Freedom Folks: We Need to Learn from Our Immigration History

It goes a little something like this.

Let me open with some history, American style.

The United States of America enacted the first Congressional immigration law in 1790.

That is fact. Our first immigration law that was passed by our Congress was titled The Naturalization Act and was the first immigration law to nationally regulate the number of allowed naturalized legal immigrants in America. We have put several more immigration acts into law since then. When our United States Congress realized in the 1800s that immigrants were arriving to The Promised Land in greater and greater numbers, enticed by the dangling carrot of higher wages paid and better job opportunities and displacing American ‘willing workers,’ Congress then passed an additional immigration law, called the Immigration Act of 1882. This law placed a tax on each immigrant who applied for lawful entry into our country and was intended to slow the flow. What differs from today is this was not a new tax imposed on the American taxpayers to fund; this was a tax that the immigrants themselves paid.