy launched/mounted an invasion.
the invasion of Poland
[noncount]
The people live under a constant threat of invasion.
b : the act of entering a place in large numbers especially in a way that is harmful or unwanted
[count]
The town is gearing up for the annual tourist invasion.
an invasion of/by insects
[noncount]
protecting the house from insect invasion
2
◊ An invasion of privacy is a situation in which someone tries to get information about a person’s private life in an unwanted and usually improper way.
I consider these questions to be an invasion of my privacy.
Is drug testing an invasion of privacy?
The Oxford Dictionary also defines invasion as “to enter a place in large numbers, especially in a way that causes damage or problems”. For example, “Demonstrators invaded the government buildings”
Lynne says
So, too, when the Irish came in the mid 191th century, fleeing the potato famine, and then the Italians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Chinese brought in to work railroad construction in the mid 19th century faced the same prejudices.
Seems to me that many Americans are forgetting our roots – we are ALL descended from immigrants with the exception of those with direct lineage to our indigenous peoples.
oldtimer says
The difference was the previous Immigrants came here legally; the majority of this wave are illegal.
Sherry says
@oldtimer. . . You do understand that Ellis Island has been closed for many years, right? To fully understand why it is almost IMPOSSIBLE to immigrate legally, please take the time to read and digest this article from the Cato Institute:
https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/why-legal-immigration-nearly-impossible
Thank You! Joy! Peace! Love!
Ray W. says
Thank you, Sherry.
Ray W. says
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, in January 2021, there were roughly 45 million documented and undocumented immigrants residing in America. Now, there are 49.5 million foreign-born residents. Of the additional 4.5 million new foreign-born residents, three quarters of the new arrivees are documented immigrants.
If this report is accurate, this pretty much squelches the argument about large numbers of undocumented immigrants entering the country illegally. There just aren’t that many of them. Most arrivees intend to seek asylum and report to authorities at their first opportunity.
The 49.5 million immigrants now comprise 15% of the overall American population, a record. In 1870, 14.7% of the population was foreign-born. In 1890, 14.8% of the population was foreign-born. In 1910, 14.7% was foreign-born.
By 1970, the percentage of foreign-born residents had dropped to 4.7%. It then began its inexorable rise. In 2010, the percentage had risen steadily to 12.9%. It steadily rose through the remainder of the two Obama terms and Trump’s term, excepting the Covid years.
In summary of these facts, perhaps the best explanation is that we have yet to face any event that qualifies as an invasion. The better, more accurate term just might be an ”influx.” Maybe a “long-term growth spurt.” However, I concede that in an age of hyperbole, maybe “invasion” does fit the bill. We do have a propensity to exaggerate things out of proportion. We had 38.5 million foreign-born residents in October 2010. That, too, is a pretty big number. Of course, the upward trend line has been steady since 2010, except for the pandemic years. The foreign-born population dropped from 44.9 million in October 2018 to 43.9 million in October 2020.
Maybe the invasion began in 1970, if it ever was an invasion. Make no mistake, however, immigration has been with us for a long, long time.
Endless dark money says
Spread hate and racism! vote republicon.
William Moya says
That was The New York Times folks, and many of you still cling to the idea Republicans and Democrats are going to take us in different directions, we’re complicit.
Land of no turn signals says says
Actually thought the term invasion was a nice way of saying overrun or taken over.
Bill C says
The ultra violence of drug cartels is what is most responsible for driving people to flee Central America. Stop blaming the victims! These cartels wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for AMERICAN DEMAND FOR DRUGS. Human trafficking by the cartels is just an adjacent opportunity they took advantage of because the drug smuggling routes were already in place- an easy and logical business expansion from their sick and murderous point of view.
Lance.Boyle says
Unfortunately, this writer is completely uninformed as to the real reasons this country is being INVADED. The doublespeak by these people is unbelievable.
If you’d like to see a FIRST HAND ACCOUNT of what is causing this invasion click the link below and scroll down the page and watch “Who Is Behind This”. It’s a real eye opener.
https://peakprosperity.com/exposed-the-hidden-agenda-behind-mass-migration-in-the-western-world/?vgo_ee=7vq658qUvr%2Bi3weLSuUrErjpmpYhLn1mBJmKwhCuN0he6g%3D%3D%3AChv2CmuG%2FG0I5RQH2C9Yvt0wrFfAebUh
Bill C says
Dr. Chris Martinson, the person behind Peak Prosperity, only has a degree in neurotoxicology. No expertise outside of that so his statements are nothing more than his own opinions. IMO he’s nothing more than a rank and file conspiracy theorist.
Sherry says
@ Bill C. . . Right On! Remember. . . “anyone” can start a blog these days. We unfortunately live in an era of making money by distorting the truth.
Ray W. says
It took only a few seconds of reading the article you linked to understand that the author is purposely trying to mislead you.
His is a very old premise. America is being impoverished because undocumented immigrants are sending money to their home countries, instead of spending that money here. There is a new twist to the old argument, in that for the first time there is an alleged international conspiracy afloat to impoverish all Western nations.
Let’s think this through. If an undocumented immigrant sends $1k per month home, that means that the $12k per year is no longer circulating in the American economy. If enough immigrants send money to their families in other countries, that crimps the overall efficiency of our economy. Of course, the same things happen whenever an American buys a Mercedes that has been reworked by AMG. These high-end AMG cars sell for roughly $100k each. If 3000 AMG vehicles are sold in the U.S. each year, then roughly $300 million is sent to Germany each year. That money no longer circulates in the American economy. In a zero-sum world, we are becoming impoverished because we buy AMG cars. But we don’t live in a zero-sum world.
If we import roughly seven million barrels of crude oil and related distillate products each day, at $80 per barrel, we are sending roughly $560 million per day out of the country, yet we are not impoverished. In 2008, we were importing roughly 15 million barrels of crude oil and distillate products per day and sending even more money out of the country, yet we were not impoverished. If not for the economic policies of the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations, we would be producing far less crude oil today than we are. (Last month we set a new daily average crude oil production record for the second month in a row.)
We call this economic activity international trade and we have been running a trade deficit for decades.
Immigrants sending money to their families is but a tiny part of an overall much larger U.S. international economic model.
The real issue is just how gullible you are, Lance.Boyle. You present as an extraordinarily gullible commenter. Maybe on some issues, you are less gullible. On this one? Way out there on the gullibility scale. You are mistaking a valid argument for a winning argument. A valid argument keeps you in the argument. Validity alone seldom wins any argument. If we never sent any money abroad, all of our GDP would stay within our borders. But what if our domestic methods of production are less efficient for whatever reason that production in another country. Relying on less efficient domestic production also crimps an economy. Historically, we never have experienced an economy that was solely domestic, i.e., there has always been some level of international trade. In the 1780’s, we imported sugar from the Caribbean. We simply could not supply our own sugar needs with domestic sugar production. When our nation formed, British law forbade skilled tradesmen and manufacturers from travelling to America. We provided raw materials to the world, but we did not have a manufacturing base. Alexander Hamilton, our first secretary of the treasury, enticed skilled British workmen to evade British law and settle in America, primarily at first in New Jersey. But we kept exporting fish and timber and other natural resources to England, France and other European nations. I have to think that those early skilled tradesmen sent money to relatives back in England, too.
If we as a nation are going to engage in an international economy based on capitalist theory, then money will always flow towards the most efficient use of that capital. If that means that Indonesia corners the palm oil market by vast deforestation efforts, or China attempts to control the lithium-ion battery market because we as a nation were stupid enough to cede that market to China for political reasons, then the world will send its resources and wealth to those markets, instead of sending the money to us. We buy expensive French champagne for special events. We buy luxury olive oils from Spain, Italy and Greece, when less expensive versions are available elsewhere. We even allowed huge orchards to fail so that we can buy cheaper jars of apple sauce from China. Even though domestic coal consumption is dropping, U.S. coal companies are exporting more coal than ever. I am old enough to remember when the dollar/yen exchange rate was 1/340. Today, it is 1/146. Our buying Japanese goods has impoverished, using the author’s definition of impoverishment, the American economy, to the point that the Japanese yen is today more than twice as strong as it was when I bought my first Japanese motorcycle. Notwithstanding that long-term weakening of the dollar compared to the yen, the dollar remains the strongest currency among the G-7 nations, and by far the strongest currency against almost every other currency in the world. Yet, Lance.Boyle is gullible enough to fall for a very old yet always fallacious argument. We just do not live in a zero-sum world. Sending money out of the country does not automatically mean that we are impoverishing our own economy.
Oy, vey!
Ray W. says
During the night, the Magna Carta came to mind.
In clause 41 of that great charter, the English barons insisted on free trade, as follows:
“All merchants may enter of leave England unharmed and without fear, and may stay or travel within it, by land or water, for purposes of trade, free from illegal exactions, in accordance with ancient and lawful customs. This, however, does not apply in time of war to merchants from a country that is at war with us. Any such merchants found in our country at the outbreak of war shall be detained without injury to their persons or property, until we or our chief justice have discovered how our own merchants are being treated in the country at war with us. If our own merchants are safe they shall be safe too.”
Just over 800 years ago, the English barons knew more about the importance of unfettered trade and the free flow of money across borders than does Lance.Boyle today.
If French barley traders could provide grain to English mill owners at a cheaper price than could English barley farmers, the English barons knew that that was good for the economy, even if it meant sending English currency abroad to France. England was not impoverished by importing cheaper goods. Right now, the American economy is the strongest in the world, by far. It is not perfect. We have many issues to confront and solve, if we can. But once again, we added an extraordinary number of jobs in January to our overall economy. 343,000, according to the BLS. Our unemployment rate stands at 3.7%, another extraordinary number. American businesses are creating jobs and we are finding people to fill those jobs. Yes, most of those new workers are immigrants. No, our replacement birth rate is not adding enough new Americans to the labor pool. All of this happened with perhaps millions of immigrants sending money home in January, just as they have done for many decades. Does this sound like an impoverished economy to any FlaglerLive reader?
The answer to gullibility is the exercise of intellectual rigor within the framework of reason. To our founding fathers, reason (at least to some) was heaven’s greatest gift to mankind. But only if one followed reason to whatever end it took them. Do not contort reason to fit whatever preconceived goal you hope to prove. Let reason take its course.
Ray W. says
Interestingly, according to the World Bank, 50% of Tonga’s GDP comes from remittances home from Tongan immigrants living in other countries. India is the world’s largest recipient of remittances from immigrants living in other countries, at roughly $100 billion last year. China, one of the world’s wealthiest countries, is on the World Bank’s top five list of recipients of remittances. Overall, it is probable that some $800 billion, worldwide, was sent home by immigrants. With a worldwide GDP of well over $100 trillion (U.S. GDP is over $25 trillion), remittances are indeed a significant slice of the pie, but there is no “hidden agenda” other than immigrants wanting better lives for their families.
Ray W. says
According to a February 1st AP article, Mexican immigrants sent on average $391 in remittances last year. The remittances, as of 2020, constituted 3.8% of Mexico’s GDP.
Of course, the remittances to Mexico are but a miniscule percentage of America’s much larger GDP.
Sherry says
Thank you, Ray W. Maybe, just maybe, you provoked some thought by those that are victims of extreme right winged brain washing. . . from many different sources.
dolly day says
Nice gaslight you got there. It would be a pity if something happened to it…
(snark)
Ray W. says
The Cato Institute also published, in 2021, an overview of the history of American immigration policy.
Its conclusion is as follows:
“In 2019, the United States issued just over one million green cards. Of these green cards, 63 percent were based on familial relationships (81 percent of which went to immediate family relatives of U.S. citizens and green card holders); 5 percent were based on employment; and the remainder were based on various humanitarian concerns or the diversity green card lottery. More than half of those obtaining a green card were adjustments of status, meaning that they were already in the United States, as opposed to new arrivals from abroad. The demand to immigrate to the United States, combined with numerical limits and per country caps on family and employment-based migration, has created a backlog of individuals who have been approved for green cards but who are not yet able to receive them. As of 2019, roughly one million foreign workers and family members were awaiting their employment-based green cards in the United States, while another 3.6 million prospective immigrants were awaiting their immigration visas. For immigrants from some countries, such as those from India, this means that they will not receive their employment-based green cards for roughly a decade.
“While estimates of the size of the illegal immigrant population continue to fall, the demand for nonimmigrant visas continues to rise. In 2018, the Department of State issued nearly 196,409 H-2A visas for temporary agricultural workers, compared with the 11,004 visas it issued in 1996. Similarly, the issuance of H2-B visas for temporary nonagricultural workers has grown significantly, increasing from 12,200 in 1996 to 97,623 in 2018. Demand for high-skilled workers has been so high ‘that the annual H-1B cap was reached within the first five business days on eight occasions’ between 2008 and 2020. Since the academic year 2008-2009, more than 6000,000 international students have enrolled in American academic institutions each year, and many of those students have been unable to obtain green cards, given the current numerical constraints.
“Overall, the U.S. immigration system remains fragmented as of early 2021. Relative to a system that prioritizes economic contributions and creates pathways for immigrants to work in the United States legally, the current system constrains economic growth. Path dependency and politics preserve the status quo and make it difficult to reach consensus on immigration, despite seemingly straightforward opportunities to harness prospective immigrants’ desire to live and work in the United States. although regulatory changes can generate meaningful improvements to the United States immigration system, congressional reform is likely necessary to replace the patchwork of current immigration policies with a coherent system that channels the constructive powers of immigration rather than disrupting them.”
The Cato Institute has long been known as a conservative think tank. If I am reading its conclusion accurately, today’s congress can help our economy in a statistically significant way by passing a bipartisan bill that creates a comprehensive approach to immigration. We know how to do it. We just refuse to address the problems. We need more workers. We need their youth and energy. American businesses continue to create new jobs in unexpectedly large numbers. With an ample supply of workers to fill those jobs, our overall economic outlook, already bright, could be much brighter. The Cato Institute takes the position that executive action is unsuited to today’s demands. Legislative action is needed.
If the Cato Institute is correct, people like oldtimer need to stop trying to constrain the American economy.
Ray W. says
Speaking of invasions, can it be argued that many of our founding fathers wanted an invasion of immigrants?
One of the clauses in our Declaration of Independence addresses this desire for many more immigrants.
Thomas Jefferson wrote of King George III as follows:
“He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.”
Our Constitution purposely lacks language addressing immigration. Our earliest federal immigration statute established a requirement of two years of residency (whites only), plus an oath to support the Constitution. Simple enough to become a citizen. We wanted an invasion of immigration, if only white immigrants. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Approximately 20% of the members of our first Congress were foreign born. In 1860, over 13% of our population was foreign born. The number rose to higher levels in the following decades. Today, just under 14% of our population is foreign born. There is no invasion, folks. There is an influx, admittedly a large influx, but one that has existed since the beginning of our nation. Immigrants have always driven our nation’s economic growth, if only we allow it to drive growth. Our founding fathers knew this. They rebelled against their king, in part, because our king was hindering immigration. Imagine that!
Of course, King George III did offer immigration to criminals and debtors. At common-law, the death penalty was the only penalty for a number of felonies. “Transportation” was the phrase of the day. An inmate awaiting execution was offered “transportation” to the colonies. Many selected that option, over death. America got the dregs of English society. Debtors signed contracts of indentured servitude, usually for seven years labor in the colonies. They then fled to the western edges of the various states where they could settle on inexpensive or free land and attempt to scratch out a living in the wilderness.
Pogo says
@Ray W.
Your contributions to the comments about this topic are an erudite tour de force.
Thank you.