Donald Trump’s Immigration Order – US News.com
By David FitzGerald and David Cook Martín
President Donald Trump banned the entry of people from seven majority Muslim countries last week. Leaders as far apart ideologically as former Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. Bernie Sanders warned the ban could become a recruitment tool for terrorists.
In addition, the U.S. risks straining or losing important diplomatic ties and fragile relationships. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and even Theresa May have warned about the geopolitical effects of a ban on immigrants and refugees from predominantly Muslim countries. Iran has already promised to take “reciprocal measures” after Trump’s immigration order, although the exact measures remain to be specified.
Banning immigration from seven majority Muslim countries and selectively admitting Christians is a bad idea for many moral and legal reasons. A long history shows such policies also threaten national security. Our research for the book “Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policies in the Americas” shows the perils of policies targeting particular nationalities.
Losing Hearts and Minds
From the 19th century to 1965, the United States discriminated against various groups. In the 1920s, the U.S. established national origins quotas that set the number of immigrants who were allowed to enter the U.S. from certain countries. These quotas were designed to restrict the entrance of southern and eastern Europeans because nativists like famed eugenecist Harry Laughlin and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge feared the newcomers were likely to be criminals, and even anarchist or Bolshevik terrorists. Anti-Catholic sentiment played a role as well.
The laws kept out Asians altogether on grounds that “no alien ineligible for citizenship shall be admitted to the United States” (43 Stat. 153. Sec. 13 (c)). Asians were ineligible for citizenship because of their race. The quotas gave 51,227 of the 164,667 annual spots for immigration to Germans, 3,845 to Italians and zero to Japanese.
Bipartisan coalitions ended this discrimination in large part because it hurt U.S. national security at key moments during World War II and the Cold War.
For original article from U.S. News
