According to the promise of our new fearless leader there will be a massive crackdown on immigration….farmers are trying to head this off at the pass….but this ‘promise’ is nothing new…..it happened back in the mid to late 19th century and it was the Chinese that was the anger of the people.
That’s right yet another opportunity for me to drop some history and maybe some knowledge of things to come.
This is a detail look at what transpired around what became known as the “Chinese Exclusion Act”…..
This 1882 law is now popularly known as “the Chinese Exclusion Act.” It banned both skilled and unskilled Chinese laborers from immigrating to the US for ten years. Symbolically and politically, this bill was a big deal: it was the first significant crackdown on immigration in American history, a message that the federal government opposed Chinese immigration, and a reaffirmation that Chinese immigrants already in America could never become citizens.
However, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was just one in a series of federal laws against Chinese immigrants — and, as Beth Lew-Williams makes clear in The Chinese Must Go, this 1882 law was actually quite ineffective. Basically, President Arthur and Congress threw a bone to the insurgent anti-Chinese movement, but they provided few resources for federal enforcement against Chinese immigration and introduced a bunch of loopholes that allowed Chinese immigrants to continue coming in.
In the years after the Act’s passage, West Coast newspapers and populist agitators grew angry that Chinese immigrants were still entering the country and demanded that the government do more. This was the beginning of what you might call the national fight against “illegal immigration” — because before this virtually all immigration to the United States was legal.
Historians have found that the economies of towns suffered after they kicked out their Chinese residents.
So, if there’s a lesson from Qian’s study, it’s that, yes, maybe immigration restrictions and expulsions or deportations can actually help some native workers. But, really, the cost is tremendous — not just for the immigrants themselves but also for almost everyone else.
Please read the entire article…..there was a huge cost to this crackdown as there will be if another one takes place.
If you worry about the economy then maybe Trump’s big idea will not play well as it did in the 19th century.
Class dismissed!
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”