re: #41 Bridgeghazi: Never Forget!!11!!!!11

Not quite.

There was no immigration law at all, no rules whatsoever, for the first 100 years of this country’s existence. Hell, we used to *recruit* European immigrants by promising free land (back when “the frontier” was still east of the Mississippi.)

The first immigration law was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which was just what it says on the tin. A few years after that there was a law forbidding prostitutes to immigrate. A more wide-ranging racist immigration policy didn’t start until the 1920’s — country of origin quotas were based on how many people of what origin had been here in 1890 (they specifically wanted to limit Jews and Italians).

Mexicans and other Central Americans also had free passage up until the Depression — then they got run out (whole trainloads and planeloads were forcibly deported). During WWII we again recruited them aggressively, to come here and do the jobs that all the draftees had used to do before being sent overseas… and in the 1950’s another round of deportations.