Roger Daniels, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Cincinnati, has witnessed more than a few attempts by Congress and the president to reform immigration policy. He has written a half-dozen books on the topic, including Guarding the Golden Door. This fall University Press of Kansas will publish his latest book, The Japanese American Cases: The Rule of Law in Wartime.
Americans are hostile to immigrants, according to polls. Is the idea of immigration misunderstood?
If you ask people about their heritage, they’re proud of it and they’re interested in immigration. The Immigration Museum at Ellis Island, for instance, gets tremendous attention and respect. But it has to be immigration in the past—or it depends on the type of people you are talking about. People have a very high opinion of high-tech immigrants from Asia, and they want them to come. Mexicans? Well, that’s something else again.
Haven’t immigrants always brought the United States more prosperity?
I think immigrants have been indispensable. It’s the old formula for economic growth, “land, labor and capital.” Well, they provided a little of the capital but a lot of the labor, and the land was here already.
When did the United States start restricting immigration?
There was no significant immigration legislation for almost the first century of U.S. history. Then in 1849 in the so-called passenger cases the Supreme Court ruled that immigration was “commerce” and thus subject to exclusive regulation by the federal government. It’s only after the 1840s that you begin to get anti-immigrant feelings. The Civil War made it clear that the real danger to the republic came not from the immigrants but from the slaveholders. During the Civil War, we needed immigrants for the Army, and they were recruited right off the boat.
The early restrictions were focused on certain groups, right?
Yes. For a long time, much of our legislation was not aimed at stopping general immigration but at cutting off particular segments. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Law was the hinge upon which American immigration law changed. Emma Lazarus’ “golden door” began to swing closed, starting an era of steadily increasing restrictions that lasted until 1943, when the Chinese exclusion laws were repealed.
Was it naked racism?
The opposition certainly had racist characteristics, but the job argument was also important. Trade unions tended to oppose Chinese and most other immigration.
Weren’t there other worries?
One of the great fights in the late 19th and early 20th century was over literacy. Congress didn’t want illiterates to come in. The sticking point was, “What does ‘illiterate’ mean?”
Didn’t the Chinese resist the exclusion law?
The Chinese Six Companies, powerful San Francisco merchants, got money for every Chinese they supplied to the railroads. They hired the first immigration lawyers. The foundation of U.S. immigration law arose out of the struggle among immigrants, government officials and federal judges over enforcement of the Chinese exclusion laws. The Chinese, in their resistance, laid claim to principles—habeas corpus, due process, evidentiary rules— at the heart of Anglo-American jurisprudence. In the late 19th century, California lawyers for Chinese immigrants won more than 10,000 habeas corpus cases against the government.
Between 1905 and 1914, 10 million immigrants arrived—and then came another backlash.
You had the beginning of mass-production industries at that time, and Italians, Poles, southern Slavs and Eastern Europeans were drawn here by American prosperity. They took most of the jobs. Then in 1917, the U.S. declaration of war contributed to a pervasive antiimmigrant climate, and there was a series of anti-immigrant legislation. The literacy test comes in with a 1917 law, then serious restrictions against Eastern Europeans with the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, and then the Immigration Act of 1924, which required immigrants to have papers.
This was the visa requirement?
Yes, you had to have a visa, and only so many were issued, and the largest numbers were issued to the British Isles and Germany, which were not the places from which most immigrants were coming. Supporters of European immigration saw no incongruity in supporting restrictions on some Europeans, so Eastern Europeans, largely Jews and Catholics, were opposed while others were welcomed. It was not just important to be white, but white and Western. Terence Powderly, second commissioner of the immigration service, once said that Brits, Germans and Scandinavians made the best Americans.
There’s been a rise in immigration since the 1980s. What changed?
In times of economic growth, immigration tends to increase and attitudes toward it tend to soften. The era of ethnic or racial discrimination ended in 1952 and began the era of selective admission, with preferences for family members and others, which continues to the present. The 1965 act loosened restrictions, and the so-called amnesty of the Reagan era further redefined the rules, with more than 3 million illegal aliens beginning the process of legalization.
And yet we remain conflicted?
There is always some resentment shown to some immigrants—most recently the continuing post-9/11 reactions against immigrants described as “Arabs” and “Muslims.” At the same time, there are economic pressures for more immigrants—for agricultural workers and high-tech immigrants for high-tech regions.
How do we address illegal immigration from Mexico?
The United States claimed Mexicans first. As we annexed parts of Mexico, all kinds of people became citizens of the United States, with an option of staying or going back. Immigration from Latin America got a big boost during the First World War, when European immigration was cut off. Then the federal government brought in large numbers of Mexican braceros, or temporary workers, during the Second World War. And in good times, as the saying goes, “there ain’t no such thing as a temporary worker.” As long as they are comfortable, a lot of them stay. The notion that you can just close down the borders is not viable.
Why not?
There are 500 million border crossings every year. If you try to inspect every truck, you’ll have gridlock. And the notion that illegal immigrants are just Mexicans is wrong. The real problem is people come in on tourist visas, and we don’t know when they leave. The government has never really kept track of how many people leave.
So there’s no way to control it?
You’d need a system of regulation and interference with privacy that would make many Americans furious, because you can’t say, “Well, only immigrants have to do this”— because who’s an immigrant? They don’t have signs on their backs.
Originally published in the August 2013 issue of American History. To subscribe, click here.
