LET’S TALK: “Immigration”

One of the hottest topics during this political race is immigration. It is a topic of epic proportion and a main debate. Except for the American Indian, everyone living in the United States is an immigrant. However, the African American is in its own class they were brought to this country as slaves.

Immigrants like the Polish, and Italians has been flocking to this country since 1890. These immigrants were coming from the southeastern part of Europe; they were Catholics, Jews, and peasants who did not speak English. By 1920 it is estimated over 75,000 immigrants entered this country monthly through Ell i s Island located in the New York Harbor. Charles Davenport a puritan English protestant northwestern descendent of one of the original early immigrants wrote to a friend of his, Madison Grant,

“Can we build a wall around this country to keep out these cheaper races.”

Davenport and Grant believed the southeastern immigrants were diluting and polluting the country and the right people were not having enough children. Their ancestors were of the original immigrants that came from the northwestern part of Europe, the British Isles and Germany. They believed the foreign-born whites were intellectually inferior to native born whites in America and the threat of the foreigners was insidious. They targeted the Mediterranean’s and Jews as the biggest threat to the purity of their race. The African American was not considered a threat because by law they were forbidden to marry anyone that was white.

Madison Grant was also a white supremacist attorney who studied and practiced eugenicist. Eugenicist is a set of beliefs and practices put into place to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Grant and Davenport goal was to preserve the northwestern immigrant’s race whom they deemed superior to any other race of people. Together they were successful in getting the government to back studies in eugenics targeting the southeastern Europeans. Resulting in the eugenic society attempting to alter various human gene frequencies by inhibiting the fertility of people and groups they considered inferior by placing them in asylums and performing surgical procedures like vasectomy and hysterectomy on them.

They also successfully lobbied the United States Department of Immigration and won over Congress and a bill was enacted called The Emergency Quota Act, also known as the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921. The Emergency Quota Act restricted the number of immigrants admitted from any country annually to 3%.

Sound familiar? It has been over 104 years since this debate started. Somehow, we have been unable to land on a resolution. Perhaps if someone had reminded Mr. Davenport and Mr. Grant that they were immigrants and the only native in the United States is the American Indian. And unlike other race and cultures the African American earned their rightful position in this country through blood, sweat, and tears, they built this country. If they had been reminded of these facts this debate could have started and ended in 1920.