Griego: Immigration in the U.S. - a history lesson

Thursday, May 11, 2006

"My family immigrated to this country a couple hundred years ago, but they did it the right way. Why can't they do it the right way?"

- Fort Collins resident Gabe Elliott

A question for the class: Which of the following groups were prohibited from entering the United States in the 19th century?

A. Prostitutes

B. Convicts

C. Chinese laborers

D. All of the above

Answer: D

But it's not an inclusive list. The disabled, paupers, polygamists, people with contagious diseases, epileptics and anarchists would also be turned back at ports of entry. After 1917, immigrants 16 and older would have to show they could read in their native languages.

But the nation was young, the land vast, the work plentiful and the doors wide open to immigration. The restrictions on legal immigration that exist today did not exist 200 years ago, 100 years ago, even 80 years ago. Unless great-great-grandpa was a disabled polygamist, chances were good he was going to be allowed to enter this country "the right way." Illegal immigration, as we define it today, did not exist.

The point here is not to justify illegal immigration. Nor is it to argue that there should not be restrictions on immigration. There should be. It's to remind us of our history, to put today's debate into a larger context.

Present immigration is different from past, but the present, as any historian will testify, is full of echoes. History tells us "that Americans feared immigrants of the past almost as much as they fear immigrants of the present," says Donna Gabaccia, director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. "We labor under the myth that the U.S. has always embraced immigration, but that is simply not the case."

Question: The Naturalization Law of 1790 required a potential citizen to:

A. Reside in the U.S. for at least two years

B. Demonstrate proof of good moral character

C. Be a "free white person"

D. All of the above

Answer: D again

Paupers and "idiots" and epileptics aside, the first major immigration restriction wasn't imposed until 1882. By then, the Transcontinental Railroad had been completed. The thousands of Chinese workers who had been recruited to build the tracks had moved into cities across the country, into factories and mills and mines. The outcry that followed them went something like this: They're taking our jobs, depressing our wages, robbing our country of its wealth by sending too much gold back to China.

In response, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, banning immigration of Chinese laborers and denying citizenship to Chinese people already living here. That law was not repealed until 1940.

Meanwhile, back in Europe, between the crop failures, the population boom and the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, more eyes were turning west. Not just Anglo-Saxon Protestant eyes, but Jewish and Catholic eyes. Polish and Czech and Greek and Italian eyes.

They came by the millions, Rice University sociology professor Stephen Klineberg tells me - 15.9 million from 1890 to 1914. Recruited by industry, they were not eagerly embraced by the earlier immigrants. You can ask most grandchildren of Irish, Italian or Eastern European immigrants about that. Undisciplined. Immoral. Disease-carrying. Those were some characterizations of the day, not to mention those fertility rates.

So was born the second major restriction on immigration, the 1924 National Origins Act, a law Klineberg describes as "viciously racist." Basically, it set immigration quotas based upon that country's representation in the U.S. in 1890. Before the waves of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe began.

The "new science" of psychology, IQ testing and eugenics, offered as evidence in the debate over the 1924 law, proposed a hierarchy, Klineberg says: "The Nordics were superior to the Alpines who were superior to Mediterraneans, and all were superior to the Jews and the Asians."

During the Depression and war years, immigration "was a trickle," Klineberg says. But between 1924 and 1965, "98 percent (of immigrants) came from Europe and 86 percent of that came from England, Germany and Scandinavia."

Question: How do you know your ancestors came here legally?

The question is not mine, it's Gabaccia's. She told me that almost all people who came here from the Russian empire may have entered legally, but they left illegally, violating their home country's laws. So did German and Italian men fleeing the draft. Fraud was rampant in the early 20th century. People came through Mexico. They jumped ship. An immigration attorney recently told me of meeting a lawyer whose early practice was almost entirely made up of Greek ship jumpers.

But illegal immigration as we know it did not begin in earnest until after 1965, with the next major immigration law. That law, passed in the momentum of the civil rights era, sought to correct the discrimination of the past. It still provides the framework for modern immigration policy. The 1965 law brought largely unforeseen changes to this country, and it, as I'll explain in the next column, holds part of the answer to Gabe Elliott's question.

griegot@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2699