US Immigration & Citizenship, part 1
An overview from the 16th to 21st c., with a glossary & timeline.
A video of parts 1-3 is available here.
Introduction
Before we start this series on US immigration and citizenship, let me be clear: I’m not a lawyer - especially not an immigration lawyer. I’m not a politician. I’m not working for any organization that has an axe to grind regarding US immigration. I’m a historian, and I’m doing what historians ought to do: give you the past as context, so you can better decide what to do in the present and the future.
This series of Substack posts consists of a selection of entries from my works in progress, Timeline 1700-1900 and Timeline 1900-2021. We’ll be looking at provisions of the major immigration and citizenship laws, plus the historical context in which they were passed. Over the past centuries, why did people want to come to America? Did those who had already immigrated here encourage new arrivals, or did they try to keep them out? If so, on what grounds?
Trigger warning: US immigration law often smacks of collectivism. Over the course of nearly 250 years, Congress has evidenced bias against many races, ethnicities, religions, professions, and sexual preferences. Let’s stipulate right here that such bigotry is absolutely wrong. If I take the time to rant about it every time it occurs, these posts will be very long indeed.
Spoiler: The big surprise in researching these posts was how unsystematic the laws governing US immigration and citizenship are. They’re almost always a reaction to current hot topics: “No anarchists!” “No prostitutes!” “No cheap labor!” There’s a lot of spur-of-the-moment decision-making, and very little discussion of moral and political principles. For example: Who are we, as a nation? What do we want to become? What sort of people (what sort of minds with what sort of basic premises) do we need, in order to make that happen?
The point of studying history is that it can help us answer questions like those. It lets us see what’s been tried, what succeeded or failed, what’s relevant and irrelevant, and what the salient issues are. Therefore I’m going to postpone discussion of proper immigration policy until after we’ve looked at a couple hundred years of historical context.
In tomorrow’s post: a glossary of terms, from “birthright citizen” to “American national” to “asylum-seeker” and “illegal immigrant”.