Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Haitian immigrants are not roaming the streets of Springfield, Ohio, eating people’s pets or the ducks in the ponds. A woman was arrested in Canton, Ohio, for allegedly killing and eating a cat, much to the horror of neighbors. However, she is not Haitian. She is a U.S. citizen and lifelong resident of Canton.
Unfortunately, our country has a long history of demonizing recent immigrant arrivals. In the 1860s, Chinese Americans built the Transcontinental Railroad. When an economic depression struck in the 1870s creating competition for jobs, Chinese Americans became the “yellow peril.” The Chinese Exclusion Act prohibiting Chinese immigration into the United States was passed in 1882 and was not repealed until 1943. But even then, only 105 Chinese per year would be allowed to immigrate to the U.S. This limitation was not lifted until 1965.
Mexican immigrants, many of whom were citizens or who legally entered the country, were swept up in massive involuntary deportation actions during the Great Depression. They were enticed by American companies to immigrate to the United States to provide cheap labor. But when the Depression struck, the government did not want to provide New Deal relief to the immigrants so they conducted sweeps and dumped the immigrants in areas of Mexico where they had no ties or resources.
The same thing happened again during the 1950s when the United States began “Operation Wetback.” U.S. border-patrol officials and local officials rounded up hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants across the country, many of whom were U.S. citizens, and once again transported them across the border and dumped them in Mexico. The justification for these deportations was that the Mexicans were lazy, stupid and did not deserve the benefits of living in America.
In Springfield, Ohio, the town population sharply declined by thousands after manufacturing jobs disappeared. Young people were leaving and not returning. Thanks to a dedicated program of renewal, Springfield began attracting new manufacturing companies to the point that the labor force was not sufficient to meet the demand. Many of the young people who had remained in Springfield had either become caught up in the opioid epidemic or were not interested in the new manufacturing jobs. Enter the Haitians, most of whom are legally in the United States. They flocked to Springfield and alleviated the crisis by taking the jobs that don’t pay the top wages and that were unwanted by U.S. citizens.
The influx of thousands of Haitians brought major change to the community. While Springfield had geared up to welcome the return of manufacturing, the community failed to address how its infrastructure would address the additional needed housing, growing educational demands and the increased need for medical care. At a meeting to address the problems, a single individual stood up to claim the Haitians were killing the ducks in the park and taking them home to eat. Another claimed the Haitians were eating pet cats and dogs. Neither provided any proof, but a meme was born. The story has grown to the point that it has become ammunition for those wanting to score political points and attack immigrants.
Many other immigrants have lived through this same experience of being discriminated against, including Irish, Italian, German and Jewish immigrants. We should have learned the lesson, but we continue to fall for the same specious claims denigrating immigrants to provide justification for taking action against them (by the way, a Venezuelan gang has not taken over an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado).
With the assistance of social media, the problem is worse. It will continue to grow worse unless we speak out by calling it what it is—a lie.•
__________
Celestino-Horseman is an Indianapolis attorney. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.
Click here for more Forefront columns.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.