Learning from Immigration History

This article from the New York Times stuck with me mostly because of one particular line near the end:

During World War II, the United States blocked a ship with hundreds of Jewish refugees from docking at our shores, sending many back to their deaths. After the war, the United States declared “never again” and became a leader in the modern-day refugee movement.

Given that the whole article is about problems in Central America and Honduras specifically, one can probably guess why the author brings that point up.

And the reason why it's so compelling to me is that this isn't the first time this point has been raised - the immigration debate often features comparisons to the Irish, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Jews, and more, depending on whether we're talking about people who we feared weren't useful, people who we feared might be a threat, or people who we regretted not helping more when we had the chance. It's remarkable how often we've regretted our past mistakes in this regard, and kind of depressing how often we turn around and do the same thing to different groups of people anyway.

That doesn't mean we can't decide we don't wish to or don't believe we can help, and there are plenty of ways we can make the problem worse with poorly thought out interventions. However, using that as an excuse to do nothing at all to help is little more than a prelude to yet more useless avoidable regret.