First my comment, then the article, followed by the FB conversation.
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This is a case of using an innocuous phrase (“My ancestors came here legally”) to divert the conversation to impugning an idea not presented rather than evaluating the issue at hand, illegal immigration. The objective is to suggest a group of people are stupid for having the idea. The author does this by imposing an implication not warranted by the statement in question.
The author asserts that absent a law, your behavior is neither legal nor illegal. However, laws always restrict the range of what is available. Laws never, ever broaden available choices, unless they modify an existing, more restrictive law.
The total absence of law means nothing is restricted, aka anarchy. The first law passed necessarily limits unrestricted choices to "everything minus this one thing."
Illegality does not define legality, because legality is the default state. If the body of law is silent, that is, it hasn't restricted a range of choices, then every choice is definitionally legal.
Laws make us conscious of what is wrong to do. Interestingly, the Bible makes this very point: "Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin." (Rom 3:20)
Here's the article:
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I guarantee you’ll hear the phrase “My ancestors came here legally” in the aftermath of President Obama’s immigration address. It’s almost impossible to find any conversation about immigration—between elected officials, pundits, online commenters—in which at least one participant doesn’t use the phrase. It’s an understandable position, through which the speaker can both defend his or her family history and critique current illegal immigrants who choose to do things differently. It helps deflect charges of hypocrisy (since most Americans are descended from immigrants). It’s hard to argue with. And it’s also, in nearly every case, entirely inaccurate.
Prior to 1875’s Page Act and 1882’s Chinese Exclusion Act, there were no national immigration laws. None. There were laws related to naturalization and citizenship, to how vessels reported their passengers, to banning the slave trade. Once New York’s Castle Garden Immigration Station opened in 1855, arrivals there reported names and origins before entering the U.S. But for all pre-1875 immigrants, no laws applied to their arrival. They weren’t legal or illegal; they were just immigrants.
Moreover, those two laws and their extensions affected only very specific immigrant communities: suspected prostitutes and criminals (the Page Act); Chinese arrivals (the Exclusion Act); immigrants from a few other Asian nations (the extensions). So if your ancestors came before the 1920s and weren’t prostitutes, criminals, or from one of those Asian nations, they remained unaffected by any laws, and so were still neither legal nor illegal. This might seem like a semantic distinction, but it’s much more; the phrase “My ancestors came here legally” implies that they “chose to follow the law,” yet none of these unaffected immigrants had to make any such choice, nor had any laws to follow.
The 1892 opening of Ellis Island didn’t change these fundamental realities. Ellis arrivals had to wait in line and answer a list of questions, and could be quarantined if they had a communicable disease or were visibly insane. But if they weren’t in those aforementioned few illegal categories, they still weren’t affected by any law, made no choice of how to immigrate. Moreover, many arrivals during this period came not through Ellis but across the borders, which were unpatrolled and open.
Only with the 1920s Quota Acts did Congress establish national immigration laws encompassing most arrivals. But those acts were overtly discriminatory, extending the Exclusion Act’s principles by categorizing arrivals by nationality and drastically limiting certain groups; South Carolina Senator Ellison Smith put it bluntly: “It seems to me the point as to this measure is that the time has arrived when we should shut the door.” Since immigrants had no control over their nationality, it’s difficult to argue that post-1920s arrivals “chose” to immigrate legally or illegally. And since the borders remained largely open and there were multiple entry points, it’s hard to say that any individual arrival was under the quota and thus legal or illegal.
The 1965 Immigration Act ended national quotas, instituting preferences based on less overtly discriminatory categories such as family connections and educational/professional training. Subsequent laws (such as the 1986 IRCA) further adjusted national policy. But as the ubiquitous “my ancestors” phrase proves, current immigration debates aren’t just about present policies—they’re always informed by ideas about history, and specifically about legal and illegal immigration in our past. So it’s vitally important that we begin to use those terms accurately—to recognize that for so many of us, our ancestors were neither legal nor illegal immigrants. That they came in the same way contemporary undocumented immigrants do: by crossing a border.
Ben Railton is an Associate Professor of English at Fitchburg State University and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.
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And here's the FB conversation:
Me: "... the phrase 'My ancestors came here legally' implies that they 'chose to follow the law...'” No, it implies no such thing. It implies they violated no laws when they came.
C.K.: But there were no laws to follow. So it is still hypocritical.
Me: No, there were no laws to violate. Definitionally, violating no laws means legal. A law creates illegality, not legality.
C.K.: So maybe we should go back to the way things were when your family arrived so that we all get treated the same. The point is that at no point did you family jump through the same hoops today's immigrants have to go through so you are in no position to judge them.
Me: Agreed. However, in the meantime, let's just continue to ignore existing law as it suits us.
Me: And no one has issued any judgments.
My response to C.K. (if he were part of this conversation): There are also considerably more "hoops" to jump through today regarding payment of taxes, forms of taxation, and governmental levels of taxation than our ancestors ever dreamed of. There was no permanent income tax prior to 1913 and passage of the 16th amendment. But if you are consistent in your logic, it would require the following:
ReplyDelete- It is "hypocritical" to suggest our ancestors followed the law regarding income tax. Because where there is no law, you cannot characterize someone’s actions as “legal.” (which is B.S., as our mountainman host has pointed out)
- A tax-evader today is operating illegally, but needs to be extended a much greater level of tolerance, up to and including total amnesty. After all, paying taxes involves filling out forms and doing a bunch of difficult stuff our ancestors did not face, particularly prior to 1913.
Would you ascribe the same tolerance to today's tax evaders as you ascribe to legal immigration evaders?
Well said.
ReplyDeleteI am going to go over to the site where the original article is published and comment there as well. The more I read his article, the more incensed I became. He laments in various comments that most missed the point of his article. Namely, that it is a canard for conservatives to claim that their ancestors immigrated legally because they could not do otherwise. The absence of a law meant they choosing to come to America was synonymous with coming legally - since it was impossible to come illegally. If so, I have a few questions for Mr. Railton:
ReplyDelete1. Why did you choose a title for your article that was purposely misleading, and provably false, as most people's ancestors DID come here legally (mine included, via Ellis Island), because, by definition, there were no laws prohibiting their immigration.
2. As an English professor, and arguably therefore in the business of clear and articulate communication, why did so many people fail to understand the real point of your article? Could it be the fault lies with the writer, not the reader?
3. What powers of time travel do you possess, affording you the ability to know who would and would not comply with current immigration laws had they been in effect at the time? What hardships, exactly, do today's "immigrants" encounter that were not several orders of magnitude greater 100+ years ago?
This guy is a disgrace to the language and to thinking people everywhere if this is what passes for a "refutation." He and several of the commenters there are doing their little end zone dance. Time for a little rain to fall on that party.