Matt Walsh’s views on immigration could be refuted by a fourth grade social studies student.
Walsh, an influential conservative blogger, author and political commentator, hosts the podcast “The Matt Walsh Show,” which has 3.2 million subscribers. He is the author of Johnny the Walrus, What Is a Woman, and Am I A Racist? — surely among the most absurd books ever written.
His page on X identifies him as a “theocratic fascist, bestselling children’s author, world renowned DEI consultant.” His posts are racist, misogynistic and promote conspiracy theories.
In one of his latest social media posts, Walsh declares: “America is not a nation ‘built by immigrants.’ America was built by settlers. There’s a difference. Settlers ventured out into the wilderness to build a civilization from scratch. The modern immigrant comes to a place that is already built. Settlers planted the trees. The modern immigrant comes to eat the fruits. If you cannot see the difference, I don’t know how else to explain it.”
That post reached 6.7 million people on X alone, where it generated 9,500 comments, 22,000 retweets and 123,000 likes.
As Michelle Obama truthfully remarked in a 2016 speech, “I wake up every morning in a house (the White House) that was built by slaves.”
Reginald Washington, senior archivist and African-American records specialist, with documents showing slave labor was used to build the White House, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2008, during a news conference at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
She was right, of course. The White House was constructed by slaves (“forced immigrants”) and by a variety of other immigrants who didn’t have U.S. citizenship.
New York City was built by immigrants. Some of the city’s most iconic residential and commercial buildings were designed by immigrant architects, who drew influence from their home countries to turn NYC into an architectural as well as cultural melting pot.
Among the immigrant architects were Richard Upjohn and Griffith Thomas, who built Trinity Church and the Astor Library (now the Public Theater).
Architects who were not English included Vienna-born Leopold Eidlitz and German Detlef Lienau, who constructed the original Brooklyn Academy of Music and the DeLancey Kane Estate loft building at 676 Broadway in Noho.
In this famous photograph by Lewis Wick Hines, an immigrant laborer is showing taking a break while constructing the Empire State Building.
Thousands of unknown immigrants did the back-breaking and perilous work of creating the skyscrapers of the Manhattan skyline: Iron workers, plasterers, masons, fireproofers, shophands, elevator constructors, truck drivers, mechanics, electricians, plumbers, terrazzo and mosaic workers, carpenters, millwrights, pile drivers, lathers, cabinetmakers, sheet metal workers and heavy equipment operators.
Immigrants, especially Irish and Chinese, played significant roles in building America’s railroads. The completion of the transcontinental railroad in May 1869 was a defining moment in the country’s history, and immigrant labor made it possible.
Thousands of workers from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds labored in grueling terrain and conditions to connect the Atlantic and Pacific. At the sesquicentennial of the Golden Spike Ceremony, then U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao said, “The Transcontinental Railroad was a tremendous feat of engineering, innovation and manpower that was key to unleashing the economic prosperity of the United States for generations.”
The Golden Spike celebration ceremony linking the Central Pacific Railroad with the Union Pacific Railroad, Weber Canyon, at Promontory Point, Utah, May 10, 1869. (Photo by Archive Photos/Getty Images)
Walsh counters by saying, “America was built by settlers,” evoking images of brave Causasians driving the westward expansion and ignoring the existence of Native Americans.
A settler is a person who moves with a group of others to live in a new country or area. An immigrant is a person living in a country other than that of his or her birth. America’s “settlers” were also immigrants.
Let’s use an eighth grade social studies lesson plan to explain the difference between settlers and immigrants: “The people who came west to make new homes were called immigrants. An immigrant is a person who comes to a new country to make a home. Once these people settled on the new land, they were called settlers.”
Walsh completely ignores the Native American contribution to white immigrants even surviving one winter. America’s Thanksgiving celebration depends on the narrative of Native Americans saving the lives of the immigrants.
Yet Walsh makes up the story that “settlers ventured out into the wilderness to build a civilization from scratch” while “the modern immigrant comes to a place that is already built.”
And his claim that “settlers planted the trees” is a new variety of stupid. Early American settlers discovered a land filled with forests. They cleared land to make room for villages and farms.
Immigrant workers pick cucumbers in Edgecombe County, N.C., on Friday, June 8, 2007. (AP Photo/The News & Observer, Ted Richardson)
Yet that’s not as outlandish as his assertion that “the modern immigrant comes to eat the fruits” of those trees.
Who picks the fruit off those trees? Immigrants.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, there are more than 283,000 illegal immigrants working on U.S. farms. If Trump manages to deport all the immigrants, do you think Walsh will take a job picking avocados in California?
Here’s the final blow: Thousands of “settlers” sent to the American colonies were criminals. As many of 50,000 were sent to Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Free Americans weren’t too happy about it. In fact, even before the Transportation Act of 1718 really opened the doors for Britain’s dumping of “undesirables” in America, some colonies tried to pass laws that would prohibit the practice. In 1670, authorities in Virginia passed an act that prohibited convicts from being sent there.
I can imagine the mayor of a Puritan Massachusetts town saying: “When King George sends us people, he’s sending those of the worst order. Charged with or convicted with heinous crimes, including child predators, drug dealers, vicious gang members, sadist thugs and people that deal in women.”
Oh, no, those are the words of presidential candidate Donald Trump last fall.
Walsh’s feeble attempt to draw a distinction between immigrants and settlers advances Trump’s desired narrative that all modern-day immigrants are bad, while the early European settlers were good. This is revisionist history.
The historical reality is the United States is a nation built by immigrants and slaves and also populated by criminal immigrants. And over time — including the present time — immigrants have made tremendous contributions to our society.
A quick check on the website of the Bush Institute offers in-depth testimony of immigrant contributions and participation in American life. For example:
- 5% of immigrants believe hard work is how you succeed in America and are responsible for half of the total U.S. labor force growth over the last decade
- Immigrant-owned businesses with employees have an average of 11 employees
- 6% of immigrants are self-employed compared to 5.6% of native-born Americans and they founded more than 40% of Fortune 500 companies
- Recent immigrants are more likely to have college degrees than native-born Americans and are more likely to have advanced degrees
Walsh and his allies praise the settlers of old who were themselves immigrants, while working to make sure today’s immigrants do not have the chance to become settlers.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.
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