My great-grandparents emigrated from French Canada (Quebec) in the latter half of the nineteenth century. I've occasionally blogged on my Franco-American heritage during the life of the blog. I don't know my ancestors' stories, but the
Quebec diaspora to the US was motivated primarily by bleak economic circumstances, including the population growing faster than farmland. The economically diverse, prosperous US to the South, particularly in nearby industrialized New England, held an attraction. The Franco-Americans are a proud people
with a hard work ethic;. They weren't attracted by a (nonexisting) social welfare state, although no doubt based on a cohesive culture and the Catholic Church, a commitment to help the less fortunate, they were able to muddle through still challenging economic opportunities. A number of Francos, including my ancestors, settled in Fall River, in southeast Massachusetts close to the RI border and a short drive from Providence. Fall River at the time was a thriving textile center. In fact, my maternal grandmother and godmother was proud of her master weaving skills, but when she married my grocery owner grandfather/godfather, he had some old-fashioned notions about her being s full-time homemaker and that he earned enough that they didn't need her second income for their family of 4. (I had a few disagreements with my grandfather, and this was one of them.) My grandmother died of complications from colon cancer before I turned 3, done too soon; I and younger siblings have already outlived her lifespan.
But make no mistake: life working in the mills, farms (my Dad worked at a relative's farm during summers), etc., was not an easy lifestyle: long hours for meager wages. My maternal great-grandfather was a businessman with at least one failed business. My grandfather entered into a partnership with his father and basically rebuilt a successful mom-and-pop grocery from scratch. He barely managed to keep the business afloat during the Depression. A lot of customers still owed him money on credit at the time he shut down his store to retire. (My uncle was a diocesan priest, and my Mom was a full-time Air Force spouse raising a young, large family in Florida.)
But make no mistake, the French did not find a positive reception in many sectors of American society. In one of my past posts, I quoted an old WASP-ish NYT op-ed, attacking fast-breeding French-Canadian immigrants living in unassimilated closed communities around Catholic churches and parochial schools, stubbornly holding on to their language and culture. To groups like the KKK, we were a triple threat: immigrants, French-speaking and Catholic.
In fact, my grandparents were US-born and fully bilingual (English and French). So were my folks. Mostly they spoke French at home. My folks and maternal uncle were fiercely American and did not consider themselves hyphenated Americans. No older relative ever discussed the old country. I was the only sibling to be early-raised bilingually, and my kindergarten teacher didn't know how to cope with a bilingual child. There was some talk of holding me back in kindergarten until they administered an IQ test. My parents responded by no longer speaking French in front of their children. (My own French today is largely out of practice although I did take a French literature course in undergraduate school.)
For some reason, I (and my younger brothers) always had an interest in our Franco-American roots. I can remember in primary school reading everything I could find, e.g., on the French and Indian War. Did it have anything to do with identity politics or being part of the Roots generation? Not really. It's rare to meet other Francos; we have a distinctively French surname few Americans can pronounce properly. My Mom would occasionally prepare cultural dishes like cretons (seasoned ground pork spread) and toutiere (pork pie). To this day, I would prefer a cretons sandwich over any other food.
I always loved our distinctive iconic reputation of being the world's melting pot. Being raised in the integrated military gave me early exposure to black, Asian and Latino Americans (among others). I always felt that diversity makes life more interesting. (However, don't confuse this to mean I support the affirmative action industrial complex or racial identity politics.)
I've always been pro-immigration, although I've occasionally paid lip service to respecting the rule of law. However, the more I've looked at the specifics of immigration restrictive policies over the past century, the more disgusted I've become with this assault on our largely open immigration heritage.
Like I've mentioned, there have been some ugly movements in American history, including repression against black people (including at the expense of state/local government), anti-Catholicism, and anti-immigrant (e.g., the Know Nothings from the nineteenth century. My perspective has always been, my kingdom ends at my property line. If anything, people from other states or countries enrich the economy with more diverse goods and services, can help alleviate local shortages driving up the cost of living. Life isn't a zero-sum game. My unalienable rights are not diminished by other people, regardless of origin, pursuing their happiness.
I do have some pet peeves over xenophobes who offer sham rationalizations of their morally contemptible prejudices.
Let me start with a point of view that even one of my favorite libertarians, Ron Paul, promotes, along with almost every media "conservative" (and I'm particularly unhappy over "conservatives" quoting Milton Friedman out of context), the lie over the lure of the social welfare state. For one thing, immigrants, including "legal" ones, are ineligible for a period of time (at best, always if undocumented). Social welfare programs came in the twentieth century--after immigration was restricted around 1916-1925, It clearly wasn't a factor attracting my ancestors. How do we account for the robust immigration in the nineteenth century? Many of them were attracted by economic opportunity, freedom from an oppressive homeland regime, etc. Since when did those original motivations go away? And there are lots of "progressives" willing to document that our social welfare system pales compared to other democratic countries. So assuming the welfare system is the motivation seems, at best, questionable.
Not to mention leaving one's country is usually a difficult choice: You are leaving your personal support system, including your relatives, your culture, for a new country which may not be accommodating, a number of uncertainties, and your resources may be limited. You may be forced to liquidate your home and other possessions at low prices. Here's a relevant quote from an earlier cited source:
At the outset, two important points need to be established: the first one is that there are costs associated to emigration. These costs are economical, emotional and cultural. The economical costs are fairly easy to estimate as they are quantifiable. When individuals leave, assets have to be liquidated, often at a loss. Many material possessions have to be left behind. Packing material has to be acquired. Then there is the cost of transportation to their intended destination, and the cost of sustaining themselves during their travel. Lastly, there will be further costs of settlement, once the destination has been reached. The emotional costs are more difficult to estimate. To migrate often means to leave behind beloved family and friends with whom long association have forged strong emotional ties. To leave family and friends behind certainly meant to leave behind one’s support system. It also always meant to forego the familiar surroundings of one’s region and ancestral home, the land that generations of their ancestors had toiled, the landscape that had defined their environment since birth. All migrants have to face these wrenching emotional costs, and they will frequently remember very fondly that which they have left behind. The cultural costs may also be great. If one immigrates from a region that has particular cultural characteristics, such as way of life, language, religion and traditions, that are quite different from the host society then one will have to adapt to a far greater extent than a migrant that would share many cultural elements with the receiving society. Thus, it is evident that the greater the costs, economical, emotional and cultural, the less likely one is to leave one’s country for another. While the economical costs of French Canadians to leave for the United States might have been relatively small, the emotional and, especially, the cultural costs were quite high. They left behind a traditional rural society with strong family ties. They entered an industrial world, alien to them by virtue of its way of life, language and religion. Given these high emotional and cultural costs, it is surprising that so many French Canadians engaged in the migration process between 1840 and 1930. In fact, it would be normal to consider that French Canadians, who only find their language and religion dominant in a part of the continent, would be the least likely to engage in the migration process. Indeed, since the beginning of the 20th century, Quebec has had consistently the greatest rate of retention of its population of all provinces in Canada (for more recent statistics, see this table as well). These comments serve to highlight particularly the factors of causation for the emigration of French Canadians to the Unites States: if French Canadians were the people least likely to migrate from Canada, what severe problems impelled them to leave?
The second factor to raise is one that is familiar to historians and sociologists: immigration is the result of the interplay of push and pull factors. As mentioned above, if there are potentially considerable costs to migrate, then one engages in this process only when there are very serious reasons to do so. These reasons may be personal, economical, social, political. Historically, the great mover of large numbers of people has been poor or deteriorating economic conditions. When one’s life is miserable, when one does not see a way to pull out of poverty, then one is literally pushed out of one’s environment. In this respect, much discussion of the poor economic conditions in Quebec will be found below. If that is so, where should the migrant go? Sometimes, economical circumstances, or political restrictions, will limit the choice. However, there is no doubt that what will be the most attractive alternative, what will pull the immigrant, is the land around them that is the most prosperous. In this respect, it should be noted that in the 19th century, the United States emerged as one of the most industrialised and prosperous nations on earth. To the Québécois, the United States appeared as a vast Eldorado whose streets were literally paved with gold. These factors are explored further below.
Back in 1995 I went on two business trips to Brazil, the first nearly 3 months long (I was initially told about 2-3 weeks). I don't remember how the subject came up, but my project lead told me he could negotiate a six-figure salary for me to work for the client (the largest credit card operation). This would have meant maybe doubling my salary at a
much lower cost of living. I never expressed interest; Brazil was a nice place to visit, but I didn't want to live there. I had a girlfriend I really loved during my stay and on multiple occasions expressed an interest in her moving to the US so we could continue our relationship; regardless of her feelings for me, she had no interest in leaving her family or country. (Obviously I felt the same way; I could have chosen to stay with her in Brazil and I didn't.)
So this whole idea of America being overrun by a flood of immigrants is disreputable propaganda: in fact, under relatively open immigration until WWI, the US was not flooded with immigrants, for the most part, there is a cost-benefit assessment to migration, it's not easy on one financially or emotionally. Only a fraction of the world's population chose to emigrate to the US under more open policy. I myself have moved between states, not because of relative state benefits but because I had a job waiting for me. I've been trying for 20 years to return to Texas. My Mom has made the case for years: most of the family lives in Texas. My brother who lives in Kansas is building his eventual retirement home in Texas.
Let me close this rant by reviewing a couple of talking points I especially despise:
- "Without borders, you don't have a country." Rubbish. That's like saying without enforced state travel papers/regulations at border entries or barriers along state lines, you don't have a state. I don't have an issue with the "open borders" label, which the right-wing xenophobes seem to equate with leftism--and I'm far from that. Let me point out that unions have generally opposed immigration, which they believe is "unfair competition" driving down wages. Eisenhower, facing a similar "crisis", legalized temporary workers, and immigration arrests dropped nearly 90%. It was a Democratic President (JFK/LBJ) who did away with the above-referenced bracero program. Unions reject temporary worker programs, etc. In fact, ring-wingers are often anti-liberty, wanting business owners prosecuted for failing to report undocumented job applicants--in effect, making employers slaves to the State. We open immigration advocates do think there are legitimate health and security concerns for a limited State, but these are not served by a Big Government bureaucracy and manipulation of immigration by anti-market quota schemes over the past century.
- "We appreciate LEGAL immigration." This comes across similar to the comment "some of my best friends are black". I saw a Prager U. clip titled similarly, and although I've embedded a number of their clips, I immediately knew what this clip would argue, i.e., get in line and do it the right way. This is absurd. You can spend 15 years or more waiting in line under the current system. You can reform the system by doing away with anti-market policies like quotas. Why are people working around the legal system? Because the legal system doesn't accommodate the market.
