Last updated on July 28, 2013
As with Mexican migrants today, not everyone welcomed [the influx of French Canadians to New England in the early 20th century.] One Massachusetts official called French Canadians “the Chinese of the eastern states” in an 1881 report that described them as “indefatigable workers” who had no interest in assimilating and drove American wages down. …
Besides helping to fuel New England’s manufacturing boom, thousands served in the world wars. Rene Gagnon, whose Quebec-born mother worked at a shoe factory in Manchester, NH, was one of the Marines photographed raising the American flag over Iwo Jima in 1945. The author Jack Kerouac was born of French Canadian parents in Lowell, Mass.
Far from causing the collapse of the republic, these largely unregulated border crossers helped build the United States we know today.
What the French Canadian experience shows is that our current obsession with border security is inconsistent with our history, undermines our economic vitality and is likely to fail.
From an op-ed in the New York Times last week by Stephen R. Kelly.
The op-ed hit particularly close to home, for three reasons. First, because my grandmother was born in 1930 in New Hampshire of French Canadians who had decided to move there for work, and who decided to return to Quebec a few years later.
Second, because Steve is a colleague of mine, and not only is he one of the nicest people I have met during my time at Duke, he is also infinitely knowledgeable about North American affairs, having served in Quebec City, Ottawa, and Mexico City.
Third, and most importantly, because it sets the record straight on the mistaken “They took our jobs!” line of thought, about how an immigrant who has a job necessarily stole that job from someone born here, which fails to recognize that (i) immigrants are also consumers whose demand for goods and services create additional jobs, and (ii) if you are going to vilify immigrants for “stealing jobs,” then by that logic you might as well vilify your neighbor for having kids because they, too, will be “stealing” your kid’s job one day.
What Is This I Don’t Even: A Sad Anecdote
One of the most surreal conversations I ever had took place while I was in college, in 1997. A handful of us were hanging out between classes, and I was trying to make conversation with a French student who I had hardly spoken to before, but with whom I had wanted to go out with.
Ever the smooth player, I decided to talk about politics with her, and asked her whether she was going to vote in the upcoming French legislative election. She said she would. In a further stunning move of pickup artistry, I tried to impress her by asking her which of the major parties — PS, RPR, or UDF — she had voted for (and because hey, everyone knows that the opposite sex is always super impressed when you can credibly signal that you read The Economist cover to cover every week). She said she would vote for neither one of those parties.
After a few more guesses, when I finally asked: “Wait, will you be voting for the National Front?,” Jean-Marie Le Pen’s far-right, anti-immigrant party, she said she would. As she explained it: “Well, in France, there are lots of immigrants, and there is a lot of unemployment. So I vote for the National Front.”
My interest in going out with her died that day.