March 8, 2017

Trump’s renewed effort to bar entry to Muslims, including refugees, should remind us that this is not the first time that the country has barred entry or flight. Referring to the plight of German Jews in the 1030s, an historian described the situation as follows: "[T]he United States was neither willing nor able to provide refuge for more than a handful of those fleeing Nazi persecution. The 1924 law permitted a total of only 150,000 immigrants a year, of which the Jewish quota was a small percentage. . . . Roosevelt stretched the law as best he could to admit more refugees. But the only real answer was a basic modification of policy, and at a time of continuing high unemployment there was little inclination to do that. Thousands of Jews were stranded at transit points across Europe. Some made it on ships to the Americas only to be denied permission to land."[11]

Another occasion was noted by Eric Foner in a recent issue of The Nation. "President Trump’s executive order . . . and his frequent threats to deport millions of undocumented immigrants bring to mind another era when the federal government acted forcefully to apprehend men, women, and children fleeing oppressive conditions. In 1850, Congress passed and President Millard Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Act. The law authorized federal marshals to capture people who had escaped from the slaveholding Old South, federal commissioners to order their return to bondage, and federal troops to carry out these orders."

On February, 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 "authorizing the secretary of war to designate military zones within the U.S. from which ‘any or all persons may be excluded.’ The order was not targeted at any specific group, but it became the basis for the mass relocation and internment of some 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry, including both citizens and non-citizens of the United States."[12]  Fear of foreigners again was the basis for the action.

That this country has turned away refugees and other unwanted persons or interned them, even under a far better President, does not justify Trump’s action. It does show that his idea of making America great again is to relive some of its worst moments.

Lady Liberty went dark this week. Perhaps it was from embarrassment.

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11. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776, pp. 516-17

12. https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2011/08/world-war-ii-internment-of-japanese- americans/100132/