True Colors

Or: CIS Says The Quiet Part Out Loud

Today (May 26, 2024) marks the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Immigration Act of 1924 by President Calvin Coolidge. Let’s not beat around the bush: the act was explicitly based on anti-Semitism and racism. Here’s one expert’s recap:

“The Immigration Act of 1924 limited immigration from any country to 2 percent of the number of immigrants from that country that were in the U.S. in 1890, and further excluded Asians. The purpose was to stop the growing number of Polish, Italian, Greek, and Slavic immigrants, as well as Jewish immigrants (who were referred to at the time as members of the “Hebrew race,” considered the lowest of all the European “races”). In signing the bill into law, President Calvin Coolidge declared that “America must be kept American.” Such view was motivated by the belief that “persons of northern European stock were superior to...the ‘races’ of southern and eastern Europe,” who at that time, “were racialized as non-white,” and was also motivated by strong anti-Semitism. Madison Grant, described as a “prolific non-scientist” and “popularizer of the eugenics movement,” was called in as an expert to influence Congress by convincing its members of the threat posed by the immigration of Southern Europeans of “inferior stock.” Grant was the author of a highly influential book, The Passing of the Great Race,” in which he propagandized his theory of Nordic racial superiority. In a fan letter written to the author in the early 1930s, Adolf Hitler referred to the book as his “Bible.” "

- Jeffrey S. Chase, Racism in U.S. Immigration: A Historical Overview, © Jeffrey S. Chase 2017 All Rights Reserved

The anti-Semitic and racist roots of the 1924 Act are not contested by anyone.

And yet…

The Center for Immigration Studies, a DC-based “think tank” thinks that the 1924 Act was the greatest thing since sliced (white?) bread. Here is CIS Executive Director Mark Krikorian’s celebration of the Act, and here is a 40-minute CIS podcast going into greater detail.

Does CIS lament the intentional anti-Semitism and racism of the Act? Nope. Krikorian brushes those aside as racial and ethnic “concerns” and “various flavors of bigotry.” The bottom line for Krikorian? “One hundred years ago this Sunday, the Ellis Island wave of immigration was brought to an end. And all Americans are better for it.”

CIS is in favor of less immigration. I’m in favor of more. The congressional decision regarding how many and what kind of immigrants to welcome is not likely to be resolved, or even addressed, in my lifetime. But wherever you stand on those questions, for God’s sake have the honesty and the decency to face the fact that thousands, perhaps even millions, of European Jews died in the Holocaust as a direct result of the 1924 Act. Stating that we Americans are “better” for having essentially closed our borders from 1924 to 1965 is appalling.

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