A Nebraska elementary
school teacher was arrested and convicted for teaching in a foreign
language. He was fined and jailed as the law read that teaching
elementary school children a foreign language or using a foreign
language to teach was a crime. How can this possibly happen in
America?
Were this article to end at this point, letters
would pour in suggesting that the teacher and I go back to Mexico.
Letters would include hoorays for Nebraska along with reminders that
English is the language of America and that Mexicans do not want to
assimilate to the American culture and way of life and are stealing
jobs from Americans.
Hold off on the letters, there is more to the
article. The teacher arrested and jailed was not a Hispanic, he was of
German ethnicity and the language he used was not Spanish, it was
German. The teacher appealed to the Supreme Court (Meyer vs. Nebraska)
that in turn overturned the conviction as an infringement on personal
liberty.
Since the creation of the country after the
American Revolution there have been those, known as nativists, who
oppose immigration, foreign language usage and the practice of
religions and cultures not conforming to those of the nativists.
Today’s similar in attitude group are but the latest batch, whose
commonality with past groups is their claims that unless we make a
final stand the country, culture and sovereignty will be overrun and
forever lost.
Teacher Myer’s Supreme Court case was in 1923. But
the question of language dates to the organization of the new country
as the founders debated which language to adopt. German was of prime
consideration, as was Dutch and even Greek was considered. There was
good reason, about one-third of the population was foreign born and
numerous languages were in use. English was chosen as the nation’s
language (though never as the official language) simply because the
majority of the founders in power were English users.
Early day nativists argued that immigrants
depressed the wages of "artisans and laborers because newcomers would
work for less pay than native-born workers." This argument was heard
in the early 1800s about the Irish and German immigrants, today it’s
about Mexicans.
We also hear that Mexico through Mexican immigrants
is hatching a Reconquista, a plot to take back the “conquered
land.” In 1844, the argument was that the Pope in Rome was
secretly planning to seize control of America through Irish Catholics.
In those days opportunistic political candidates campaigned to deny
citizenship to Catholic immigrants denouncing Catholicism as an evil
foreign influence.
To diminish the power of those already citizens a
secondary argument was that "a set of citizens,
German and Irish, wanted to get the Constitution of the U. S. into
their own hands and sell it to a foreign power." From 1840
through 1880, German immigration was in excess of 4 million and Irish
immigration over 1.5 million – their number making them the target.
Some prominent figures in those days carried the
nativist banner: Henry Francis Bowers founder of the American
Protective Association; John Bell, presidential candidate in 1860,
John J. Crittenden, Senator from Kentucky; Nathaniel Banks, Speaker of
the House, Jerome Smith, mayor of Boston; Henry Wilson, Vice President
under Grant; Secretary of State Edward Everett; Lincoln’s Attorney
General Edward Bates and many more.
Those names are today replaced by Congressmen Tom
Tancredo, James Sensenbrenner, Duncan Hunter, Charlie Norwood, Lamar
Smith, and about 80 other Congress representatives. From outside
government there is John Tanton, founder of a multitude of anti
immigrant, disguised as ‘immigration reform’ nativist organizations:
Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Numbers USA, Pro
English, and others that replace the Know Nothing Party, the
Immigration Restriction League, Order of United Americans and Order of
the Star Spangled Banner organizations of the 1800s.
Nativists attack and periodic influence
continued into the 1900s. Germans after WWI once again became targets
as happened to Myers in Nebraska. The 12+ million Italian, Jewish,
Poles, Austrians, Czechs, Hungarians and Slovaks immigrants arriving
through the 1920s, suffered the same wrath, in some cases worse at the
hands of nativists.
Fortunately nativists have always been a minority
in the Unites States but their power to create national division and
cause fear about immigrants is always present. We are again faced with
such force.
