I don't agree with him.
I don't think we need millions of what are essentially the dregs of other countries pouring into our country to grow our economy.
That’s how this country was built.
On German immigrants:
"Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion….
Those who come hither are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own nation… Not being used to Liberty, they know not how to make a modest use of it… in short unless the stream of their importation be turned from this to the surrounding colonies, as you very judiciously propose, they will so outnumber us, that all the advantages we have will not in my opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”
-Benjamin Franklin, 1750, on the large number of new German immigrants to The British colony of Pennsylvania at the time.
On Irish immigrants:
“[T]hey steal, they are cruel and bloody, full of revenge, and delighting in deadly execution, licentious, swearers and blasphemers, common ravishers of women, and murderers of children.” —Edmund Spencer
"The judgement of God sent the calamity (Irish potato famine) to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated. …The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people."Charles Trevelyan, head of administration for famine relief during the Great Irish famine
“The emigrants who land at New York, whether they remain in that city or come on in the interior, are not merely ignorant and poor—which might be their misfortune rather than their fault—but they are drunken, dirty, indolent, and riotous, so as to be the objects of dislike and fear to all in whose neighbourhood they congregate in large numbers.” —James Silk Buckingham
On Catholics:
I do not like the late Reappearance of the Jesuits. They have a General, now in Russia, in correspondence with the Jesuits in the U.S. who are more numerous than every body knows. Shall We not have Swarms of them here. In as many shapes and disguises as ever a King of Gypsies, Bamfield More Carew himself, assumed? In the shape of Printers, Editors, Writers School masters etc. If ever any Congregation of Men could merit, eternal Perdition on Earth and in Hell, it is this Company of Loiola [Ignatius Loyola -- Ed.]. Our System however of Religious Liberty must afford them an Assylum. But if they do not put the Purity of our Elections to a severe Tryal, it will be a Wonder."
-John Adams
"We should build a wall of brass around the country."
- John Jay, first chief justice of Supreme always Court, regarding “Catholic alien invaders”
On Poles:
The people of this country are too tolerant. There’s no other country in the world where they’d allow it... After all we built up this country and then we allow a lot of foreigners, the scum of Europe, the offscourings of Polish ghettos to come and run it for us.
– John Dos Passos, early 20th century novelist, on U.S. immigration policy
On Jews:
They are coming in such numbers and we are unable adequately to take care of them…It simply amounts to unrestricted and indiscriminate dumping into this country of people of every character and description…If there were in existence a ship that could hold three million human beings, then three million Jews of Poland would board to escape to America.
-Congressional hearing, 1920
On Chinese:
"Standing behind them are Christian employers of this land, who would rather import heathen willing to work for barely enough to sustain life than retain a brother Christian at a wage sufficient in to live as becomes a Christian. We do not want Opium or the Chinese who grow it."
- Terence Powderly, Irish-American labor leader, 1892
On Italians:
Now, what do we find in all our large cities? Entire sections containing a population incapable of understanding our institutions, with no comprehension of our national ideals, and for the most part incapable of speaking the English language. Foreign language information service gives evidence that many southern Europeans resent as an unjust discrimination the quota laws and represent America as showing race hatred and unmindful of its mission to the world. The reverse is true. America’s first duty is to those already within her own shores.
- Representative Grant Hudson, 1924
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