When people say that immigration has always been in issue in America, they are not lying. Just about every generation has been faced with the question, "What do we do about people who are coming here from another country?" in some way, shape or form. So why should our generation be any different?
I'll let others debate the good and the bad of this current legislation (as well as who's giving in, and who is to blame for its supposed demise). I just wanted to point out that there is such a thing as going too far, even if you have the best intentions.
We all know the example of the Patriot Act. Well, I want to bring up a piece of legislation that's a bit older: the Immigration Act of 1924.
Back in 1924, the target was Southern and Northen Europe (whose numbers were reduced) as well as East Asian and Asian Indians (who were not allowed to immigrate to the US period).
What's striking is that the engine that drove this legislation was not the Plight of the Middle Class (or rather, the fear that immigrant workers would take American jobs en mass and destroy our economy) but the concept of racial hygiene wrapped in a layer of eugenics. Two prominent eugenicists, Harry Hamilton Laughlin and Lothrop Stoddard, were at the forefront of this movement.
Laughlin claimed that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were crazy, and recommened mass sterilization as a remedy. He even invented the "Model Eugenical Sterilization Law." The motive? Well:
Purely eugenic, that is, to prevent certain degenerate human stock from reproducing its kind. Absolutely no punitive element.
But this only applied to the "socially inadequate classes," which included
The socially inadequate classes, regardless of etiology or prognosis, are the following: (1) Feeble-minded; (2) Insane, (including the psychopathic); (3) Criminalistic (including the delinquent and wayward); (4) Epileptic; (5) Inebriate (including drug-habitués); (6) Diseased (including the tuberculous, the syphilitic, the leprous, and others with chronic, infectious and legally segregable diseases); (7) Blind (including those with seriously impaired vision); (8) Deaf (including those with seriously impaired hearing); (9) Deformed (including the crippled); and (10) Dependent (including orphans, ne'er-do-wells, the homeless, tramps and paupers).
Oh, and the "State Eugenicist and his assistants" were to have the power to arrest those they felt fit the definition of "socially inadequate."
Nazi Germany would later adapt some parts of his model. Irony of ironies: Laughlin was epileptic, meaning under his model he too was subject to sterlization.
Stoddard believed that Japan (because they were imperialistic at the time), China (because of their population size) and Muslims (because he thought they were fanatics) were a threat to nations and cultures dominated by white people. These beliefs came to print in his book entitled, "The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy." In reality, his biggest plus was that his views were just a few bus stops before Nazism.
So, you essentially have the Bill O'Reilly and Pat Buchanan of their day (minus the science and Nazi element) leading the charge of one of the most important pieces of legislation in the early 1900's. And if you think such thinking stopped at the Senate floor, well let me introduce Senator Ellison DuRant Smith of South Carolina, who gave a speech basically endorsing the theories of people like Laughlin and Stoddard. Here's a snippet:
I think that we have sufficient stock in America now for us to shut the door, Americanize what we have, and save the resources of America for the natural increase of our population. We all know that one of the most prolific causes of war is the desire for increased land ownership for the overflow of a congested population. We are increasing at such a rate that in the natural course of things in a comparatively few years the landed resources, the natural resources of the country, shall be taken up by the natural increase of our population. It seems to me the part of wisdom now that we have throughout the length and breadth of continental America a population which is beginning to encroach upon the reserve and virgin resources of the country to keep it in trust for the multiplying population of the country...
[snip]
...I think we now have sufficient population in our country for us to shut the door and to breed up a pure, unadulterated American citizenship. I recognize that there is a dangerous lack of distinction between people of a certain nationality and the breed of the dog. Who is an American? Is he an immigrant from Italy? Is he an immigrant from Germany? If you were to go abroad and some one were to meet you and say, "I met a typical American," what would flash into your mind as a typical American, the typical representative of that new Nation? Would it be the son of an Italian immigrant, the son of a German immigrant, the son of any of the breeds from the Orient, the son of the denizens of Africa? We must not get our ethnological distinctions mixed up with out anthropological distinctions. It is the breed of the dog in which I am interested. I would like for the Members of the Senate to read that book just recently published by Madison Grant, The Passing of a Great Race. Thank God we have in America perhaps the largest percentage of any country in the world of the pure, unadulterated Anglo-Saxon stock; certainly the greatest of any nation in the Nordic breed. It is for the preservation of that splendid stock that has characterized us that I would make this not an asylum for the oppressed of all countries, but a country to assimilate and perfect that splendid type of manhood that has made America the foremost Nation in her progress and in her power, and yet the youngest of all the nations. I myself believe that the preservation of her institutions depends upon us now taking counsel with our condition and our experience during the last World War.
Even though people like Smith were (thankfully) in the minority, the Act passed by a large majority and was pretty much the status quo until Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1965.
During the signing of the 1965 Act, LBJ had the following remarks:
This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives, or really add importantly to either our wealth or our power.
Yet it is still one of the most important acts of this Congress and of this administration.
For it does repair a very deep and painful flaw in the fabric of American justice. It corrects a cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American Nation...
[snip]
...This bill says simply that from this day forth those wishing to immigrate to America shall be admitted on the basis of their skills and their close relationship to those already here.
This is a simple test, and it is a fair test. Those who can contribute most to this country--to its growth, to its strength, to its spirit--will be the first that are admitted to this land.
The fairness of this standard is so self-evident that we may well wonder that it has not always been applied. Yet the fact is that for over four decades the immigration policy of the United States has been twisted and has been distorted by the harsh injustice of the national origins quota system.
Under that system the ability of new immigrants to come to America depended upon the country of their birth. Only 3 countries were allowed to supply 70 percent of all the immigrants.
Families were kept apart because a husband or a wife or a child had been born in the wrong place.
Men of needed skill and talent were denied entrance because they came from southern or eastern Europe or from one of the developing continents.
This system violated the basic principle of American democracy--the principle that values and rewards each man on the basis of his merit as a man.
It has been un-American in the highest sense, because it has been untrue to the faith that brought thousands to these shores even before we were a country.
Today, with my signature, this system is abolished.
We can now believe that it will never again shadow the gate to the American Nation with the twin barriers of prejudice and privilege.
As history shows, America has faced the issue of immigration before. While our initial response was far from glorious, we managed the correct ourselves. Senators like Ted Kennedy (who was a big supporter of the 1965 Act) was a part of that correction and I hope he (and those that have been in Congress as long as he has) keeps the 1924 Act in mind as they address this current situation.