Expanding North American capitalism sought immigrants for economic reasons, as a cheap labour force. Others saw immigration as a moral imperative, a refuge for the poor and persecuted, as many still do. But immigration’s important political consequences for today’s left are less well understood and are underscored by Lichtenstein.
“If and when a twenty-first-century left comes into being, immigrants—whether freshly arrived or one or two generations in—will be at the heart of it…For nearly two centuries, immigrants have formed a reservoir of support out of which the left has drawn millions of partisans and thousands of leaders and activists.”