On Thursday, MSNBC host Joy Reid said on “The ReidOut” that whether we “like it or not, immigrants continue to build America and make it run.”
Discussing commentary about the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, Reid said, “These grotesque accusations are part of a rightward shift in America where the majority of our problems are laid at the feet of people Republicans claim have broken into the country like burglars to steal jobs and money from real Americans. What they fail to acknowledge is foreign labor has fueled the American economy for generations. Millions of African men and women kidnapped and transported to this country and forced to become America’s’ most efficient labors were sold by property, bred like cattle with a single task of planting and picking cotton, cultivating rice and other crops, herding cattle and building the grand homes and iconic buildings that define America.”
She continued, “The profits from cotton alone propelled the U.S. into one of the lead economies in the world by the 19th century and made the south America’s’ most prosperous region until the civil war. After which, the wealth of the country shifted north, to the railroad men and the industrialists. With that came the 15,000 forgotten Chinese migrants who helped build the western portion of America’s’ transcontinental railroad in the late 1800s.”
She added, “In the east, it was roughly 10,000 Irish immigrants who helped build the eastern section of that railroad. Irish immigrants also helped build a number of America’s key canals like the Erie canal, because few locals would work for the low wages that the newly arrived Irish would.”
Reid concluded, “Whether you like it or not, immigrants continue to build America and make it run.”
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