(The following column by Pat Browne appeared on the Allentown Morning Call website on March 17. Pat Browne is the Republican state senator from Allentown.)
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — On St. Patrick’s Day, everyone is Irish. What that really means is the Irish-American experience is a story every American can learn from.
The Irish, in more numbers than any other ethnic group, came to America in the 1700s to escape the Irish penal laws that deprived them of land and the right to vote. They came in the mid 1800s to escape the famine. And they came later through Ellis Island to escape economic stagnation. They came by the millions to grasp a piece of the American Dream. They toiled, they bled, they achieved. But their story is a tale of two extremes — their level of contributions to the nation is probably only matched by the level of hardship they experienced here.
Following the harrowing path of the Irish-American of the mid-19th century is where this story is best begun. The famine Irish, as they were called, started their American Experience during our nation’s darkest hour. Serving predominantly in front line infantry during the Civil War, it was the lads of the 69th Pennsylvania Irish Brigade who repelled the charge of Pickett’s Division from Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg with such determination that a Union general remarked ”the high water mark of the rebellion crested no higher than the Rocks of Erin.”
When the war ended, the Irish again took the front lines as the nation looked to its future. Thousands ventured west to Council Bluffs, Iowa, to take part in the largest private works project ever taken in this country. On massive work crews of the Union Pacific railroad, tens of thousands of Irish surveyed, graded, split rails and laid track for six years in oppressive conditions for pennies a week. Together with the Chinse of the Central Pacific, the Irish helped fulfill the dreams of the then fallen 16th President — a country united not only north and south but east and west as well.
The Irish also joined Italians, Germans and Hungarians, among others, in the shafts of Appalachian coal mines, in the foundries and steel and textile mills. They were the grunts, doing the hard, dirty, low-paying, high-casualty jobs that no one else would do. They were the backbone of an economic machine building a powerful nation.
For a people so indispensible to the success of America, you would think acceptance by a pluralist nation would be an afterthought. Tragically, the Irish were despised by many Americas who called the New World their home before them. They were scorned as a sub-culture of humanity. For housing, they were offered crowded and vermin-filled tenements in the cities and plywood shacks near the mines and factories. At job sites, they often read ”No Irish need apply.” Political parties were formed whose sole platform was to oppress the rising tide of Irish and German immigrants.
We must ask ourselves how can the treatment of any people deep within the bosom of the great experiment be so abhorrent to its creed of the sanctity of all men?
With drastic changes in the American economic landscape over the past generation, the path to economic opportunity for new immigrant groups of Americans will be more complex than it was for the Irish. Most unskilled industrial jobs which used to provide a place in the middle class for the Irish have moved oversees. New Americans must navigate a knowledge-based economy to achieve prosperity. Only through increased partnerships between government at all levels and the private sector to commit to cutting edge early education, job training, secondary and post-secondary education can we provide both acceptance and a path to those who, like the Irish before them, seek the promise of America to fulfill their dreams for their children.
Blocked against the Atlantic and the peat covered hills of western county Mayo is a small fishing farming town of Ballycastle, the birthplace of my grandfather. As you happen upon this small community on the only road that runs through it, you are greeted with a large banner that hangs permanently across the entrance to the town. It reads in Gallic, ”Welcome one and all to Ballycastle.”
As Americans gather together to celebrate the Emerald Isle, let us remember and reflect on the extraordinary contributions and hardships of its sons and daughters in America. In the Spirit of St. Patrick, who offered the love and hope of Christ to a ancient land rife with oppression and fear, let us offer a prayer that all Americans will extend a hand of acceptance to all those in the collage of humanity thirsting for the promise of its gleaming shores — that all Americans will hoist the torch at the golden door to those, who, like the Irish, are the toiled, the poor, the desperate — the retched refuse yearning to be free.