Immigration Has Always Been an Issue in U.S. Politics

Our Founding Fathers were a mix of new arrivals, first-generation, and those who had been in North America since the early days of the American colonies. For example, Alexander Hamilton, who arrived from St. Croix in 1772, was a brand-new resident. Patrick Henry was a first-generation immigrant because his father immigrated from Scotland in the early 1720s. Others were like Benjamin Franklin, whose ancestors landed in Boston in 1683 and had been in the Thirteen Colonies for almost a century when the American Revolution began.

When the American Constitution was written, the Founding Fathers’ first objective was to facilitate the growth of the country via interstate and international commerce, adding states, acquiring land, etc. Goals two and three were to conduct foreign policy and provide for the common defense. Number four was to create and implement a judicial system that served the rights of the people as well as those of the states. And last, although some would say it was number one, give the government the power to levy AND collect taxes.

If you read the Constitution, the word “naturalization” appears once in the document. It is the first six words of Article I (Legislative) Section 8, Clause 4, in which the framers of the Constitution gave Congress the power to Establish an uniform rule of Naturalization. The rest of the clause covers bankruptcies.

For the sake of discussion, immigration is the act of going from one’s country of birth or residence to a new country where one would prefer to live. Naturalization is the process of becoming a citizen in the country where one chooses to live after immigrating.

This definition is important to understand because reading between the lines, it is clear that Our Founding Fathers welcomed immigrants. The best indication of this is the growth of the U.S. population. In a December 12th, 2021 post – Origin of the U.S. Census – https://marcliebman.com/the-origin-of-the-u-s-census/ here’s a chart that shows the growth of the U.S. population from the American Revolution to modern times. To use a mathematical term, the growth is exponential.

In layman’s terms, every 10 years until 1810, the U.S. population counted in the census grew by 35%! That growth wasn’t organic and can’t be explained by deserters from the British Army and the German mercenaries. Of the 2.8 million folks in the Thirteen Colonies in 1770, by the end of the war, 158,000 died from disease and the war and about 75,000 Loyalists emigrated to other British colonies.

Our population went from ~2.8 million in 1770 to ~2.8 million in 1780 to ~3.9 million in first U.S. Census in 1790. By 1800, the U.S. population had blossomed to over 5.3 million. This caused Congress to act.

The Naturalization Act of 1790 was the first, it was followed by the Naturalization Act of 1795, the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Naturalization Act of 1798 and Naturalization Act of 1802. There are more throughout our history.

When you boil down these initial acts and those that followed down to the core issues, Congress was trying to pass laws to provide guidance to the Executive Branch to answer three basic questions:

Who do we let in?

How do we vet them?

What’s the path to citizenship?

Sound familiar?

Image is Welcome to All” by J. Keppler, Puck, published April 28, 1880