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Comment by tofukid | Hacker News Reader

“The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respected Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges…” — President George Washington

“Freedom of emigration is due to the general interests of humanity. The course of emigrations being always, from places where living is more difficult, to places where it is less difficult, the happiness of the emigrant is promoted by the change: and as a more numerous progeny is another effect of the same cause, human life is at once made a greater blessing, and more individuals are created to partake of it.” — James Madison

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Lovely sentiment but it doesn’t translate to actual immigration policy.

And, chances are, these two presidents were probably talking about white immigrants, given the racism and slavery of the time. Are you familiar with James Madison’s policies with Native Americans? He privately thought they couldn’t be civilized and wanted white immigrants to eventually mix with and displace them into irrelevance.

It translates to immigration policy. Plenty of people support freedom of immigration (note, immigration is not naturalization), a policy of letting people freely come to the US to live and work (as opposed to quotas, work permits, work requirements, residency restrictions, etc.).

The "immigration not naturalization" people fall into two camps: [1] People who want cheap low-skilled labor but don't want that "labor" to have any political power. [2] People who are lying about the "not naturalization" part.

I suppose that there are also folks who don't realize which group they're in.

For better or worse, that's exactly what happened, so Madison's policy appears to have been quite effective.

I don't really get this line of reasoning. If the Founding Fathers were in favor of immigration, but in practice their immigration policy was racist, shouldn't the conclusion be that if we want to adhere to the spirit of their policies that we ought to favor immigration but discard the outmoded racist views?

Hey, at least you didn't just quote the Emma Lazarus couplet and leave it at that, as if that by itself guarantees unlimited open borders for the United States for all time.

Now, someone is going to ... quote said couplet and leave it at that. So:

First, Lazarus's bad poetry was added to the base of the Statue of Liberty 20 years after the statue itself, as a fundraising effort.

Second, poetry (regardless of quality) does not policy nor law make.

Third, in any case, every single person who came through Ellis Island

* was a legal immigrant

* had passed a medical inspection

* had proof of having enough resources to pay for their upkeep in the US, or a US financial sponsor guaranteeing same

* was turned away if failing any of the above tests, with no possibility of appeal

I, for one, am very much in favor of reinstating such barriers to entering the US.

PS - One more thing: Every single person who came through Ellis Island was coming to a country with an enormous demand for unskilled labor. This is no longer true.

The folks coming through Ellis island were, on average, higher skilled than the average person already here.

I'm all for brain-draining other countries but ... (IIUC, Australia and New Zealand are very selective along those lines.)

> Every single person who came through Ellis Island was coming to a country with an enormous demand for unskilled labor. This is no longer true.

It is still very true.

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