Right-Wing Immigration Policy: Quick Pull Up The Ladder!

Yesterday's Guardian reported that Alabama Republicans, in control of the state legislature and governorship for the first time in 136 years, passed the toughest illegal immigration law in the U.S., tougher than the law everyone was so appalled by that Arizona passed. Republicans in right-wing bastions like Utah, Indiana and Georgia have passed similar laws. (Georgia's agricultural sector, heavily dependent on migrant farm workers, is already in turmoil.)

The crackdown will require public schools to determine the immigration status of students – an aspect not covered in an Arizona law that has been at the forefront of attempts by several US states to crack down on illegal immigrants.

Under the Alabama law, police must detain someone they suspect of being in the country illegally if the person cannot produce proper documentation when stopped for any reason.

It also will be a crime to knowingly transport or harbour someone who is in the country illegally. The law imposes penalties on businesses that knowingly employ someone without legal resident status, and business licences could be suspended or revoked.

Backward, reactionary parts of the country, like Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Utah and Arizona have always feared change and always been virulently anti-immigrant-- no matter what group the immigrant was from. The Know Nothing mentality has been, historically, anti-Irish, anti-German, anti-Catholic, anti-Slav, anti-Italian, anti-Asian, anti-Jewish. In 1924 Republicans passed a bigoted immigration law, gleefully signed by racist Calvin Coolidge, targeting "inferior groups." A quota for Italians, for example, was reduced from 42,000 a year to 4,000. One has to wonder how prominent Italian-American Republican immigrant haters like Tom Tancredo (CO), Lou Barletta (PA), Rick Santorum (PA), Steve Palazzo (MS), John Barrasso (WY), and John Mica (FL) deal with the collective memory.

As we've been seeing in The Nazi Hydra in America, the Republican Party, conniving with Hitler's government in Germany, played up this fear and hatred of foreigners-- especially Jews-- in the 1930s to sow discord in America.

To understand how the Republican Party could run election campaigns based on intense and vicious racist platforms; one needs to understand the attitude of the country towards Jews at the time. A few days after Kristallnacht, Roosevelt spoke out publicly expressing his anger and horror. A Gallup poll that month revealed that 94% of the people disapproved of the Nazi treatment of Jews, but 97% of the people also disapproved of the way Nazis treated Catholics. A Roper poll that same month revealed the deep anti-Semitic views in America. The poll found that only 39% of the people believed that Jews should be treated as everyone else, 53% believed that Jews were different and should be restricted, and 10% believed Jews should be deported. In the winter of 1938-1939, many had denounced helping "refu-Jews." Polls revealed 71-85% opposed increasing immigration quotes; 67% opposed admitting any refugees and 67% opposed a one-time admission of 10,000 refugee children.

Turning away the refugees aboard the St. Louis was a low point in the Roosevelt administration and perhaps indefensible in light of the Holocaust, but Roosevelt hardly acted in a vacuum. The public opinion was decidedly against admitting Jews. One can only guess at how much of the anti-Semitism prevalent at the time, was the direct result of the various anti-Semitic campaigns conducted by the Republican Party. It could not be a minor factor, as many of these anti-Semitic campaigns ran by Republicans equated Judaism with communism, as in the example of the 1938 Minnesota election.

Today Know Nothing Republicans like Sarah Palin can wear a Star of David while visiting New York City or a deranged bigot like Michele Bachmann can campaign against Barack Obama based on supposed love and devotion to a right-wing vision of a militaristic Jewish state. It may take some time, but in just a few generations, right-wing Republican hatred for Latinos will go from a high boil to a low simmer. Yesterday Congresswoman Yvette Clarke of Brooklyn released the following statement: "I am deeply saddened and disappointed that the Governor of Alabama has decided to enact such egregious anti-immigrant provisions in order to address our broken immigration system. Using our nation’s education system as a conduit to enforce immigration laws is highly inappropriate. It is my concern, that this will spread fear among students, hindering them from pursuing an education. Ever since the state of Arizona has enacted its harsh immigration laws, many states have followed suit, enacting provisions that often time over step their jurisdiction. This is a clear indication that our nation needs to address Comprehensive Immigration Reform at the federal level. Our national security is at stake; our moral standing in the world depends on it; and the American people, many of whom are first and second generation immigrants, demand it.” I'm sure you can guess why I want you to listen to Pete Seeger... keep listening:

Despite The Star Of David, Palin's In The Mainstream Of Republican Party Thought On Immigrants

Palin's no bumpkin. So what if she thinks it's the "Statute of Liberty?" She eats pizza with a knife and fork (and Trump) and removes the usual Christian iconography and dons a Jewish star necklace when in NYC.

On Ellis Island, gateway to America for so many millions of immigrants from Europe who had to contend with the fear-mongers and Know Nothings (teabaggers of their day) who prophesied the end of America because of them, Palin recited her line: “It’s one of the symbols of course of our country, and it’s a reminder too that immigrants built this country." She then proceeded, predictably, to tear down the DREAM Act.

"The immigrants of the past, they had to literally and figuratively stand in line to become U.S. citizens. I'd like to see that continue," Palin said. "And unfortunately, the DREAM Act kind of usurps that-- the system that is a legal system to make sure that immigrants who want to be here legally, working hard, producing and supplying revenue and resources for their families, that they're able to do that right and legally. Unfortunately, the DREAM Act doesn't accomplish that."

The Palin wing of the Republican Party has always hated immigrants and has hysterically, and often violently, protested the entry of successive waves that have helped build America. Right-wingers were enthusiastic about embracing Nazi war criminals after the war and welcomed them with open arms-- Nixon even hoping they would balance out his "Jewish problem" in key states like New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan, where tens of thousands of Eastern European Nazi collaborators were encouraged to settle. But regular immigrants looking for a better life in America? Palin-like Republicans have always objected. Back in the '20s the GOP turned to Washington Congressman Albert Johnson, chairman of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, who was responsible for the Republican anti-immigrant legislation of the 1920s. Johnson, a vehement racist and nativist, was the chief author of the Immigration Act of 1924, which he justified as a bulwark against "a stream of alien blood, with all its inherited misconceptions respecting the relationships of the governing power to the governed." Apparently he was as muddleheaded then as like-thinking Republicans like Palin and Bachmann are today. He was also head of the Eugenics Research Association which campaigned for forced sterilization. Back in those days Republicans didn't see Jews the way they do today-- as necessary for Armageddon-- so Johnson didn't wear Jewish stars but referred to Jews as "filthy, un-American, and often dangerous in their habits." He did his best to refuse Jews entry into this country... Italians too.

In Glen Yeadon's Nazi Hydra In America there was a description of Johnson that sounds like something Steve King, Tom Tancredo and Elton Gallegly modeled themselves after.

A key figure in the success of the eugenicists in changing immigration policy was Albert Johnson. Johnson had been raised at the northern edge of the Mason Dixon line in Illinois during the turbulent Reconstruction period. He later became a big city newspaperman before moving to the small town of Hoquiam, Washington. It was from here that Johnson ran for congress and was elected to the House in 1912. Johnson was a fanatic racist and eugenicist. In 1919, he began a twelve-year tenure as chairman of the Immigration and Naturalization subcommittee in the House.

While there had been restrictions in immigration prior to Johnson’s chairmanship, the restrictions were reactionary in nature and not eugenically motivated. Johnson viewed any immigration as a negative factor. One of his first actions was to appoint [deranged Missouri fascist and racist Harry] Laughlin as his eugenic expert before his committee. Laughlin and other eugenicists had long urged the classification of immigrants along strict biological and racial lines, as well as advocating intelligence testing of immigrants before they left Europe. Their goal was to restrict immigration based on quotas before the mass arrivals started in 1890. ... [Laughlin's] American Breeders and the Eugenic Society were not content with just sterilization and segregation methods as a means to eliminate the defective. By 1910, they were also proposing euthanasia using a lethal chamber... the forerunner of the modern gas chamber.

Much of the money that funded all the eugenics "research" in the U.S. and Germany-- including the Mengele "experiments" in Auschwitz-- came from the Rockefeller family, as well as from other prominent Republican Party fascists. So, Star of David or not, eating pizza with a knife and fork not withstanding, Palin comes from a long line of right-wing Know Nothings and ideologues in the mainstream of deeply ingrained Republican Party traditions.