Although every modern nation deserves to maintain control over its borders and who enters, it always strikes me as odd when otherwise moderate people express virulent anger specifically toward undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America. I challenge anyone to identify a harder-working, more family-oriented ethnic group.

Getting all lathered up about economic refugees who come here seeking jobs is extremely ironic. There’s hardly one of us whose ancestors didn’t come here in similar straits and who didn’t face hateful prejudice because of it.

The Irish are the classic example of this, having been regarded as inferior cattle when they began arriving in numbers following the Potato Famine of the 1840s. Now, most every American proudly claims at least a little symbolic Irish ancestry, especially in this month of St. Patrick’s Day. In the 19th century, they were seen as illiterate, criminal brutes who lowered everyone’s wages by stealing the jobs of “real” white people.

He claimed to be born in England, but I’m virtually certain one of my great-great-grandfathers was Irish. He managed to pass himself off as English because his family had moved to London a few years before he came to the U.S. in 1849, probably drawn by the California Gold Rush. For all intents and purposes, our borders were open then and there was no such thing as an illegal immigrant. Citizenship still didn’t come easy if you weren’t rich: It wasn’t until he survived fighting in the Civil War that he was formally made a member of our happy little club in 1865.

When it comes to Mexicans, it particularly bears recalling that we essentially stole half of their country, including California, after our trumped-up Mexican-American War and our annexation in 1845 of Texas, which Mexico regarded as a rebel territory. What’s done is done, and I’m often happy to have California as part of our nation. (They can have Texas back, however.) We should at least curb any tendency to feel high and mighty when it comes to welcoming Mexican people to “our” land.

A hundred years from now, if not much sooner, a little Mexican blood in Gringo veins will be as commonplace and fully as much a source of pride as having a touch of the Irish.

Speaking of St. Patrick’s Day, I didn’t know until recently that Patrick wasn’t born Irish. Starting his life as Patricius, Patrick was born to a well-to-do Romano-Briton family in Carlisle in what is now northwestern England. He was carted off to Northern Ireland by pirates as a slave at age 15.

After escaping to Gaul in what is now France, Patrick trained as a priest and returned to Ireland with a determination to continue the conversion of his captors. (Christianization of the Irish actually began years before St. Patrick’s mission. And it was more than 200 years after his death before he became the primary focus of Irish Catholic devotion.)

Possibly foremost of the legends about him is that he drove the snakes from Ireland. Though less inspirational, this absence perhaps has more to with the island being cut off from the European mainland by rising sea levels after the end of the ice age, before moderating air temperatures encouraged the northward migration of reptiles.

St. Patrick also is remembered for suggesting the shamrock as the model for the Trinity, from whence it became Ireland’s emblem. In her Superstitions of Ireland, Jane Francesca Wilde wrote “The fortunate possessor of the four-leafed shamrock will have luck in gambling, luck in racing, and witchcraft will have no power over him. But he must always carry it about his person, and never give it away, or even show it to another.” I like this poetic English form: “The first leaflet is for fame, the second for wealth, the third a faithful lover, and the fourth, glorious health.”

I can’t leave the subject of the Irish without mentioning leprechauns. According to the Ireland Now Web site, “These two-foot tall, unfriendly, gruff men (there are no female leprechauns) prefer to pass their time making shoes for other fairies.” They carry two leather pouches and if you ever have a chance, be sure to select the one containing a single silver shilling, which will always magically replenish itself. The other pouch has a gold coin that turns to ashes once the leprechaun is freed.

It’s also good to know that leprechauns are probably a Christian invention, substituting harmless fairies for the powerful Celtic god Lugh Lámhfhada, or Lugh Long Hand – nicknamed in honor of his archery prowess that killed enemies as if he reached out and knocked them down with his hand.

His name is pronounced “Luck.” He is the original luck of the Irish.

– M.S.W.

Matt Winters is editor of the Chinook Observer.