Today, the shrill calls for harsh laws, steep fines, and tall walls across the Mexican-American border to stop the growing flow of Hispanic immigrants into the U.S. is an echo of past times: times when Americans did foolish and terrible things that remain as stains upon our history. I shudder when I hear or read the voices of the hatred, which warn us of the dangers of our Hispanic "immigration problem." The fear and hatred of American anti-immigration feelings have always run deep.

This syndrome is called, "Nativism," defined as an excessive reactionary movement of native-born citizens against new immigrants to their country, who are different. Nativism pops up in the U.S. during periods of economic instability and increased competition for jobs. It is a viewpoint claiming that people with religions, races, cultures, and languages different than the original immigrants to this country, who came from England and northwestern Europe—are dangerous to the American "way of life."

During 1830-1850, the immigration of Irish Catholics fleeing the famine in their homeland, caused an increase in competition for jobs and housing and frightened American Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, Christians, who believed this country was theirs alone, to the exclusion of all others who differed from them. Their fears erupted in the explosion of Anti-Catholic publications describing the presumed crimes and conspiracies of Roman Catholic to conquer the U.S. Consequently, in Boston, a Catholic convent was burned, and in Philadelphia, more than 100 Catholic churches and homes were destroyed and many American Catholics murdered.

By 1849, the fear of a Catholic takeover of the U.S. gave birth to the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, an Anti-Catholic political organization that created their American political party in 1850. In 1854, the party made its presence known in both state legislatures and Congress and preying upon the fears of ignorant Americans. Their presidential nominee, former president Millard Fillmore, won twenty-two percent of the popular vote in the election of 1876. By 1861 the American party was in decline as many of their members switched allegiance to the new Republican party, whose goal—the exclusion of slavery from the territories—was more to their liking.

During 1850-1870, California imported thousands of Chinese laborers to work its mines, farms, and manufacturing plants while the railroads took advantage of cheap Chinese labor to lay its tracks. By 1870, poor economic conditions and growing unemployment caused a flood of race-baiting talk against the "Chinese Menace" by political demagogues and the growth of a network of Chinese Exclusion Leagues throughout California and across the West. In 1882, Congress passed a Chinese Exclusion Act. Anti-Chinese riots followed resulting in the massacre of helpless Chinese workers, the looting, burning, or destruction of their homes and the forced evacuation of the remaining Chinese from their neighborhoods.

The ugly face of nativism appeared again with the advent of World War I. A backlash against Germany—and everything German—swept across the nation in response to the flood of anti-German propaganda issuing from Washington D.C. German language newspapers were forced out of business, German books were burned, German language classes in school were discontinued and in some parts of the country made illegal. Music written by German composers was removed from scheduled concerts, and the names of schools, streets, and cities with German names were changed. Some German-Americans were harassed and brutally beaten.

The Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 and the National Origins Act of 1924 restricted the entry to this country of people who were not from northern Europe and who were "biologically inferior." By 1937, thirty-two states had passed sterilization laws. Beginning in 1907 some states passed laws requiring the sterilization of citizens who were mentally ill, handicapped, or criminals.

After World War I, American nativists took issue with the flood of immigrants from eastern Europe who were flooding the labor markets of the nation. Their fears gave birth to the pseudo-science of "eugenics," which claimed that certain races were superior to others in intelligence, cleanliness, and industriousness. It was followed by a rash of eugenics societies and groups popping up around the U.S. with names such as the "Race Betterment Foundation" and the "American Eugenics Society" all of which spread the idea that eugenics meant better breeding habits for "true" Americans, and promoted the exclusion of people from the U.S. with undesirable traits.

The year 1915, saw the resurrection of the Klu Klux Klan. Originally a nativist organization founded by fear of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the potential rise of black supremacy in the country. This "modernized" organization was not only anti-black, but also anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, and anti-immigrant. It's popularity, however, diminished during the depression years of the 1930s. Presumably, however, the KKK, or something like it, is being resurrected in the 21st century U.S.

In 1917, Russian workers rocked the Establishments of Europe by forcing the Tzar to abdicate his throne and in 1918 withdrew Russian military forces from the European conflict (WWI) claiming it to be a war of Establishments and not of the common people. World War I ended on November 11, 1918, but the American Establishment kept troops in Russia for almost another year to assist Russians loyal to the Tsar in their fight against worker forces. Many Americans condemned this action.

Fearful of more worker revolutions throughout Europe, the American Establishment, unleashed its National Security League to promote hatred against foreigners. It passed a naturalization law giving it the authority to deport noncitizens for taking part in antigovernment activities, such as labor strikes. Consequently, hundreds of eastern European immigrant union strikers waiting for naturalization were deported. Socialist Party headquarters were broken into and zealous American "patriots" terrorized anyone claiming an interest in socialism.

When unexpected bombings racked the nation, the attorney general—covering all bases— blamed them on "immigrant, communist, union agitators." When a bomb destroyed the front of his home he asked Congress for funds to fight this "Red Scare," although the origin of the bombings wasn't known, and has never been proved He established a General Intelligence Division within the Bureau of Investigation-later to become the Federal Bureau of Investigation to spy upon Americans holding incorrect political views. In 1919, with little regard for due process of law, his Justice Department raided labor union halls in twelve cities, arresting, brutally beating, and deporting hundreds of workers, despite the illegality of the actions, for it was the Labor Department, which possessed the sole power of deportation, not the Justice Department.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry to World War II, fear that some Japanese-Americans might be spies for Japan resulted in the uprooting of thousands of Japanese citizens from their California homes, placing them in concentration camps scattered throughout the nation. White Americans quickly—and legally—confiscated their homes and businesses.

The 1950s was a bad time for Americans who questioned the integrity of the American System, or who investigated alternative political systems. Despite inconsistencies and changed stories by paid informants and known liars, accusations were always assumed to be true, and all defendants were accused of being communists and assumed to be spies. There was little attempt by the Establishment's House UnAmerican Committee—or the American people—to distinguish between truth and lies.

Today, American nativists wish to stop the flow of immigrants from Latin America. With publication of his new book, "State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America," the popular Christian demagogue, Pat Buchanan, has finally added his voice to the national concert of hate. Buchanan claims the central issue of our times is the entry into America of millions of people from different cultures who refuse to adapt to ours. He claims Hispanics don't really want to be part of this nation, but prefer to build their own communities and retain their own language.

What Buchanan ignores, and what an educated person like Buchanan knows, is that this is the "American Way." Every immigrant people to the U.S., after the first of Anglo-Saxon, Protestants—after having experienced the animosity and lack of neighborliness of fearful whites—have eventually been forced to migrate to "their own kind" and build their own communities.

The problem with nativism movements is that their negative solution to the perceived problem is always detrimental to constructive reforms, as witnessed by the most heinous nativism movement of modern times—Adolph Hitler's demonic regime and its extermination of a supposedly dangerous and inferior Jewish population.

What ordinary, working Americans so casually ignore is most immigrants to the United States are merely honest, hardworking people merely seeking the means to help their families survive. What ordinary, working Americans so casually ignore is that most of these people have been invited, or allowed, to enter the United States by our business-influenced and business-controlled governments to increase job competition and keep wages low.