USA TODAY International Edition
Historians see parallels between 1917 and today
Sunday marks the centennial of one of the darkest, most discriminatory immigration turns in American history: the passage of the Immigration Act of 1917. The law banned immigrants from the Asiatic Barred Zone, a new, massive region that included Saudi Arabia, most of China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.
Now, 100 years and 16 presidents later, some see that ugly history repeating itself.
Less than a week after moving into the White House, President Trump signed an order to increase deportations of an undocumented immigrant population that is 77% Hispanic and 15% Asian. He then instituted a temporary travel ban from countries
that are 98% Muslim and suspended the admission of refugees who come mostly from Africa and the Middle East.
In some ways, the 1917 law serves as a reminder of how different the times were back then. It banned “idiots” and “imbeciles” and created a literacy test targeting immigrants from Eastern Europe. But immigration historians see similarities in the hostility toward foreign settlers that’s on display a century later.
Trump said he halted the refugee program for 120 days and barred immigration from seven majority- Muslim countries for 90 days to give security agencies time to improve vetting procedures for people coming from terror- prone countries.
Alan Kraut, a history professor at American University and past president of the Organization of American Historians, said he sees something else happening.
“From the moment that Trump in his campaign characterized Mexicans as a bunch of criminals and talked about Muslims in a negative way, it was clear to me and many other scholars around the country where this theme came from,” he said. “It had a long echo.”
As damaging as the 1917 law was, it was just one chapter in America’s long history of discrimination that goes back to the battles against Native Americans and the enslavement of African Americans. There were periods of intense anti- Catholicism focused on the Irish and the Germans and multiple periods of rampant anti- Semitism.
Asians became a target during the California gold rush, as tales of gold- filled rivers lured thousands to California. That led to passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the socalled Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907, which banned most immigrants from Japan.
The fear of an Asian on- slaught, dubbed the “Yellow Peril,” culminated in the Immigration Act of 1917, which had such overwhelming support in Congress that it became law despite a veto by President Woodrow Wilson. It was followed by the Immigration Act of 1924, which created an immigration quota system that favored immigrants from Western Europe and marginalized Asians, Africans and other ethnic groups.
Taeku Lee, a professor of political science and law at the University of California, Berkeley, said he senses a similar nativist sentiment today, driven by a mix of demographic changes, economic insecurity and anxieties about national security.
“Today’s fantasied scourge of ‘ aliens’ from south of the border and terrorists cloaked in the garb of refugees is the Yellow Peril of the late 19th and early 20th century,” Lee said.
Lee sees another difference. Wilson opposed the 1917 law and led a global “charge for freedom and against totalitarianism,” including creation of the League of Nations after World War I. By contrast, Trump’s focus is inward- looking, as he speaks critically about the United Nations and NATO while “shying away from this longstanding role of ‘ leader of the Free World.’ ”
The first step toward overcoming a revival of nativism is to understand its roots, said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which advocates for immigrants.
But “what gets us out of this dark moment,” he said, “is leadership from a range of civic and political leaders saying, ‘ America is better than this.’ ”