Discussion for article #230413
But for all pre-1875 immigrants, no laws applied to their arrival. They weren’t legal or illegal; they were just immigrants.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for making this point. The claim that “my ancestors came here legally” has been driving me crazy for a long time.
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Bering Strait Theory. We kinda walked our way south from Alaska to Patagonia.
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My ancestors were dirty whores from French Canadia. You can’t tell cause I’m white. Take that tight assed rethugs.
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Let’s go back to the pre-1920s future by rewriting immigration laws if we can, or incremental reforms and executive actions if we must.
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This is what happens when an English professor attempts to use reason. You get nothing but total garbage. If there is not a law stopping you from coming, you come legally.
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And you are no more legal than anyone else.
In other words, a descendant of pre-1875 immigrant should say “my ancestors did not come here illegally.” Happy now?
I’m tired of the irrationality of the immigration debate – from both sides. The fact is, immigration policy should be contained within a national population policy. The goal of that policy should be reducing America’s population. We have an economy that’s propped up by unsustainable population-fueled “growth.” It’s a recipe for environmental and economic disaster. Immigration doesn’t fix the problems of the nations people are exiting. Nations should enter into “immigration reciprocity” agreements, allowing people to “trade places” without impacting overall population.
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I appreciate the comment and understand that linguistic/semantic point, but still believe that anyone who uses the “My ancestors” argument is also and most importantly arguing that those ancestors chose to do so. And there was no such choice possible, not for all arrivals pre-1875 and most through at least 1920s (and I’d argue 1965). Pretty important distinction and history to get right.
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Hi All,
Just wanted to add that this op ed is drawn from my most recent book, The Chinese Exclusion Act: What It Can Teach Us about America. I’m always happy to send a free e-copy of the book to anybody who’s interested and wants to talk more about all these and other related histories and issues.
If you’d like one, feel free to email me (brailton@fitchburgstate.edu) or Tweet at me (@AmericanStudier) or otherwise e-find me and I’ll be happy to send you a copy. Thanks, and thanks for the comments,
Ben
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I’m sure prof. railton is a lovely English instructor, and his students give him high marks, come the end of semester evaluations. however, what he is not, is a lawyer. his assertion that, in the absence of specific laws controlling it, immigrants are just immigrants, with no position regarding their legal status. not true. well, only true up to the point where their is a society sufficiently capable of controlling its borders, and hence, controlling who does and who doesn’t gain admittance.
this would be the position of pre-Columbian and pre-revolutionary America. no thought was even given to attempting to control who did and didn’t enter the colonies of the various European countries, or the lands of the native American tribes (a position they came to regret). thus, anyone coming in from a foreign land was “just an immigrant”. however, once the colonies broke away from mother England, forming their own government, and recognizing their own borders, things changed. the new gov’t had the authority to control admission, but it wasn’t high on the national “to do” list. however, that there were no laws specifically controlling said immigration made those coming in legal immigrants, by definition, because they were breaking no relevant laws. this continues on up until the first formal immigration laws were passed. again, those immigrating, not in violation of those early limiting laws, were legal immigrants.
If prof. railton and I are doing something that no formal legislation applies to, we are doing that something legally. in a country of laws, there really are only two possible positions to be in:
- legal., or
- illegal.
there is no neutral. and no, this isn’t simply a matter of semantics.
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Heh heh, my family came to these shores before there WAS an America. One branch came to Virginia in the late 1600’s, another to Pennsylvania in the mid-1700’s. Their farm was a rock throw from Valley Forge.
I say that only to show that in my case the legal/illegal thing did not apply. Anyone who isn’t Native American is an immigrant from somewhere. Obama rightly said that we are a nation of immigrants. Those who dislike immigrants (that’s you Kris Kobach) are only disliking themselves. They show their inherent racism.
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I appreciate the thoughts, but would reiterate what I said in another reply above: all those making this argument about their ancestors are arguing that they chose to immigrate in a certain way, when they had no such choice to make. And that situation goes way beyond the Revolution–again, up until at least the 1920s most arrivals (not from China and eventually a few other Asian nations) still had no such choice to make.
This is a response to a line of argument, and that line of argument is very definitely about choices. Which, again, simply did not exist for most of our history.
Thanks,
Ben
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The US naturalization process c. 1900, as described by Upton Sinclair (The Jungle, chapter 9):
“When Jurgis [from Lithuania, recently landed in Chicago with no papers] had been working about three weeks at Brown’s, there had come to him one noontime a man who was employed as a night watchman, and who asked him if he would not like to take out naturalization papers and become a citizen. Jurgis did not know what that meant, but the man explained the advantages. In the first place, it would not cost him anything, and it would get him half a day off, with his pay just the same; and then when election time came he would be able to vote—and there was something in that. Jurgis was naturally glad to accept, and so the night watchman said a few words to the boss, and he was excused for the rest of the day… So they drove downtown and stopped before an imposing granite building, in which they interviewed an official, who had the papers all ready, with only the names to be filled in. So each man in turn took an oath of which he did not understand a word, and then was presented with a handsome ornamented document with a big red seal and the shield of the United States upon it, and was told that he had become a citizen of the Republic and the equal of the President himself.”
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Half of my ancestors are American Indian, so I guess that puts me somewhere dead in the middle. And the only immigration that they did was down the trail of tears and right into Oklahoma.
So, yeah, my ancestors didn’t come here illegally or legally, they were here. And btw, half of me despises Christopher Columbus whom didn’t discover shit and was lost : )
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Several people have left comments arguing that Pure Logic dictates that any immigrant not legally prohibited from being an immigrant must by definition be a “legal” immigrant. I suspect that some of these people know they’re missing the point–the technical term is “trolling”–but others might be honestly confused by this. This should clear it up nicely:
If, in the context of contemporary debates about immigration reform, I made a big deal of saying that your ancestors were all “undocumented immigrants”, would you think I was being fair and accurate? Or would you perhaps think it was profoundly misleading at best? And that it was at least arguably false, given what ordinary speakers of the English language actually mean when they use terms like “undocumented immigrant”?
What goes for the terminology preferred by people with more liberal views on immigration reform (documented vs. undocumented) goes for the terminology preferred by the other side (legal vs. illegal). When you use the phrase “legal immigrants”, it sounds like you’re talking about immigrants who went through some sort of legal process to grant them permission to immigrate to the United States. That anyone doing something not banned is doing it “legally” is exactly as pertinent as someone not having documents (because they didn’t exist yet!) is “undocumented.”
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Nope, still totally misleading and point-missing, like if I said “your ancestors didn’t have green cards.”
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And my ancestors also did not have drivers licenses. So would you then say that they were all scofflaws, in that they operated vehicles without licenses? No, of course not. They were legal drivers, in that there was no law requiring that they possess a license.
The entire argument is totally trollish, period. Things that can be done are legal until they are made illegal.
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This doesn’t help me, some of my ancestors came to North America in 1630, what were theMassachusett immigration laws?