The current hatred and disdain for immigrants displayed by those that are anti-immigration is not a new situation. Immigration has been one of the most rancorous political issues in American politics. The saddest part is that many of the arguments made by anti-immigration people are misinformed, disingenuous, or hypocritical.
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”
Our country takes great pride in telling the world that we are a country of immigrants. We hold out the Statue of Liberty, whose inscription is a powerful avatar of our position on immigration and empathy. But unfortunately, it leaves much to be desired when we pull back the curtain on our historical immigration policies during the 20th century. From one side of our mouths, we correctly claim to be a nation of immigrants, but as far back as the 1800s have treated specific groups of immigrants as undesirables. We have even institutionalized that discrimination in our laws and policies.
One of the earliest examples was the Page Act of 1875, more infamously known as the Asian Exclusion Act. This law and the subsequent Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 virtually eliminated immigration from Asian countries. Before these two pieces of legislation, several states elected to pass immigration laws after the Civil War. The Immigration Act of 1891 was a significant step in establishing federal responsibility for immigration.
The United States Census estimates that 99% of the people residing in the United States are descendants of immigrants or immigrants. My calculation of this number would be a bit different because when I think of immigration, one critical component is self-determination and choice. In that case, I would argue that Africans and their descendants were not immigrants. Despite that, the overwhelming number of Americans have ancestors from other lands. That points out the absurdity when any American chooses to utter the words go back to your own country.
Many anti-immigrant people spend much time expressing their hatred and fear of “open borders.” Still, if we looked back, we would find that the only time the United States came close to having open borders was from 1880 to 1920, when approximately 20 to 25 million Europeans immigrated to the United States, fleeing oppression, looking for opportunity, or both. The Immigration Act of 1882 levied a head tax of $0.50 per immigrant and blocked or excluded the “entry of idiots, lunatics, convicts, and persons likely to become a public charge” (1). If we applied today’s standards to these early immigrants, it is doubtful so many would have been able to enter.
Even though the overwhelming majority of the immigrants during the period were European, it did not prevent xenophobia from raising its ugly head. Like today, many native-born Americans, primarily Anglo-Saxon Protestants, lashed out against immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and Germany. The treatment of these new immigrants was horrific and debasing, but a shockingly significant number of the descendants of these same maltreated immigrants vilify and delegitimize today’s immigrants. The anti-immigration fervor was so intense that it created a political party appropriately called the Know Nothing Party.
Let’s be real. Much of our immigration history has been based on where you come from, not that you were coming. Early on, Europeans received the green light, while Chinese and other Asians had the door slammed in their faces with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1982. We welcomed Cuban exiles and refugees with open arms. In contrast, Haitian refugees who have suffered primarily due to our support of dictators like Francois Duvalier, infamously known as Papa Doc, have summarily been denied entry to the United States. One of our most shameful immigration decisions was our refusal to welcome Jewish immigrants at risk of being murdered and mutilated by Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich.
By 1920, the anti-immigration sentiment in the United States led to two separate pieces of legislation restricting the number of citizens entering the country. First, there was the Emergency Quota Act and then the Immigration Act of 1924. In effect, these two laws created quotas for each country’s entrants, defining how many immigrants the United States would admit. On its face, this appeared to be an objective answer to immigration concerns. Still, it favored British and Western European immigrants because of the high number of immigrants they already had in the United States. Then, in 1965 the Immigration and Nationality Act 1965 was enacted. The most significant impact of the legislation was the elimination of national and ethnicity-based immigration quotas.
Most people (discounting xenophobes) will agree that our current immigration system is in dire need of an overhaul. Unfortunately, when the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was enacted, the United States made an unforced error. This error was the elimination of the program created in 1942 called the Bracero Program (2). It allowed millions of Mexican immigrants into the United States to work on short-term agricultural labor contracts. From 1942 to 1964, 4.6 million contracts were signed by primarily Mexican immigrants. Fortunately, it also brought back Mexican Americans who the United States targeted for deportation.
However, the major problem with the program was that employers often discriminated freely, created harsh working conditions, and workers had virtually no job security (3). Regrettably, rather than addressing these problems, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 convinced Congress they should eliminate the program. As a result, the immigrants participating in the program went home broke or stayed in the United States and became unauthorized immigrants.
The immigration and nationality act eliminated quotas based on national origin and instead based immigration on family relationships and job skills. When Congress enacted this legislation, the original intent or expectation was that more Europeans would immigrate (4). Rather European immigration diminished, and immigration from Korea, China, India, the Philippines, and Pakistan became more common. Finally, in the 1980s, it was primarily about immigrants from Mexico, authorized amnesty recipients, and unauthorized.
According to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), 11 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States as of 2018 (5). That only represents 3 percent of the population of the United States. Republicans would tell you that unauthorized immigrants are overrunning the country. They make it sound apocalyptic. Another misconception or myth promoted by Republicans is that Republican red states are being inundated and impacted significantly more than blue states by unauthorized immigrants. The fact is that over 40 percent of all unauthorized immigrants reside in California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey (6). Disgustingly, this was the justification used by Republican governors like Ron DeSantis to abuse migrants that were authorized to be in the United States.
Here’s one for people who vent about problems at the southern border. As of 2019, immigrants who entered the United States legally and overstayed their visas exceeded unauthorized border crossings (7). It is also important to note that every President since 1988 has experienced increased unauthorized immigration at the southern border. Over time, the demographics and the reasons for the increases have varied.
Guess when this headline was written, “Border at ‘Breaking Point’ as More Than 76,000 Unauthorized Migrants Cross in a Month”? It was March 5, 2019, approximately ten months before the first recorded case of Covid- 19 in the United States. Unauthorized migration continued to increase until the pandemic. Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama had this one thing in common, unauthorized migration. The other thing they had in common was a Republican Party that refused to adopt immigration reform.
Our immigration system has always been flawed. Systemic racism and bias have been endemic, and it is incongruous to reconcile the words inscribed on lady liberty and the xenophobic tendencies of our nation. The biggest obstacles to reforming and improving our immigration system aren’t resources, not overpopulation, or crime. The major roadblock is the one that has existed for centuries. It is the unfounded fear and hatred for the “other.” It’s an American tradition. Once many have established themselves in America, they adopt the same hateful, paranoid-fueled tactics against current immigrants used against them.
In the end, the people that benefit from this are the Republican politicians that convince their followers that being moral, empathetic, and just will lead to the demise of civilization. There is no such thing as replacement theory, there aren’t millions of immigrants coming to take your jobs, and unauthorized immigrants commit crimes at a much lower rate than native-born Americans. Identifying people as “other” demonizes and dehumanizes them. Once you’ve done that, you feel justified in committing any atrocity against them, like separating babies from their mothers.
Republican politicians understand numerous Americans believe the ability to deny and withdraw rights and opportunities is empowering. Fear mongering is the Republicans’ superpower. Make them afraid, make them very afraid. Many of these people fail to acknowledge or understand that they are choking off the lifeline that has fueled the great American experiment.
References
- Laura Ben, Did European Immigrants Come to the U.S. the Right Way? June 11, 2018.
- S. Immigration Before 1965, History.com, September 10, 1921
- S. Immigration Before 1965, History.com, September 10, 1921
- George J. Boras, The Economics of Immigration, (1994)
- Fifty Years On, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act Continues to Reshape the United States – https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/fifty-years-1965-immigration-and-nationality-act-continues-reshape-united-states
- Richard Gonzales, For 7th Consecutive Year, Visa Overstays Exceeded Illegal Border Crossings January 16, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/01/16/686056668/for-seventh-consecutive-year-visa-overstays-exceeded-illegal-border-crossings
- Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/mpi-unauthorized-immigrants-stablenumbers-changingorigins_final.pdf
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Good post!
Thank you.