Immigration

by Henry Pratt Fairchild

What, then, are the arguments for and against immigration from the point of view of the United States? The positive arguments for, and the negative arguments against, immigration center around the question whether the United States needs the immigrants. The positive arguments against, and the negative arguments for, immigration have to do with the claim that immigration injures the United States.

The argument for immigration which, if not the strongest during the first half of the nineteenth century, was probably the most frequently expressed, was the sentimental one which exhibited the United States as the natural haven of refuge for the oppressed and unfortunate of all lands, and extended a hearty welcome to all seekers of liberty who should come. This, as has been mentioned, was natural under the conditions of the time. It found expression in such words as the following, appearing in a magazine in the year 1855:

“If the physiologic principle we have endeavored to establish is correct, it follows that America pre-eminently owes its growth and prosperity to the amalgamation of foreign blood. To cut off, therefore, or to discourage its influx, will be to check the current from which our very life is drawn. The better course is evidently to welcome and provide for this tide of immigration, rather than to oppose and turn it away; to cherish the good influence it brings, and regulate the bad, rather than to trample them both under foot. What, though the population which is annually cast upon American shores is all of the filthiest and most degraded kind! The farmer might as well complain of the black and reeking soil into which his seed is dropped, as the statesman of such materials as these.... Let us welcome the houseless and the naked of every land to American shores; in the boundless forests of the north and the south there is room to make a home for them all. Let us invite the ill-fed and the starving of every grade to partake of American abundance; on the fertile fields of the west there grows corn enough to feed them all. Let us urge the oppressed and the down trodden of every name to the blessings of American freedom; the Star Spangled Banner is broad enough to cover, and the eagle that sits over it is strong enough to defend, them all.”[^[350]]

Such talk as this is so thoroughly out of date as to sound almost ridiculous in modern ears. In fact, the sentimental argument plays but little part in the present agitation, for the reason that the conditions which justify it furnish the motive to an insignificant portion of our present immigrants, with the exception of the Russian Jews.

Two other arguments for immigration may be styled the social and the biological. These claim respectively that the national character and the physical stock of the American people may be much improved by the addition of new elements brought in by foreign immigrants. It is pointed out that the German love for music, the artistic temperament of the Italian, the thrift of the Slav, the outdoor sociability of the Greek, might add—perhaps have added already—something of great value to the life of the country. There is much weight to this argument. It is quite conceivable that under proper conditions of social contact on a plane of equality between foreigner and native some such desirable transfusion of character might take place. It is another matter altogether to claim that any such beneficial result is transpiring, under the present conditions of the immigrant in this country.

The biological argument brings up the much-vexed question of the desirability of mixed stocks. There has been a prevalent opinion that the interbreeding of two races, not too far separated in physical stock, resulted in a type superior to either of the parent races. But there is no agreement as to where the line between the favorable and the unfavorable mixing shall be drawn. Some of the papers read at the Universal Races Congress in London would seem to convey the impression that any two races on earth might be mixed to good advantage. But this is by no means the universal opinion of careful anthropologists.

In regard to both of these arguments it may be said that, whatever their intrinsic worth, they have no great positive weight as respects the present situation in the United States. It seems likely that this country has already within its borders all the alien elements that will be needed for a long time to come—certainly until they are more completely absorbed than they are at present.

There remains by far the greatest and most universal argument for immigration—the economic one. The one plea for the free admission of aliens, that has weight to-day, is that our industrial organization demands it. Not only is it asserted that the rapid development of the country would not have been possible without the immigrant and cannot be prosecuted in the future without him, but that the cessation of immigration would seriously cripple many of the basic industries of this country. The former of these points has already been considered at some length, and the conclusion was reached that it was inconceivable that in such a country as the United States any socially important or necessary work should have had to be foregone in the absence of a foreign labor supply. Such an assertion implies a lack of self-sufficiency on the part of a young and vigorous people which is unthinkable. Whether the exploitation of our resources would have proceeded at such a rapid pace in the past, whether this pace could be kept up in the future, without the immigrant—these are questions more difficult of answer. There is no doubt that at present a large portion of our industry—possibly the greater part—is closely dependent upon a foreign labor supply, and that a sudden cessation of immigration would check the expansion of those industries, though it would not necessarily prevent their continuing on the present basis. It seems wholly probable that the development of the country would be retarded for a time if the immigration current was stopped.

But why this insistent demand for a rapid exploitation of our resources? Wherein are we the gainers if the wonderful natural riches of the country, which, as we have seen, constitute one of the two great elements which have accounted for our past prosperity, are consumed in the shortest possible time? In the words of Prescott F. Hall, “what boots an extended railroad mileage or the fact that all our coal and minerals are dug up or all our trees cut down some years or decades sooner?” Are we so greedy for luxury in the present that we wish to leave as little as possible of this natural advantage to future generations? It seems hardly possible. Rather is this idea another of those traditional survivals from the early life of the country, when conditions were such that the exploitation of resources was really essential to growth in per capita, as well as total, wealth, and prosperity. Our country has, in point of fact, developed so rapidly that the public mind has not adjusted itself to new conditions, and the idea of the value of a rapid exploitation lingers on as an anachronism. Possibly there is a slight element of modern megalomania mingled with it.

If it were true that the United States, having reached its present point of development, was unable to advance along the path of steady and solid growth, depending solely upon its own resources, human as well as material, it would be one of the most serious indictments against our social situation that could possibly be made. It is inconceivable that it should be true. It seems much more reasonable to believe that while the suspension of accessions of population from foreign sources would entail numerous and serious readjustments in social and economic relations, nevertheless the United States still has enough native virility to work out a prosperous and independent destiny of its own. It is hard to see any important respect in which the United States, at the present time, really needs immigrants.