The Great German Immigrant Panic (aka John Derbyshire Is Just Too Aggravating To Ignore)

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Jonathan has a righteous bit of outrage about National Review columnist John Derbyshire’s latest inanity (heavens to murgatroid! there are Hispanics in Iowa!) that I can’t resist piling on to. About a century ago the Derbyshires of the day were tearing their hair out about the way German immigrants were taking over Upper Midwest towns. In Minnesota, there was much hand-wringing over “Stearns County Syndrome,” which consisted of Mueller and Schmidt kids graduating from 8th grade without having learned English.

When I was reporting on Latino immigration in a small town not so far from Storm Lake (10 years ago, by the way–and the town was about 50 percent Latino then, so what’s Derbyshire’s big news here anyway?), a local church lady told me about how her Norwegian parents used to warn the kids not to hang out with the riffraff from across town. “Back then it was Swedes, today it’s the Spanish people,” she said. Then she went off to root for the new boys’ high school soccer team, 50 percent Mexican kids plus a few Bosnians and Somalis. They made the state tournament that year.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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