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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now, we continue our WNYC centennial series, 100 years of a hundred things. We're up to thing number 27, 100 years of Immigration Law. This is obviously very relevant to the election, since Donald Trump and other Republicans are running on an anti-immigration platform more than anything else. It's very central to a hundred-year series because 1924 was the year of an era-defining immigration shutdown law that today's political debate has eerie echoes of exactly a century later.

Let's look to the past, the present, and the future as we do in these segments. Our guest today is Madeline Hsu, professor of history and director of the Center for Global Migration Studies at the University of Maryland. Among other things, she's got a great timeline that she uses in her teaching that we'll get to. I also want to mention some books that she's got. She is editor of the two-volume Cambridge History of Global Migrations, which just came out last year. She wrote the book A Nation of Immigrants Reconsidered: US Society in an Age of Restriction, 1924-1965.

We're going to be talking about that a lot in this segment. She's got, as I started to say, a great timeline that she uses in her teaching at immigrationhistory.org/lessonplan if you want to follow along at home, immigrationhistory.org/lesson-plan if you want to follow along at home, but not in your car. Professor Hsu, thanks for letting us informally audit your class and audit your brain. Welcome to WNYC.

Madeline Hsu: Thank you so much for this chance to talk about immigration. As you said, it is very timely.

Brian Lehrer: Before we even get to the official start of the centennial timeline with the landmark 1924 Immigration Act, would you establish some prehistory? You note in your syllabus that the very earliest US immigration laws established criteria based on race, class, and gender. What were one or two of those earliest immigration laws?

Madeline Hsu: The earliest set of laws that the US Congress and Immigration regulation is considered to be related to international trade. It is a matter for the federal government. It had to be Congress that passed immigration laws. The earliest sets to be passed with the intention to be enforced, really responded to California's sense of crisis in the 1860s, 1870s that most of the Chinese who were arriving in the United States. The actual numbers were very small, but most of them were in California, constituted a kind of invasion. They were unfair competition to white working class men.

As California was developing as a state, it was a central value to that electorate. In the 1870s, California was an important swing state. In 1882, Congress will pass the what's come to be known as the Chinese Exclusion laws. It identified Chinese by race and restricted almost entirely their coming to the United States. At this time, Asians already could not get citizenship by naturalization. This was a written into the 1790 Nationality Act. For most of US history, actually, restrictions about immigration and citizenship have chiefly focused people on the basis of their race, and then with 1924, their national origin.

The immigration laws will then start taking aim at a broader and broader array of people. Later in 1882, there will be a law targeting persons likely to become public charges. This is the poor. These kinds of restrictions are still on the books. There will also be targeting of other Asians also identified by national origin and by race. By far, the 1924 Immigration Act is the most impactful, because in the 1920s, 1930s, it's taking aim at, what was seen as, just this national crisis. Americans were feeling very pessimistic about how their country was faring economically, a sense that there were limited resources, that there were too many immigrants.

By the turn of the century, many immigrants who were arriving were coming from eastern and southern Europe. There were many more Jews, many Italians, and many of them ended up in these major urban centers looking for work. It's because they were in concentrated numbers in famous neighborhoods, such as the Lower East Side that the perception was that they weren't assimilating, that they were poor, that they were in the coinage of some historians poorer stock.

The big push in the 1919s, 1920s was to try to reduce overall immigration, which meant trying to limit the overall numbers, especially from eastern and southern Europe. This is what is accomplished with the 1924 Immigration Act.

Brian Lehrer: Right. That's a lot of background for that moment. Exactly--

Madeline Hsu: Yes. I talked too much.

Brian Lehrer: No, no, that was all great, and I learned a lot. That was all what contributed to that moment, that this timeline sort of starts with, for this segment exactly 100 years ago, the Immigration Act of 1924. With all that you just described, starting with the 1790 Immigration Law, where it said only free white persons could be naturalized. Through the Chinese Exclusion Act and the other things prior to 1924, how did we get to the Ellis Island period of so much immigration from parts of Europe? The inscription on the Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired, you're poor," which I think was placed there in 1903.

Madeline Hsu: The Ellis Island immigration station gets started, I think, in 1892. We don't have an Immigration Bureau until 1891. There is rising attention to growing awareness and concern about immigration levels. It's very contradictory on many fronts. People still recognize that immigrants have been a major resource, major contributor. Many countries believe, and there are many economic theories that discuss access to labor, access to workers, that human beings are the chief resource for any nation's greatness, especially economically.

This also contradicts other very powerful values of having a limited set of resources. I think anti-immigrant sentiments also derive from this discomfort with having a changing society. I think we need to realize that, recognize that as long as you have ongoing immigration, your society is going to keep on changing. How you respond to change, who's living in your neighborhood, what kinds of restaurants and businesses are on your local street corner, what the composition is of the faces of people that you see on TV or in movies, the kinds of music you're hearing, all of this, I think, will influence how you feel about what our immigration policy should be.

I also like to point out that in a democratic society, the stakes of immigration regulation are particularly high because the United States, a republic operates on the principle that all men are created equal, all women, all peoples, and that if you become citizens, you get to participate equally, at least in terms of political rights and entitlements. Therefore, the stakes of immigration regulation are even higher that we actually want to scrutinize who we are admitting, who gets to become our citizens, who gets to become our neighbors.

I think there is particular concern about people tapping into public resources, going onto welfare programs, and I will just throw out there that. Yes, yes, go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, go ahead. No, go ahead and finish your thought. You wanted to throw out there that.

Madeline Hsu: Immigration regulation is also the most direct way that our government can try to shape the population of the United States. I think a lot depends on what your priorities are. Should it be about trying to advance economic needs? What sort of suits the economy of the United States? Does it have to do with this idea that people should be assimilating? Should people should just be blending into and becoming invisible in this country? There are very different kinds of values strongly felt. It's entirely understandable that we have such deep conflicts and disagreements about what our immigration policy should be.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Just to get back to the Ellis Island era for a minute, in the context of everything you were just saying, was there some relative national consensus from the 1880s to the earliest part of the 1900s that it was in the United States interest to admit a lot of people from Italy, a lot of eastern European Jews, others, or was it sort of an accident?

Madeline Hsu: There were many different interest groups. There was, I think, some recognition and some enshrining of the ideal that the United States greatness had really emerged out of this idea of a melting pot, that the United States became a great nation precisely because it had all of these immigrants coming over from Europe who were able to apply their aspiration, their hard work, their work ethics, and just really be able to pursue wealth and opportunity here in the United States. This is reaching a turning point, though.

Open immigration for Europeans is continuing and considered a benefit as long as the United States have kept expanding westward territorially, but there will be in 1894, as identified by the historian Frederick Jackson Turner, what he called a closing of the western frontier. By the mid 1890s, there is this perception that there is limited opportunity in the United States because every plot of land in the United States had been occupied by settlers. This fuels this sense of growing crisis. The United States economy is also going through some severe upheavals.

There also is growing concerns about radicalism, which is associated with Italians, with Jews. The establishment of the Soviet Union in 1917 exacerbates these kinds of concerns, as does World War I. There is this intensification. In the 1920s, the United States experiences this-- I think there is a fair consensus around isolationism, followed by the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is a changing set of views and support for immigration restriction.

The actual law that gets passed is, in fact, deeply insulting to many other countries around the world because it makes clear the kinds of immigrants that the United States values, which are chiefly those from western and northern Europe, and that the United States is, in fact, categorically dismissing just about everybody else as potential Americans.

Brian Lehrer: In a couple of minutes, I want to get back to something from your timeline that surprised me about the 1924 close the Borders Immigration Act, which is that it allowed a lot of migration from Latin America in particular, which is, of course, the hot button part of the world right now. Listeners, as we try to do on these hundred year segments, we invite your personal oral histories to contribute to the telling of our hundred year stories. In this case, how did the 1965 Immigration Act, which, of course, we will get to that was so landmark and has done a lot to define the amount and the type of immigration ever since.

How did the 1965 Immigration Act open the door for your family to come to the United States? Does anybody have a story like that? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. How did the 1965 Immigration Act open the door for your family to come to the United States? Does anyone listening right now know that piece of your family history and how it connects to US policy? That's a lot of why. For example, the biggest immigrant group to New York City ever since has been people from the Dominican Republic, or maybe your family came from elsewhere in Latin America or from India or China or South Korea, anywhere in Africa, because of that law.

212-433-WNYC. Tell us your family's immigration story post-1965 Immigration Law with our guest Madeline Hsu, immigration historian from the University of Maryland. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. I have two clips to play of President Lyndon Johnson from his signing ceremony for the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act that opened things up to begin the modern era. Here is Johnson at that Ellis Island ceremony in '65, looking back critically on the Immigration Act of 1924. As I say, sometimes we have the luxury of time on this long form program. Here is two minutes of LBJ in 1965 looking back critically on the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924.

President Lyndon Johnson: The fact is that for over four decades, the immigration policy of the United States has been twisted and has been distorted by the harsh injustice of the national origins quota system. Under that system, the ability of new immigrants to come to America depended upon the country of their birth. Only three countries were allowed to supply 70% of all the immigrants. Families were kept apart because a husband or a wife or a child had been born in the wrong place. Men of needed skill and talent were denied entrance because they came from southern or eastern Europe or from one of the developing continents.

This system violated the basic principle of American democracy, the principle that values and rewards each man on the basis of his merit as a man. It has been un-American in the highest sense because it has been untrue to the faith that brought thousands to these shores even before we were a country. Today, with my signature, this system is abolished. We can now believe that it will never again shatter the gate to the American nation with the twin barriers of prejudice and privilege.

Brian Lehrer: Yet, here we are once again, but 60 years later, that's LBJ looking back. We're going to play another clip of him looking forward in 1965 as he signed that year's law. We'll take some of your phone calls that are starting to come in about your own family's post-1965 law, immigration stories. Professor Hsu, he talked about how prejudice and privilege gave a very few people the opportunity to immigrate during that 40 year period. You write in your timeline that the 1924 Act gave us a system under which only Europeans and persons from the Americas could immigrate here legally in unrestricted numbers.

It allowed unrestricted immigration from those two regions. A lot of our listeners will think, "Really? It allowed unrestricted immigration from Latin America and the Caribbean, the very immigration that's the main source of contention now?" Tell us about that aspect.

Madeline Hsu: Major things that the 1924 Act did is imposed for the first time, quantitative caps on immigration. It set an overall cap of 150,000. Immigration in prior years had been reaching over a million. You can see how severe that drop was. England, Ireland, Germany had the biggest quotas, which basically remained unfilled. They never used up their quotas, whereas other countries and Italy was particularly hard hit. It became virtually impossible for most Italians to come to the United States simply based on the numbers.

This was a shift from past views of immigration, because leading up to 1924, there had been some discussion that we should try to find immigrants who we think will contribute, who will become worthy Americans, who will be able to help our country continue to become greater and greater. Rather than doing this on the basis of sort of individual capacities, individual merit, the decision was to sort of really value national origins. The caps were imposed. Although it was discussed, there was a decision not to impose restrictions on the United States nearest neighbors.

Canada and Mexico, this was seen as part of being a good neighbor. It also addressed the reality that there was just a lot of fluidity. People went back and forth. There was also a growing reliance on the idea that the United States could just bring in workers, especially from Mexico. Then when those workers were no longer needed, send them away. There was this perception that Mexican workers, Mexican peoples were just birds of passage and would just kill them in and out.

The 1965 Immigration Act then changed this relationship and is, I think, one of the sources of our greatest problems now in terms of enforcing immigration laws, the 1965 act is, even though it liberalized immigration from most other parts of the world, is also imposed for the first time, these quantitative caps. This is where we're really struggling in terms of the enforceability, even sort of just, is there a need for this kind of quantitative cap when we're talking about the United States closest neighbors?

Brian Lehrer: When we come back from a break, we're going to play that other LBJ clip from 1965, where he talks about what the opening in the 1965 Immigration Act was supposed to create in terms of what kinds of immigrants would come and whether even he might have been surprised by the way it turned out. We'll start taking your family stories. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with our hundred years of 100 things series. Number 27, 100 years of Immigration Law in the United States, obviously very relevant to the election this year, very relevant to our lives in the New York City area and elsewhere with Madeline Hsu, professor of history and director of the center for Global Migration Studies at the University of Maryland, editor of the two-volume Cambridge History of Global Migrations, which came out last year, and A Nation of Immigrants Reconsidered: US Society in an Age of Restriction, 1924-1965, which is a lot of what this hundred year history series is about.

Let's hear a few personal stories of how the 1965 Immigration Act, which reopened things to a large degree, brought some of our listeners, families to this country. Kavita in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kavita.

Kavita: Hi, Brian. My family story, I'm 53, I live in New York City now, raising my family here. My father was able to come to Canada to do his master's. He came from a very small village in India. Both my parents, very small villages, was able to go through school in India, make his way to Canada. Because of the Immigration Act, an opportunity was opened up in Pennsylvania. He was a civil engineer, and he and a number of his colleagues were offered positions at the Department of Transportation in Pennsylvania. They were able to come through around 1968.

They had two children at the time. I was then first born here, and I have a younger brother. From that founding in Pennsylvania and that opportunity, my older sister went on to become a doctor. My second sister is a judge. I'm in education, have a consulting practice. My brother is in the tech field. Since that time, we've sponsored a number of family members who have had less education but an opportunity to come over. Now, we have about 60 family members here.

They've been able to bring their children and within one generation, be able to take advantage of the opportunities, and create a life that would probably not have been possible given our rural beginnings in India.

Brian Lehrer: Kavita, thank you so much for that story. There are a few things about that story that are really, really classic with respect to the 1965 Immigration Act that from my other conversations with immigration historians may have actually surprised the people who wrote the law. We'll get to that, but let's take another caller first. Sarah in The Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sarah.

Sarah: Hey, Brian. Nice to talk to you again. I've called several times. Very quickly. My oldest sister in the 1960s came to New York from Spain. That was a different story. In 1967 or '66, she was able to petition my mother, who came in 1967. My mother was a seamstress, worked in factories. Within two years, 1969, three of her children, including myself, we were ages 12, 13, and 14, she petitioned us. We were able to get here within probably nine months. Ever since, all we do is work. We've become professionals in healthcare, in education. We have college degrees. We raise our children, who also became professional college graduates.

My granddaughter, who turned 22 a couple weeks ago, just graduated recently with a degree in film studies. We have been the family that has accomplished, and we came through from that Act of 1965. I will say this quickly, I am very offended and upset every time immigrants are portrayed as criminals and everything else because even when you come through legally, which we were able to do, or you come through the border illegally, and eventually you get your legal status, immigrants, especially people from Latin America, we work really hard.

We are Dominican. I am Dominican. I was born in the Dominican Republic. My children were born here. We are the example of what it's like to come to a country who gives you an opportunity and really pay it back and pay forward.

Brian Lehrer: Sarah, thank you so much. Keep calling us. Now, talking about the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, here again is President Lyndon Johnson at the signing ceremony on Ellis Island on October 3rd, 1965.

President Lyndon Johnson: This bill says simply that from this day forth, those wishing to immigrate to America shall be admitted on the basis of their skills and their close relationships to those already here. This is a simple test, and it is a fair test. Those who can contribute most to this country, to its growth, to its strength, to its spirit, will be the first that are admitted to this land. The fairness of this standard is so self-evident that we may well wonder that it has not always been applied.

Brian Lehrer: Professor Hsu, with all that we've been discussing in this segment about the almost perennial fears and concerns that Americans who are already here had about letting immigrants in in large numbers going forward, what were the politics of 1965 that allowed that Act to pass?

Madeline Hsu: In 1965, Johnson was working with supermajorities in both houses of Congress. You're also coming off of a few decades in which immigration to the United States had dropped severely. There was a period, where people really did believe in a melting pot. A JFK had also-- Immigration had really been one of his major campaigns that he was working towards as a senator, and then when he became president-- The civil rights movement was ongoing. There was also a general recognition that the United States, during the Cold War was presenting itself as the leading democracy.

Immigration policies which openly discriminated against, especially Asian, African, and Latin-- well, not yet Latin American countries, but Asian and African countries that had just become nations, was also detrimental to US international relations interests. There were many, many kinds of reasons, but the law itself contains a kind of slate of hand, which actually was used to argue that the laws could be changed, they could be made more equal, less overtly discriminatory, and yet, the demographics of the United States would not change.

Because actually the preference that has the highest percentage of immigrant visas is for family reunification. The belief at the time was that, well, this would ensure that most of the people who immigrated to the United States were relatives of the dominant Euro-American population than in the country. In pursuing this belief, Congress didn't really understand that migration is not just about the policies that's passed by the United states.

It's also about all the kinds of pressures and conditions that lead people to make a really difficult decision, that they have to migrate, they have to uproot themselves, they have to sort of make all the sacrifices and try to forge their way in a new country. As Sarah was talking about so movingly, people who made that decision are usually very driven. They're very ambitious. They want to make better lives for themselves. These are exactly the kinds of people that, in fact, are beneficial to any country to which they come.

The immigration increased, and it has come from parts of the world that were not really anticipated at the time, that had not been part of the campaigns leading to passage of the law.

Brian Lehrer: To that point, LBJ, in that clip, spoke mostly about people being admitted on the basis of their skills. Another immigration historian has said to me that they never intended for the family reunification provision, which he also referred to in the clip, to become as prominent as it has in opening the doors to so many people from around the world. From what you just said, it sounds like that's your take, too, that they didn't think that the demographic balance would change very much if they were just allowing in.

I'm thinking of the caller, Kavita from Harlem, who talked about her family from India, first person coming over after the 1965 Act, who had a particular professional skill that was in demand in Pennsylvania. Then that person was able to bring in other relatives based on family reunification. That exact story was replicated so many times, and it did wind up changing the demographics, certainly of New York City and of many places in the United States. It, I think, surprised LBJ and other policymakers of the 1965 Immigration Act. Would you put it that way?

Madeline Hsu: The scholarship varies. There were some people who pointed out the United States had already been admitting more people to come as international students. Before 1965, you could actually anticipate that, given the opportunity, many of the college graduates, graduate students in this country, would want to stay. This actually is one of the major ways in which we have people immigrating through the skilled preference. The major group, the one that's most visible for this kind of immigration, is actually Indian Americans.

Indian Americans show more than any other ethnic population in the United States, except actually African immigrants. These attributes of having advanced degrees, Indian Americans lead the way in terms of household incomes, in terms of white collar, technical and professional employment. They also have become the largest Asian ethnic group in this country. I think in 2023, they are also now the largest population of international students on university campuses, exceeding Chinese.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. One more family history from a listener posting a text message. "My mother was able to immigrate to the US because of the law. My mother was a nurse from the Philippines, a former US territory, but its former colonial power limited its immigration. Please see Nurse Unseen documentary for background, which my mother was part of." That's certainly another big category, nurses from the Philippines. In our last minute, professor, and we really have under a minute, why are we back here now with immigration restrictionism so prominent more than any time since 100 years ago, 1924, we know how Trump is campaigning.

Madeline Hsu: We can actually look back in history and see that many political leaders seeking elected office lie about and use immigration as an inflammatory matter to try to gain themselves more votes. We can see this in the 1852 race for governor of California, a politician there who ended up winning, magnified and inflamed and spread just sort of really scary threats about what would happen if Chinese immigration was allowed to continue unchecked.

Brian Lehrer: It's in the thread of that history, and that, unfortunately, has to be the last word. Madeline Hsu, professor of history and director of the Center for Global Migration Studies at the University of Maryland, has been our guide through this 100 years of 100 things segment, number 27. 100 years of US Immigration Law. Thank you so much for your time and knowledge, Professor Hsu.

Madeline Hsu: Thank you.

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