The Melting Pot Myth By Michael Natrella
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IVE ME YOUR TIRED, YOUR POOR, YOUR HUDDLED MASSES YEARNING TO breathe free, Thewretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” (Lazarus,1883) The United States has long claimed to be the world’s beacon of liberty and acceptance, with U.S citizens happily rallying behind the New Colossus by Emma Lazarus inscribed upon the Statue of Liberty. The reality is that this fundamental belief that the United States is a melting pot of cultural acceptance is and has always been a myth. In fact, in the incipient years of our nation, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were exclusive to white men. Although Trump and his supporters purport that recent racist and xenophobic policies are making America great again, they are merely escalating a long history of racism and exclusion in our country. Beginning with the very first immigration law, the Naturalization Act of 1790, which restricted the right to apply for citizenship to free white people who had been in the country for two years, immigration policy has been racist and exclusive. Then, in response to the increase in Chinese immigrants entering the United States to join the Gold Rush, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed. This act, similar to the Muslim ban, barred Chinese people from entering the United States. In 1902, Chinese immigration was made permanently illegal. In direct opposition to the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, the Immigration Act of 1917 further restricted immigration by establishing a literacy requirement. (History.com Editors, 2018) Then, ironically, despite establishing the Statue of Liberty as a national monument, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act
10 ASIAN OUTLOOK
of 1924, which completely excluded immigrants from Asia and Mexico and favored immigrants from Northern and Western European countries. (History.com Editors, 2018) In response to these drastic restrictions, illegal immigration increased, and the US Border Patrol was established. At this point, the vast majority of people illegally crossing the Mexican and Canadian borders into the United States were Asian, particularly Chinese. Once the attack on Pearl Harbor took place, the United States Government quickly responded with enacting Executive Order 9066, forcing every person of Japanese descent to register with the government and report to an internment camp. Once interned, the federal government seized all private possessions in which the families never saw again. This displacement caused an abundance of issues when the families finally returned to their homes and found that other families were currently occupying them. These actions inflicted upon the Japanese community were severely understated at the time, with the government claiming, Japanese Americans were cheerfully filling out the abundance of paperwork and were quickly reporting to their designated facilities. (Milton Eisenhower, 1942). These tragic events were anything but cheerful. The exclusion of Asian immigrants was not formally ended until 1952, and in 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act overhauled the racist quota system. Today, the government continues this legacy of racist and exclusive immigration policy with family separation and the detainment of immigrants at migrant detention centers at the border and throughout the United States. The U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement report directly to the President of the United States without the oversight of Congress, making them very dangerous to our Cartoon by Barry Deutsch from Abagond
