"Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion."
-Benjamin Franklin, 1751
The "great Palatine migration" took place in the decades following the Thirty Years' War - the early to mid-1700s, in which the people of south-central Germany experienced tremendous economic hardships. They sailed up the Rhine River to Rotterdam and made crossings to the east coast of North America (especially in and around Philadelphia), where they often worked as indentured servants.
The Johann Michale Willhite who settled in Orange County, VA in 1717 was part of this migration of "boors" ,and from the looks of Mr. Franklin's comments above, he and other Anglos were none too happy to see these folks from Central Europe arrive. Apparently, Franklin also referred to the German immigrants as "stupid" and "swarthy".
So between that and the fact that the Gallaghers were among Irish immigrants of the 19th Century who were reviled by the Know-Nothings and other nativist bigots as unsanitary, stupid, papist traitors, I am having a hard time sympathizing with the notion that the US is experiencing a destructive "invasion" of Latinos as some 21st Century Know-Nothings might loudly suggest.
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