No living American can recall hearing
a president whip up popular hysteria about immigration. But President Trump is at least the third
president to stoop so low.
President Grover Cleveland sounded this anti-immigration
trope in his 1885 inaugural address: “The laws should be rigidly enforced
which prohibit the immigration of a servile class to compete with American
labor, with no intention of acquiring citizenship, and bringing with them and
retaining habits and customs repugnant to our civilization.”
President William
McKinley struck an anti-immigration theme in his first inaugural address in
1897: “Our naturalization and immigration laws should
be further improved to the constant promotion of a safer, a better, and a
higher citizenship. A grave peril to the Republic would be a citizenship too
ignorant to understand or too vicious to appreciate the great value and
beneficence of our institutions and laws, and against all who come here to make
war upon them our gates must be promptly and tightly closed.”
What to make
of this comparison?
First, when presidents make these public pronouncements,
they follow up with very restrictive and harsh enforcement of immigration laws.
Second, they reinforce irrational concerns that immigrants have no legitimate
place in building America.
Finally, Cleveland and McKinley were insignificant
presidents—but their intolerance of immigrants lived on in U.S. policies for
many decades (until 1965).
In my opinion, the Trump hysteria is, and will be, a long-term American feature. I hope I am wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment