Get The Message

Donald Trump recently barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries - Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen - from entering the United States for at least the next 90 days.  This is not the first time we have banned immigrants.

May 6, 1882 President Chester A. Arthur signed the Exclusion of the Chinese Act which banned "skilled and unskilled laborers employed in mining" from entering the US for ten years.  It was the first law restricting immigration.  It came at a time when the nation had high unemployment. Despite the Chinese were a very small segment of the workforce, but they were scapegoated as a cause of the problem.

The law placed restrictions on Chinese already in the US, requiring certificates to re-enter if they left and banned them from citizenship. The act expired in 1892, then extended for 10 years as the Geary Act placing restrictions on Chinese residents, forcing them to register and obtain a certificate of residence or be deported.

In 1901, President William McKinley had been fatally shot by Leon Czolgosz, an American anarchist who was the son of Polish immigrants. In 1903, the Anarchist Exclusion Act banned anarchists and others deemed to be political extremists from entering the US.

The Immigration Act of 1903 incorporated previous immigration law and, in addition to anarchists, added three other new classes of people who would be banned from entry: those with epilepsy, beggars and importers of prostitutes.  The act was the first in which people were banned for political beliefs.

Democrat wailing today is especially ironic considering the WWII actions of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Millions of people became refugees and FDR said refugees posed a serious threat to national security. He feared Nazi spies could be hiding among them, so he severely limited the number of German Jews to 26,000 annually, but the quota was never more than 25% filled as anti-Semitism was common in America then.

The father of John F. Kennedy was the Ambassador to England in that time and he became notorious for having said, "It is nice to see Hitler giving the Jews their due," while at the high society horse race at Ascot Downs in England.  He was recalled within two weeks, such was the furor.  Embarrassed or not anti-Semitism was part of America in that time.

In the most notorious case FDR refused to let the Saint Louis ocean liner,  carrying 937 Jewish passengers in June 1939. The ship was forced to return to Europe and many of passengers died in the Holocaust.  A decade later Congress passed the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950 or the McCarran Act making it possible to deport any immigrants believed to be members of the Communist Party.

Members of communist organizations were required to register and not allowed to become citizens.  President Truman opposed the law, stating that it "would make a mockery of our Bill of Rights."  Which was nonsensical as these people were not citizens, but Harry was not the sharpest knife in the block. Sections of the Act were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1993. Some parts of the act still stand.

On April 7, 1980 President Jimmy Carter, cut diplomatic relations with and imposed sanctions banning Iranians from entering the country.  The 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, when the US embassy in Tehran was stormed and 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days.  Iranians are again banned by President Trump's Executive Order.

In 1987 President Ronald Reagan banned people carrying HIV in response to the US Public Health Service recommendation to control the disease. President Barack Obama lifted it in 2009.

President Trump has declared the seven state ban is temporary until we find ways to identify and validate the incoming Middle Eastern immigrants are not ISIS terrorists.  This is necessary only because Islam declared war on the world in 622 AD.  How long does it take us to get the message?

Adrian Vance