Consider the problems around refugees and immigration. This country has had a huge influx of people looking for a better life. It has been going on for decades. Many of these immigrants are poor –  not the best and brightest. Some of them come in legally, but many have snuck in by way of Canada. They do not assimilate to American culture. They have a foreign religion and worship among themselves, reciting prayers in a foreign tongue. When they speak English at all, it’s broken and with a heavy accent. Many of them are criminals and are involved in street gangs. Specifically, I want to talk about the ones who joined our military only to betray their sacred oath and join members of their foreign religion to wage war against the United States. I’m talking, of course, about the Irish-American military deserters who formed St. Patrick’s Battalion and took up arms against the United States.

Following the Great Famine, thousands of Irish emigrated to the United States seeking a better life. Lacking land and money, many joined the American Army. These foreign soldiers faced discrimination and abuse on account of their foreign origin and Catholic religion. In 1846, when the United States began a war of territorial expansion against Mexico, an Irishman, John Riley (born Seán Ó Raghailligh in County Galway) organized Irish deserters into a unit of the Mexican Army, the San Patricios. They fought under the flag of the Irish Harp and fought against the United States in the Mexican-American War. While the Irish San Patricios were renowned in Mexico for their bravery, the United States ultimately won the war, seizing Texas and northern Mexico.

Irish Catholic immigrants fought in a declared war against the United States as part of a foreign army. Those involved lived in Mexican exile or were punished in courts martial. Those deserters who were captured were branded – literally branded with hot iron – as traitors and hanged.

Relevant today is what didn’t happen: Loyal Americans of Irish origin were not rounded up and deported. There was no blanket ban on Irish or Catholic immigration. Their children grew up as Americans. They adopted American values and American accents. They ascended to the highest levels of success in both business and government. An Irish-American president is commemorated on the fifty cent coin. Today in the United States, if those Irish deserters are remembered at all, they are celebrated in song and film.

Assimilation does not happen over the course of a single night. But for many of us of Irish ancestry, we choose not to remember the difficulties our ancestors faced in integrating into American culture. We pretend that our people were model citizens and not at all like those immigrants today from Mexico or Syria who cause trouble. But the hard truth is moving to another country is a difficult transition for anyone. The same forces of nativism and alienation that tormented my Irish ancestors in the 1840s are faced by the current generation of immigrants.

In fact, the discrimination immigrants face today is far more overt. Today’s discrimination is sanctioned by our government. The president has issued executive orders banning immigration into this country according to religion. He has proposed a massive slash in government services in order to finance a giant wall to keep other immigrants out. Families are being split up and immigrants are being deported for seeking medical care, for practicing their religion, for speaking out. Even American citizens are being detained at the border for no reason apart from their religious beliefs. None of these have raised an army battalion. None of them deserve this treatment. This nation is founded on the belief that all people have an equal right to liberty and justice.  We’ve always had a hard time living up to those ideals.  But in 2017, more than any time since the abolition of slavery, we are failing spectacularly.