Happy Presidents’ Day
Have a great holiday.
Here is some food for thought on immigration about the two Presidents’ who often are thought of on Presidents’ Day.
A few years ago, Citizen Orange highlighted some quotes from George Washington that have startling relevance today:
GEORGE WASHINGTON:
“The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions, whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.”
– Address to the Members of the Volunteer Association and the Other Inhabitants of the Kingdom of Ireland Who Have Lately Arrived in the City of New York, December 2, 1783
GEORGE WASHINGTON:
“Happy, thrice happy shall they be pronounced hereafter who have contributed anything, who have performed the meanest office in erecting this stupendous fabric of freedom and empire on the broad basis of Independence, who have assisted in protecting the rights of humane nature and establishing an asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions.”
– General Orders, April 18, 1783
Abraham Lincoln was a supporter of immigration and immigrants. As Jason Silverman states,
“Think about Abraham Lincoln and chances are you think about the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, or perhaps Ford’s Theater. But, in all likelihood you don’t think about his relationship with immigrants.
Over 16,000 volumes have been written on Lincoln and not one of them examines his philosophy on immigrants and immigration!
And yet, my research will clearly demonstrate that Lincoln spoke about the need for immigrant labor long before he made his more famous remarks about slavery. Indeed, he spent more time pondering, and delivered more economic speeches, about the place of immigrants in America than he ever did about the institution of slavery. As a twenty-year old taking his first of two flatboat rides down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, he first realized that newcomers from many lands formed significant parts of the American population.
From that time onward, the immigrant was never far from Lincoln’s thoughts. Unlike so many of his day, Lincoln formed individual relationships with the Irish, German, Jewish, Swedish, and Hispanic immigrants and generally refrained from simply coalescing them into groups of foreigners. In return, they supported him in his legal and political career. From court house to White House, Abraham Lincoln advocated that a place be made for immigrants in the American work force.
This year is the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s signature piece of immigration legislation.
Called The Act to Encourage Immigration, the bill was signed into law appropriately on July 4, 1864. It was the first comprehensive federal immigration law in American history. This law established the first US Immigration Bureau, whose primary function was to increase immigration so that American industries would have an adequate supply of workers to meet production needs during the Civil War.
“I regard our immigrants as one of the principal replenishing streams,” Lincoln told Congress in 1863, “who are appointed by Providence to repair the ravages of internal war, and it’s wastes of national strength and health.”
KJ