"We're a nation of immigrants that has never liked immigrants"
That's how it was when Benjamin Franklin, an Englishman, shook his fist at the German immigrants of the mid-18th century, declaring they "will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion." And when it was said on the West Coast in the mid-19th century that Chinese immigrants were not "assimilable." And when Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts warned, in 1905, that immigrants (read: the Irish) were "diminishing the quality of our citizenship." And when Italian immigrants in the early 1900s were criticized for allegedly being uneducated and dirty and -- no kidding -- smelling of garlic. And when, in a 1938 public opinion survey, approximately 60 percent of respondents said they held a low opinion of Jewish immigrants, labeling them "greedy," "dishonest" and "pushy." And it goes on, and on. http://journalstar.com/news/opinion/editorial/columnists/ruben-navarrette-jr-why-we-have-a
