Immigrants helped shape Arkansas. The state shouldn’t forget that history.

I’ve never been to Tontitown, nor have I had the pleasure of partaking in its storied annual Grape Festival. But the northwest Arkansas community founded by Italian immigrants feels familiar to me.

That’s partly because of Deputy Editor Antoinette Grajeda’s recent article on how the debate over immigration enforcement is playing out in the small northwest Arkansas community. 

Reading about Tontitown reminded me of Hibbing, the Minnesota mining town where my grandfather and father were raised. Just like Tontitown, Hibbing was founded in the late 19th century and its identity was shaped by the immigrants who settled there to make a better life for themselves.

There are places like Tontitown and Hibbing all over this country, places whose histories are interwoven with immigration. They’re proof of how immigration has shaped the country from its beginnings. That lesson needs to be repeated in the face of increasingly hostile anti-immigrant rhetoric.

In Arkansas, that climate goes against the history of a state that has relied on immigrants. Some of the state’s most well-known communities and traditions exist because earlier generations chose to welcome immigrants rather than shun them.

Tontitown is just one of several communities founded by immigrants that are part of this story. Several enclaves that can trace their roots to Italian immigration can be found in the state. They include Sunnyside Plantation in the Delta region where Tontitown’s founders first settled before moving to northwest Arkansas. Just outside Little Rock is the tiny community of Little Italy, which traces its history to the early 1900s.

Arkansas’ history is a constant reminder of the value of immigration, from the founding of Stuttgart as a colony for German migrants in the 1800s to the Latino and Marshallese communities in northwest Arkansas. 

Arkansas has also stood out for the moments it has welcomed people displaced from other countries, as it did in 1975 when former Gov. David Pryor allowed 55,000 Vietnamese refugees to come through Fort Chaffee. Pryor welcomed the first of the refugees with a brass band.

But the state more recently is embarking on a different path that in many ways echoes the anti-immigrant sentiment that people in Tontitown faced when they first moved here. 

That path includes a full-throated endorsement of President Donald Trump’s rhetoric blaming immigrants for crime. And Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ unproven claims linking businesses to communist China.

Given this environment and the nationwide crackdown during Trump’s second term, it’s understandable why Tontitown’s participation in a federal immigration enforcement program has prompted such a backlash. 

The embrace of anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric even bucks the state’s most recent history, especially from Republican leaders. 

As Arkansas governor, Sanders’ father Mike Huckabee spoke out forcefully against legislation targeting unauthorized immigrants. The Republican governor and Baptist minister quipped that a lawmaker who proposed denying state services to immigrants in the country illegally “drinks a different kind of Jesus juice.” Huckabee once struck a welcoming tone toward immigrants that contrasted sharply with Trump’s.

“Every night, I get on my knees and thank God I’m in a country people are trying to break into, rather than one they’re trying to break out of,” Huckabee said during his presidential bid in 2015.

And Sanders’ predecessor, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson, appeared before lawmakers to defend his decision to continue accepting new refugees, addressing skepticism from some fellow Republicans.

“If we say no to them, then we lose the talent, the entrepreneurship, and humanity of those who love America. Yes, they can go elsewhere, but Arkansas will benefit from their presence,” he said in 2020.

History shows that a welcoming attitude toward immigrants and those seeking refuge is what helped make Arkansas great. It can again. Remembering that history is a good start.