To Elena, I’d suggest you go back to your history a bit more to discover the role many labor unions and related American-worker interests had in demanding limits to immigration in the 1920s. What labor wanted was a need to limit immigration in order to obtain bargaining leverage. How can any union successfully strike for lower wages without limits to the labor supply? Check out the ILGWU resolutions dating back as early as 1905.

Dan Stein

I think it is imperative, for all who discuss immigration, to understand its origins. I may not be an expert on unions, but I do understand the fear and anxiety that lives in all of us when we encounter people that are different from own small world experiences. The original, over-reaching 1924 Johnson-Reed act was in response to a changing face of America. What I found interesting was that “The 1924 Immigration Act also included a provision excluding from entry any alien who by virtue of race or nationality was ineligible for citizenship. Existing nationality laws dating from 1790 and 1870 excluded people of Asian lineage from naturalizing. As a result, the 1924 Act meant that even Asians not previously prevented from immigrating – the Japanese in particular – would no longer be admitted to the United States.” Now Really Mr. Stein, does this sound like unbiased labor union concerns, or just simply racism codified within the immigration legislation?

It is also extremely noteworthy that the KKK had great influence in working towards passage of the 1924 Johnson Reed Act. The eugenics movement was integral to the passage of the immigration act.

Local eugenics societies and groups sprang up around the United States after World War I, with names like the Race Betterment Foundation. The war had given many Americans a greater fear of foreigners, and immigration to the United States was still increasing. In 1923, organizers founded the American Eugenics Society, and it quickly grew to 29 chapters around the country. At fairs and exhibitions, eugenicists spread the word and hosted “fitter family” and “better baby” competitions to award blue ribbons to the finest human stock — not unlike the awards for prize bull and biggest pumpkin. Not only did eugenicists promote better breeding, they wanted to prevent poor breeding or the risk of it. That meant keeping people with undesireable traits in their heritage (including alcoholism, pauperism, or epilepsy) separate from others or, where law allowed, preventing them from reproducing.

These vocal groups advocated laws to attain their aims, and in 1924, the Immigration Act was passed by majorities in the U.S. House and Senate. It set up strict quotas limiting immigrants from countries believed by eugenicists to have “inferior” stock, particularly Southern Europe and Asia. President Coolidge, who signed the bill into law, had stated when he was vice president, “America should be kept American. . . . Biological laws show that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races.”

 

An “Un-American Bill”: A Congressman Denounces Immigration Quotas

At the turn of the 20th century, unprecedented levels of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe to the United States aroused public support for restrictive immigration laws. After World War I, which temporarily slowed immigration levels, anti-immigration sentiment rose again. Congress passed the Quota Act of 1921, limiting entrants from each nation to 3 percent of that nationality’s presence in the U.S. population as recorded by the 1910 census. As a result, immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe dropped to less than one-quarter of pre-World War I levels. Even more restrictive was the Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act) that shaped American immigration policy until the 1960s. While it passed with only six dissenting votes, congressional debates over the Johnson-Reed Act revealed arguments on both sides of this question of American policy and national identity. For example, on April 8, 1924, Robert H. Clancy, a Republican congressman from Detroit with a large immigrant constituency, defended the “Americanism” of Jewish, Italian, and Polish immigrants and attacked the quota provisions of the bill as racially discriminatory and “un-American.”

——————————————————————————–

Since the foundations of the American commonwealth were laid in colonial times over 300 years ago, vigorous complaint and more or less bitter persecution have been aimed at newcomers to our shores. Also the congressional reports of about 1840 are full of abuse of English, Scotch, Welsh immigrants as paupers, criminals, and so forth.

Old citizens in Detroit of Irish and German descent have told me of the fierce tirades and propaganda directed against the great waves of Irish and Germans who came over from 1840 on for a few decades to escape civil, racial, and religious persecution in their native lands.

The “Know-Nothings,” lineal ancestors of the Ku-Klux Klan, bitterly denounced the Irish and Germans as mongrels, scum, foreigners, and a menace to our institutions, much as other great branches of the Caucasian race of glorious history and antecedents are berated to-day. All are riff-raff, unassimilables, “foreign devils,” swine not fit to associate with the great chosen people—a form of national pride and hallucination as old as the division of races and nations.

But to-day it is the Italians, Spanish, Poles, Jews, Greeks, Russians, Balkanians, and so forth, who are the racial lepers. And it is eminently fitting and proper that so many Members of this House with names as Irish as Paddy’s pig, are taking the floor these days to attack once more as their kind has attacked for seven bloody centuries the fearful fallacy of chosen peoples and inferior peoples. The fearful fallacy is that one is made to rule and the other to be abominated. . . .

It must never be forgotten also that the Johnson bill, although it claims to favor the northern and western European peoples only, does so on a basis of comparison with the southern and western European peoples. The Johnson bill cuts down materially the number of immigrants allowed to come from northern and western Europe, the so-called Nordic peoples. . . .

Then I would be true to the principles for which my forefathers fought and true to the real spirit of the magnificent United States of to-day. I can not stultify myself by voting for the present bill and overwhelm my country with racial hatreds and racial lines and antagonisms drawn even tighter than they are to-day. [Applause.]

Source: Speech by Robert H. Clancy, April 8, 1924, Congressional Record, 68th Congress, 1st Session (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1924), vol. 65, 5929–5932.

Another thing to remember is that all this anti-immigrant ferver of the 1920’s was needed to distract voters from the Teapot Dome Scandal. For those who aren’t familiar, this was an instance where Big Oil worked in cahoots with the White House to defraud the American people of our natural resources, namely the oil reserves that belonged to the U.S. Navy, one of which was named after a teapot shaped mountain in Wyoming. By bribing Warren G. Harding during the Republican National Convention (this is where the term “smoked filled room” comes from), America’s two biggest oil barons, Doheny and Sinclaire, were granted leases to the Navy oil reserves. As the scandal was beginning to break, anti-immigrant legislation was being crafted.

119 Thoughts to “The History of Immigration Quotas, Steeped in Prejudice”

  1. Elena, do you have to pick on an intellectual cripple the likes of Dan Stein to make your point!??? Hahaha. I’m only kidding. Your work here is excellent and it comletely destroys Stein’s argument that American has a proud history of Anti-Immigrant Lobbyists ruining our government.

    The simple fact is that America would not have become the superpower it is without immigration. We have to let go of the idea that we want our immigrants to look a certain way or speak a certain language as soon as they get here. History has shown a dispiciable tradition of Anti-immigrant bigotry, but all the same our nation has benefitted greatly from the contributions of each wave of immigration … all of whom learned English and assimmilated within a generation, some not as quickly as the currently targeted Hispanics.

    We need immigration to keep our economy growing. This is even more true today than ever. Dan Stein and the other eugenicist scum who are running the Anti-Immigrant Lobby need to drop this anti-American philosophy of preserving a white majority at all costs, even at the cost of our ability to compete in a global economy.

  2. Elena

    WHWN,

    The other similarity that struck me was the fear caused by the aftermath of WWI, much like the fear we face today after the 9-11 attack.

    I think though, we don’t want to reduce ourselves to calling Dan scum. I would actually rather encourage more dialogue with him. Robb Pearson is a great example of someone who decided to change course, and travel down a different road in life, one that did not scapegoat an entire population for all this countries ills.

    I wonder, I did my research and reported back my findings regarding the passage of the early immigration quotas, will Dan do his research on sprawl and report back 😉

    Seriously Dan, immigration isn’t a joke, and we all want to find the solutions that are based on sound economic strategies while addressing the need to remember that we are all human beings on this earth, no matter what our citizenship status.

  3. Okay. I take back calling him scum. But he lies for a living. Either he is so consumed by his own propaganda that he doesn’t know the “facts and figures” his various front groups and websites put out are demonstrably false. Or he so relies on the stupidity of his audience, and so disregards the national security and economic future of this nation that he lies knowingly in order to achieve his shamelessly undisguised agenda of preserving America’s white majority.

    Since I don’t know the man, I have to qualify my criticism of him. Either he is a brainwashed liar, or he is an immoral racist liar.

    This is a more precise criticism since I don’t even know what I meant by “scum.”

  4. NotGregLetiecq

    Thank you, Elena, for posting this. This is truly informative. The only way to address misinformation is to confront the source of it (Dan Stein and Fair) with the facts. You’ve done exactly that. I think that America truly needs to do some soul-searching about the role of racism in our society and institutions. The denial that race is factor in legislations about immigration is disingenuous, deluded or downright deceitful.

    Despite the feeling that the immigration issue is spiraling out of control, I feel reassured that democracy and compassion are alive and well in America when I read the posts by you and Alanna on anti. It’s truly a daily relief for me. Without anti, I’d be shuddering at all the horrific news reports about the treatment of immigrants and people of color and get terribly depressed. Antibvbl is my anti-depressant. Please keep up the amazing work.

  5. NotGregLetiecq

    I can’t decide if Dan Stein is scum. I think he is a parasite thriving on the strain of fear and hatred coursing through all of us.

  6. Save the Middle Class

    Elena – excellent post. You are spot on with your facts and historical analysis. I want to know, however, if you are arguing for unrestricted immigration today. Should the United States allow anyone and everyone who wants to immigrate here to do so?

    Assuming we accept everything in your post as accurate and concede your premise that anti-immigration sentiment has been based historically on racism, would unrestricted immigration be the best route for the United States today?

    From its beginnings through most of the twentieth century, the U.S. enjoyed a rapidly growing economy with abundant resources and an ability to absorb everyone who wanted to come here to work or build a business. Net investment capital flowed in and generated higher returns than just about anywhere else in the world. The economy grew during most periods (Great Depression and other exceptions notwithstanding) largely on the basis of the availability of people to work with the growing capital base.

    Such is no longer true. We are a mature economy with a solid rate of economic growth. However, we are now a net debtor nation and capital earns a higher return elsewhere in more rapidly growing economies. Capital growth (plant, equipment and other non-labor productive resources) has diminished in the U.S. relative to other, more rapidly growing nations.

    Growth of our labor force, because of immigration or any other reason, at rates faster than that of real economic output and income decreases the standards of living of the American unskilled, lower and middle classes of people. This problem is compounded by corporate outsourcing of jobs to cheaper labor (often even skilled labor) in those rapidly developing nations. The highest income and wealth ranks (Bill Gates, George Soros, et. al.) are fine with this situation because they need the cheapest labor they can find to continue building their wealth. This discrepancy of priorities is clearly evidenced by the widening disparities in income and wealth between the poorest Americans and the middle class on one side, and the wealthy elite on the other.

    Fareed Zakaria argues in “The Post American World” that the U.S. is not in decline, but simply that other nations are growing much more rapidly. Billions of people around the world want to live like Americans. This is an optimistic scenario that I find very realistic. I had the opportunity to hear Zakaria speak last fall and he offers a very engaging presentation. In response to one question about immigration, however, he seemed to hold the view that unrestricted immigration would be good, which is the prevailing Libertarian view. I found that response somewhat inconsistent with his own assertion that economic growth in the U.S. would lag behind the emerging economies.

    As you wrote, the U.S. could not have grown to its current levels of wealth and power without essentially unrestricted immigration of people from all over the world. Don’t you think, however, that the 21st century will represent a marked change from the past? Won’t we be a strong economy but not the fastest growing one, as Zakaria argues? We see labor from the rest of world, both from immigration and outsourcing, competing with Americans already and reducing our standards of living. Shouldn’t we pause and ensure our children and grandchildren will enjoy at least the same standard of living we do, even if it means less wealth for Gates and Soros?

  7. Censored bybvbl

    Groups that hope to preserve a white America of European stock should wake up to reality. The WaPo had an article yesterday that contained projections by the Census Bureau that the country’s population is becoming older and more racially and ethnically diverse.

    The nation’s population will look dramatically different by mid-century, becoming more racially and ethnically diverse and a good deal older as it increases from about 302 million to 439 million by 2050, according to projections released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.

    The findings are in line with recent analyses published by independent demographers, but they are the first such official Census Bureau projections in years.

    Minorities, about one-third of the U.S. population, are expected to become a majority by 2042 and be 54 percent of U.S. residents by 2050.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/13/AR2008081303524.html?hpid=moreheadlines

  8. Elena

    Censored,
    I wonder if this article has appeard on white surpemcist web sites yet?

  9. Elena

    Welcome Save the Middle Class,
    Excellent questions, ones that require more than my brief minutes will allow right now. I wonder, on one hand you quote Fareed (whom I truly admire BTW) and yet on the other you doubt his stance on immigration and free market labor.

  10. Rick Bentley

    I wonder also what position you are advocating.

  11. Censored bybvbl

    Elena, I don’t doubt that the article will be used to increase the panic on white supremicist sites.

  12. Alanna

    NGL,
    Let’s not suggest people are ‘scum’. Dan Stein has his position and I for one am glad he has decided to join in the conversation.

  13. Save the Middle Class

    Elena – I agree strongly with much of what Zakaria says, and enjoyed having an opportunity to hear him in person and participate in a Q&A with him. However, I do find his arguments about the relative slowing of growth in the U.S. inconsistent with arguments in favor of unrestricted immigration.

    I don’t agree or disagree with everything anyone says. Everyone on anti would be more credible by acknowledging that even Greg is correct sometimes. Accepting or dismissing an idea completely on the basis of who said it is anti-rational and shows very shallow thought.

    Another book you might enjoy is Susan Jacoby’s “The Age of American Unreason.” I’m reading that now. She traces American culture, thought and intellectualism back to the founding of the nation and argues that reason and rationality in the U.S. today are largely in the crapper. Everyone is distracted by nonsense and does not think anything through. She explores much of the history of the eugenics movement you talked about, and other manifestations of pseudo-science that have infected our popular culture over the centuries.

    Jacoby is writing from a clearly liberal perspective and I’m generally right-of-center. However, I enjoy her bi-partisan thrashing of moronic public discourse offered by both the left and the right.

  14. Save The Middle Class, don’t be so down on America’s future. We can and will continue to grow our economy if we can make two things happen:

    1) we need to stay on the cutting edge of technology, creating new markets and leading the world economy.

    2) if we adjust our immigration quotas to meet our labor demands and don’t shut down our own economy due to a labor shortage

    We can and will do both of the things I listed above because we have no other choice. America is the place that people want to come to, and that is our one advantage over other countries. We can import the most inspired, the best trained, the hardest workers, the most productive technology … it all wants to come here because we are still considered the greatest nation on earth. If our economy grinds to a halt, that may change. So let’s do our best to avoid that.

    When a nation has more retired persons than working persons, it puts a lot of strain on the tax base. If our economy fails to grow as you seem to fear it may, we will be facing problems MUCH worse than a shifting demographic.

  15. Yes, we already had a cartoon showing an elephant and John McCain celebrating the fact that America’s economy is so bad that we are no longer the land of opportunity. I’m hoping this trend does NOT continue. But then again, I prefer the thriving superpower with a diverse population and no clear majority (God forbid).

    Ethnic people do not ruin my day. They do not ruin my neighborhood. Ethnic people on TV do not make me angry. Lou Dobb’s and Bill O’Riely’s “Culture War” does not make me want our economy to crumble so we have an argument that there is not enough to go around and immigrants must be kept out.

    Do we want to see the USA going into bottomless debt because there aren’t enough workers to generate the GNP necessary to care for its elders?

    America is a nation of immigrants. Always has been. If we try to reverse that now it is at our own peril.

  16. Moon-howler

    Info,

    Are you suggesting this is a good thing, a bad thing, or just is? The article seems to not differentiate between legal and illegal.

  17. Great post Elena. Thanks for taking on Danny Boy.

    When did Danny start caring so much about working class people? It’s good to know he cares. What Danny chooses to ignore is that if undocumented immigrants actually had legal status, they could fight for higher wages and better benefits. If he really cared about working class people, good ol’ Danny Boy would be trying to give immigrants legal status.

  18. Save the Middle Class

    WHWN – I’m not down on America’s future at all and I don’t think Zakaria is either. America has a bright future, if we don’t allow policy to be driven by corporate greed and corrupt politicians.

    Economic growth comes from building your workforce and capital base, which includes physical capital as well as the skills and talent of your workforce (i.e., education, training and experience). Also essential is technological progress to improve the productivity of human and capital resources. I think you captured that in your post and I agree with you completely on that point.

    In the 18th, 19th, and into the 20th centuries, the workforce struggled most of the time to grow at the same pace as investment in capital and technological progress. Thus came the need for substantial immigration to drive the U.S. economy.

    Technological progress continues, but capital investment is spread more broadly throughout the world as we move into the 21st century. This is not a bad thing for Americans in all respects because it creates more demand for our output. Moreover, the dispersion of demand throughout the globe is helping buffer the current economic downturn in the U.S., which would likely have been a major recession only a few decades ago when we mostly depended on homegrown demand to keep our economy stable.

    Enter the big corporations and corrupt politicians who do their bidding. I’m not talking about the little S-corporations. LLCs and such, which are mostly small businesses that create the bulk of new jobs in this nation. I’m referring to the big, transnational corporations that owe allegiance to no nation, even though they may be American by where their headquarters are located. These are the organizations that create jobs elsewhere with the support of tax breaks and other subsidies from our government. In industries that can’t send production overseas, or outsource jobs, the firms import cheap, illegal labor.

    At this point in U.S. history, domestic growth of capital investment and technological improvement are not adequately robust to sustain the increases in the workforce we would get from unrestricted immigration, or continuing to look the other way as illegal immigration continues unabated. It’s a simple equation that if the workforce is growing faster than the nation’s capacity to assimilate them into the economy, their wages and standards of living deteriorate. Employers gain from the falling real cost of labor, as the middle class suffers under the strains created by the same forces.

  19. The economics of “there ain’t enough jobs to go around” were used to justify keeping the Chinese out. The same logic was used to justify keeping the Irish out. The Germans, the Italians, it’s always the same scare tactics. “They will come. Our economy will not grow. We will all have to fight for the same jobs that exist in the present day economy.”

    Doesn’t work that way.

    The economics of “there ain’t enough jobs to go around” have always proven wrong. But they are even more non-sensical in a time like today, when we are suffering from an acute labor shortage.

    Yes, we have a potentially crippling labor shortage right now. We are nearly 10 million workers short. Our economy would be growing so much faster right now if the rate of immigration was sufficient to meet the needs of our economy. We wouldn’t be talking about a recession at all.

    I’ll put it another way and I think we can all agree on this one. We would not have an illegal immigration problem if our immigration system allowed new workers to come here legally in large enough numbers to maintain our standard of living.

    That’s right. New immigrants are NOT a threat to our standard of living. They are a boon to our standard of living. They are NOT competing for the same jobs. Their presence helps create new jobs. Our success creates new jobs. New technology creates new jobs. Economies tend to grow. They just do. Look at our history.

    (By the way, the jobs created by our moving up the ladder are service jobs that ALLOW us to have the standard of living we have. I don’t enjoy tuning up car engines. I prefer to pay someone to do this so I can spend my time doing other things. The guy who tunes my car has dark skin. His kids will too. Big deal!)

    Face it … however corrupt, our elected leaders are not stupid enough to starve our economy of workers. That is why they have created this inane system where it takes 5 years to immigrate legally, yet we instantly give federal tax ID numbers to undocumented workers who come here to fill the jobs that we can’t afford to wait 5 years to fill.

    There IS no argument that will convince our leaders to collapse our economy by shutting off immigration. So Dan Stein can scream all he wants but the only ones who listen to him will be people who are ill-informed and hateful, or the rare politician who is unscrupulous to form a base out of such constituents (sadly our Chairman of the BOCS is one of them).

    There is a labor shortage RIGHT NOW, and we are assured of a deepening labor shortage over the next 10 years as baby boomers retire. We can’t afford to deepen the current imbalance where the workforce cannot generate enough product nor enough taxes to take care of the old folks. We need new workers, EVEN IF THEY’RE BROWN. The fact that there is an emerging global econmy means it is even more important that we feed our national economy instead of starving it.

    Let’s accept the fact that people are really all the same, and no one ethnicity has a greater claim on “real America” than any other. It’s time we moved on to solving bigger problems than racial discord.

  20. Leila

    Info, the phenomenon may be real (if temporary), but that tiny article is not good journalism. First take the headline, “Flocking.” There is no evidence in the article of numbers that would warrant that word. If they exist, they aren’t demonstrated. Then we have “Jose” who is illegally here, but then Alexander Cantu, who it appears may not be. He is quoted by name and talks about his company transferring him. So the fact that he is used after the lead graph promises talk of the undocumented seems off.

    Next we have the school quote, fascinating. But it just says the number of parents asking to transfer transcripts has more than doubled.However it never gives an idea (even a vague one) of what that number might be. I guess if you are going to spotlight a “flocking,” it would matter if last year the number were 6 and now it’s 12, or it was 100 and now it’s 200, no?

    It’s a really really bad piece. I have to wonder why if you are intent on making this point, you didn’t pick a piece like this one, from the Dallas Morning News.

    http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-exodus_31met.ART.State.Edition2.4d7274b.html

    where the journalists actually did some work, wrote something coherent, and included specifics.

    In relation to this area, most illegal Latino immigrants aren’t Mexican, can’t simply return to their country by crossing the border, and are from countries with far smaller economies than Mexico so have fewer prospects. I would be interested in seeing whether Salvadorans (the largest group in this area), or Guatemalans, or Hondurans, etc. are also as quick to return given the greater difficulty and the greater problem should they want to come back.

  21. Slowpoke Rodriguez

    I missed the uproar here about the Spanish Olympic teams pictures holding their eyes in slits to make fun of the Chinese. Oh, I forgot, anyone who speaks Spanish gets a pass and this site isn’t about calling things by their true names. Sorry, wrong place.

  22. Rick Bentley

    You’re right. Let’s abandon lower-class Americans and move towards a tiered society of haves and have-nots. It’ll make you feel better about yourself AND you can get your battery tuned at rock bottom prices.

  23. Elena

    I REALLY want to add to this conversation, but too busy with family right now, just merely checking in. I will add, late tonight, my usual night owl commentary period!

  24. Leila

    I have been finding historians who contradict what Dan Stein said about the ILGWU in particular. It struck me as odd since that union was basically made up of Italian and Jewish immigrants and the Ellis Island wave was definitely still in full force in 1905 and years after. So basically it would mean a union dominated by immigrants was opposed to immigration just past the turn of the century when Jews and Italians were still coming in huge numbers.

    I also found claims in a historian’s study of the ILGWU that says the union spoke out against quotas in the 1920s. Dan Stein suggested we check out the union’s resolutions (by the way he doesn’t mention if these are resolutions that passed or were just proposed by some members). That material is archived at Cornell and requires special permission. If he has a source that shows the resolutions, could he please include a URL?

    I certainly know that some labor unions, or at least their leadership, came out against immigrants at various times. While others, like the IWW, were among immigrants’ staunchest defenders. Go Wobblies! But Stein mentioned the ILGWU in particular, so he must have the documentation of all the passed resolutions from 1905 on condemning immigration at hand.

    Today the labor movement is courting not spurning immigrant workers.

  25. Ivan

    I wonder if Mr. Stein is really trying to get involed in the conversation. Or is he just checking to see how his “laboratory experiment” here in PWC is progressing. Mayby he’s just trying to evaluate the opposition. What he doesn’t realize is the fact that it is more than just an immigration issue that we dissagree with him on, it’s also the tactics on his “foot soldiers” like GL that has citizens speaking out on this issue. This is not only an immigration issue, but one of compassion and humanity.

  26. Leila

    Slowpoke, what are you smoking? Exactly what do the actions of EUROPEAN basketball players have to do with anything here? Because they speak Spanish? So I assume that if something obnoxious is done by Australians, New Zealanders, Brits, etc. etc., we are somehow associated because they speak English.

    Really, you must be very close to some candy man.

  27. Leila

    Rick, from your mention exclusively of protecting lower-class Americans, I am not sure if you are opposed to illegal immigrants or just immigrants in general. But I think that legalizing the status of immigrants, whether as guest workers or future citizens, could be something to revitalize workers’ struggles.

    But from all your previous posts it has been clear that this is a matter of distaste for you regardless of legal status. You speak of language, and music, etc. You want to waterboard and slap deportees. If someone tomorrow legalized everyone, you would still object to having so many Latinos around. So what are you actually saying?

    You are also allied to a movement that has its backing in a party that has worked intensely against rises in the minimum wage and every other benefit for lower-class American workers. You are in a right to work, anti-union state. Maybe you really do care about the working class, but your political bedfellows sure as hell don’t.

  28. Save the Middle Class

    Perhaps I came to the wrong blog to participate. The discussion here seems to deal with nothing but race and ethnicity. I want to discuss economics and the future of working people in the United States. My mechanic has dark skin also. So what? I don’t care about that. He does a good job and charges a fair price. I do care about unrestricted immigration that would depress wages by allowing a multitude of people to enter the country, hang out signs saying they are mechanics, and drive prices down so much that he could not afford to continue in business. Moreover, I’m not Dan Stein. I don’t even know who that is.

    Unrestricted immigration would be a boon to the standard of living some people enjoy. I’ve spent a lot of time in developing countries. I’ve seen situations first hand where a wealthy elite suppresses wages so they can enjoy personal servants, mechanics, restaurant meals, etc. at next-to-nothing prices. We could have that here, but that’s not how I see America. People here should enjoy incomes that provide a decent quality of life no matter what their race or ethnicity might be, even if that means we pay more for some services.

    What is the source of the estimate of a shortage of 10 million workers? Some foundation funded by Bill Gates or George Soros?

    Jeremy Siegel, a professor at the Wharton School of Business, estimates that we would need 500 million new immigrants over the next 45 years to deal with the economic impact of the baby-boomers retiring. There are other ways of dealing with this problem, however. Immigration isn’t it. I heard Siegel speak also and he commented that he is generally liberal on immigration issues but that’s too much even for him. One reference to this can be found at:
    http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/alum_mag/issues/summer2006/feature_1.html

    Perhaps I’m something of a geek because I enjoy hearing people like Zakaria and Siegel speak, and discuss the books they’ve written. I enjoy Book TV on C-Span also (when Comcast doesn’t preempt it with sports). I thought I would give anti a try looking for some intelligent discussion of the issues. If the debate I get is accusations of racism and bigotry instead of reasoned argument and citation of sources, I’ll go elsewhere.

  29. Leila

    Save the Middle Class, where was the part where you were accused of racism and bigotry? I saw Elena’s welcome to you and her statement that you made excellent points. I saw one single other person respond directly to you, in a forceful manner, but I must be missing the section where she calls you a racist and bigot.

    I know I enjoy Book TV on CSPAN and any other source of information on history or politics where people actually cite sources. I’m sure others do too.

    So you find the current rate of legal immigration too high? I am asking because you didn’t distinguish between legal and illegal. About wages, can you offer a ballpark of how much you would increase the minimum wage? Double? Triple?
    Do you feel there are any sectors in the American economy where it might be hard to find non-immigrant labor to fill the needed positions? What would you do with the non-citizen immigrants that are here already, legal or illegal?

  30. Rick Bentley

    “You are also allied to a movement that has its backing in a party …” – the only “movement” I’m in is Help Save Manassas. They’re not backed by the GOP, though there is a lot of crossover. i’m sworn off both political parties, I find them both corrupt. It’s obvious though that the GOP will take a stand long before the Democratic party ever will – the Dems stand to become perennial rulers if they can import tens of millions more Latino voters. AND THAT’S ALL EITHER PARTY REALLY CARES ABOUT. Their platforms and stated rationales for governing are all complete bs.

    “So what are you actually saying?” I’ll spare myself trying to consolidate it meaningfully – basically, what lou Dobbs says every night. That the wealthy in this nation have abandoned patrtiotism and sold our country out for short-term profit through outsourcing and through their support for illegal immigration.

  31. Rick Bentley

    it wasn’t always so.

  32. Rick Bentley

    Oh, and also that I strongly feel that when the Federal and State governments fail to uphold their oaths and laws and fail to protect their citizens, localities should have the right to do it themselves – they should not have to suffer an undocumented and illegal presense just because some activist judge or corrupt politician says so.

    Also I maintain that PWC or at least my neck of it became a Spanish ghetto for a couple of years or so, a place that middle-class taxpayers were fleeing from.

  33. Leila

    Rick, you never mention any illegal immigrants other than Latinos even though there are millions who are of other backgrounds and other continents than North and South America. That and all your previous cultural objections and your violent suggestions indicate it isn’t about illegality. How would things change if they were made legal tomorrow?

    But can you “unpack” the it wasn’t always so part? Because nativists objected to the fully legal immigrants of the turn of the century with exactly the same charges of taking jobs, depressing wages, not speaking English quickly enough, and culturally transforming the nation. They also didn’t like how many more Catholics and Jews or other non-Protestant groups were coming in. I guess we survived it. Or would it have been better if all those people hadn’t come?

  34. Alanna

    info – so?

  35. Rick Bentley

    I want all illegal immigrants treated equally of course.

    How would things change if they were all made legal? Most significantly, it would result in an even LARGER wave in as every previous amnesty has. (About 50% of Mexico’s working-age adults think about coming here illegally, according to a poll from a couple of years ago). It would leave Mexico wide open to global investors to buy land cheap while back in the US wages would continue to drop and the gap between rich and poor continued to widen. Basically the rich would get richer and the poor poorer, though I guess you would applaud the short-term transfer of wealth from lower-class Americans to lower-class illegal immigrants. This would happen at the cost of Americans and the money would eventually all flow into the hands of the wealthy.

    It wasn’t always so I don’t think that Americans took no pride in helping each other and actually preferred helping citizens of other nations to helping other Americans. And it wasn’t always so that people would sit and let their leaders pick and chooose which laws would be followed. And it wasn’t always so that poitical correctness lead to a society where hospitals are closing and schools bleeding money and some people are afraid to even admit the phenomenon is real (the phenomenon of the middle class paying the bill for the illegal immigrants).

  36. Save the Middle Class

    Leila – my apologies if I overreacted. My views on immigration, or any other issue, are not driven by considerations of race or ethnicity. I’ve been fortunate to have gone to schools with diverse populations from grade school through graduate school, and have had opportunities to study and work in Africa and Latin America, as well as in Europe. I am highly offended to have any of my views attributed to preconceptions based on race.

    That said, I do not consider myself a “citizen of the world.” I don’t abide with exploiting people in other countries, but I believe the priority of U.S. policies should be the well-being and prosperity of those legally here and entitled to work, regardless of their national origins, race or ethnicity. If American belongs to the world, it belongs to no one.

    You are correct that I have made no distinction between legal and illegal immigration. In the current state of affairs that line is so blurred as to be largely irrelevant. Our “leaders” from the White House on down pander to corporate interests for cheap labor and free reign to transfer production aboard to the benefit of their bottom lines and the detriment of middle class working people who haven’t lined the pockets of corrupt politicians. If the law is deliberately not enforced, it doesn’t matter that we have a law.

    I could cite page after page of economic data proving the stagnation and even deterioration of real wages and standards of living of working people but that would bore readers to tears. Suffice it to say that the data are free and available online through the Federal Reserve, Bureau of Economic Analysis, etc. Googling will produce many studies as well. I recommend also books by Kevin Phillips on the deterioration of our standard of living and the growing disparity of income and wealth in the U.S. Phillips is a moderate Republican who is not afraid of speaking honestly about the economic predicament in which we find ourselves. And, yes, I like much of what Lou Dobbs writes as well, although I hope that comment doesn’t get me banned from the blog!

    Lastly, the minimum wage is meaningless. Living wages must be attained through market forces of supply and demand. At any given time, demand for various sorts of labor is very stable. Increasing the supply depresses prices (wages). Mechanics, construction workers, etc., can earn a decent living if corporate interests were unable to flood the market with cheap immigrant labor. Check the Labor Department’s statistics on the trends in real wages in the construction industry, which is one of sectors most impacted by the flood of illegal immigrants.

  37. DiversityGal

    Rick,

    Where does your information come from that HSM is not backed by the GOP? This is highly interesting to me…

  38. Leila

    I should have used a different tense. You have a total focus on Latinos. That is clear from virtually every post you make. So what difference would it have made to you if the people who were all around you had been poor legal immigrants who were suddenly a large number in your neighborhood and not illegal ones? Your feelings seem indistinguishable from those 100-150 years ago who looked around and saw all the (legal) working-class Jews and Italians or Irish Catholics and said the same thing. The also seem indistinguishable from those who have bitterly complained about the influx of (legal) Hmong or Vietnamese in some places in the South and Midwest taking jobs and not assimilating.

    I don’t disagree with you about the corruption of the wealthy or politicians. I disagree about blaming all your woe and the economy’s woes on illegal immigrants.

  39. Leila

    Wasn’t there the smoking gun of a GOP contribution?

  40. Leila

    Not that it matters ultimately. The hypocrisy is just that the GOP has done everything it can to fight wage increases, unions, or any kind of constraint on business, so the notion they are sympathetic to working-class Americans’ economic interests is a stretch.

  41. DiversityGal

    A $6,800 payment from the Republican Party of Virginia to HSM (listed on vpap.org) would indicate a backing of some sort, right?

  42. Marie

    Great Post, Elena. Was out all day and just saw it. I really don’t have anything to add just wanted to thank you.

    What is this about a $6,800 donation to HSM from the GOP listed on vpap.org? Who has the 411?

  43. Michael

    Leila and WHWN,

    You both make good points, as long as you are talking about “legal” immigrants. I agee with most of your reseach and comments you made that America does need to keep a quality labor force and quality of imported skill through immigration.

    What neither of you seem to be able to address though is why you seem to treat “illegal” immigration as “justified” to fill the labor need as “legal” immigration.

    I first need to understand why neither of you seem to think we need any “borders” or “legal” immigration quotas at all.

    If you both think we need “borders” then I agree with you. If you both think we do not need borders, then I disagree with you.

    If you both think we need “legal” immigration quotas, then I agree with you. If you both think we do not need quotas or that “illegal” immigration should be allowed to fill the “quota gap” then I very much dis-agree with you for the following reasons.

    All nations need borders for the following reasons:
    Security from other nations, cultures and religions foreign to the nation’s value system (i.e.democracy ideology), national culture and national religion, in order to prevent conflict, poverty and political turmoil.

    Politics creates leadership stability behind a border, after a war is fought to secure a border, secure leadership (good or bad) and secure a national philosophy that governs that nation’s ethics, idealogy, political ideals, and laws.

    If you ignore this border, people who are political, create warring factions divided along racial, gender, religious and ethnic group lines of political power and create a period of conflict and misery between all of the people who have separated themselves into factional groups (racial, gender, religious and ethnic centric political groups), keeping all of these groups in poverty, serfdom, misery and conflict, often for several generations.

    Look at world history for why borders are created and you will realize NO NATION can survive as an intact entity for very long from those political groups who would wish to destroy it or undermine it without a border and common law. A border is a legal and moral necessity until the entire world is under one common law and one common ideology, preferably a democratic one. This is not going to happen anytime soon in our lifetimes, because existing national leaders are not going to give up political power and wealth to the masses, except peacefuly and under a common world doctrine of common law and order.

    Controlled immigration is a moral and legal necessity for the same reason, the nation must control the influx of different nationalisms, ideologies, cultures and people of various economic wealth, if it is to remain stable, avoid political instability by seperatist factions aligned along racial, gender, religious and ethnic group political lines of power. “illegal” immigrants, have historically always aligned their political interests along ethnic and religious lines of political power, and because of this are a large threat to the stability of any nation if they achieve “ilegal” immigration numbers that can affect local, state and national elections and local and state business practices, by breaking the law according to thier own moral or ethnic group legal code.

    Quotas must first account for this political risk, and then account for the financial undermining of existing jobs and the existing economy by the influx of “illegal” immigrants, and in some cases of bad immigration policy, the negative impact on the economy of even too many “legal” immigrants of the wrong skill base and political ideology.

    I know of NO historical case where “illegal” immigrants or even “un-controlled” growth of legal immigrants, results in the financial prosperity of a nation.

    Our nation only prospered from immigrants after laws were put into place to eliminate child labor, factory abuses, worker abuses by creation of labor unions, mandatory 40 hour weeks and mandatory minimum wages, heakth and food laws, measures standards (NBStandards), public assistance (welfare and social security), and business incentives for factory owners and business owners to put wealth back into the community and pay higher wages under a freee market competition concept, all created by the government to bring impoverished groups out of poverty, and wages into narrorwer spreads. Illegal immigration has always worsened the above problems and never made then better. The US primarily prospered to be what it is today, not because of “immigrants” but because we came out of WWII with a massive war production capability, that was the only nation not destroyed by Germany and Japan war machines and political ideology.

    Russia had massive immigrations and massive exiles after WWII, moving people (immigrants) to many regions and NEVER prospered from this movement of incredibly “cheap” immigrant labor. It only became even more impoverished due to its “socialist” policy, that never understood the fair and competitive free market.

    Illegal immigrants do not strengthen a free market, they undermine it, and that is what unions during the period you have analyzed were so afraid of. To them it was not racism, but “econoimic protectionism”, that also undermined free market principals.

    I know of many cases in world history where the “conquering” of nations by colonialists, exploited “cheap labor”, and made the small segment of the wealthy wealthier, and the poor (lower classes, or serfs, or slaves), depending on the political law defining such, incresed overall community poverty rather than increased overall community wealth.

    I do not entirely buy your analysis, it only tells a small fragment of the entire story.

    Controlled “legal” immigration is good, uncontrolled “illegal” mmigration is not. It leads to massive criminalization of the political infrastructure and class wars as political factions align.

  44. Michael

    I only have time for one comment, so hack away.

  45. Leila

    Michael, ah late for your date. In any case, the above is a monolith of ahistorical claims. Let’s just take one of them because Rome wasn’t built in a day.

    You say “Our nation only prospered from immigrants after.” and then you give a long list of reform laws. So you are saying immigrants brought no prosperity to the nation until these laws were put into effect. That is, nothing until, for example, 1938 when several laws you cited were put into effect. No prosperity from immigrants. That’s interesting considering that Irish and Chinese immigrants were the bulk of the 19th-century labor for the transcontinental railroads. But no prosperity came from the railroads. Hell no. That’s interesting considering the Ellis Island generation of immigrants were part of industrial booms of their era. And finally it’s particularly interesting since working class immigrants took very long sea voyages from the farthest reaches of Europe and other continents precisely because the US was gaining in prosperity from its immigrant-fueled burgeoning industrialization.

  46. Emma

    DiversityGal,
    Actually, the $6,800 donation was from the Republican Senate Victory PAC.

  47. Censored bybvbl

    What was the $6,800 used for? General operating expenses? PR? A special project? What did the Republican Senate Victory PAC expect for its money? I would think that logically the money should have flowed in the opposite direction – to candidates.

  48. Leila

    Save the Middle Class, another thoughtful post, even if I don’t agree with you 🙂 As yet, nobody has been banned from Anti that I know of, much less for being fans of Lou Dobbs. Banning is a speciality (ahem) in darker quarters. Dobbs makes me cringe. It’s not just his politics, it’s not just his smarminess, it’s not just his demogoguery. It’s the fact that as a journalist/pundit he actually feels that evidence for a claim consists of his saying:

    “Well, I can tell you this. If we reported it, it’s a fact.” (an actual by God quote.)

    I think that anyone so arrogant to say such a thing, after being presented with evidence of a lie, error, or however you wish to characterize, puts everything he has ever said or ever will say into doubt.

    Regarding wages. I share your concern about the construction industry. I favor an expanded guest worker program that would be sent up with every safeguard possible to insure there are no alternative American sources of labor at competitive wages. The thing is there are some sectors where that supply won’t exist, like the *mobile* workforce needed for the harvest of fruits and vegetables. I think it is a matter of national security to keep that kind of agriculture here and I don’t for a minute think the workforce is there without imported labor, not even at double the low wages. There are other sectors that are similar as well as sectors that in one region could operate with just local labor, while in another more affluent region can not. I was happy to see you use the term “living wage,” but unhappy to see you think the market will provide it without any kind of direction. Even in areas with no illegal immigrant labor to speak of there are plenty of working poor who can’t make ends meet.

  49. Leila

    Ack, typos. Sorry.

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