A True Gem: Felix Cohen on Immigration

Tova Indritz uncovered this wonderful “blast from the past” (Download cohen_guild_1939.pdf):

Last night I read a terrific article entitled The Social and Economic Consequences of Exclusionary Immigration Laws. It discussed the anti-immigrant climate in Congress and the country, that that these attitudes are commonly supported on the theories that (a) immigrants threaten the American standard of living, (b) that immigration increases unemployment, and (c) that immigration lowers the cultural level and menaces the American way of life. It then proceeded to analyze facts and statistics to show that each of these arguments are completely wrong.

It was well written and so very interesting.

The article was published in the October, 1939 (yes, that’s 1939) issue of the National Lawyers Guild Quarterly (Volume 2, No. 3).

It was written by the brilliant Felix S. Cohen, a member of the Guild’s National Executive Board and was then chair of the Guild committee on International Law. And, yes, if you do any Indian Law, he is the same Felix Cohen, who in 1942 published the seminal Handbook of Federal Indian Law, which is still updated and the standard treatise on Indian Law today. He also wrote Ethical Systems and Legal Ideals in 1933. At the time he wrote this article, although the publication does not say so, he was a lawyer in the Solicitor’s office of the U.S. Department of Interior under Secretary Harold Ickes.

. . . Although some of the statistics are from the 1930 census, the general arguments are as fresh today as when written, and this strikes me as worth reprinting, to encourage those who toil in these vineyards today.

By the way, of the 11 bills he mentions in a footnote as then pending in Congress, the most succinct was one introduced by a Congressman from Georgia, which reads in its entirety as follows: “Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that after December 31, 1939, no immigrant (as defined in section 203, title 8, United States Code) shall be admitted to the United States. Sec. 2. That after December 31, 1939, every alien in the United States (as defined in section 173, title 8, United States Code) shall be forthwith deported.” Makes one either laugh or cry.

Here’s one quote in his discussion of the history of immigration law, after describing the 1882 Chinese exclusion laws: ” The ‘Whereas’ clause of this Act is strangely reminiscent of explanations of aggression and racial persecution offered by certain European nations in recent years: ‘Whereas, in the opinion of the Government of the United States, the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof . . .’ Apparently Congress, in its anxiety to do away with the riots and lynchings which were directed against Chinese in certain localities, decided that the proximate cause of the disorders was the existence of the Chinese victims. By preventing them from entering the country, Congress made sure that they would not be molested, and by denying those who had already entered the rights of citizenship, Congress made sure that their rights would not be violated.”

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This article is well worth a read.  It is amazing how so many of the restrictionist arguments — and the rebuttals — never really change.  Cohen’s Legal Realist approach to the immigration debate is written in elegant prose with impeccable logic.  What fun!

KJ