c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and sociologist at the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. His home page on the World Wide Web is at http://www.greeley.com. Or send him e-mail at agreel(AT)aol.com.)

(RNS)-Is nativism-hatred of immigrants-taking America where hatred of the Jews took the German people?

The specter of what the Nazis did to European Jews hovers over the recent beating of Mexican immigrants by police officers in Orange County, Calif. It also is evident in the current move in Congress to deprive the children of illegal immigrants of public schooling.

To read”Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust,”Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s new book about the support of ordinary German people for the murder of Jews, one wonders if this country is not drifting in the same direction.

We’re not killing anyone yet, but the enthusiastic applause in some quarters over a videotape of police beating a Mexican man and woman captured after a freeway chase suggests that we’re not all that far away.

In our minds, the”illegals”have become vermin. We have dehumanized them, deprived them of a claim to full humanity. Is it a long step from that to a gas chamber? Perhaps, but the logic is the same.

Goldhagen points out how widespread the feeling was that Jews were the cause of most of the problems in pre-war Germany and that eventually they would all have to leave. I fail to see much difference between that and the present American attitude toward immigrants.

The tip-off is the catch phrase that the United States must defend its borders. Immigrants-Mexicans in particular-are pictured as an invading army violating the borders of the United States. In fact, they are a labor supply responding to a labor demand. They are”invading”the United States only to do jobs that Americans cannot or will not do.

If this country could effectively keep them out, California’s fruit and vegetables would rot in the fields; dishes in restaurants from Los Angeles to New Orleans would go unwashed. When there is a long border with a labor demand on one side and a labor supply on the other, the border itself becomes a labor market-albeit a”secondary”one rife with exploitation and injustice.

No one has yet suggested shooting immigrants who illegally cross the border, but it certainly fits the logic of those who rejoice in the beating of the two hapless people riding in a pickup truck full of other illegal immigrants.

Doubtless it was not the first time either had been beaten. Nor is it the first time that law enforcement officials have beaten Mexicans, only the first time that they’ve been caught doing it on television.

There is not a responsible economist in this country who does not know that immigrants are an asset to the United States. Serious research proves that they do not contribute to unemployment rates among American workers.

Every politician in the country with any intelligence knows this is true. Yet the temper of the American people on the subject of immigrants-especially”illegal”immigrants-is such that not a single politician, not even the president, is ready to tell that truth.

Instead we have legislation to deprive their children of education and eliminate their rights when the Immigration and Naturalization Service arrests them.

These people are not criminals. They are men and women who are looking for a job. They already make a major contribution to the American economy. Given half a chance many would become good Americans, as did many of the hated immigrants of the past-our parents and grandparents.

The prejudice against them-which makes possible much of their exploitation-is based on ignorance and bigotry, just as German anti-Semitism was.

Moreover, many good American”liberals”support the ignorance and bigotry, just as did some moderates in Germany who tried to have it both ways on the subject of Jews.

Some church leaders, most notably the Catholic bishops, are speaking out against the evil of nativism. But they are not loud enough. It is a sin that should be denounced from every altar in America.

MJP END GREELEY