Edward Kennedy on America versus FDR on America

Regarding Edward Kennedy’s contemptible swipe at America at a recent swearing-in ceremony for new citizens, it is instructive to remind ourselves of how liberal Democrats of past eras talked about immigration and America. I’m thinking particularly of the two excellent speeches delivered by President Franklin Roosevelt’s on Liberty Island and in Manhattan on October 28, 1936, the fiftieth anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, which I’ve previously quoted and discussed.

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Paul K. writes:

Roosevelt did not speak in the ingratiating manner that President Bush adopts for Hispanics, as when he addressed the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce earlier this week and said, “I appreciate the fact that you say loud and clear, ‘el sueno Americano es para todos.’” [The American dream is for everyone.] Bush speaks of the growing ties between the United States and Latin America, adding, “These ties are growing because of our churches and faith-based institutions, which understand that the call to love our neighbors as ourselves does not stop at our borders.” This sounds like a nod to the strong open borders’ stance the Catholic Church and liberal Protestants have taken.

Bush also endorses the massive outflow of money from the United States to Latin America: “These ties are growing because of the estimated $45 billion that workers in the United States send back to their families in Latin America and the Caribbean each year, one of the largest private economic initiatives in the world.”

At the speech’s end, he said, “You know, not far from the White House is a statue of the great liberator, Simon Bolivar. He’s often compared to George Washington—Jorge W.” This was obviously a joke but under the circumstances it raises my hackles.

Stephen T. writes:

The FDR administration’s stance toward illegal aliens was far less charitable than George Bush’s “goodhearted migrants” approach. One of the latest myths being espoused by Mestizos in the SouthWest (in addition to the idea that California—not Mexico—is their “ancient spiritual homeland”) is the notion that “America was built by Mexicans.” This idea has become common enough among youthful Mestizos to make me suspect that it is being internally promulgated by the Mexican gov’t itself, probably in order to foster a sense of entitlement in uneducated young Mexicans to cross the border and take back what is, supposedly, their rightful property. One day, a friend of mine working in construction had an angry young Mestizo, full of that hot, eggshell-fragile pride, assert in a moment of overblown bravado that “Mexicans built the Golden Gate Bridge and the Hoover Dam.” This disclosure inspired me to a bit of research, which revealed the following: The Golden Gate and the Hoover Dam were WPA projects. Roosevelt’s WPA, it turns out, expressly and aggressively prohibited employment of illegal aliens, and even gave low priority to legal immigrants. (Top priority was reserved for native-born WWI vets.) At intervals throughout the 1930s, the administration ordered “paper sweeps” of all WPA projects—including the Golden Gate and Hoover Dam—in which workers had to prove citizenship. The best known of these occurred in 1936, when all foreign-born WPA workers were given two weeks to appear in person at a WPA office and display papers proving their legal right to work in the country. This measure resulted in large numbers being terminated, even though it was widely known that many of these were actually legal immigrants who simply hadn’t kept up with their paperwork. Despite tear-jerking accounts in newspapers and even appeals to the White House, both the administration and the Congress held fast and the vacated jobs were turned over to legal American citizens.

It’s hard to imagine George Bush turning away these workers (“doing jobs American’s won’t do”) but FDR apparently had no qualms about it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 08, 2007 12:08 PM | Send