America is a country of immigrants

Immigration has been an issue since early in our nation’s history

My walk with Miley this morning was pleasant. She’s been in good spirits and good health for the past few days which makes me really happy. Of course, she did have me outside at 1:30 in the morning – waking me up to take her outside to do a little business and a lot of sniffing. I guess that’s why she was taking a long nap this afternoon.

I was reading about some of the dictates coming from the White House as executive orders and many are along lines of logic including controlling the culture. I know I’ve referenced this several times in the past but one in particular caught my attention and when linked to other words and actions it makes for a very troubling trend towards a new era of eugenics. First came Trump on the campaign trail talking about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country” (direct quote, more on that later). The administration has demanded that the Smithsonian to change some of their messaging in historical displays based on the administrations race theory. The Trump administration have demanded that Race be treated as a genetic trait (thoroughly debunked by genetic science) and not a social construct. Link that with RFK Jrs proposal creating a national register of people with Autism, JD Vance’s repetition of the “Great Replacement Theory” and it is very troubling. There is a long history of “othering” by several different means but eugenics is probably the most mendacious and evil.

I was raised in the 1960s and I was taught that America is a nation of immigrants. This is factually correct – other than native Americans – all of us are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. My wife is second generation – both sets of grandparents were immigrants. My family has been in America since the 1600s, I’m a 10^th generation American (English and Dutch settlers) but I’m still the product of immigrants. In school we learned about different eras of immigration in our country. None of it was taught to us as being controversial and I never really thought of it as such until I received one of my monthly magazines in the spring of 1994 – American Heritage magazine.

As I read the article on the history of immigration to our country I learned of the reception that immigrants have received at various times over the past 400 years. I recalled the poem The New Colossus "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Wasn’t American identity wrapped up in the peoples from around the world? Didn’t that truly make us the melting pot. Apparently not so much.

There has been opposition to immigrants coming here since the creation of the United States as a nation. I’ve learned about the opposition led by the Know Nothings of the mid 1850s. Formally known as the American Party or Native American Party, they gained a reputation for their secrecy, with members instructed to respond "I know nothing" to inquiries about the party's specifics. Their primary opposition was focused on immigrants, particularly Catholics, whom they perceived as a threat to American values and institutions. Of course, this coincided with the Irish wave of immigration. The Know Nothings believed that immigration led to the exploitation of workers and a decline in moral standards. They were successful for a while and held a number of elected offices and even controlled some state governments. Eugenics in Immigration Policy. That movement faded but then came something far worse – using Eugenics to identify specific groups of people to exclude from our country.

Eugenics, a deeply controversial and pseudoscientific ideology, has historically shaped policies and societal attitudes in significant and troubling ways. It was the basis of the Nazis extermination policies. Its influence on American immigration policy provides a striking example of how the principles of selective breeding and racial hierarchy were applied to govern the movement of people across borders. Specifically, what is eugenics and just how powerful a weapon was it in American history?

The eugenics movement emerged in the late 19th century, largely influenced by the work of Francis Galton, who sought to apply Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection to human populations. Galton proposed that selective breeding could improve the genetic quality of the human race. This notion quickly gained traction in academic, political, and social circles, especially in the United States and Western Europe, where concerns over population growth, poverty, and health were rife.

As the eugenics movement gained momentum, policymakers began incorporating its principles into immigration regulations. The belief that certain ethnic groups were genetically superior paved the way for restrictive policies aimed at controlling the influx of individuals deemed "undesirable." Eugenics proponents argued that immigration posed a threat to the gene pool of a nation, advocating for measures to exclude individuals from races, ethnicities, or nationalities seen as inferior. This argument was the basis of the 1924 immigration law known as the Johnson-Reed Act.

The U.S. Immigration Act of 1924, which established quotas to limit immigration from certain regions, particularly those perceived as contributing to a "degeneration" of the population. This legislation was heavily influenced by eugenicists who claimed that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe (Poles, Slavs, Italians and Jews) and Asians (it banned immigrants from Asia altogether), lacked the genetic traits necessary to integrate successfully into American society. (The absolute best resource for fully understanding this – the culture of America at the time, the motivations, the consequences is The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America by Daniel Okrent. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough – it is essential reading of American history and a cautionary tale.)

The most influential and leading promoter of eugenics in America was Madison Grant. In his book The Passing of the Great Race, Grant wrote: "Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race." Yes, this all happened in America and it shaped laws and policies for half of a century.

Fast forward to America today. The current administration has promoted the “Great Replacement theory” very similar to ideas in The Passing Of the Great Race stating the immigrants are replacing real Americans. This is being used as a reason to significantly curtail immigration to the United States, and not just illegal immigration, but overall immigration. Many right wing organizations are calling for severely restricting immigration and curtailing altogether. It is also behind so of the “pronatalist movement” to have more real American children by significantly increasing the birthrate in the US. I’m pretty sure you have heard Trump talk about giving families $5,000 to have a child. There are so many other links that lead you to what these folks are motivated by.

The current President has repeatedly used the phrase "poisoning the blood of our country" when discussing immigration. He first used this phrase in September 2023 and has repeated it on multiple occasions since then. During a December 2023 rally in New Hampshire, he stated, "They're poisoning the blood of our country," and elaborated that "they" are coming from "Africa, from Asia, all over the world". (You know, those “shithole Countries” that Trump referred to in his first term bemoaning the lack of immigration from Norway.) Trump's statements have been widely interpreted as referring to immigrants as a threat to the racial and cultural purity of the United States. Of course, he has made one exception for one group of Africans – White Afrikaners. The deputy secretary that met them at Dulles when we the American taxpayers paid to fly them from South Africa, state that they “can easily assimilate into America.” I guess because they are white….

I’ll also quote Trumps own nephew regarding the president’s stance towards handicapped people. When he met with his uncle in the White House to discuss support for handicapped people in America the president pulled him aside and said “Those people . . . The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.”

Remember that eugenics is the belief in superior and inferior peoples and can be used to identify those that should be excluded from our country, that handicapped people are worthless and should be eliminated, and that certain people need to be sterilized so that can’t have children. I’m very worried that we will repeat the mistakes and history of the past.

A side note- I read a newsletter that my son wrote last night and it really reinforced that we must love one another and accept those who we disagree with. Civility is an essential quality for a functioning society. Let’s be “better” than those that chose division. Thank you, son, for reminding me of what it takes to be a good person.