THE TROY DEMOCRAT

THE TROY DEMOCRAT

April 1, 1893

IMMIGRATION LAWS
“What, if any, changes in the existing immigration laws are expedient?”

By F.W. Hamilton

This sense of danger has come from the change in character of the stream of immigration pouring into our eastern ports…

These people for the most part bring nothing but themselves, and in themselves are neither useful or desirable. The are of entirely different stocks from the original settlers and the earlier immigrants. They may indeed have longings for liberty, but they have no knowledge of what liberty is, how it may be secured, or how it should be used. They are mentally and morally degraded by century on century of oppression, of ignorance and misery. Unused to any sort of self-government, they are incapable of walking the paths of citizenship without leaning heavily on the arm of some kind of paternalism. They have just enough money to get them past the gates of Castle Garden and then are dumped down, a helpless and unassimilable mass, and expected to take care of themselves and to develop by some mysterious process into intelligent wielders of the American suffrage.

We are daily witnessing the results of such a policy. These poor people herd helplessly in the cities… They have no skill and no natural aptitude for productive labor, and so they crowd the labor or market with a vast mass of cheap unskilled labor, a constant menace to the intelligent workman’s pay and an unfailing resource for the capitalist who desires to screw down wages a few cents lower. Just as they may be used in masses by the unscrupulous contractor for the demoralization of the labor market, so, if they ever became citizens, they can be used in masses by the unscrupulous politician or the demoralization of citizenship.

[…]

Now we are greatly and properly exercised by the presence in our midst of a rapidly growing and almost equally unassimilable foreign element, an element that is a menace to the public health because of the life it lives, a source to the interests of labor because of the industrial conditions from which it cannot readily escape, and a constant anxiety to the defenders of the public peace because of the lawlessness, disorder and degradation which are the legitimate fruits of generations of serfdom.

Looking these facts fairly in the face it seems that the time has come for a radical change of policy… The time has come to take a new stand and to declare definitely and firmly that the United State will henceforth pursue a new policy. Experience has shown that the fundamental assumptions of the old policy are no longer tenable…

We did not realize in the old days what a superior quality of manhood we were getting, as compared with the world’s average. When we said that we needed men more than anything else we did not really comprehend what we were saying. Now that we are getting men who are human beings and nothing more, we are beginning to realize that it is not men but manhood that we want. We want more than the muscles and the stomach and the power of procreation. We want the enterprise, thrift, aptitude, morality and intelligent aspiration which contain the promise and potency of good citizenship and without which good citizenship and free government are impossible.

The time has come to say to all of the world that no man is wanted here unless he can bring us these things.

We have a right to demand that the man who comes to enjoy the opportunities and advantages of American life should, in compensation, give reasonable guarantee that he well not be a debaser of the standards of that life.

Instead of our present patchwork immigration statutes, we should have a statute permitting no immigrant to land on our shores unless able to read and write his native language with fluency (excepting young children, wives coming with their husbands, and persons above sixty coming with other members of their families), and able to show possession of a sufficient sum of money to provide for immediate needs.

This statute should be re-enforced by sanitary and police regulations, excluding those infected with loathsome or contagious diseases, those who had been convicted of crimes other than political, and those whose money has been provided for the return of all immigrants who should become a public charge within a year. The prevision against assisted immigrants would be needed to keep out criminals who had not been convicted, but deported as an easier way of getting rid of them. The political offenses exception to the criminal clause should not be allowed to cover anarchist. The anarchist is the sworn foe of all government. He is the enemy of humanity. He has no right to claim any protection or harborage from any government on humanitarian grounds. He is a rabid animal, and has no more right to be at large anywhere than other rabid animals have.

 

 

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