Robert DeCourcy Ward Quotes
The first general immigration act was passed as recently as 1882 and provided only for the exclusion of convicts … of lunatics, of idiots, and of persons likely to become a public charge.
Most immigration reformers want to open immigration more widely. Ward wanted immigration restricted to certain ethnicities and limited.
Robert DeCourcy Ward, 1867–1931, Scientist & Immigration Reformer, “Our New Immigration Policy”, Foreign Affairs, September 1923
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JOUAM was a nativist workingmen's organization founded in 1853 to resist the competition for jobs from immigration. See related quote for membership criteria. At its peak it had over 200,000 members. “Mechanics” was the term used for a wide variety of skilled craftsmen from plumbers to bricklayers. JOUAM is the oldest fraternal order in America.
For every illegal immigrant working in the United States, there is at least one company or individual who is also breaking the law by employing him/her.
Ironically, where national quotas have been used in American immigration policy, it has rarely been used to keep nationals of countries with which we were having difficulty, out. In almost all cases, the national quotas have been used to discriminate against racial and religious minorities in America. Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, Catholics, Mormons and Jews have been the most frequent groups targeted. Even when we were in the midst of the Cold War, American policy was to accept immigrants from the Soviet Union and Cuba enthusiastically.
This is a very important historical quotation. When the anti-Asian racists first organized into a League, their racism was offensive to most national politicians and Eastern business and political leaders. However, this changed quite rapidly. It illustrates the constant vigilance that has to be maintained to condemn racism whenever it erupts last that was anathema becomes fashionable. The extremes become the norm. These minutes were taken when the League was still operating under the name of the “Japanese and Korean Exclusion League”.
Robert DeCourcy Ward was an American climatologist, author, educator and leading eugenics and immigration reform advocate in the early 20th Century. He became the first ever professor of climatology in the United States and made contributions to the study of the climate. His advocacy for immigration reform and eugenics led him to co-found the Immigration Restriction League which was instrumental in the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 which reduced Jewish and Italian immigration to the U.S. by over 95% and completely barred Asian immigration until 1952.
