The Declaration of Independence list the series of grievances that the signers had with the king of England. Do you recall that one reason they gave for their rebellion was the king’s refusal to allow immigration, as well as his creation of barriers to immigration?
Here’s the sentence where the declarers make their case against the king’s immigration bans:
“He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.”
In other words, the king refused to follow existing immigration laws, wouldn’t allow for new laws to encourage immigration, and made it difficult for immigrants to obtain the land they needed for survival. Does that anti-immigrant approach to governance sound familiar? I can hear someone arguing that, “Well, it was a new nation that needed new people to grow. That’s not the case anymore. We can’t just let anyone in.”
That’s ironic since there actually were plenty of people already on the continent in 1776. The rebellion happened as settlers were pushing native peoples from their land. So these new colonists wanted a government that would bring more people to support settler expansion – with no thought to the people (later in the Declaration identified as “Indian Savages”) who’d lived there for millennia. Seems like immigration has been a thorny issue from the time of this nation’s founding.
Read history, folks. Lots to learn there.
