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Fun Fact of the Day

Jill

From my immigration law reading:

For a fairly long time, the United States had a policy of entirely open borders, and didn’t regulate immigration much at all. When the first exclusion law was passed, Congress chose to bar two groups: Prostitutes and vagabonds.

This was even as open borders were applauded for their humanitarian and liberal values, serving, as George Washington urged, to make America an “asylum” for the “oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions.” Apparently, “prostitutes and vagabonds” never need a benevolent nation to shelter them.

One thing I’ve learned in law school: Oppression never gets old. And the same bottom-of-the-barrel groups just keep getting hit.

29 thoughts on Fun Fact of the Day

  1. “Fun” Fact?
    But seriously, I remember this from immigration law too. Reading the ways we put up walls- Prostitutes and vagabonds, then the sick, then the Chinese (the Other)- is like reading how it has to go in reverse now. Broaden our circle of compassion back to the beginning. Though without indentured servants, and slavery.

  3. Exactly! This is what the current immigration debate leaves out. So much rhetoric surrounds how a nation “needs” to secure it’s borders or else it risks losing its identity as a sovereign nation. People need history lessons.

  4. Truly brilliant post, and quite in line with all the others here. Like our host, I don’t see any difference between hundreds of years ago and today. Well, gotta go get prepared for a few week’s journey on the clipper to France. Tally-ho!

  5. Like our host, I don’t see any difference between hundreds of years ago and today.

    Where did I say that I don’t see any difference between hundreds of years ago and today?

    I did say that oppression continues unabated. That doesn’t mean there are no differences.

  6. This is pretty obvious (in fact, probably just supporting the point of the post), but things change and things don’t change. I was doing a little research into the 1889 nationality law in France, and the similarity to contempory immigration debates was striking – right down to the “They took our jobs!” rhetoric.

  8. What exactly is a vagabond anyway, in a legal context like early immigration laws? Is that where you show up trying to get into the country, and you have to be able to say what your profession, means of support, former place of residence, etc is, and as long as it’s not “prostitution” or “I live by my wits, off the land and the generosity of strangers, sir!” then you’re allowed to come in the United States?

    Obviously these early laws didn’t prevent this country’s long tradition of sex work and vagabondism from flourishing. (c.f. O Brother Where Art Thou?, My Own Private Idaho, Pretty Woman etc etc etc.)

  9. When my great-grandmother came over on a boat in 1909, they threw her in jail for a week because she didn’t speak English and the jerk she was engaged to didn’t come pick her up.

    In the early 1900s they didn’t like Italians any more then people like Hispanics today. Our fear of the Others don’t change… just who the Others are sometimes.

  10. I am so glad that my ancestors were sensible enough to come early before the price of entry started to get so high.

  11. Out of curiosity, how did one prove one was not a prostitute? And who thinks that the odds were very high that some prostitutes got in by being “friendly” to immigrations officials?

  12. Pingback: Pithy Bitch » Blog Archive » Oppression Never Gets Old

  13. Check this out: http://www.genealogi.se/roots/ticket.htm

    It’s about immigration from Sweden to the U.S. in the late 1800s. According to this website unmarried pregnant women or women who were accompanied by illegitimate children weren’t allowed to enter the United States unless they could prove that they had relatives in the States who would take responsibility for them. I had read about this in a studies in women and gender class in college, but forgotten about it.

    We examined immigration policies in my class as a way of discussing who we mean when we say “citizen” both currently and throughout American history.

  14. Jill:

    There is a huge difference both morally and pragmatically between “oppressors” (e.g. the reason immigrants sought America) and those who refuse to help. America didn’t “oppress”anybody by refusing to admit them any more than you “starve to death” each child in Africa you don’t devote your earnings to. Not so say refusing them was justified, but still, huge difference.

  15. In the early 1900s they didn’t like Italians any more then people like Hispanics today. Our fear of the Others don’t change… just who the Others are sometimes.

    Don’t forget “No Blacks No Dogs No Irish.” Every ethnic group that comes here in large numbers goes through a period where there’s a moral panic that “they” are going to take over and bring American society to ruin. First it was the Germans, then it was the Irish, then it was the Italians, then it was the Poles. Now it’s the Mexicans (even though a lot of the “Mexican” immigrants people complain about are actually from Central America).

  16. Then, as now, the rationale for immigration is cheap labour. Mechaniks were derided by our founding mercantilists as being too expensive. Let’s import a few thousand unskilled migrants and watch the wages drop.

    You think our politicians care worry about the Mexes? Pshaw, the worry is from the employers that got used to paying cheap rates for work. We really could ship every illegal back to their home country. It is within the realm of the possible. But then our lawns would cost more.

  17. America didn’t “oppress”anybody by refusing to admit them any more than you “starve to death” each child in Africa you don’t devote your earnings to.

    You may want to read up on the history of the Asian exclusion acts before you decide that those laws were made rationally and not out of irrational, racist fear.

  18. I disagree, YouGoGirl, because the US was extending the benefits of immigration to a group of people, then excluding a subset of those people based on personal characteristics. If we hadn’t been allowing anyone at all to immigrate, it would be hard to characterize that as oppression. But choosing to deny access to one group of people while offering it to another reflects a decision to allow access based on personal characteristics, which is the very definition of oppression. Another way to think of it: say the US donated a ton of money to feed the starving in Africa, but refused to make that money available to unmarried women with children. That would certainly constitute oppression of that subgroup.

  19. Then, as now, the rationale for immigration is cheap labour.

    Yup. That’s why the current situation persists. “Illegal” immigrants are extra cheap and exploitable. This is why the WSJ wing of the GOP is uncomfortable with the nativist (aka redneck) wing’s bloviations over illegal immigration.

  20. Immigration restrictions were done for the same reason that minimum wage laws and hour restrictions were initially enacted by various states. To protect WHITE labor. Similar to the Progressives blatant support for eugenics in the early part of this century. The Progressive Left was every bit as racist back in the day as the Right. Neither side has a pretty past.

  21. “You may want to read up on the history of the Asian exclusion acts before you decide that those laws were made rationally and not out of irrational, racist fear.”

    I didn’t say exclusions were rational or justified decisions. But the motive for refusing to help somebody doesn’t make it “oppression” in the ordinary meaning of the word. “Oppression” connotes some positive action taken to harm somebody. If I refuse to give charity to blacks because I am a vile racist, but give it to asians and whites, I am not “oppressing” blacks.

    “If we hadn’t been allowing anyone at all to immigrate, it would be hard to characterize that as oppression. But choosing to deny access to one group of people while offering it to another reflects a decision to allow access based on personal characteristics, which is the very definition of oppression.”

    First, it’s ludicrous to suggest that helping somebody opens you up to moral culpability (e.g. the label “oppressor”) because you’re not helping everyone. For one, there are in some cases practical limits on what one person can do. If I only have $50 and need $10 to live, and give $40 to charity, am I oppressing everyone else? What if I give $20 and still have some left? Am I to be condemned for not giving more?

  22. YouGoGirl – First, thanks for characterizing my argument as ludicrous!

    I don’t believe I ever said that giving or not giving overall was oppression. And I should be clear that my characterization of excluding a subgroup from immigration based on personal characteristics is based in large part on it being the government who is acting.

    I do believe that when the government makes a benefit available – ability to immigrate, public highways, police forces, etc – it is then morally and legally required to make that benefit available to everyone. Exclusion from services must be based on something that has a rational relationship to the service or benefit being offered. For example, I can exclude pedestrians from using freeways because aspects of that characteristic are related to the benefit – ie pedestrians on the freeway would cause traffic and safety problems. However, I couldn’t exclude prostitutes from driving on the freeways, because excluding that subgroup is not at all related to the use of freeways or impact on other freeway users or anything, really.

    Again, I am referring to cases where the exclusion is based on this kind of personal characteristic – not on scarcity of resources, not on a basis related to the resource or benefit in question, not on anything but a personal characteristic. So your charity donation example doesn’t really fit.

    (Law people, please forgive this greatly collapsed and simplified view of equal protection rights.)

  24. I don’t blame the white poor of the US for wanting the migrants out. If your job was taking the hit, maybe you would see their fear as real.

    Construction used to pay quite well. Many found it to be the way to reach the American Dream. Try that now. A person starting in the business at the bottom will find their competition to be a Mex willing to work for far less. The government turns a blind eye because of the huge profits.

    Only recently have the tighty-white collars felt this pressure. Indian and Chinese professionals will do more for less. They also have better educations in many instances. Protectionism seems quaint when you have your lawn done by a Mex or Guat for change. It will not be so whimsical when “your” job is shipped to Bangalore or Beijing.

  25. But the motive for refusing to help somebody doesn’t make it “oppression” in the ordinary meaning of the word. “Oppression” connotes some positive action taken to harm somebody.

    As Jessica said, Chinese women as a group were excluded from emigrating to the United States, for the ostensible reason that their only possible motive for coming here was prostitution. Chinese men could come here because we needed them to build the railroads.

    So, again, when you’re allowing males from China to emigrate to the US but refusing to allow females from China to do the same, how is that not oppression? They are being denied the opportunity to follow their fathers, sons and brothers to the US the same way that European immigrants did.

    Writing into the laws that Chinese women, specifically and as a group, were not allowed to emigrate to the US was a positive action taken to harm them. They were treated differently than men from the same country and that treatment was specifically written into the law. How is that a passive action?

  26. Oh, and by your construction, Jim Crow laws could not be oppressive. After all, they did not specifically harm anyone.

  27. And in a global economy where the people and natural resources at the downward end of the economic scale must be constantly exploited in one way or another to fuel the consumption of those at the upper end… can you REALLY say there’s no action being taken deliberately to harm anyone? You have to ignore the entire system of exploitation.

    And no, I’m not suddenly fiddling a different tune even though I’ve actually had the experience of losing work and money to people willing to work for less in other countries. As someone who lives in the US with all my basic needs met plus a whole bunch of electronic gadgets and toys and various other luxuries available to me if I want them, I’m part of the top 1% upper echelon. I deserve to have some work taken away from me, and probably so do a lot of people reading and posting here. It’s disgusting to claim you’re not part of an oppressive system when you live on the backs of others, and hypocritical to change your mind the moment you actually start to suffer for it.

  28. Mnemo — Chinese women were excluded to prevent Chinese from settling here permanently. We wanted Chinese men to work hard for a few years, save up some money then go home to marry. Then the Chinese Exclusion Act kept everyone out. (People from other Asian countries were allowed in till the Quota-setting act of the mid 20s set the immigrant quota for each Asian country to zero.) But, as late as the 1920s and 30s, Filipino men were allowed to come here, but not women. The Filipino father of a friend of mine fooled everyone by marrying a white woman — implicitly the law assumed that no white woman would marry an Asian man.

  29. As someone who lives in the US with all my basic needs met plus a whole bunch of electronic gadgets and toys and various other luxuries available to me if I want them, I’m part of the top 1% upper echelon. I deserve to have some work taken away from me, and probably so do a lot of people reading and posting here. It’s disgusting to claim you’re not part of an oppressive system when you live on the backs of others, and hypocritical to change your mind the moment you actually start to suffer for it.

    Holly,

    It is interesting that the argument you advanced above is almost the exact argument I’ve seen put forth by many senior corporate managers to justify their outsourcing efforts and shafting the working and middle class workers who were laid off as a result.

    While what you said is applicable to those in the sometime overentitled upper/middle classes, I am certain many of the working class workers will feel it sounds like another well-off elitist minimizing their own sufferings.

    This was the angry reaction of some working-class childhood friends when they read one upper-management corporate type making such a pronouncement about American workers need to stop complaining so much about their jobs being outsourced when they have all their basic needs and luxuries at their disposal.

    That is not to say I am against immigration…..if anything, I believe that immigration should be less restricted as I feel they provide the much needed fresh lifeblood our society needs, especially in this current environment.

    Maybe my own life experience is limited, but I found there was much more to respect from immigrants such as my parents and classmates than the many overentitled upper/middle-class “native-born” Americans I’ve had the misfortune to encounter in college and in the workplace.

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