Fox News has an article today that explains Easter: “We Christians believe that Jesus Christ
was sent by God the father to live among us, to show us perfect love. Jesus
loved outcasts and sinners.”
So why did President Trump choose
today, of all days, to tweet his disdain for DACA recipients and to imply that
there is no place for them in our nation?
That
question is for you to decide. This president’s views on immigrants compare to
those published in a shocking article in 1919 by Sen. Phelan, “The Japanese
Evil in California.”
Part of Sen.
Phelan’s concerns focus on the “breeding” habits of Japanese. In the following
passage, he expressed concerns that Japanese will outbreed the whites and push
whites out of California.
Speaking of “picture”
brides—women who were brought to the U.S. to marry Japanese men— Phelan said:
"I have
recently witnessed as many as one hundred and fifty arriving on one ship in San
Francisco harbor, and these unfortunate chattels, I am told, recoil in many
instances from the ordeal when, through the bars of the immigration station,
they see for the first time the images of their " husbands." There is
no ceremony. Japan has simply given the women passports as wives, under the
"Gentleman's Agreement," and they come in.
They are led
away by their masters and serve a twofold purpose, both in violation of the
spirit of the Agreement, which was to restrict the increase of Japanese laborers.
They are laborers. They work in the fields as laborers, side by side with the
men; and, being remarkably prolific, they bear many children to them to swell
the increasing Japanese tide.
The
California State Board of Health, in its twenty-fifth biennial report, gives
the following vital statistics of births for 1917: White 47,3I3; Japanese 4,108;
Chinese, 419; Negro, 328, Indian, 52. The report makes this comment: " The
per cent, white decreased steadily through the last twelve years; thus, 98.04
(1906), … (to) 91.9.
The decrease
in the proportion of white babies is due to marked increases in Japanese birth
registration, as follows: 134 (1906), 221, 455, 682, 719, 995, 1,467, 2,215,
2,874, 3,342, 3,721, and 4,108 (1917).
This is
three thousand per cent, increase!
The
unavoidable conclusion to be drawn from these figures is that, where the
Japanese come, the whites go. It is easy to calculate how, by geometric progression,
the Japanese in a very few decades will have supplanted the men and women of
California who have pioneered, developed, and occupied the land."
***
It is hard
to reconcile the core beliefs of Easter with these harshly anti-immigrant
views.
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