Story highlights Paul Moses: For St. Patrick's Day, Irish-Americans should reflect on journey to US

They should embrace words of JFK, who argued immigrants make US stronger, he says

Paul Moses is the author of "An Unlikely Union: the Love-Hate Story of New York's Irish and Italians," newly released in the paperback edition. He teaches journalism at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.

(CNN) As St. Patrick's Day approaches in the midst of a bitter national debate over immigration, it's a good time to remember what a great Irish-American Catholic had to say on the subject.

"Every ethnic minority, in seeking its own freedom, helped strengthen the fabric of liberty in American life," John F. Kennedy once wrote. "Similarly, every aspect of the American economy has profited from the contributions of immigrants."

Paul Moses

Kennedy made those remarks in his book " A Nation of Immigrants ," his powerful and ultimately successful argument that the restrictive, discriminatory immigration laws of the 1920s had to be replaced.

He didn't live to see the day: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, a law that continues to change the face of America by abandoning quotas designed to keep out newcomers from many parts of the world. But Kennedy had formally proposed such an overhaul to Congress in 1963. In fact, he'd published the first edition of "A Nation of Immigrants" while a US senator from Massachusetts in 1958 and was working on a new version at the time of his assassination.

As the first Catholic to be elected president, Kennedy was careful to avoid giving the impression that religion had shaped his political views, lest he hand kindling to critics who were wary of his faith. Though it is clear from his book that his Irish Catholic upbringing was the foundation of his concern for immigrants.

Read More