A view of the Statue of Liberty from Ellis Island in New York Harbor just after sunset May 19, 2015. It used to be legal to deny Irish people work, the author writes. But is our rejection of almost all immigration not just as pernicious? Mike Segar/Reuters
There’s apparently been some controversy in academia about whether the infamous “No Irish Need Apply” signs and advertisements ever actually existed, or whether they were somehow figments of the collective Irish-American imagination, conjured up to get victim status.
For more than a decade, University of Illinois-Chicago Professor Richard Jensen has been peddling a very strange historical thesis with a surprising amount of success in academic journals.
Jensen argues that the “No Irish Need Apply” slogan—the infamous discriminatory display against Irish immigrants to the United States in the 19th century—is largely a myth. He contends that the slogan, referred to as “NINA,” is a case of projected self-victimization that Irish communities enlisted to evoke sympathy or encourage immigrant solidarity, while also suggesting that evidence of NINA’s actual use was exceedingly rare.
And the person who refuted Jensen’s claims is a high school student named Rebecca Fried. As detailed in this article, Fried investigated Jensen’s claims by scanning several online newspaper databases and finding extensive evidence of the nativist NINA slogan in hundreds of classified advertisements, newspaper articles, and even a couple of court cases in the 19th century.
Searching for NINA in genealogybank.com and newspapers.com—two subscription newspaper database websites—yielded 808 and 856 hits between the years 1800 and 1900, respectively, with the peak taking place between roughly 1850 and 1880. Most appear to be classified ads seeking labor. A few are Irish community commentaries upon the prevalence of such ads, further refuting Jensen’s additional claims about whether Irish immigrants were historically aware of such discrimination on a large scale.
It also became apparent that the practice was also sufficiently established by as early as 1830 that the New York Morning Herald (July 12, 1830) ran the following announcement that the offensive NINA advertisements would be refused by their office:
It is perfectly clear that Irish-Americans and immigrants did face widespread animus and discrimination in many parts of the country for probably a hundred years or more.
This prejudice was surely wrong and irrational, but, before we pat our progressive and enlightened selves on the back, we ought to acknowledge at least one way that 19th century America was fairer and more just to immigrants than it is today: It let them come.
However widespread the social prejudice against immigrant groups may have been, the federal government played no role in excluding them.
It was legal (though seemingly frowned upon by many) for individuals and businesses to not hire the Irish, but it was not legal for the government to forcibly deny them the right to live, work and compete in the Land of the Free.
No musket-bearing SWAT teams kicked in doors, hauled children away from their parents or spouses away from their family and packed them off to be starved, impoverished and oppressed by the government of their birth country.
It was not until 1875 that the first anti-immigration controls, primarily targeting Asian women, were imposed in the United States, soon to be followed by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, also explicitly racist in nature.
The Progressive Era of the early 1900s, with its fondness for eugenics and ethnic central planning, saw a series of increasingly harsh and restrictive laws designed to exclude and control racial composition, as well as stop foreign workers from competing with American labor.
We have since abolished explicitly racist immigration quotas, and, in their place, we have erected an almost total ban on immigration from anywhere. A few exceptions are made for the rich and well educated, and some family members of U.S. citizens (a nice-sounding and beneficial exemption that, coincidentally, has a similar effect as the old quotas designed to make sure that immigrants looked like us).
Today, nondiscrimination laws make it illegal for businesses to say they won’t hire Mexicans, but immigration laws make it actually impossible to hire almost any of them—even if Americans want to hire them and they want to work—just because they happen to have been born in Mexico. Of course, the same goes for the Chinese, and the Irish and the other 7 billion people on earth.
Is this “speak no evil” approach to injustice against foreigners really so morally superior? I wonder.
Daniel Bier is the editor of the blog Anything Peaceful on the Foundation for Economic Education website, which is where this article first appeared.
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Kesari is a war drama based on the Battle of Saragarhi in which an army of 21 Sikhs fought against 10,000 Afghans in 1897. It stars Akshay Kumar and Parineeti Chopra in the lead roles and is helmed by Anurag Singh. Kesari is being backed by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions and will be distributed by Reliance Entertainment.
Bollywood superstar Akshay Kumar, who impressed us with his breakthrough performance in his recent film PadMan which released earlier this year, is gearing up for his forthcoming war film Kesari, which is one of the most anticipated films of 2019. Kesari is a war drama based on the Battle of Saragarhi in which an army of 21 Sikhs fought against 10,000 Afghans in 1897. It stars Akshay Kumar and Parineeti Chopra in the lead roles and is helmed by Anurag Singh.
Bollywood Khiladi Akshay Kumar on the occasion of Baisakhi took to micro-blogging site Twitter to give a beautiful surprise to his fans sharing his latest look from the much-awaited film and wrote, “Tuhanu saareyaan nu Baisakhi di sohni saver mubarak hove!! Hasde vasde raho!!” In the film, Akshay will be playing the role of a military commander of 21 Sikh soldiers named Havaldar Ishar Singh who fought against thousands of Afghani invaders. The movie is based on the Battle Of Saragarhi and it will also mark Akshay Kumar and Parineeti Chopra’s first film together.
Kesari is being backed by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions and will be distributed by Reliance Entertainment. Earlier, the actor shared a pic from the sets in which he was clicked with kids. He captioned the image as, “Innocent smiles galore on set today! Shooting with these lovely children playing Afghani kids in #Kesari based on the Battle Of Saragarhi, one of the bravest battles fought in India.” Besides Kesari, Akshay will also be seen in Gold which will also feature television diva Mouni Roy in a key role.
4 deputy commissioners of Mumbai customs and a private on Tuesday arrested by CBI on allegations of demanding a bribe fo Rs 50 lakh from a complainant. The officials have been identified as Mukesh Meena, Rajeev Kumar Singh, Sudarshan Meena & Sandeep Yadav. CBI has also conducted searched at offices and residential premises of accused persons involved in the matter.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Tuesday arrested 4 deputy commissioners of Mumbai customs on allegations of demanding a bribe of Rs 50 lakh from a complainant. Along with 4 officials of customs, a private person Nilesh Singh has also been apprehended. The officials have been identified as Mukesh Meena, Rajeev Kumar Singh, Sudarshan Meena & Sandeep Yadav. According to the CBI officials, the national investigation agency laid a trap & caught 2 Dy Commissioners & 1 private person accepting Rs 5 lakh as 1st installment of bribe.
2 more Dy Commissioners & a Superintendent of Police arrested during the probe. CBI has also conducted searched at offices and residential premises of accused persons involved in the matter. All accused are being produced Mumbai court.
I'm a big fan of Sydal's work and I always enjoy Liger whenever he's in action, so seeing them team up was a real treat. Plus, Castle and Taguchi had fun chemistry together, so it was a very entertaining matchup on the whole and perfect in the opening slot. Sydal winning with a move that Liger innovated was also a nice touch. Taguchi was the only one I wasn't too familiar with coming into this bout, but I definitely want to see more of his work after being exposed to him here.
It's worth noting that Gedo is the head booker for New Japan Pro Wrestling while Delirious is one of the head bookers for Ring of Honor, so that was a cool dynamic. I wasn't aware of Delirious' gimmick prior to this match because I've only been watching Ring of Honor for the past two years, but it's a fun character and he worked well with Gedo. The commentators did a nice job of relaying the importance of his return to ROH and bringing up how he had yet to appear on the television show before now.
Yes, this was taped over two months ago (which I'll discuss in more detail momentarily) and thus the ending outcome was never in doubt, but the match itself was terrific. I knew nothing about Ishii and therefore had no incentive to see him win the title, but the audience in attendance obviously responded favorably to him and was solidly behind him throughout the bout. Hopefully ROH does more to get fans familiar with Ishii during his reign as champion and so far they haven't done that in the two months since this was taped.
As a wrestling show, I enjoyed this, but from a storyline standpoint, it's absolutely asinine to be airing a show that's this dated. As if that isn't bad enough, ROH has a pay-per-view coming up, so they're basically putting their current feuds on hold in order to air old content. The atmosphere was a refreshing change of pace and the in-ring action was excellent, but long-term, ROH is sabotaging their own event by not hyping it up at all with their weekly television show.