At the beginning of the month, the White House issued a proclamation that March is “Irish- American Heritage Month.” It seems that whenever the U.S. government sets aside a month to celebrate a certain racial or ethnic group, it’s usually a thinly veiled attempt to atone for past discrimination. Discrimination against Irish people has certainly subsided over the years. Aided by our white skin, Irish Americans like me have been able to escape the discrimination felt by so many immigrants of color. Like every other immigrant group in the United States, Irish Americans have suffered at the hands of xenophobic native-born White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, especially through employment discrimination. It was once commonplace to see signs that read “No Irish Need Apply” on storefronts. However, the discrimination we see today toward immigrants doesn’t apply to the nearly 50,000 undocumented Irish immigrants living in the United States. One thing is certain: race and immigration have always been intertwined.
In the early twentieth century, millions of Irish people faced almost the same exact plight of discrimination now facing Latin American immigrants and Middle Eastern refugees. Irish people allegedly brought drugs and crime, and some — I assume — had a reputation for being good people. Irish immigrants were predominantly Catholic and often arrived on America’s shores speaking only Irish, which subjected them to further discrimination and social isolation. The one barrier that didn’t exist for Irish immigrants was race. They could pass as Anglo-Saxon and blend into their surroundings thanks to their white skin. Over time, Irish people gained the same status as Anglo-Saxon white people in the United States. Unfortunately, other immigrant populations had a much harder time assimilating, and this included other European groups. In 1924, the Johnson-Reed Act also known as the “Asian Exclusion Act” was passed making it increasingly difficult to enter the United States if you were Eastern European and completely impossible if Asian. Though the Irish did face discrimination, they were not as affected by this immigration ban propped up by the alt-right of the day.
Fintan O’Toole, a columnist for the Irish Times, describes the racialized nature of American immigration eloquently in his piece “We are undocumented but they are illegal.” O’Toole affirms the importance of language by pointing out that when people describe undocumented Irish Immigrants, they are four times more likely to use the term “undocumented Irish” rather than “illegal Irish.” The immigration debate is filled with discriminatory and racialized language giving undocumented Irishmen a pass and illegal Mexicans a worse reputation than they deserve. It seems like a contradiction that so many of Trump’s advisees have Irish surnames — Bannon, Conway, Spicer — but they are his accomplices in creating a national sentiment eerily similar to the anti-Irish sentiment of the early twentieth century. O’Toole breaks down this modern-day contradiction: “white Irish migrants good; brown Mexican or Muslim migrants bad. Or, as the euphemisms go, undocumented Tommy O’Malley okay; illegal María Contreras a threat to our way of life.”
The language contemporary politicians use to describe immigrants has always been vaguely racist, and since it never applied to white people, it was ignored. Now the language has escalated to a point where it is impossible for white people, like me, to stand idly by. There is no way that Trump would ever refer to an undocumented Irish immigrant as a “bad hombre.” Through various choices in language, Trump continuously associates the migration of black and brown people with criminality while simultaneously regulating his language to avoid the implication that white immigrants are also capable of committing crimes. This is apparent in Trump’s racially charged roll out of the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) office which will document and publish reports on the crimes of “illegal aliens.” This office is entirely unnecessary and it only serves to heighten xenophobic sentiment and racial tension.
Despite protests on both sides of the Atlantic, on March 16 the Prime Minister of Ireland, Enda Kenny, and President Trump will continue a longstanding tradition of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day together at the White House. Kenny and Trump set to discuss the 50,000 undocumented Irish immigrants currently living in the U.S. It’s no secret that Trump flirts with racism and is slow to “disavow” groups like the KKK. However, Trump’s buffoonery, blatant hypocrisy and selective xenophobia will be on full display when Trump meets with Kenny. A recurring theme in global politics is the notion that words matter and unless people start speaking out, history is doomed to repeat itself. This Irish Heritage Month, I’m going to keep the following O’Toole quote in mind: “This is a moment of truth about what it means to be Irish in the world. We either wink at a racism that affords most of us the privilege of a white skin. Or we honour the struggles of so many millions of Irish immigrants to be accepted as equal human beings.”
