This newspaper has periodically, to its shame, succumbed to the kind of xenophobic fearmongering that President Trump is now trying to make American policy.
In 1875, The Times sternly warned that too many Irish and German immigrants (like the Trumps) could “deprive Americans by birth and descent of the small share they yet retain” in New York City.
In 1941, The Times cautioned in a front-page article that European Jews desperately seeking American visas might be Nazi spies. In 1942, as Japanese-Americans were being interned, The Times cheerfully suggestedthat the detainees were happily undertaking an “adventure.”
We make bad decisions when we fear immigrants we “otherize.” That’s why Americans burned Irish Catholics alive, banned Chinese for decades, denied visas to Anne Frank’s family and interned Japanese-Americans. And yes, The New York Times sometimes participated in such madness.
But we will not be part of that today.Keep in mind that we still are not quite back to the percent foreign-born in this country that we had a century ago, and that includes undocumented immigrants. Immigrants are not the problem with America.
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