This story appears in the December 20, 2016 issue of Forbes. Subscribe
"IMMIGRATION restrictionist = racist." "Restrictionist nation = racist nation." These are the basic equations animating the opponents of President-elect Donald Trump's call to restrict illegal immigration.
But I write this after the Liberation. The liberation, that is, of the country from preelection assumptions, logic and linkages. Immigration is a case in point. Immigration restrictions slow economies, but they don't necessarily prove or portend bigotry or racism. Indeed, it's possible for an American government to restrict immigration and foster national comity at the same time. That's what Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge demonstrated in the 1920s.
The story of that era's immigration policy commences with World War I. President Woodrow Wilson and American voters worried that revolutionaries from abroad would import revolution to our shores. U.S. troops returned home from Europe informed and angry. When a general strike paralyzed Seattle, Mayor Ole Hanson feared that what was happening in Petrograd might be happening on Seattle's waterfront. The rumbling from the war of independence in Ireland was so powerful its reverberations could be felt in the cobblestones of Boston.
Today similar concerns surface. ISIS worries voters, as do al Qaeda and any other extremist groups that might inspire revolution or violence. When it comes to our porous border with Mexico, the erosion of the rule of law also troubles American citizens. Heavy, curricular multiculturalism leaves too little space for the teaching and absorption of common law and U.S. history.
Back in the day the U.S. responded by shutting out the world. The Wilson Administration's Justice Department took the most flagrant action, instituting the Palmer Raids. Rounding up several thousand anarchists and communists--confirmed or suspected--the department actually deported 249 of them to Russia on the U.S.S. Buford. With enormous support from lawmakers three Presidents signed immigration restrictions into law. President Calvin Coolidge signed the Johnson-Reed Act, which (to his regret) included the infamous Asian Exclusion and halted Japanese immigration.
Wilson was too rough. So were some of the features of those laws. But the Harding and Coolidge administrations went out of their way to let immigrants who were here know they were welcome--officially. As Coolidge said in 1925: "Whether one traces his Americanism back three centuries to the Mayflower, or three years to steerage, is not half so important as whether his Americanism of today is real and genuine. No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat." To signal respect Coolidge also declared the Statue of Liberty a national moment.
What Harding and Coolidge sought was respect for the rule of law. They wanted a breathing space for all the immigrants to assimilate, time for them to learn English and what people in those days called "Americanism." By Americanism they meant a familiarity with common law, U.S. civics and adequate workplace English.
BILINGUAL ED'S WALL
The economic theories behind restriction did not play out. In the 1920s wages didn't rise as much as restrictionists had hoped they would. Restriction didn't prevent the Great Depression. When, many decades later, Asians were again allowed to immigrate, they proved their social and economic worth through their contributions many times over.
There is little evidence that restrictive laws caused a wave of xenophobia or racism. During the second half of the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan weakened and lynchings of blacks trended down. Newcomers did assimilate.
As for today, building a wall at the border with Mexico makes less economic sense than President-elect Trump has suggested. But there may be some benefit to a pause in immigration or to policy reform. For example, no one opposes a person's right to speak his or her native language at home or in church. But defunding the official publicly funded bilingualism of the courts and schools would accelerate Hispanics' move into the professional class. Workers are more flexible and integrate better when there is no language barrier, as a recent National Bureau of Economic Research paper by Ethan G. Lewis of Dartmouth demonstrates. Official bilingualism erects its own wall, a cultural wall.
To lump support for immigration restriction with "hate" every time it's mentioned is to fail to recognize the respect most Americans have for newcomers. The gift of Trump--whatever comes next--is to offer the people of this country time to reevaluate our assumptions, without the pressure of an intimidating monolith of political correctness. We'll take it.