Huh so you can limit immigration --- yep ... Fewer than 5 percent of Americans surveyed <https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#safe=off&q=fortune+poll+opinion+on+refugees+1938> at the time believed that the United States should raise its immigration quotas or encourage political refugees fleeing fascist states in Europe — the vast majority of whom were Jewish — to voyage across the Atlantic. Two-thirds of the respondents agreed with the proposition that "we should try to keep them out."
*[Yes, the comparison between Jewish and Syrian refugees matters <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/19/yes-the-comparison-between-jewish-and-syrian-refugees-matters/>]* To be sure, the United States was emerging from the Great Depression, hardly a climate in which ordinary folks would welcome immigrants and economic competition. The events of Kristallnacht <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005201> — a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms in areas controlled by the Nazis — had yet to take place. And the poll's use of the term "political refugees" could have conjured in the minds of the American public images of communists, anarchists and other perceived ideological threats. But look at the next chart, also tweeted by @HistOpinion. Two-thirds of Americans polled by Gallup’s American Institute of Public Opinion in January 1939 — well after the events of Kristallnacht — said they would not take in 10,000 German Jewish refugee children. View image on Twitter <http://twitter.com/HistOpinion/status/666412991500255232/photo/1> [image: View image on Twitter] <http://twitter.com/HistOpinion/status/666412991500255232/photo/1> Follow <https://twitter.com/HistOpinion> Historical Opinion @HistOpinion <https://twitter.com/HistOpinion> US Jan 20 ’39: Should the US government permit 10,000 mostly Jewish refugee children to come in from Germany? 6:30 PM - 16 Nov 2015 <https://twitter.com/HistOpinion/status/666412991500255232> - <https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?in_reply_to=666412991500255232> - 4,7144,714 Retweets <https://twitter.com/intent/retweet?tweet_id=666412991500255232> - 2,0092,009 likes <https://twitter.com/intent/like?tweet_id=666412991500255232> [A couple of caveats: Polling in this period, including Gallup surveys, was not as scientifically rigorous as it later became. Also, respondents may not necessarily have had a particular bias against Jewish refugees. A separate portion of Gallup respondents were asked a nearly identical question which did not describe refugees as Jewish. Support for accepting refugees was slightly lower than when they were described as mostly Jewish.] As WorldViews detailed <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/02/europes-current-anti-migrant-rhetoric-carries-echoes-of-1930s-anti-semitism/> earlier this year, most Western countries regarded the plight of Jewish refugees with skepticism or unveiled bigotry (and sympathy followed only wider knowledge of the monstrous slaughters of the Holocaust): No matter the alarming rhetoric of [Adolf] Hitler's fascist state — and the growing acts of violence against Jews and others — popular sentiment in Western Europe and the United States was largely indifferent to the plight of German Jews. "Of all the groups in the 20th century," write the authors of the 1999 book "Refugees in an Age of Genocide <http://www.amazon.com/Refugees-Age-Genocide-Perspectives-Twentieth/dp/0714643416>," "refugees from Nazism are now widely and popularly perceived as 'genuine,' but at the time German, Austrian and Czechoslovakian Jews were treated with ambivalence and outright hostility as well as sympathy." It's worth remembering this mood when thinking about the current moment, in which the United States is once more in the throes of a debate over letting in refugees. Ever since Friday's terror attacks in Paris <https://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/paris-attacks/>, the Republicans, led by their presidential candidates, have sounded the alarm <http://the%20republicans%2C%20led%20by%20their%20presidential%20candidates%2C%20have%20engaged/> over the threat of jihadist infiltration from Syria — even though it now appears <http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/11/16/3722838/all-paris-attackers-identified-so-far-are-european-nationals-according-to-top-eu-official/> that every single identified assailant in the Paris siege was a European national. *[Europe’s fear of Muslim refugees echoes rhetoric of 1930s anti-Semitism <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/02/europes-current-anti-migrant-rhetoric-carries-echoes-of-1930s-anti-semitism/>]* The Republicans have signaled their intent <https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republican-governors-and-candidates-move-to-keep-muslim-migrants-out/2015/11/16/17adafaa-8c7c-11e5-baf4-bdf37355da0c_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-high_gopmuslims-755pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory> to stop Syrian refugee arrivals, or at least accept only non-Muslim Syrians. GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie of New Jersey was one of the many governors who said Monday that they would oppose settling Syrian refugees in their states; Christie insisted <http://www.newsweek.com/after-paris-attacks-21-republican-governors-one-democrat-refuse-syrian-394859> that he would not permit even a "3-year-old orphan's" entry. Today's 3-year-old Syrian orphan, it seems, is 1939's German Jewish child. *[5 stories you should read to really understand the Islamic State <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/16/5-stories-you-should-read-to-really-understand-the-islamic-state/>]* WorldViews newsletter Important stories from around the world. Sign up Of course, there are huge historical and contextual differences <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/02/europes-current-anti-migrant-rhetoric-carries-echoes-of-1930s-anti-semitism/> between then and now. But, as Post columnist Dana Milbank notes, it is hard to ignore the echoes of the past when faced with the "xenophobic bidding war" of the present: "This growing cry to turn away people fleeing for their lives brings to mind the SS St. Louis, the ship of Jewish refugees turned away from Florida in 1939," Milbank writes. "It’s perhaps the ugliest moment in a primary fight that has been sullied by bigotry from the start. It’s no exaggeration to call this un-American." <?subject=Photos%20of%20the%20Jewish%20refugees%20no%20one%20wanted%20from%20The%20Washington%20Post&body=http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/photos-of-the-jewish-refugees-no-one-wanted/2015/11/18/978ad36c-8e23-11e5-ae1f-af46b7df8483_gallery.html%3Ftid=ss_mail> Photos of the Jewish refugees no one wanted View Photos In June 1939, just three months before the start of World War II, a ship filled with Jewish refugees left Germany seeking asylum in Cuba, the United States and Canada. Each of those countries turned them away. Yes, the comparison between Jewish and Syrian refugees matters By Ishaan Tharoor <http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/ishaan-tharoor> November 19, 2015 <[email protected]?subject=Reader%20feedback%20for%20%27Yes,%20the%20comparison%20between%20Jewish%20and%20Syrian%20refugees%20matters%27> Some of the 250 Jewish refugees from Germany, Britain's share of the 907 who sailed for weeks in search of a home, who landed at Southampton, England, from the steamship "Rhakotis." (Planet News Archive/SSPL/Getty Images) Earlier this week, WorldViews ran a post <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/17/what-americans-thought-of-jewish-refugees-on-the-eve-of-world-war-ii/> that cited a set of polls conducted in the United States in the build-up to World War II. Broadly, they illustrated the extent to which American public opinion was largely against the arrival of refugees from Europe, many of whom were Jews. The polls had been highlighted on Twitter <https://twitter.com/HistOpinion> by Peter Shulman, a historian at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. The WorldViews story that followed -- "What Americans thought of Jewish refugees on the eve of World War II <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/17/what-americans-thought-of-jewish-refugees-on-the-eve-of-world-war-ii/>" -- ended up being one of the most read articles on our Web site. Clearly, it posed a history lesson that resonated with many readers, as the United States is now in the grips of a new conversation over refugees. [*Were Syrian refugees among the Paris attackers? What we know <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/17/were-syrian-refugees-involved-in-the-paris-attacks-what-we-know-and-dont-know/>* ] Naturally, the story generated a lot of feedback and reaction, both positive and negative. Some readers appreciated the nod to the past as evidence of a deep strain of nativism in American politics. "Here in Canada we had the same angst about dealing with the boat people from Vietnam but history has shown that the nay-sayers were wrong," wrote one reader. "I'd also like to point out that 100 years before the Jews were rejected, the Irish famine refugees were being treated with the same hostility." Others were less convinced: Numerous reader e-mails angrily rejected any connection between Jewish refugees and their current Syrian counterparts. In the latter, it was repeatedly argued that (with varying degrees of profanity) Muslims can't assimilate, represent an evil religion and seek to wreak violence on the West. "There was not even a question of Jews fomenting attacks in the United States," wrote one reader. "Your intent is to pull on the politically correct heartstrings." The point here is that, in the 1930s, there most certainly *was* a question of Jews "fomenting" some sort of trouble. As WorldViews wrote earlier <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/02/europes-current-anti-migrant-rhetoric-carries-echoes-of-1930s-anti-semitism/>, a considerable proportion of Americans viewed Jewish refugees with the similar kind of suspicion that's now on display in social media and from leading Republican politicians, who have issued loud calls to block arrivals of Syrian refugees. Jews were viewed as harbingers of dangerous ideologies <https://www.timeline.com/stories/syrian-refugees-world-war-II-jews>, particularly communism and anarchism. There were pronounced fears <https://theintercept.com/2015/11/18/syrian-jews-refugees/> that fifth columnists and spies would infiltrate the country through the tide of refugees fleeing fascist Europe. Lee Fang, writing at the Intercept, compiled a very useful guide <https://theintercept.com/2015/11/18/syrian-jews-refugees/> to the rhetoric at the time. Here are some highlights: John B. Trevor, a prominent Capitol Hill lobbyist, argued against <http://www.amazon.com/Paper-Walls-America-Refugee-1938-1941/dp/0394736591> a proposal to settle Jewish refugees in Alaska, claiming they would be potential enemies — and charging that Nazi persecution of the Jews had occurred “in very many cases … because of their beliefs in the Marxian philosophy.”... Rep. Jacob Thorkelson, a Republican from Montana, warned at the time that Jewish migrants were part of an “invisible government,” an organization he said was tied to the “communistic Jew” and to “Jewish international financiers.”... “I have heard on good authority that an Executive order has given immigration authorities permission to let down the usual bars in favor of the so-called Jewish refugees from Germany,” declared Julia Cantacuzene, a Republican activist in New York, according to a front page *New York Times* article that ran on May 18, 1938. Cantacuzene, the granddaughter of President Ulysses Grant and an ardent opponent of President Franklin Roosevelt, claimed that the Soviet revolution occurred only because Communist agents had snuck into Russia to “instill their insidious poison onto the Russian people.” She claimed that the same would happen here: “Under these lax regulations, many Communists are coming to this country to join the ranks of those who hate our institutions and want to over throw them.” It's impossible not to hear the echoes of this sort of language and thinking now in our polarized present, where prominent voices in the American right wing are casting the Syrian refugees as potential foreign agents, bent on sowing chaos and disrupting the American way of life. A mayor in Virginia raised the prospect of internment camps <https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/roanoke-mayor-david-bowers-reject-refugees-like-us-interned-japanese/2015/11/18/9714681a-8e34-11e5-acff-673ae92ddd2b_story.html>, a gesture to a sad chapter in American history that even a supposed "PC-apologist" -- another barb hurled at WorldViews -- could not have imagined entering the conversation. "The situations are not exactly parallel and I’m not saying that they are," Shulman told TIME magazine <http://time.com/4118178/paris-attacks-jews-syrian-refugees-history/> in an interview this week. "But in terms of a heavily politicized, nativist response to a refugee crisis, we have been here before. And the example of Jewish refugees fleeing Europe in the late ’30s is most poignant because we know how it ended." Polls appear to show <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/19/republican-voters-dont-want-to-let-syrian-refugees-in-what-should-gop-politicians-do/?postshare=9911447946405016&tid=ss_tw> that many Americans seem comfortable stigmatizing hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees -- people who are fleeing a hideous war zone -- because of the violence carried out by an extremist fringe. This is despite the fact that the United States does have an extensive vetting process in place for refugees. And it completely misses the many heart-warming stories <https://t.co/SgJe6oNAU1> of refugees building new lives and becoming proud Americans. 5 things to know about Syrian refugees in the U.S. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/19/yes-the-comparison-between-jewish-and-syrian-refugees-matters/?tid=a_inl#> Play Video1:22 Syrian refugees in the United States have become a political football after the Paris attacks. Here are the facts. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post) As Michelle Ye Hee Lee, writing for The Washington Post's Fact Checker, details <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/11/19/the-viral-claim-that-not-one-refugee-resettled-since-911-has-been-arrested-on-domestic-terrorism-charges/?postshare=7941447942350318&tid=ss_tw>, there were very few incidents of refugees resettled in the United States committing acts related to terrorism: A State Department spokesperson said of the nearly 785,000 refugees admitted through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program since 9/11, “only about a dozen — a tiny fraction of one percent of admitted refugees — have been arrested or removed from the U.S. due to terrorism concerns that existed prior to their resettlement in the U.S. None of them were Syrian.” The backlash against Syrian refugees arriving in the United States was sparked by the Paris terror attacks, where it's suspected -- but not confirmed -- that one of the assailants came through a refugee processing facility in Greece on a fake Syrian passport. So far, all the identified attackers are European nationals. WorldViews newsletter Important stories from around the world. Sign up Nothing puts the U.S. conversation about refugees more in perspective than France's own insistence -- declared by President François Hollande on Wednesday -- that it will still take in some 30,000 Syrian refugees <https://t.co/SgJe6oNAU1> over the course of the next two years. In spite of the traumas of the past week, Hollande said, "our country has the duty to respect this commitment." On Friday, June 3, 2016 at 5:19:39 PM UTC-5, Bill wrote: > > > > > > > > *So, There’s Already A Law. As Gomer Pyle would say, “Surprise, Surprise > !!!” * > *It's been law for over 60 years....* > *Interesting Bit of Legislative History - MacCarran-Walter Act of 1952.* > *Trump was recently severely criticized for suggesting that the U.S. > should limit or temporarily suspend the immigration of certain ethnic > groups, nationalities, and even people of certain religions (Muslims). The > criticisms condemned such a suggestion as, among other things, being > “Un-American,” dumb, stupid, reckless, dangerous and racist. Congressmen > and Senators swore that they would never allow such legislation, and the > president called such a prohibition on immigration unconstitutional.* > *It seems that the selective immigration ban is already law and has been > applied on several occasions. Known as the McCarran-Walter Act, the > Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 allows for the "Suspension of entry > or imposition of restrictions by the president. Whenever the president > finds that the entry of aliens or of any class of aliens into the United > States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, the > president may, by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem > necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as > immigrants or non-immigrants or impose on the entry of aliens any > restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”* > The act was utilized by Jimmy Carter, no less, in 1979 to keep Iranians > out of the United States, but he actually did more. He made all Iranian > students already here check in, and then he deported a bunch. Seven > thousand were found in violation of their visas, 15,000 Iranians were > forced to leave the United States in 1979. > *It is of note that the act requires that an applicant for immigration > must be of good moral character and "attached to the principles of the > Constitution.”* > *Since the Quran forbids Muslims to swear allegiance to the U.S. > Constitution, technically, all Muslims should be refused immigration.* > Authenticated at: > *http://library.uwb.edu/static/USimmigration/1952_immigration_and_nationality_act.html > > <http://library.uwb.edu/static/USimmigration/1952_immigration_and_nationality_act.html>* > 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, a.k.a. the McCarran-Walter Act *(An > act to revise the laws relating to immigration, naturalization, and > nationality; and for other purposes)* > H.R. 13342; Pub.L. 414; 182 Stat. 66. > 82nd Congress; June 27, 1952. > You can find the full text of this law *here > <http://tucnak.fsv.cuni.cz/~calda/Documents/1950s/McCarran_52.html>* or > download the *PDF > <http://library.uwb.edu/static/USimmigration/66%20stat%20163.pdf>.* > SUMMARY: > Otherwise known as the McCarran-Walter Act, the Immigration and > Nationality Act of 1952 was meant to exclude certain immigrants from > immigrating to America, post World War II and in the early Cold War. The > McCarran-Walter Act moved away from excluding immigrants based simply upon > country of origin. Instead it focused upon denying immigrants who were > unlawful, immoral, diseased in any way, politically radical etc. and > accepting those who were willing and able to assimilate into the US > economic, social, and political structures, which restructured how > immigration law was handled. Furthermore, the most notable exclusions were > anyone even remotely associated with communism which in the early days of > the Cold War was seen as a serious threat to US democracy. The main > objective of this was to block any spread of communism from outside post > WWII countries, as well as deny any enemies of the US during WWII such as > Japan and favor “good Asian” countries such as China. The McCarran-Walter > Act was a strong reinforcement in immigration selection, which was labeled > the best way to preserve national security and national interests. > President Truman originally vetoed the law, deeming it discriminatory; > however there was enough support in Congress for the law to pass. > *library.uwb.edu <http://library.uwb.edu/>* > *US immigration legislation online : 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, > a.k.a. the McCarran-Walter Act (An act to revise the laws relating to > immigration ...* > > > -- -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PoliticalForum" group. 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