Obama said something about immigration policy through the ages which struck a chord:
You know, this whole anti-immigrant sentiment in our politics right now is contrary to who we are. Unless you are a native American, your family came from someplace else. And although we are a nation of laws and we want people to follow the law, and I have been pushing Congress to make sure we have strong borders and we are keeping everybody moving through the legal processes, don't pretend that somehow 100 years ago the process was smooth and strict. That is not how it worked. There are a bunch of folks who came here from all over Europe, all throughout Asia, all throughout Central America, and certainly who came from Africa. It was not some orderly process where all the rules applied and everything was strict, and, 'I came the right way.'
I think he did it in the perfect way, and pre-empted some of the openly nativist sentiment that marked the GOP debate last night. But he only barely touched upon how racially biased our immigration policy has been through the years. I'll discuss how messed up today's legal immigration policy is below the fold, but I want to start with a short history.
A personal anecdote, back in 1994 I was on a student visa in the US. In a random conversation, I explained the investor immigrant visa (have $1 million? here's a green card) to my boss at the university (who happened to be Puerto Rican). Her shocked response was to wonder how this squared with the ideals inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. Most Americans believe that inscription is an accurate description of what our immigration policy has always been. It reads:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
But that has never been the complete or even the true story.
Some huddled masses are more desirable than others.
Most damingly, we deported over a million people to Mexico (most of them American citizens) in the 1930s as part of a localized movement of "Mexican Repatriation". They were often put on buses with one way tickets to a country hundreds or thousands of miles away. Some were young children who had never seen the place. And 6 out of 10 were American citizens. Let that sink in for a moment.
These deportations are what partly led to the Bracero Program.
Until the 1970s, the US had explicit racial quotas to limit the immigration of non-northern Europeans. This policy goal took various forms, starting with Naturalization Act of 1790, which limited immigration to "free white persons of good character" (no Southern or Eastern Europeans need apply). We took one small step forward with the Naturalization Act of 1870 which opened citizenship to people with African ancestry (after the Civil War), other non-white persons continued to be excluded.
It took a infamous step back with the Chinese exclusion act of 1882 which did exactly what it's name suggests. The National Origins Formula of 1921 sought to limit immigration from countries based on the existing ethnic makeup of the US. That was tweaked with the Immigration act of 1924, which sought to limit immigration from Africa, southern/eastern Europe. It was also known (correctly) as the Asian Exclusion Act (still don't want no orientals). We took a small step forward with the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 which extended US citizenship to all Native Americans. Yes Virginia, the natives only got citizenship after thousands fought overseas for the US in World War I.
During the inter-war period, among other lamentable things, we refused to take in significant numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution, missing a chance to save millions. Public opinion was 70% opposed to Jewish immigration.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 abolished racial quotas, but retained the "national origin" quotas. Truman vetoed that bill calling out it's proponents for trying to limit immigration from Eastern Europe after the second world war (which is what they were doing):
We do not need to be protected against immigrants from these countries–on the contrary we want to stretch out a helping hand, to save those who have managed to flee into Western Europe, to succor those who are brave enough to escape from barbarism, to welcome and restore them against the day when their countries will, as we hope, be free again.
-- Harry S. Truman as President of the United States, in a letter to the House explaining his veto
Congress promptly overrode the White House veto. The resolution's co-author
said this in the Senate:
I believe that this nation is the last hope of Western civilization and if this oasis of the world shall be overrun, perverted, contaminated or destroyed, then the last flickering light of humanity will be extinguished. I take no issue with those who would praise the contributions which have been made to our society by people of many races, of varied creeds and colors. ... However, we have in the United States today hard-core, indigestible blocs which have not become integrated into the American way of life, but which, on the contrary are its deadly enemies. Today, as never before, untold millions are storming our gates for admission and those gates are cracking under the strain. The solution of the problems of Europe and Asia will not come through a transplanting of those problems en masse to the United States. ... I do not intend to become prophetic, but if the enemies of this legislation succeed in riddling it to pieces, or in amending it beyond recognition, they will have contributed more to promote this nation's downfall than any other group since we achieved our independence as a nation.
-- Senator Patrick McCarran on the floor of the US Senate, March 2, 1953
You can pretty much take that quote (from 1953) and put it on the teleprompter of several GOP candidates. They will read it out with conviction without pausing to take a breath.
More on immigration, including LBJ, how race still factors into immigration today and the diversity visa program below the orange border fence.
And now finally, at long last we get to LBJ. Along with the truly landmark Civil Rights acts, LBJ's administration also championed immigration reform. Under his administration, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was passed, finally abolishing the National Origins quotas. This opened up immigration from Asia, significant numbers of immigrants began to arrive from non-European countries (especially Asia) and the demographics of the US began to change. I am very aware that without this change, I would not have had the opportunity to immigrate to this country, and this is one of the reasons I'm a Democrat (though the laws were passed with Republican votes with Southern Democrats opposed, i.e. prior to Nixon's Southern strategy). It's one of the many reasons I think LBJ's term is under-appreciated for the manner in which it changed the landscape in every direction. If it weren't for Vietnam...
Even the liberalization of 1965 had it's limits, we still barred "sexual deviants" (read homosexuals) from immigrating to the US, that wasn't fixed till the Immigration Act of 1990. The act also introduced quotas for immigrants from North and South America where previously there hadn't been any.
Which brings me to the rich irony of the Diversity Immigrant visa (also known as the Green Card lottery), part of the 1990 law. It sounds like a great thing at first (yay, more diversity), but the intent was to privilege immigrants from European nations by reducing the criteria for them. This was abundantly clear when the law was passed:
"This is kind of a white person's lottery," said Michael Maggio, a Washington-based immigration lawyer.
In particular, the new law, co-sponsored by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, favors the Irish, who are allotted at least 40 percent of the places. Some critics describe it as a disguised amnesty for the more than 100,000 undocumented immigrants from the Republic of Ireland who are living illegally in America; supporters say it is merely addressing years of discrimination against Irish immigrants.
[...]
Cecilia Munoz, an official of the Washington-based Hispanic rights lobbying group, National Council of La Raza, said, " 'Diversity' is clearly a euphemism. 'Diversity' under this law means larger numbers of white Europeans, and I think there is some irony in that."
Of course, as numerous comments note below, it has also become a vehicle for immigration for many unexpected and far-flung places, to our country's continuing benefit.
Today, people immigrate to the US in two ways:
- have a family member who is a citizen or permanent resident "sponsor" you under the family re-unification category
- have your employer "sponsor" you for permanent residency (as oppposed to temporary non-immigrant work visas)
There are other classes for investors (invest 1-5 million), artists/authors/actors etc, but the criteria are pretty stringent and the numbers lower. Most legal immigrants gattain permanent residency (and eventually citizenship) under the family member or employer route.
But what most people don't realize is that there are quotas which restrict immigration from any one country to 7% of total immigrant visas issued in a year. This foreign state of chargeability concept is largely intended to control the racial composition of the pool. It mainly impacts countries with large populations and big immigrant application backlogs. Namely, Mexico, China, India and the Phillipines. India's population is 1.25 billion, or 17% of the world's. China's is 1.35 billion or 19% of the world's. The annual cap on immigration from either country is the same as for citizens of Luxembourg, which has a total population of 545,000.
If you're a US citizen and you want to "sponsor" your unmarried 22 year old daughter (category F1), she'll get an immigrant visa after being put on hold of 7 years. But if your daughter happens to be Mexican, the application will be on hold for 21 years (14 years for the Phillipines). USCIS is currently processing immigrant petitions for children of Mexican citizens which were filed in 1994! That 22 year old would be 43 today. If she happens to get married, over that 21 year period, she would get shuffled to another category (F3) were the wait could be much longer (jumps to 22 years for Phillipines). There are no quotas for minor children, spouses or parents of US citizens.
See the visa bulletin from the State department for this month's view of the waiting list for immigrants visas.
If your employer is sponsoring you for permanent residence on the basis of your having an advanced degree and specialized skills, they have to clear labor department rules intended to show they could not find a US worker for the job, and they're paying you the "prevailing wage". If you're from any part of the world except China and India, your application will be processed immediately and you should receive a green card within a few months or a couple of years. If you are from India, you'll have to wait an additional 10 years before your application is even looked at. If you're Chinese, you will have to wait an additional 4 years. During that time, depending on where you are in the process, if your employer fires you, you may have 10 days to leave the country.
I'm going to close by quoting LBJ at the signing of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965:
This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives, or really add importantly to either our wealth or our power.
Yet it is still one of the most important acts of this Congress and of this administration.
For it does repair a very deep and painful flaw in the fabric of American justice. It corrects a cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American Nation.
[...]
This bill says simply that from this day forth those wishing to immigrate to America shall be admitted on the basis of their skills and their close relationship to those already here.
This is a simple test, and it is a fair test. Those who can contribute most to this country--to its growth, to its strength, to its spirit--will be the first that are admitted to this land.
The fairness of this standard is so self-evident that we may well wonder that it has not always been applied. Yet the fact is that for over four decades the immigration policy of the United States has been twisted and has been distorted by the harsh injustice of the national origins quota system.
Under that system the ability of new immigrants to come to America depended upon the country of their birth. Only 3 countries were allowed to supply 70 percent of all the immigrants.
Families were kept apart because a husband or a wife or a child had been born in the wrong place.
Men of needed skill and talent were denied entrance because they came from southern or eastern Europe or from one of the developing continents.
This system violated the basic principle of American democracy--the principle that values and rewards each man on the basis of his merit as a man.
It has been un-American in the highest sense, because it has been untrue to the faith that brought thousands to these shores even before we were a country.
Today, with my signature, this system is abolished.