Estebonrober
Deity
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2017
- Messages
- 6,054
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin...frum-how-much-immigration-is-too-much/583252/
hrough much of the 20th century, the United States received comparatively few immigrants. In the 60 years from 1915 until 1975, nearly a human lifetime, the United States admitted fewer immigrants than arrived, legally and illegally, in the single decade of the 1990s.
If you grew up in the 1950s, the 1960s, or even the 1970s, heavy immigration seemed mostly a chapter from the American past, narrated to the nostalgic strains of The Godfather or Fiddler on the Roof. The Ellis Island immigrant-inspection station—through which flowed the ancestors of so many of today’s Americans—closed in 1954. It reopened as a museum in 1990.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin...erwer-madison-grant-white-nationalism/583258/
t was america that taught us a nation should not open its doors equally to all nations,” Adolf Hitler told The New York Times half a decade later, just one year before his elevation to chancellor in January 1933. Elsewhere he admiringly noted that the U.S. “simply excludes the immigration of certain races. In these respects America already pays obeisance, at least in tentative first steps, to the characteristic völkisch conception of the state.” Hitler and his followers were eager to claim a foreign—American—lineage for the Nazi mission.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1896/06/restriction-of-immigration/306011/
t is true that in the past there has been gross and scandalous neglect of this matter on the part both of government and people, here in the United States. For nearly two generations, great numbers of persons utterly unable to earn their living, by reason of one or another form of physical or mental disability, and others who were, from widely different causes, unfit to be members of any decent community, were admitted to our ports without challenge or question. It is a matter of official record that in many cases these persons had been directly shipped to us by states or municipalities desiring to rid themselves of a burden and a nuisance; while it could reasonably be believed that the proportion of such instances was far greater than could be officially ascertained. But all this is of the past. The question of the restriction of immigration to-day does not deal with that phase of the subject. What is proposed is, not to keep out some hundreds, or possibly thousands of persons, against whom lie specific objections like those above indicated, but to exclude perhaps hundreds of thousands, the great majority of whom would be subject to no individual objections; who, on the contrary, might fairly be expected to earn their living here in this new country, at least up to the standard known to them at home, and probably much more. The question to-day is not of preventing the wards of our almshouses, our insane asylums, and our jails from being stuffed to repletion by new arrivals from Europe; but of protecting the American rate of wages, the American standard of living, and the quality of American citizenship from degradation through the tumultuous access of vast throngs of ignorant and brutalized peasantry from the countries of eastern and southern Europe.
These three pieces form the Atlantic this month and the last piece being from the Atlantic in 1896 tell a very American story about immigration. What it means to be an American, how whiteness has always played a pivotal role in that discussion even today. I find it telling that one of the most horrific policies of the last century was born here and that its antithetical was born here as well. It's telling to read these stories because they continually shift the boundary of Americaness or whiteness (however you want to read that) to mean more and more things. At one point it meant only wasps, then Irish Catholics were let in, then Italians and so on. The ability to recognize our past struggles with this topic should guide or decisions moving forward.
Why America is great and getting greater all the time? A constant influx of immigrants with ambition and dynamic personalities. This is our history from the founding on and it must be states that to continue this means to continue promoting good immigration in serious numbers. The most troubling aspect of white ethno-nationalism is obviously its inherent ignorance of racial hierarchy or minimally its intense apathy towards mixing cultures. Of course mixing cultures is and has been previously why the American experiment has continued to excel and slowing that down will hurt it.
There is room for negotiation. Maybe a pause in the speed of immigration and certainly as Frum argues a reworking of the immigration system as a whole has been overdue for almost 20 years now. We could use a quota system that still involves letting in the impoverished at a certain rate while focusing on educated foreign nationals for a while. What we can't do is allow the story of America to be hijacked by far right wing reactionaries that are patently un-american. In their thought, in their politics, and in their hearts. We must rebuke these sentiments for what they are, racism. So while placating the masses with an immigration reform is necessary, quotas based on color, religion, or sex will not be acceptable. If America and the freedoms it represents is to lead the world moving forward it must resemble the world. Marching into white holes of clean safe spaces is not an answer.
hrough much of the 20th century, the United States received comparatively few immigrants. In the 60 years from 1915 until 1975, nearly a human lifetime, the United States admitted fewer immigrants than arrived, legally and illegally, in the single decade of the 1990s.
If you grew up in the 1950s, the 1960s, or even the 1970s, heavy immigration seemed mostly a chapter from the American past, narrated to the nostalgic strains of The Godfather or Fiddler on the Roof. The Ellis Island immigrant-inspection station—through which flowed the ancestors of so many of today’s Americans—closed in 1954. It reopened as a museum in 1990.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin...erwer-madison-grant-white-nationalism/583258/
t was america that taught us a nation should not open its doors equally to all nations,” Adolf Hitler told The New York Times half a decade later, just one year before his elevation to chancellor in January 1933. Elsewhere he admiringly noted that the U.S. “simply excludes the immigration of certain races. In these respects America already pays obeisance, at least in tentative first steps, to the characteristic völkisch conception of the state.” Hitler and his followers were eager to claim a foreign—American—lineage for the Nazi mission.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1896/06/restriction-of-immigration/306011/
t is true that in the past there has been gross and scandalous neglect of this matter on the part both of government and people, here in the United States. For nearly two generations, great numbers of persons utterly unable to earn their living, by reason of one or another form of physical or mental disability, and others who were, from widely different causes, unfit to be members of any decent community, were admitted to our ports without challenge or question. It is a matter of official record that in many cases these persons had been directly shipped to us by states or municipalities desiring to rid themselves of a burden and a nuisance; while it could reasonably be believed that the proportion of such instances was far greater than could be officially ascertained. But all this is of the past. The question of the restriction of immigration to-day does not deal with that phase of the subject. What is proposed is, not to keep out some hundreds, or possibly thousands of persons, against whom lie specific objections like those above indicated, but to exclude perhaps hundreds of thousands, the great majority of whom would be subject to no individual objections; who, on the contrary, might fairly be expected to earn their living here in this new country, at least up to the standard known to them at home, and probably much more. The question to-day is not of preventing the wards of our almshouses, our insane asylums, and our jails from being stuffed to repletion by new arrivals from Europe; but of protecting the American rate of wages, the American standard of living, and the quality of American citizenship from degradation through the tumultuous access of vast throngs of ignorant and brutalized peasantry from the countries of eastern and southern Europe.
These three pieces form the Atlantic this month and the last piece being from the Atlantic in 1896 tell a very American story about immigration. What it means to be an American, how whiteness has always played a pivotal role in that discussion even today. I find it telling that one of the most horrific policies of the last century was born here and that its antithetical was born here as well. It's telling to read these stories because they continually shift the boundary of Americaness or whiteness (however you want to read that) to mean more and more things. At one point it meant only wasps, then Irish Catholics were let in, then Italians and so on. The ability to recognize our past struggles with this topic should guide or decisions moving forward.
Why America is great and getting greater all the time? A constant influx of immigrants with ambition and dynamic personalities. This is our history from the founding on and it must be states that to continue this means to continue promoting good immigration in serious numbers. The most troubling aspect of white ethno-nationalism is obviously its inherent ignorance of racial hierarchy or minimally its intense apathy towards mixing cultures. Of course mixing cultures is and has been previously why the American experiment has continued to excel and slowing that down will hurt it.
There is room for negotiation. Maybe a pause in the speed of immigration and certainly as Frum argues a reworking of the immigration system as a whole has been overdue for almost 20 years now. We could use a quota system that still involves letting in the impoverished at a certain rate while focusing on educated foreign nationals for a while. What we can't do is allow the story of America to be hijacked by far right wing reactionaries that are patently un-american. In their thought, in their politics, and in their hearts. We must rebuke these sentiments for what they are, racism. So while placating the masses with an immigration reform is necessary, quotas based on color, religion, or sex will not be acceptable. If America and the freedoms it represents is to lead the world moving forward it must resemble the world. Marching into white holes of clean safe spaces is not an answer.
