Why immigration restrictions would not threaten Jews

As has been pointed out many times by Jews and others, American Jews are suspicious of any call for an end to open immigration because they see it as an attack on the universalist, tolerant attitude that permitted their own families to come here around the turn of the twentieth century. This Jewish fear is based on a misunderstanding of modern American history. During the very period when the mass Jewish influx was occurring, between 1880 and 1920, prospective Chinese immigrants were explicitly barred from this country under the Chinese Exclusion Act, and Japanese were kept out under the Gentlemen’s Agreement. Thus the immigration that let Jews into this country was not a universal, multi-racial immigration but a consciously white, European immigration. If America were to return to such an ethnicity-conscious, pro-Western immigration policy, that would neither delegitimate the past policy that permitted Jews to come here, nor would it put into question Jews’ current place in America. To the contrary, it would strengthen and secure Jews’ place in America by stopping the immigration of a certain non-Western people who are commanded by their god to kill Jews.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 12, 2005 05:39 PM | Send