We must examine in historical context the attitude expressed by Donald Trump that America needs more immigrants from Norway.
A December 22, 2016 article on the Right Wing Watch website notes:
“In an interview with [Steve] Bannon in October 2015, [then Senator Jeff] Sessions lamented current levels of legal immigration, pointing favorably to a 1924 effort that set strict quotas on immigrants based on their nation of origin, which heavily favored immigrants from largely white countries, and disparaging the 1965 immigration measure that undid that quota system.”
These reactions are not new.
An Atlantic article from Mar 12, 2016 explains:
“Unsurprisingly, the 1920s [Ku Klux] Klan supported legislation to restrict immigration to preferred countries with Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian roots. The order [i.e., the KKK] championed the Immigration Act of 1924, which limited immigration visas to 2 percent or 3 percent of the population of each nationality from the 1890 census.”
The KKK of the 1920s got much of what it wanted with the passage of the the Immigration Act of 1924, also called the Johnson–Reed Act.
The US Office of the Historian states:
“In all of its parts, the most basic purpose of the 1924 Immigration Act was to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity.”
Long before that, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882 and repeatedly renewed. In 1907-8 a “Gentlemen’s Agreement” between the United States and Japan curtailed the immigration of Japanese men. Soon after, Chester H. Rowell, then editor of the Fresno Republican, wrote, “Nothing can keep our Pacific Coast essentially a white man’s country except our continued determination to keep it so.” [Source: Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 107, No. 1 (Spring, 2006), pp. 36-63]
The Oregon State Immigration Commission, in its 1912 annual report, observed that “there is a certain immigration from Europe which is undesirable, especially that which congregates in our cities and towns, creating slum districts, living below the standard of American workmen, and entering into ruinous competition with American labor.” [Source: Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 118, No. 4, Oregon Migrations (Winter 2017), pp.460-487]
Does this sound familiar? Many of Donald Trump’s statements echo these sentiments.
Later Walter Pierce, Oregon member of the US House of Representatives and former Oregon Governor, was appointed to the Special House Committee looking into internment for Japanese after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. He felt the measures enacted against Japanese-Americans did not go far enough. He also opposed upward adjustment of immigration limits for Jewish children trying to escape the Nazi holocaust. [Source: Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 110, No. 3 (Fall, 2009), pp. 408-410]
We must not only remember our history of excluding immigrants from the Unites States, but more importantly, we must keep in mind the cultural richness, innovation, and plain hard work that generations of immigrants have contributed to our country.
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Read more about the KKK’s Pacific Northwest history in my novel Acquaintance. Buy the book HERE.
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