Comment on The USA prided itself on a nation of immigrant, heck even the Statue of Liberty says it. When did immigrants (US citizens from the old world) become anti immigrant and why?

muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• Fondots@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  The us has always been anti illegal immigration

  The US actually made it almost the first hundred years of its history without many meaningful immigration laws

  I’m sure someone will argue otherwise, but one thing commonly cited as the first US immigration law was the steerage act of 1819, which was pretty much just “you can’t overcrowd your ships, you have to have enough food and water for everyone, you have to have a list of your passengers and account for anyone who died on the way”

  So not really limiting immigration, more making sure that the ships bringing immigrants here were providing at least basic livable conditions for the trip.

  Immigration overland was totally unregulated.

  And with some minor alterations here and there, that was pretty much the state of things until the 1870s and 80s with the Page Act and Chinese Exclusion Act. Until then there really wasn’t such a thing as “illegal immigration” and borders were pretty much wide-open.

  To be thorough, between 1776 and the Page Act, we did have the Alien Friends and Alien Enemies acts to allow the US to deport non-citizen immigrants under certain circumstances, and we took a few steps forwards and backwards at times regarding the naturalization process, but we also had the 14th amendment and “An Act to Encourage Immigration” in there as well.

  And of course after that, shit went downhill pretty damn quickly.

  So it’s a bit of a mixed bag, but again for almost half of US history there really wasn’t any such thing as “illegal” immigration for anyone to be against (general anti-immigrant sentiments are another story)

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