17 May 2023
A Nation of Immigrants Part 2
America has a long, long, long history of embracing immigrants one day, generally because it needed them for economic reasons, a variation of slave labor, then rejecting them the next day because of racism, xenophobia, bigotry, white supremacy, greed, and a hundred other hideous reasons. At Jamestown, where the America that we know really got its start, forced immigration began just twelve years after the colony thrust its roots into the spongy Tidewater soil. That’s when the slave ships began arriving with their holds packed with human beings who were to begin the nightmare of permanent captivity, rape, brutality, torture, murder. No hope for escape, no chance for freedom. By the end of the colonial period, one in every five Americans was of African descent, fully twenty percent of the population was black. And the overwhelming majority of them were slaves. A Civil War would be fought that would result in their emancipation, at least on paper, and a hundred years after that, a Civil Rights movement would be waged. But today, four hundred years after those first Africans arrived here, black Americans simply don’t enjoy the same treatment as white Americans. Up in merry old New England, those colonies, back in the 1600s, welcomed their fellow Englishmen, unless, of course, they happened to be Quakers. This was the country’s first real example of religious intolerance, which has lasted in one form or other up till this day, when you consider the current president’s attempted ban on Muslims. Back in the day, when Quakers slipped into the Puritan-rich waters of the Massachusetts Bay Colony they were whipped, imprisoned, banished, or forced to climb up the long ladder and drop down the short rope. Summarily hanged for their beliefs, a very Christian thing to do, according to the Puritans. A hundred years later, in the mid-1700s, English Parliament passed an odious bill called the Plantation Act, which became the blueprint for every subsequent U.S. Naturalization Act that ever became law. The Plantation Act required all immigrants to pledge allegiance to the Christian faith, meaning Protestantism, before becoming naturalized citizens. Roman Catholics were not considered Christians, were referred to, in that law, as Papists. Shortly after the birth of the Republic, the Alien Naturalization Act went into effect. This was one of the craziest laws ever written. Citizenship was offered to “free white persons” only, thereby excluding indentured servants, slaves, and, get this, women. This law claimed to limit naturalization to people of 'good moral character'—like white slave owners. In the early years of twentieth century, when eugenics was all the rage, the Immigration Act of 1917, barred “idiots, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, insane persons, alcoholics, and all persons mentally or physically defective” from becoming US citizens. Which today would mean that the president, his staff and cabinet, along with all members of both houses of Congress, would not be able to become US citizens. Over the course of our history there have been hundreds of immigration laws that were simply, and in many cases, arbitrarily, discriminatory. They were enacted, but later repealed, or overturned by the courts. One of the oddest ones, which was extant until 1924, refused citizenship to the only real native Americans—namely Native American Indians. As absurd as it sounds, it’s absolutely true. Indigenous people were not considered native, a complete and utter pretzel twist of logic. For some reason, one particular group of foreigners were treated with particular harshness. They were banned from obtaining citizenship, and those who had already achieve that status, lost it, even if their families had been here for several generations. This group of immigrants were brought in as a sort of slave labor force to do the work no one else wanted to do—to build an intercontinental railroad, and to work in true sweat shops—namely laundries.
