No easy solutions to immigration’s Gordian Knot: Just ask the Chinese
By John David Powell (04/09/06)
Before things get more out of hand, it is time for folks to take some deep breaths and think rationally about the next steps in undoing immigration’s Gordian Knot before it becomes our undoing. This will not be easy (that’s why it’s a Gordian Knot!), and empty political rhetoric from Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, and political pot stirrers will just add to the confusion and delay reasonable resolutions.
A sane and productive debate does not use the fates and fortunes of people as opportunities for political head knocking. Not to pick on Democratic Party jeffe Howard Dean, but he just happens to be the latest high-profile politician to unleash another contender for the Mother of All Ironies.
During a visit last week to California’s Alameda County Central Labor Council offices, Dean accused the president and the Republicans of scapegoating illegal aliens for political gain. Dean’s audience included labor, community, and interfaith leaders who have their own reasons for exploiting illegal aliens; reasons that include increasing sagging union membership and assuring the future employment of individuals who make their living by taking public and private dollars to perpetuate poverty and the idea of victimhood. There is no need to go into the hopes for political hay on the parts of Dean and the Democrats.
And others are out there.
Like the Spanish-language DJs who used their airtime to promote and encourage the first marches by Mexicans and other Spanish-speaking immigrants. Did they do it out of the goodness of their hearts, or out of the desire to increase ratings, considering they were just coming out of the winter ratings period and entering the spring sweeps?
Like the people passing out large, new Mexican flags. Sure, many Mexican families own their country’s flag and proudly wave it on Cinco de Mayo; but, no rational person would doubt the existence of Mexican flag foisters hanging out of the back of trucks.
Like the people who work behind the scenes to encourage middle- and high-school students to cut classes and march on city hall. These political puppet masters are no dummies. They know kids are safe and make great front-page photos and tv news video. They also know kids are safe because no city official wants to see images of tear gas and attack dogs unleashed on children.
History has an uncanny ability to shake off the dust and smack us up the side of the head. Look closely and you will see a dust cloud coming, and that rushing sound you will hear shortly will be the prelude to a mighty reminder that we have been down this ugly road before.
Just ask the Chinese.
(Disclaimer: My grandfather was an illegal immigrant who left China in the early twentieth century and crossed into the U.S. from Canada.)
Immigrants from southern China started showing up along the Pacific coast about the middle of the nineteenth century, because of natural and manmade disasters and China’s collapsing rural economy. Most of them were men who left their families, hoping to make some money and return home. The first Chinese included professionals and merchants; laborers followed.
Everyone got along until Chinese gold miners started making money from digs abandoned as worthless by American miners. Then folks started looking around and saw that Chinese were working as cooks, launderers, and domestic servants. By the depression of the 1870s, a few years after the completion of the Chinese-built transcontinental railroad, Americans saw Chinese as serious competition for the limited job opportunities. Violence against the “Oriental Menace” spread from California to Wyoming, led by an Irish immigrant in San Francisco.
Not everyone saw the Chinese as a threat. In 1876, David Phillips, in his “Letters from California” (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cbhtml/cbhome.html), wrote that to take the Chinese out of California, “its industries would be ruined, and the lands, now so productive, would be cultivated without remunerative results. They supply, by their toil, nearly all the vegetables and much of the poultry. They are doing a large share of the farm-work, and build all the railroads and irrigating canals and ditches. They do much of the cooking, and nearly all of the washing and ironing.”
Mark Twain wrote in “Roughing It”, published in 1872 (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/features/timeline/riseind/chinimms/twain.html), that “No Californian gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any circumstances . . . Only the scum of the population do it – they and their children; they, and naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as well as elsewhere in America.”
By 1876, a Republican Congress decided to investigate the Chinese immigration problem, which resulted in the Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration, Senate Report No. 689, 44th Congress, 2d Session, issued Feb. 27, 1877 (http://cprr.org/Museum/Chinese_Immigration.html).
The committee found that California and the Pacific coast developed rapidly thanks to cheap Chinese labor. The committee also found, however, that “laboring men and artisans” opposed Chinese immigration because the Chinese worked for less money and, therefore, took many of the available jobs. This attitude, according to the report, led to widely held fears that low wages would turn the white working class into a servant class.
The future of the Pacific coast was clear to the committee: It would become either “American or Mongolian.”
“There is a vast hive from which Chinese immigrants may swarm, and circumstances may send them in enormous numbers to this country . . .The Chinese do not come to make their home in this country; their only purpose is to acquire what would be a competence in China and return there to enjoy it . . . It further appears from the evidence that the Chinese do not desire to become citizens of this country, and have no knowledge of or appreciation for our institutions. Very few of them learn to speak our language . . .”
The committee believed Congress had to act before the West Coast became a province of China instead of the United States. The American population of the region was patiently waiting for Congress to act, the committee said.
Congress passed The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the nation’s first law banning immigration by race or nationality. The law barred all Chinese except for travelers, merchants, teachers, students, and those born in the United States. Congress repealed the law in 1943, when China became an ally in the war against Japan.
It is time for responsible people to replace rhetoric with reason and to learn from the well-meaning mistakes of the past. Our nation’s current predicament did not spring forth fully formed like a border-crossing Athena of immigration. It will not be resolved by political knee jerking. Just ask the Chinese.
John David Powell
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