“xe·​no·​pho·​bia" noun: fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners 

It's as American as apple pie. So what now?

Erika Lee is a grandchild of Chinese immigrants from the San Francisco Bay area, Harvard history professor, and award-winning author on US immigration and the Asian American experience.

In America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States, she uncomfortably links our pride as a nation of immigrants with our long history of prejudice against … immigrants.

If you are one of these, our nation once fought hard to keep you out:

• German
• Irish
• Catholic
• African (well not keep you out, but certainly down)
• Chinese
• Italian
• Jewish
• Japanese
• Mexican and other Latinos
• Muslim
• and of course the original Native American (kept in but moved aside)

So what are we to do?

1. Don’t be surprised to see this happening today. It’s a feature not a bug.
2. Act like we’ve seen this movie before. But change it. People in positions of power use their political and legal privilege to create anti-immigrant barriers. Don’t let them.

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

– Emma Lazarus

“Have you heard?” is our way of sharing another point of view on commonly held beliefs. Through this we hope to encourage curiosity, dialogue, and tolerance of diverse ideas.