The U.S. had been almost exclusively a Protestant nation before the Great Potato Famine bought hundreds of thousands of destitute and desperate Irish immigrants to our shores. This immigration also brought the first widespread anti-immigrant movement. You’ve probably seen the signs, “No Irish Need Apply,” and maybe you remember the “Know Nothing Party,” also called the “American Party.”
The Know Nothing Party was convinced that large numbers of Catholics would change the U.S. for the worse. These Irish immigrants would take orders from the Pope and ruin our country.
The same type of thinking is now directed to refugees from Muslim countries. They won’t fit in, they don’t understand our culture, they will subvert our way of life.
We hear it again and again, but even at the height of the anti-Irish bigotry, the U.S. never imposed a religious test on immigrants. Even our refusal to admit Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, terrible as that chapter of our history was, did not specifically tie the refusal to religion.
Now, for the first time, we are applying a religious test. Evidently Christian refugees from Syria can get in; Syrian Muslim refugees are refused.
Speak up.
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