Washington’s Open Bosom: Immigration and The Unrealized Dream
HIS 206 United States History II
Instructor: David Hall
February 8, 2016

On December 2, 1783, the 51 year old first President of the new United States sat down and wrote to the members of the Volunteer Association and other Inhabitants of the Kingdom of Ireland who were rankling under the yoke of British colonialism. In this letter Washington provided advice to buoy their spirits and off handedly provided his thoughts on immigration to the country that he had fought to free: “The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges…” (Spalding, 1994, p.36). 233 years later and the open bosom that Washington spoke of has been encased in armor, sealed behind stout oak. The tenets of the USA Patriot Act have made the process of immigration to the United States an almost impossible task for many of the world’s population. However the Patriot Act alone did not make Washington’s statement seem quaint and idealized. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1892, the cold inhospitable surroundings inside the fortress like Ellis Island, and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 made Washington’s welcoming bosom an impossibility, a dream which remains unrealized. On May 6, 1882 the corpulent, mustachioed 21st inhabitant of the executive mansion, President Chester A. Arthur signed into law The Chinese Exclusion Act which placed an absolute 10-year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration, and imposed new requirements on and Chinese born immigrant who had already entered the country ("Our Documents - Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)," n.d.). For the first time in this nations’ history, Federal law denied entry into the United States to an ethnic group and created laws which denied rights to those who had immigrated legally on the premise that they endangered the “good order of the country”. The act was an unguent, a potent salve designed to punish an ethnic group in order to mollify the masses in the Golden state who were clamoring for someone to blame.
By 1882, the ore that had perpetuated the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855, which had been floating in the streams and brooks, and seemed to pour from every open mine had become scarce, and the once booming California economy – based largely on the aureate mineral began to decline. Into this environment stepped California Governor John Bigler and prominent California labor leader Denis Kearney who vehemently avowed that the answer to California’s economic woes was the exclusion of future Chinese immigrants, and extensive legal restrictions on any Chinese immigrants who remained in the country. Kearney, Bigler, and their supporters blamed the Chinese in California for depressed wages, violence, drug use, and vice and the cause of all of the evils that Californians were experiencing (Paul, 1938, p.17).
For all non-labor Chinese who wished to immigrate, The Chinese Exclusion act mandated that the Chinese government had to provide qualified certification proving that they were not laborers. However, the non-laborers found it increasingly difficult to prove that they were not laborers because the Exclusion Act defined excludables as “skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining.” Thus very few Chinese could enter the country once the Act had been signed into law. The tenets of the Chinese Exclusion Act would remain law until 1943, when the United States needed the vast Chinese army to defeat the Japanese in the Pacific battles of World War Two (Gyory, 1998, p.442).
On April 18, 1890, eight years after the poster boy for a do nothing presidency Chester Arthur signed The Chinese Exclusion Act into law, the federal government assumed control of all US immigration, and Congress appropriated $75,000 to construct America's first Federal Immigration Station on an island located in Upper New York Bay in the Port of New York and New Jersey called Ellis Island. From its opening day on January 1, 1892 until the day that the immigration station at Ellis Island closed its doors in 1954 all immigrants to the United States arriving via the Atlantic Ocean would be processed in this facility (Pitkin, 1975, p.238). The immigration station that sits atop Ellis Island was designed by world renown architects Edward Lippincott Tilton and William Boring and it is a fantastic piece of architecture, but its beauty is superficial (Chermayeff, Wasserman, & Shapiro, 1991, p.12). It was cattle processing center for humans. Billions of men, women, and children passed through the elaborate stone archways hoping for a better life, but found that their welcome in this new country was anything but warm.
In their 2000 novel Island of hope, island of tears authors David Brownstone, Irene Franck and Douglass Brownstone collected and compiled the firsthand accounts of some of the nearly 15 million people who streamed through Ellis Island in search of a new life in America between 1892 and the early 1950s. The stories of the immigrants themselves give the best glimpse of the cattle processing plant that existed at Ellis Island behind the façade of grandeur. Perhaps none more so that 12 year old Edward Corsi, who said: “We were all shunted here and there, huddled and mishandled, kicked about and torn apart, in a way no farmer would allow his cattle to be treated" (Brownstone & Franck, 2000, p.626).
In 1952, a shy, quiet Missourian named Harry Truman – a man who had worked as a haberdasher and a farmer before he heard the call of politics watched, resigned as the Immigration and Nationality Act became law: “I was against the passage of the act…I knew that it would be a step backward and not a step forward” (Truman, 1962, p.16). . The act’s sponsors were two Democratic Senators Pat McCarran of Nevada, and Francis Walter of Pennsylvania. President Truman was a very vocal critic of the act and tried unsuccessfully to block it, saying: “We do not need to be protected against immigrants…on the contrary we want to stretch out a helping hand to them…” (Miller & Truman, 1974, p. 316). In the minds of the two Democratic sponsors of the bill however, immigration from areas of the world – specifically communist countries – posed a threat to the “American way of life”. They believed that by allowing immigrants in from certain countries that the United States government was: “promoting this nation’s downfall” (Ybarra, 2004, p.212).
The Immigration and Nationality Act abolished racial restrictions found in United States immigration and naturalization statutes going back to the Naturalization Act of 1790, which had limited naturalization to immigrants who were "free white persons" of "good moral character." However, it retained a quota system for nationalities and regions. Eventually, the Act established a preference system which determined which ethnic groups were desirable immigrants and placed great importance on labor qualifications. The Act defined three types of immigrants: immigrants with special skills or relatives of U.S. citizens who were exempt from quotas and who were to be admitted without restrictions; average immigrants whose numbers were not supposed to exceed 270,000 per year; and refugees. The Act allowed the government to deport immigrants or naturalized citizens engaged in “subversive activities” and allowed the barring of suspected “subversives” from entering the country (Chin, 1996, p.273).
On the morning of September 11th, 2001 the leader of the nation, Yale alum, and 43rd President of the United States George W Bush sat reading a children’s book, “The Pet Goat” to students at Booker Elementary School in Sarasota Florida. As the dullard read, the entire country began looking east as planes piloted by militant terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center, The Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The country it seemed was under attack. These preliminary attacks were soon followed by Anthrax attacks on prominent people within the Federal government and the media which occurred for several weeks beginning in September, 2001 (Der Derian, 2002, p.178).
In order to protect the country from further attacks, Republican Representative Jim Sensenbrenner authored, sponsored, and introduced the US Patriot Act, and the 43rd president signed it into law on October 27, 2001. The primary tenets of the act affected any immigrant seeking entry into the United States from areas of the globe which lawmakers deem contains a population which undermines U.S. antiterrorist efforts (Smith, 2003, p.93). This act broadened the scope of aliens ineligible for admission to or deportable from the United States due to terrorist activities to include an alien who: (1) is a representative of a political, social, or similar group whose political endorsement of terrorist acts undermines U.S. antiterrorist efforts; (2) has used a position of prominence to endorse terrorist activity, or to persuade others to support such activity in a way that undermines U.S. antiterrorist efforts (or the child or spouse of such an alien under specified circumstances); or (3) has been associated with a terrorist organization and intends to engage in threatening activities while in the United States. It was the most radical change to immigration policy since the Chinese Exclusion act of a century before (Doyle, 2002, p.65).
233 years have passed since this Nation’s first President sat and wrote to a cadre of Irish patriots still languishing under British colonial rule of the open and welcoming bosom of the country which he had fought to free from a lunatic king. He wrote of its welcome to all immigrants - not just the rich and powerful, but to the downtrodden and penniless as well. The dream of Washington has matured on the vine for over two centuries and yet his vision of an America which throws its arms wide, welcoming all arrive on its shores has yet to bear fruit. As we move firmly into a new century, we are now the caretakers, harvesters of that dream, and yet we have failed as those before us have failed.
Our great grandparents created and enacted the unapologetically racist tenets of The Chinese Exclusion Act. Our grandparents praised the human stockyard approach adopted at immigration posts like Ellis Island. Our parents voted the overtly bigoted Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 into existence. We have created and voted into law arguably the most derisive, prejudicial piece of legislation in the history of this great country and have had the overwhelming audacity to shield ourselves by calling it The Patriot Act. The implication being that racism, xenophobia, and the stripping away of our fellow human’s inherent rights is somehow equitable to patriotism.
What then will become of Washington’s dream in the hands of our children? Our actions and the actions of those who came before us have done little to nourish the dream. We have only poisoned the vine. Will there ever be a nation as great as the one that Washington envisioned when he dipped his quill into ink and opined the virtues of the open bosom of this great land? Unless fundamental ideals about who immigrants are and our responsibilities to our fellow human beings are passed down to the next generation, then I fear not.

References
Chermayeff, I., Wasserman, F., & Shapiro, M. J. (Eds.). (1991). Ellis Island: An illustrated history of the immigrant experience. Macmillan Publishing Company.
Chin, G. J. (1996). The civil rights revolution comes to immigration law: A new look at the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. North Carolina Law Review, 75, 273.
Der Derian, J. (2002). 9.11: Before, after, and in between. Understanding September, 11, 177-190.
Doyle, C. (2002, April). The USA Patriot Act: A Sketch. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS WASHINGTON DC CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE.
Gyory, A. (1998). Closing the gate: Race, politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act. Univ of North Carolina Press.
Miller, M., & Truman, H. S. (1974). Plain speaking. Berkley Pub. Corp.: GP Putman's Sons [distributor].
Our Documents - Chinese Exclusion Act (1882). (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=47
Paul, R. W. (1938). The Origin of the Chinese Issue in California. The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 25(2), 181-196.
Pitkin, T. M. (1975). Keepers of the Gate: A History of Ellis Island. New York University Press.
Smith, M. F. (2003). The USA Patriot Act. Academe, 89(6), 93.
Spalding, M. (1994). From pluribus to unum: Immigration and the Founding Fathers. Policy Review, 67, 35.
Truman, H. S. (1962). Harry S. Truman (Vol. 3). Government Printing Office.
Ybarra, M. J. (2004). Washington gone crazy: senator Pat McCarran and the great American communist hunt. Steerforth Press.