Unfortunately, hatred towards #immigrants and #refugees is nothing new. But the sad part is that some of those spewing hate are descendants of immigrants themselves!

When America Despised the #Irish: The 19th Century’s #RefugeeCrisis

Forced from their homeland because of famine and political upheaval, the Irish endured vehement discrimination before making their way into the American mainstream.

By: Christopher Klein

Updated: June 1, 2023 | Original: March 16, 2017

"The refugees seeking haven in America were poor and disease-ridden. They threatened to take jobs away from Americans and strain #welfare budgets. They practiced an alien religion and pledged allegiance to a foreign leader. They were bringing with them crime. They were accused of being rapists.

"These undesirables were Irish.

"Fleeing a shipwreck of an island, nearly 2 million refugees from Ireland crossed the Atlantic to the United States in the dismal wake of the #GreatHunger. Beginning in 1845, the fortunes of the Irish began to sag along with the withering leaves of the country’s potato plants. Beneath the auld sod, festering potatoes bled a putrid red-brown mucus as a virulent pathogen scorched Ireland’s staple crop and rendered it inedible.

"While the #PotatoBlight struck across Europe, no corner of the continent was as dependent on tubers for survival as Ireland, which was mired in extreme poverty as a result of centuries of British rule. Packed with nutrition and easy to grow, potatoes were the only practical crop that could flourish on the minuscule plots doled out by #wealthy British Protestant #landowners. The Irish consumed 7 million tons of potatoes each year. They ate potatoes for dinner. They ate them for lunch. They even ate them for breakfast. According to Irish Famine Facts by John Keating, the average adult working male in Ireland consumed a staggering 14 pounds of potatoes per day, while the average adult Irish woman ate 11.2 pounds.

"Through seven terrible years of famine, Ireland’s poetic landscape authored tales of the macabre. Barefoot mothers with clothes dripping from their bodies clutched dead infants in their arms as they begged for food. Wild dogs searching for food fed on human corpses. The country’s legendary 40 shades of green stained the lips of the starving who fed on tufts of grass in a futile attempt for survival. Desperate farmers sprinkled their crops with holy water, and hollow figures with eyes as empty as their stomach scraped Ireland’s stubbled fields with calloused hands searching for one, just one, healthy potato. Typhus, dysentery, tuberculosis and cholera tore through the countryside as horses maintained a constant march carting spent bodies to mass graves.

British Neglect Exacerbates the Irish Plight

"More than just the pestilence was responsible for the Great Hunger. A political system ruled by London and an economic system dominated by British #AbsenteeLandlords were co-conspirators. For centuries British laws had deprived Ireland’s Catholics of their rights to worship, vote, speak their language and own land, horses and guns. Now, with a famine raging, the Irish were denied food. Under armed guard, food convoys continued to export wheat, oats and barley to England while Ireland starved.

"British lawmakers were such adherents to laissez-faire #capitalism that they were reluctant to provide government aid, lest it interfere with the natural course of free markets to solve the humanitarian crisis. 'Great Britain cannot continue to throw her hard-won millions into the bottomless pit of Celtic pauperism,' sneered the Illustrated London News in March 1849. Charles E. Trevelyan, the British civil servant in charge of the apathetic relief efforts, even viewed the famine as a divine solution to Hibernian overpopulation as he declared, 'The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated.'

"Ireland’s population was nearly halved by the time the potato blight abated in 1852. While approximately 1 million perished, another 2 million abandoned the land that had abandoned them in the largest-single population movement of the 19th century. Most of the exiles—nearly a quarter of the Irish nation—washed up on the shores of the United States. They knew little about America except one thing: It had to be better than the hell that was searing Ireland."

Read more:
https://www.history.com/news/when-america-despised-the-irish-the-19th-centurys-refugee-crisis