Happy St. Patrick's Day

Happy holiday celebrating the Irish part of our country’s collective immigrant heritage. The Irish diaspora in the United States is over 30 million people, around seven times the population of Ireland itself. When Irish / Catholic immigrants first began arriving in significant numbers ignorant xenophobes said everything they now say about Middle Eastern / Muslim immigrants now. According to these privileged children of immigrants, the Irish were pre-disposed to violence and criminality, they lacked the skills needed to contribute, their religion was incompatible with religious liberty and the separation of church and state (as if that's what really bothers xenophobes), and they would not and could not be assimilated into the nation as previous waves of immigrants had.

But looking back we know it was just irrational bullshit. Now the Irish are considered White by society and we don’t notice the differences anymore. And the Irish didn’t go back where they came from. The nation assimilated to the Irish as much as the other way around; absorbing new immigrants doesn’t displace our culture, it expands it. 

The modern wave of immigrants aren’t going anywhere either and they will inevitably and irreversibly change our country for the better. So to all the dumbass xenophobes out there, your world is dying and the spray-tanned asshole you elected won’t be able to stop it. And as an Irish American, let me say to Trump supporting Irish Americans, on behalf of those of us who know our history in this country: shame on you, you sold out the principles that let us escape tyranny and thrive in this country despite people much like yourselves. And we're supposed to think that today’s immigrants, the most recent arrivals in a centuries-long flow, are the threats to our system and values?