Donald Trump has long explicitly challenged a foundational myth of American identity: the idea of the United States as a nation of immigrants that welcomes the world’s “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Instead of embracing the narrative of a country shaped by immigration, the “again” in Mr. Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” is often understood as a call to return to an imagined past when native-born white citizens lived safely and prospered without foreign-born people. On Monday in his second Inaugural Address, he vowed that America’s “safety will be restored” as his administration would rid the country of “dangerous criminals, many from prisons and mental institutions that have illegally entered our country from all over the world.” His vision includes a locked-down border, a promise to end birthright citizenship and the mass expulsion of immigrants.
Neither Mr. Trump’s exclusionary historical vision of a safe nation with no immigrants nor the romanticized idea of a welcoming America reflects the nation’s reality. The United States is a nation to which immigrants have come time and time again, despite systemic racism and restrictive policies. And yet it is not immigrants’ presence in the United States but the exclusionary measures introduced against them that have eroded the rights and safety of both immigrants and American citizens.
Until the 1870s, there were no federal laws enforced to restrict immigration. But rising unemployment in California during that decade led white workers to accuse Chinese immigrants of stealing jobs, depressing wages and bringing women to the United States for prostitution. In 1875, Congress passed the Page Act to curtail Chinese migration and went even further in 1882, passing the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned most Chinese immigrants. These laws, alongside the racist sentiments that led to their passage, effectively legitimized vigilante violence against Chinese communities, including the Wyoming Territory’s Rock Springs Massacre of 1885, during which white miners killed 28 Chinese workers, injured 15 more and destroyed the local Chinatown.
The Chinese Exclusion Act threatened the very foundation of American citizenship as defined by the 14th Amendment, which establishes that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” are citizens. Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco in 1873 to Chinese parents. After traveling to China in 1894, border officials barred him from entering the United States, insisting he was not a citizen. The case made its way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that the Constitution granted birthright citizenship to all individuals born on U.S. soil, regardless of parental origin.
Citizenship is not conditional. After all, if citizenship can be challenged based on race, ancestry or political will, then no one’s status is truly secure. Yet this is exactly what Mr. Trump’s promise to end birthright citizenship would do.
Banning Chinese immigration laid the groundwork for further restrictions. At the end of the 19th century, increasing numbers of Eastern and Southern Europeans began to arrive in the United States. American policymakers worried that these new arrivals, who were deemed racially inferior, would blemish the nation’s racial stock. To address these concerns, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924, which introduced national origin quotas that gave preference to Northern and Western Europeans and almost completely barred Asians from entering.
The Great Depression led to further anti-immigrant measures. Mexican migrants became scapegoats for the nation’s economic struggles. Throughout the Southwest and Midwest, officials apprehended people of Mexican descent indiscriminately, including legal residents and U.S. citizens, and forced them onto trucks, buses or trains bound for Mexico. As many as two million people were expelled; approximately 60 percent are believed to have been citizens.
When Hitler’s armies swept across Eastern and Western Europe, the doors to the United States remained largely closed. Jews fleeing persecution were caught in a vise: a restrictive quota system that severely limited immigration from the most affected countries, an isolationist climate that offered no political will to aid refugees and deep-seated antisemitism in Congress and the State Department.
Indeed, the phrase “a nation of immigrants” did not gain widespread recognition until the 1960s, after John F. Kennedy’s book by that title argued that the United States benefited from its diverse origins. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act ended the system of national origin quotas, but it also introduced other restrictive measures, like quotas for Western Hemisphere countries for the first time. The law curbed Mexicans’ possibility to migrate legally even as the demand for their labor persisted, ultimately contributing to the rise of unauthorized migration.
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 had a similar dual impact. It legalized the status of approximately three million undocumented immigrants, granting them protection from deportation, allowing them to work legally and offering a path to citizenship. Legalization profoundly changed the lives of immigrants and their families, many of which already included U.S. citizens. Living without papers meant living in constant fear, unable to visit family abroad or demand higher wages without risking deportation.
Yet this legislation also provided for increased resources to expand the Border Patrol, and immigrants continued to enter the United States without papers. To evade intensified border controls, many took increasingly hazardous routes, such as through the Arizona desert, where dehydration, rattlesnakes and extreme temperatures routinely claimed lives. By the early 2000s, deaths at the border sometimes exceeded one per day.
The expansion of the Border Patrol also infringed on the rights of U.S. citizens. Within 100 miles of the border, officials routinely conduct warrantless searches, often engaging in racial profiling by targeting individuals perceived as foreign. These actions violate Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Deportations, like those promised by the new administration, also perpetuate the practice of family separation, regularly harming U.S. citizen children whose parents are undocumented. Deported parents with children who are U.S. citizens sometimes choose to leave them in America with family or friends. Others take their children with them, though many have never lived outside the country and don’t know any language other than English. Both possibilities deprive citizens of their rights, safety and stability.
Mr. Trump’s promised anti-immigrant measures are an escalation of former policies of exclusion. He has vowed to send troops to the southern border, halt all unauthorized entries, end the practice known as catch and release (in which apprehended migrants are discharged from Department of Homeland Security custody while their cases are pending) and reinstate the policy of forcing asylum seekers to apply from and wait in Mexico. He has pledged that he will conduct the “largest deportation operation in American history.”
These policies have historical precedents, but we have also seen an alternative path. The United States has repeatedly reformed its immigration laws — overturning Chinese exclusion, dismantling its racist quota system, offering legal status for millions of people under the reforms of the 1980s. Rather than double down on expulsions, the United States could increase the number of people who may enter legally, grant amnesty to undocumented residents and address the root causes of migration in origin countries. The promise of a nation of immigrants might yet be fulfilled. A welcoming America would make the country safer, stronger, and more just — protecting everyone’s rights and turning inclusion into a source of security for all.
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