Two Posts on Irish-American Politics and History, and its Lessons for Today

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all who celebrate!

It is, I hope, an appropriate time, to re-up two posts on the Irish-American politics and history:

1. "The Declining Political Significance of Irish-American Identity," Mar. 17, 2023

This post describes how and why the political salience of Irish-American identity has declined enormously over the last century, and what can be learned from that experience. An excerpt:

Today is St. Patrick's Day. And tonight, Irish-Americans across the country will be gathering to toast their control of the highest political office in the land. After all, Joe Biden is only the second Irish Catholic president of the United States. For their part, millions of WASPs are seething about the loss of their political hegemony to the Irish. St. Patrick's Day celebrations are a painful reminder of their humiliation. Police forces in major cities are on alert for possible ethnic riots.

OK, actually nothing like that is happening! In reality, very few Americans care that Biden is an Irish Catholic. Even fewer fear that he is somehow promoting Irish interests at the expense of WASPs….. Political conflict between Irish-Americans and WASPs has almost completely disappeared….

It wasn't always so. In the 19th and early twentieth centuries, political antagonism between Irish and WASPs was ubiquitous, sometimes rising to the level of anti-Irish rioting by nativists. There was also substantial discrimination and social prejudice against the Irish….

How did this change come about? The story is long and complicated… But one crucial factor was that most Americans came to realize that the differences between Irish-Americans and other groups were far less significant than previously thought, and also that these ethnic and religious divergences should be downgraded in the name of universal liberal principles.

2."Are Hispanics Following the Path of the Irish?"Jan. 1, 2024

This post comments on Noah Smith's insightful piece arguing that Hispanics are following the same path of assimilation as Irish-Americans did in earlier generations. I think Smith is largely right, but offer two major caveats.  Here is an excerpt:

Hispanics are by far the largest American immigrant group of the last several decades, and also the focus of the most extensive nativist concerns. Immigration restrictionists contend that Hispanic immigrants increase crime, undermine American political institutions, and cannot or will not assimilate. In a recent post, prominent economic policy commentator Noah Smith compiles evidence that these complaints are largely misplaced, and that Hispanics are in fact following a trajectory similar to that of Irish-Americans in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries….

Today's fears of supposedly violent and unassimilable Hispanics are remarkably similar to the nineteenth century stereotype of brutish, un-American Irishmen…

In [his]… article, Smith compiles evidence that the concerns about Hispanics are largely false: they are in fact rapidly assimilating, quickly increasing their wealth and income, and have significantly lower crime rates than native-born Americans (a point that applies even to undocumented immigrants). Most of this evidence is well-known to students of immigration policy. But Smith does a valuable service in compiling it in one relatively short and easily accessible piece….

I would, however, note a few relevant caveats to Smith's thesis. First, it is not entirely true that Irish and Hispanic immigrants "were mostly working-class folks who came for mainly economic reasons." In reality, many Hispanic immigrants were and are refugees from oppressive socialist regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua, and (most recently) Venezuela. Some others have fled repression at the hands of right-wing dictatorships….

A second caveat is that Hispanic migrants are a much more diverse lot than the Irish were. They come from a variety of different nations and ethnic groups. This makes generalizations about them more difficult….

Finally, while Irish immigrants arrived in an era when there were few restrictions on European immigration, many Hispanic migrants are undocumented. Today, there are an estimated 7 million or more undocumented Hispanic immigrants in the US, which accounts for some one-third of all foreign-born Hispanics, and over 70% of the total undocumented immigrant population.

For obvious reasons, lack of legal status reduces migrants' incomes and educational opportunities, and impedes assimilation. The existence of this anchor makes Hispanics' progress look even more impressive than it would be otherwise. But, unless immigration policy changes, it is likely to continue to slow down the assimilation process highlighted by Smith.