> On Feb 23, 2017, at 8:55 PM, JOANNA A. <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> It's a two-edged sword. With the exception of my parents, all their fellow Romanian emigres were pretty solidly right wint.
>
> Joanna
True, but in fairness to Lichtenstein he does point this out: “Of course, not all immigrants are radicals, and among some who fled authoritarian regimes of a left-wing coloration—Cuban and Vietnamese exiles, for example—a Cold War mentality lingers on.”
I think the answer is to be found in in the early wave of immigration which coincided with the rise of the radical working class and socialist movement in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century culminating in the Russian Revolution which inspired many immigrants, and the later disillusionment with the socialist model of those who experienced and reacted to the relative deprivation and political character of the Soviet Union and its allied regimes during the Cold War.
> ----- Original Message -----
> A useful survey by historian Nelson Lichtenstein of the effect of immigration, internal and external, on US radical history - equally applicable to the history of the left in Canada and other developed countries.
>
> 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.”
>
> https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/day-without-immigrants-american-left-history-trump-resistance
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