Dr. Kevin Slack (17:31)
No. You know, and some of the founding fathers. Benjamin Franklin was probably the first to write about immigration. He does this in 1751 in his observations. His real concern was that he had tried to form this was an extralegal militia. It was a military association because the the Pennsylvania Quakers in the assembly wouldn't raise money for defense. And so he appeals to all of these different ethnicities in Pennsylvania to unite for the defense of life, liberty and property. It was a veritable social contract. It was extra legal. And the idea was they would protect themselves, all these different groups, the middling artisans of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, against threats from the French and pirates in the Delaware as well as on the frontier. And what he saw was is that many of those, the Germans who had come over, they'd migrated and massed to the colonies, had not participated in this effort, even though he tried to woo them into it. And so in 1751 he'd made this effort in 1747, in 1751 he starts railing against the German immigrants. And he says why are we bringing in all of these German migrants? He says rather what's going to happen? They don't learn our language, they don't have our habits, they don't appreciate our laws. And that instead of anglifying them, they're going to Germanize us. And so he stresses this idea of assimilation. Now he would change his views on the Germans and the Scotch Iris over time. But one thing that he stressed, and this was adopted by the other founders, somebody like Thomas Jefferson as well, was the idea of unity. How is it that affection binds a people together to command the kind of sacrifices that are necessary to preserve a people? So when we talk about a people, we say Americans. It means we're presupposing that that entity exists and that it has something in common. And that meant that the foremost, if you read Franklin or Thomas Jefferson, what they really look to is to try to get your own citizens to have more kids. So that was, that was immigration awareness. Number one was we actually don't want to bring in lots and lots of immigrants because of certain threats that they pose, although we do admit immigrants. But it wasn't a nation of immigrants. That's a much later teaching that I think you can trace to the 1920s. The idea of a nation of immigrants really takes off in the 1950s. Thomas Jefferson and Franklin, they both really questioned whether we should bring over many of the old world European immigrants. And so I think that's a second point. First you have the idea of a common mind, what binds us together as a people. And the second was the kind of character, what are the manners and the habits of the people that are coming over and what kind of institutions will they endorse if they're allowed to vote in our political system, Is it the case that they're going to bring over some of the bad policies and habits that they had left and that they had fled from? So that was the second major important point. It's also the case that if we're going to be honest, the founders warning to us would be that diversity undermines unity. And that's why if you get to the first Naturalization act of 1790 and this, you know, this is just truth, it may offend us today, but the founders said only free whites could become citizens. And the reason for that wasn't just you have ideas of inequality, natural inequality. But even Franklin in the 1760s, he looks, he goes, visits the Negro school and he says, well, I've changed my mind about these black children. It seems like they can learn just like white children. But even then he says, I hope that will discourage migration. And the reason that Franklin and Jefferson, Jefferson as well took this position and notes on the state of Virginia was they didn't think you could have Republican freedoms if you had a population that was torn apart by faction. And so this becomes, of course, this guides immigration policy. Who can become a citizen all the way until the 14th Amendment and the new Naturalization act of 1870. And that's when white Americans say, particularly the radical Republicans, they could see that the attempt on the part of the Southerners was to reintroduce slavery through a loophole in the 13th Amendment. And so in the 14th Amendment they recognized natural born citizenship for the freedmen as well as they changed naturalization policy. And so you have whites and blacks can become citizens. This did not include other races. This did not include Asians for purposes of migration in order to include Indians. That status would change for Indians under public law in the 1920s. What and why? Why did they do this? Well, I think it was those three basic points. One was, how do you have a common mind, the idea of a common citizenry, so you have a country for its citizens. Second, how do we bring over immigrants who are going to share some of our common values? This is one of the reasons why the laborers did not want a large number of Chinese immigrants at the end of the 19th century. They were very much afraid that they would bring over a kind of paternalistic view of the ends of government. There's also why many of the Irish posed such a problem. You know, 75% of the Germans, they migrated off to the countryside, but about 75% of the Irish settled down in major cities. And the claim was, is they brought much of their paternalistic or view of government that further focused on patronage. And of course, every time you have mass migration, it increases crime. It also increases the. The entitlements program or the welfare programs of the localities and the states, and of course, today the federal government. And so from 1880 to 1920, we do see a change. We see the admittance of new groups. And I think that for us, and we can look at the last two waves of immigration, this poses a kind of challenge. And that is, in the founding period, they thought diversity undermined the kind of order necessary for republican freedoms. We have a diverse regime. Right. That's what we know. And I think the challenge to us is how do we maintain this sense of unity so we can protect those republican freedoms and freedom under the law? And so I can go to the last two waves in law. You have 1880 to 1920, these were largely southeastern Europeans. And that created all kinds of problems. The, the attempt to assimilate them into the body politic. It was also the case that they introduced new institutions to try to manage the migrants. What we look at is the family courts today. If you read Roscoe Pound, this was the. The dean of Harvard Law, he's writing about the family courts, and he says these are introduced to manage all of these southeastern Europeans who are coming over here who don't know our ways. And so in the family court, you don't have due process rights. You have maxims of equity that guide all the, the. The rulings of the judge. If you don't follow them, you're in contempt of court. So what happened after the 1920s was, was two laws passed, 1921, 1924, and they introduced a national origins quota. And this would have basically froze out those who could migrate to the United States. 70% of all migrants would come from just three countries, Northwestern European countries. But the real effect of that immigration law of 1924 was it stopped immigration generally. So the percentage of foreign born in 1920 was about 14%. When you get to 1960, it's about 4 or 5%. And what that meant was all Americans just had more kids, Americans of all different races, because there was a prioritization on those who were natural born citizens. The 1965 Immigration act, as we all know, changed much of that. And one of the great dangers that it introduced was this. At every period of mass migration, whether you talk about the Irish in the 1840s or the migrations from southeastern Europe, 1880 to 1920, that you had a period of assimilation that followed these waves. What's happened since 1965 is an ever increasing number of migrants. And it poses that great threat to us that I think the Founders warned about. And that is how do we maintain some kind of a unified. Yeah, go ahead.
