The scattered debris of the Irish nation
In light of the stimulating discussion on an earlier post about increasing migration, I thought some historical context would be helpful. I’ve just been (speed) reading up on the social impact of mass migrations to America during the 19th century — when border controls were virtually absent. If you’ve seen Gangs of New York, you know that the social impacts of rapid immigration weren’t pretty.
In 1860, New York City had recently absorbed an influx of Irish immigrants and they constituted a quarter of the population – about 200,000 in a city of 800,000. The city was afflicted by endemic gang violence, with groups often affiliated by country of origin. Young Irish girls fed the rapid expansion of the prostitute population from about 11,000 in 1839 to 50,000 in 1850. Charles Dickens visited the Five Points slum (accompanied by two police officers), and later wrote about the area which hosted many recent Irish immigrants “loathsome, drooping, and decayed”. The Irish-born Archbishop of New York didn’t have many kind words for them either. He called them “the poorest and most wretched population that can be found in the world—the scattered debris of the Irish nation.”
Within less than a generation, however, the same population produced New York’s community leaders and social architects. They went from being criminals to filling out the ranks of the police and law profession. In 1890, two-thirds of the New York’s schoolteachers were Irish women, who were by then known for puritanism rather than promiscuity. The Catholic Church played a central role in the spiritual and social education of the new immigrants. (See William Stern’s article at City Journal for more details).
If we want to know about the short and long-term consequences of open borders, as well as effective strategies to integrate new immigrants, we have no further to look than the history of America during the 19th century.
