Saturday, July 21, 2018 | 2 a.m.
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A July 6 article on BBC.com by Jude Sheerin reported on U.S. immigrants seeking asylum. The president feared these immigrants would lower wages, take jobs away from citizens, be used by opponents to make a mockery of fair elections and change the culture of the nation.
The president was Millard Fillmore; the year was 1850; and, the immigrants were Irish Catholics and Germans, not Muslims and Central Americans.
Had the president been successful, some of my ancestors would have been sent back to Ireland. Unlike Donald Trump’s ancestors, my most recent German ancestors were safe, having established a home in Kentucky in the 1790s.
The article also pointed out the nepotism and cabinet chaos common to the Fillmore and Trump administrations, and that Trump has made baseless comparisons of himself to populist president Andrew Jackson. During the Revolutionary War, at 14, Jackson was slashed with a sword for refusing to clean a British officer’s boots and later took part in Indian battles and played significant roles in the War of 1812. In Trump, we have a populist who used serial deferments to avoid the military.
Fillmore’s ineptness and his role in enacting the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required officials and citizens of free states to assist in returning slaves to their owners, resulted in his party not nominating him as their presidential candidate in the next election. His fate was to become a forgettable president. How will history judge Trump?
