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So you are justifying a man who implied a number of Mexicans were rapists, said he wanted to ban members of a religion from visiting the US, made vulgar comments about women caught on tap, mocked a disabled reporter and did and said many other outrageous things.
And you expect the rest of to care that some mean old lefties are calling you a racist.
Racial and cultural anxiety was the driver for the age of immigration regulation in the US, and they were written to insulate the status quo against cultural change.
In fact, the immigration "quota system" crafted in 1924 with the Johnson-Reed Act, which President Johnson's legislature would later repeal in 1965, was designed to keep the US demography in racial stasis as per the 1910 US Census, the last to be conducted before the law. By assigning immigration quotas to specific regions, the system pre-mixes the flow legal immigrants to the same racial composition of the US ten years ago.
Historians of immigration note that it was exactly rapid cultural and ethnic change that led to successive waves of immigration-restrictions/bans/nativism. Using Atsy's example--in the 1870s and 1880s, there was a massive immigration wave of "coolies" from China as a labor force to build railroads (appeared to have started during the ACW), as well as tending the proto-industrial farms in CA. There were substantial fears of "yellow peril" criminality, such as opium use and gangsterism.
Prior to the Exclusion Act there were other restrictions, such as laws prohibiting Asian women to be on US soil to prevent a naturally-increasing population of Asians. There was absolutely a concern about race and culture.
Going a bit back, in the US federal-level immigration restrictions were scant, if they could be said to exist at all. Free men and of good moral character was the benchmark for naturalization.
There were local levels of immigration control that was crafted in terms of shipping regulations and vagrancy laws at port of entry. Passenger Ships must dedicate a share its displacements for passenger compartments that was smaller than a maximum percentage, which reduced capacity and drove up the price of tickets, while vagrants were sent home on the next outbound ship. However, the effect was an economic selection.
Back to the 20th C. Wilson's presidency collided with the anti-German craze exacerbated by WWI. Germans were fleeing central Europe throughout second part of the 1800s. Many fled after Prussia annexed their old principalities, some to escape low-income farming, others wanted nothing of fighting the German Empire's wars. The same could be said of Central and Eastern European immigrants, such as Poles, Russians, Yugoslavs, Jews.
In the early 1900s, immigrants accounted for 1/3 of the urban population by some counts, with the Germans being one of the largest groups. During WWI, Local towns passed the first "English only" laws in public places, and began banning the teaching of German for children. Bach was banned by music halls. Don't remember how much of that survived post-war normalization. German ethnic association leaders were tried under the Sedition Act. In the aftermath of the war, Johnson-Reed passed, in order to roll back those changes to demography and to culture caused by immigration.
Note that list of laws reviewed here were nearly all of the big names in immigration law history. This long tradition is that of a concern to maintain--not to put to fine a word on it--"white" supremacy, though "whiteness" was variously defined as Anglo-Americans that latter incorporated Irish, Scots, Germans, Poles etc, mostly as a result of welfare policies that treated them as indistinguishable.
Today, German Americans are the biggest white ethnic group in the US.
Historically? In Europe, immigration was regulated by the countries that had an incentive in preventing the loss of peasant workforce and base of conscription, hence internal passports systems and the such like. I am less clear on comparing conferring citizenship status between the nations, but that was going to be enforced with great difficulty, without the modern regime of ID systems. But the fact that France and a large number of other countries were on a jus sanguinis system, there seems to have been a racial or cultural motivation.
The issue becomes, what exactly is the metric with which you judge immigrants? Productivity? Obedience to laws? Some amorphous and presumably American values that US citizens don't seem to entirely agree on? Political affiliation to a certain party? And how many of those concerns fit the aspirational principles that all men are created equal, and that there should be a free market of ideas as well as goods?
Yeah, some laws were actually racist, some laws are said to be racist and aren't. Immigration restrictions are still part of the American political tradition, and ALL political traditions.
Americans actually thinking the US could be in cultural stasis in the 1880s? After a Civil War, mass black enfranchisement, and the middle of the Second Industrial Revolution?
I don't see your point. Our ancestors kept out Asian immigrants because they didn't like Asians. That doesn't change the fact that immigration restrictions have been part of US history since before any of us have been alive.
i'm addressing this point here:
This has never been understood as a way to keep America in a cultural stasis: The US hasn't been in a cultural stasis since the 1840s. As Americans, we have the right to determine what kind of change we want and who we want to allow in the nation. Again, this has always been understood to be a right of the Nation under the Nation-State configuration. It's only in the last 10 years that this has suddenly become "racist," and it's only in the last 10 years that supporting illegal immigrants became a principled stance.
my point is that racism has been a part of the history of US immigration law. in fact, US immigration law was largely created in the first place as a response to -Asian- immigration in the 1870s-1880s. keeping cultural stasis is indeed one of the advertised features, with people having called this racist since its inception.
I don't see your point. Our ancestors kept out Asian immigrants because they didn't like Asians. That doesn't change the fact that immigration restrictions have been part of US history since before any of us have been alive.
Immigration policy has never been and never will be just about controlling illegal immigration. A major part is determining what LEGAL immigration should be.
Has been in US politics since before the freakin' Civil War. It's also present in every single nation throughout essentially all of history. It's STILL the implicit US policy, which is why most immigrants to the US have a family connection, because the US system is set-up to prefer family connections.
This has never been understood as a way to keep America in a cultural stasis: The US hasn't been in a cultural stasis since the 1840s. As Americans, we have the right to determine what kind of change we want and who we want to allow in the nation. Again, this has always been understood to be a right of the Nation under the Nation-State configuration. It's only in the last 10 years that this has suddenly become "racist," and it's only in the last 10 years that supporting illegal immigrants became a principled stance.
from a historical standpoint this is not true. the US experienced significantly more immigration from the period 1860-1910 than in any period, including today. from european immigrants, this was largely regulation-free up until the 1920s-- even the much detested eastern/southern europeans and the irish weren't explicitly kept out, even though british and to a lesser degree french immigration was valued above others. asian immigration was banned starting in the 1870s-1880s. there was a very clear racial hierarchy designed to balance the views of business elites looking for cheap labor along with the nativists, anti-miscegenationists, and protectionists.
these laws WERE derided as racist, even at the time, and actually led to a number of foreign policy rows. ie when japan became a power, she began to badger the US about the racist nature of US anti-japanese immigration law.
moreover, the reason why nation-state quotas were banned in 1965 was because people finally came around to recognizing the racist aspect of quotas that encouraged European immigration at the expense of Asian immigration.
Probably will get to the rest of this later, but this element:
You've just expanded your agenda from illegal border-crossers from south of the continent to staunching the flow of skilled legal immigration. Your stated reason is that now your new group of unlikable immigrants are diluting some unchanging Americanness outside of a knowledge of the constitution or obedience of laws. It's an entirely familiar script: identity politics masquerading as legitimate national security and legal concerns, but mobilized to serve cultural/political ends.
And that's why Asian voters are moving away from the GOP. If that's the hardball the President-elect wants to play during his administration, it's not just gonna be BLM.
Has been in US politics since before the freakin' Civil War. It's also present in every single nation throughout essentially all of history. It's STILL the implicit US policy, which is why most immigrants to the US have a family connection, because the US system is set-up to prefer family connections.
This has never been understood as a way to keep America in a cultural stasis: The US hasn't been in a cultural stasis since the 1840s. As Americans, we have the right to determine what kind of change we want and who we want to allow in the nation. Again, this has always been understood to be a right of the Nation under the Nation-State configuration. It's only in the last 10 years that this has suddenly become "racist," and it's only in the last 10 years that supporting illegal immigrants became a principled stance.
Asians voting heavily Dem pre-dates Trump and the Asian voting bloc hasn't voted (R) since 1992, IIRC. Asians voting (R) is something of the Cold War and the Asian population of 2016 is NOT the Asian population of 1992 anyways: There's been substantial change in the demographics due to immigration the last 20+ years.
Also, yes, ethnic breakdown hasn't happened in the US with historical immigration. Great, that's awesome. Go tell the Soviet Union that ethnic nationalism is no big deal. Oh wait....
Buddy,you miss the point.Talking like this is a message in itself and clever planning.Opponents guarantee free publicity.Supporters get the guarantee that it is serious election issue.
Yes,you can talk about problems without shocking anyone.But with a normal,balanced population that can see eye to eye.The US electorate of today is not normal and balanced.So simply saying that the border needs to be secured is not enough.Leftists will cry "racism" anyway,while potential supporters will shrug it off.
If you recall the movie Idiocracy,the smartest man on Earth becomes POTUS at the end and he shows both middle fingers to the people,while they cheer.Is not the man that's vulgar,it's the electorate that's so debased it cannot any other mean of communication.
The public discourse that is decent,gentle,fact and reason based has been in good part replaced by a leftist narrative that shouts down anything resembling reason.
And reasonable people were in stupor after 20 years of being called evil for any pretext imaginable.They needed to woke up.
correspondingly, college-educated white voters as well as white women have shifted Dem over the last 20 years; they used to be Republican dominated demographics but is now a toss-up.
LOL "flocking"? then why the democrat still lost miserably?
do try and learn a little bit about the electoral college, and the demographics of the states that won the election for Trump.
for the 2020 election, if dem support among minorities -remains the same- as 2016 and the republicans keep the exact same level of support among working class whites-- the latter of which i have my doubts about-- then just by demographic growth alone, the dems would have flipped the results.
the whole "minorities united" (against white) platform is just pure stupidity.
who says it is "against whites"? do you say working class white people are united as a bloc against minorities?
correspondingly, college-educated white voters as well as white women have shifted Dem over the last 20 years; they used to be Republican dominated demographics but is now a toss-up.
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