My Ancestors Came Here… Legally?
James Fallows, commenting recently on the House of Representatives unanimously passing a resolution apologizing for the discriminatory nature of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, quotes immigration scholar Benjamin Railton on the implications for today’s immigration debates:
[T]he CEA wasn’t just the first restriction on immigration; it was the first immigration law period (this is the first of the three things in my book, the specific histories of immigration laws and lack thereof in America).
Prior to that, every immigrant was neither legal nor illegal, as there were no laws that applied to them. And even from 1882 to 1921, every immigrant not covered by that law (so basically any non-Chinese and eventually non-Asian immigrant; nor covered by the 1875 Page Act, which restricted only prostitutes and convicted criminals) was still neither legal nor illegal, as they continued to fall under the jurisdiction of no law.
I think this information makes a big difference, since so many of our arguments about immigration include the phrase “My ancestors came here legally” (meaning that they chose to follow the law), and it’s almost always entirely untrue.
Emphasis mine. Railton’s book is Redefining American Identity: From Cabeza de Vaca to Barack Obama.
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Finally someone has pointed this fact out. That millions of Europeans came here before immigration laws were written. Same with passports, they did not exist before World War One. I always try to tell people read B.Traven’s book The Death Ship about an American sailor trapped in Europe without papers following the first World War.
WesleyV..What is not pointed out in this article is how our government can screw up royally everytime they think they need to control something.
There are laws that need to be in place and everyone knows the majority of those needed. But what is the reason for immigration laws other than to keep out criminals? Why is there a limit on the number of individuals from different countries or regions in the world? Why is there such a long waiting list to come to America?
What we need is a complete overhaul of our immigration laws that will allow more individuals to enter the country, but at the same time will not allow those individuals to take advantage of our social programs. If you are here, you have to be productive.
I think most Americans would be surprised to learn they have ancestors who at some point took up residence in this country without benefit of proper legal processing. Of course native Americans were hardly given their due consideration as “landlords” in the first place. Afaic much of the immigration paranoia we see today stems from xenophobia and/or a subculture of racism – not to mention misinformation. And let’s not forget the political bugaboo of changing demographics which are viewed as a threat by one party in particular ideology in particular. Lastly there is the modern “conservative” disdain for empathy and compassion, which were once cornerstones of conservative ideology and have since been jettisoned.
If there are no laws governing something, then by definition it is legal. But, even if I were to concede that there is a difference, I’m not sure I understand the significance of the point. If we consider three groups of people:
A. Those who do something that is not regulated by law.
B. Those who do something that is regulated by law, but they do it legally.
C. Those who do something that is regulated by law, but they do it illegally.
Even if I concede that A is not the same as B (which I think is arguable), A certainly is not the same as C.
If people only knew the shame of US immigration statutes/exclusions, just for WWII. If only one knew the frail and failures of human heart alone for saving others from complete destruction by the Nazis and Joe Stalin. If people only knew the favored status for the wealthy and the caps on the ever so bright, but poor. If one only knew how lack of even surface generousity caused the murders of so many, the deaths of others.
If we looked into some of the current generations from those who ‘landed’ here ‘with papers’, we find in their generations cut-throats, murderers, extortionists, snake oil salesmen, cheats and molesters and monsters. That ‘immigration’ by government law can somehow ‘purify’ the flow by choosing certain classes of people or people from certain countries of origin , is a complete and laughable failure.
Come live inside the immigration mess for a few decades as our family has, and there will be no honest honor given to any who oppose with warped memory, or lack of such about the last 100 years of ‘immigration’ led by men in government who were human with their own prejudices, biases and racisms about who is worthy and who is not. Yet some others whose relatives came centuries ago and routed and destroyed peoples and lands, often howl the loudest today about immigrants taking up resources.
Amazing lack of memory. Amazing.
Thank you both Dr. E. and adelinesdad. Both of those sentiments were what I was thinking when A. reading the article and B. reading the earlier comments.
The premise it that if you do something for which there are no laws, you are neither legal nor illegal. However, I would say that most people would say that actions that no law has prohibited are legal. And even if you take the Oxford definition of “permitted by law” they remain legal unless you take the view that things can only be “permitted” by law if they are explicitly allowed.
In the end, however, it is probably a difference without a distinction. Whether you are explicitly following a law, or doing something that just isn’t prohibited by any law, the point is that both are different than actually breaking the law.
Hi All,
Thanks for posting this, Joe; and thanks for all of the comments, everybody.
I agree that it’s possible to see the act of doing something not regulated by any law as “legal,” but want to be clear that my point, in emailing Fallows and in the chapter of the upcoming book, is the one in my final emailed paragraph, the point that Joe emphasized:
That whenever anyone says “My ancestors came here legally” or the like, they are, I believe, implicitly (and often explicitly) making the case that those ancestors “chose to follow the law.” And the truth is that they had no such choices to make, nor any laws to follow. So whatever we say about the semantics of “legal,” the argument to which I’m responding is (to my mind) entirely changed by this historical knowledge.
Thanks,
Ben