Donald J. Trump, Aziz Ansari, and the Immigration Act of 1924 (A KJ Saturday Morning Op Ed)

untitled (76)As I was trying to figure out what to write about this morning, I started my daily web search of my usual resources. Finding nothing that picqued my interest, I decided to wander over to CBSNews.com and found a bunch of articles that consisted of nothing but Liberal Talking Points.

I was shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

This one, however, stood out.

After the Orlando mass shooting nearly two weeks ago, actor and comedian Aziz Ansari warned his mother not to go near mosques, to “do all your prayer at home,” he wrote in a New York Times op-ed.

Ansari, the son of Muslim immigrants, fears for the safety of his family and his Muslim friends, and it is listening to presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump that’s exacerbating his fears.

“Today, with the presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and others like him spewing hate speech, prejudice is reaching new levels,” Ansari wrote. “It’s visceral, and scary, and it affects how people live, work and pray.”

It’s not “Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or the kid who left the boy band One Direction” who comes to mind when Americans think of Muslims, Ansari laments. “It’s of a scary terrorist character from ‘Homeland’ or some monster from the news.”

He talked about the feeling Muslims — or anyone who looks Muslim — have after a horrible attack like the one in San Bernardino or Orlando.

“There is a strange feeling that you must almost prove yourself worthy of feeling sad and scared like everyone else,” he wrote.

Ansari takes issue with Trump’s claim that “people in the American Muslim community ‘know who the bad ones are,’ implying that millions of innocent people are somehow complicit in awful attacks. Not only is this wrongheaded; but it also does nothing to address the real problems posed by terrorist attacks,” Ansari’s op-ed reads. “By Mr. Trump’s logic, after the huge financial crisis of 2007-08, the best way to protect the American economy would have been to ban white males.”

The accusation Trump makes about the Muslims in New Jersey cheering in the streets after the 9/11 attacks seems to hit Ansari especially hard. At the time, he was a student at N.Y.U., living close by the World Trade Center, and the memory of the attacks is vivid.

“The haunting sound of the second plane hitting the towers is forever ingrained in my head,” Ansari wrote. “My building was close enough that it shook upon impact…”

“My family, unable to reach me on my cellphone, was terrified about my safety as they watched the towers collapse,” he continued. “There was absolutely no cheering. Only sadness, horror and fear.

“Mr. Trump, in response to the attack in Orlando, began a tweet with these words: ‘Appreciate the congrats.’ It appears that day he was the one who was celebrating after an attack.”

Trump’s actual response on Twitter was:

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don’t want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!

Hardly celebratory.

Suspending immigration is not a new concept.

It’s been done before…for over 40 years.

The following information is courtesy of u-s-history.com

During the Harding administration, a stop-gap immigration measure was passed by Congress in 1921 for the purpose of slowing the flood of immigrants entering the United States.

A more thorough law was signed by President Coolidge in May 1924. It provided for the following:

The quota for immigrants entering the U.S. was set at two percent of the total of any given nation`s residents in the U.S. as reported in the 1890 census;
after July 1, 1927, the two percent rule was to be replaced by an overall cap of 150,000 immigrants annually and quotas determined by “national origins” as revealed in the 1920 census.

College students, professors and ministers were exempted from the quotas. Initially immigration from the other Americas was allowed, but measures were quickly developed to deny legal entry to Mexican laborers.

The clear aim of this law was to restrict the entry of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, while welcoming relatively large numbers of newcomers from Britain, Ireland, and Northern Europe.

The 1921 law had used the 1910 census to determine the base for the quotas; by changing to the 1890 census when fewer Italians or Bulgarians lived in the U.S., more of the “dangerous` and “different” elements were kept out. This legislation reflected discriminatory sentiments that had surfaced earlier during the Red Scare of 1919-20.

Total
Entering U.S.
Country of Origin
Great
Britain
Eastern
Europe*
Italy
1920
430,001
38,471
3,913
95,145
1921
805,228
51,142
32,793
222,260
1922
309,556
25,153
12,244
40,319
1923
522,919
45,759
16,082
46,674
1924
706,896
59,490
13,173
56,246
1925
294,314
27,172
1,566
6,203
1926
304,488
25,528
1,596
8,253
*Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States,

Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, D.C., 1960), p. 56.

A provision in the 1924 law barred entry to those ineligible for citizenship — effectively ending the immigration of all Asians into the United States and undermining the earlier “Gentlemen`s Agreement” with Japan. Efforts by Secretary of State Hughes to change this provision were not successful and actually inflamed the passions of the anti-Japanese press, which was especially strong on the West Coast.

Heated protests were issued by the Japanese government and a citizen committed seppuku outside the American embassy in Tokyo. May 26, the effective date of the legislation, was declared a day of national humiliation in Japan, adding another in a growing list of grievances against the U.S.

(The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 upheld the national origins quota system established by the Immigration Act of 1924, reinforcing these quotas.)

In 1965, the Hart-Cellar Act abolished the national origins quota system that had structured America`s immigration policy since the 1920`s, replacing it with a preference system that emphasized immigrants` skills and family relationships with citizens or residents of the United States.

Additionally, in April of 1980, during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, President Jimmy Carter cancelled all visas issued to Iranians for entry into the United States and warned that they would be revalidated only for “compelling and proven humanitarian reasons or where the national interest requires.”

If you were watching Saturday morning cartoons in 1977, during President Carter’s time in the White House, on ABC, you would have seen a Schoolhouse Rock musical cartoon titled The Great American Melting Pot.  It extolled the unique greatness of  our American heritage.
For a while now, that heritage has been under attack.
The Immigration Act of 1924 was passed because America had experienced an overwhelming flood of immigrants, which strained the resources of our nation.
This act allowed all of these immigrants to be assimilated into American Society and to actually become Americans, in thought, word, deed, and LOYALTY.
An Liberal President Jimmy Carter stopped Iranians from immigrating, because, just like the situation we faced today with Radical Islam, we were AT WAR.
The reason that Obama and his Administration are so “concerned” with Donald J. Trump’s proposal is that is full of common sense, utilized in defense of our sovereignty.
Trump’s proposal would successfully thwart their plans to rapidly import thousands of Muslims, and potential Democrat Voters, into our country, while limiting the reality of Radical Islamists entering our country with the intent to kill our citizens and to cause terror.
Like all Liberals, Mr. Ansari  included, Obama and his Administration remain oblivious of their own hypocrisy.
What this pearl-clutching Liberal’s op ed, posted by the Liberal Propaganda Website known as CBSNews.com conveys, is a fact that I have been pointing out since I began writing my daily blog in April of 2010:

If “Moderate” Muslims, such as Mr. Ansari, want to help America in the fight against the Islamic Terrorists’ War against our country and its citizens, they must stand up and speak out against the Terrorists. Don’t complain because the Terrorists are correctly identified as Radical Islamists.

Mr. Ansari, those weren’t Southern Baptists from Mississippi who flew those airplanes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. They were Muslims from Saudi Arabia.

If you are so afraid of being deported by Donald Trump, you need to change out of your Liberal pair of red onesie pajamas, put on your American blue jeans, put down your mocha latte with the lemon twist, stand up on your hind legs, and stand by the nation which is providing you a living, instead of continuously singing the Linda Rodstadt version of the song “Poor, Poor Pitiful Me”.

Instead of being a hyphenated American…be an American.

Period.

Until He Comes,
KJ

 

 

Donald J. Trump, White House Hypocrisy, and the Immigration Act of 1924

Rising-NRD-600The hang-wringing and blowback from the suggestion by Donald J. Trump to implement a pause in the immigration of Muslims to the United States of America, has been everything that the consummate showman now doubt hoped for…and more.

White House Spokesperson Josh Earnest was positively apoplectic at yesterday’s Daily Press Conference, as Breitbart.com reports…

President Barack Obama’s spokesman angrily lashed out at Donald Trump for proposing a ban on Muslim immigration to the United States, and accused him of “offensive bluster” and “grotesque and offensive” language.

“The fact is, that what Donald Trump said yesterday disqualifies him from serving as president,” spokesman Josh Earnest said, suggesting to reporters that his words were fundamentally anti-American.

Earnest denounced Trump’s “carnival barker routine” which included “outright lies” and mocked the Republican frontrunner for having “fake hair.” He said:

The Trump campaign, for months now, has had a dustbin of history-like quality to it, from the vacuous sloganeering to the outright lies to even the fake hair, the whole carnival barker routine that we’ve seen for some time now.
Earnest also denounced other Republicans for continuing to say that they would support the nominee of the Republican party even it was Donald Trump.

Earnest suggested the Republican Party is racist for failing to denounce Trump’s presidential campaign, and he reminded reporters that House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA)
once called himself “David Duke without the baggage.” He said:

“Earlier this year, House Republicans elected to their leadership somebody who famously bragged to a reporter that he’s David Duke without the baggage.”

“They should say right now that they will not support him for president,” Earnest said, as he called Trump’s proposal “morally reprehensible.”

Earnest said Republicans leaders should:

“Say right now that they would not support Donald Trump for president. What he said is disqualifying and any Republican who’s too fearful of the Republican base to admit it has no business serving as president either. OK?”

When asked why the White House had decided to weigh in on Trump’s hair, Earnest defended the topic as an important part of the campaign.

“Well I guess I was describing why it would be easy for people to dismiss the Trump campaign as not particularly serious,” he said.

“Because of his hair?” one reporter asked in disbelief.

“Well because he’s got a rather outrageous appearance, that’s the hallmark of his campaign and his identity, though, that’s the point I’m trying to cite there,” he said.

“How do you know that it’s fake?” asked a second reporter.

“Well I guess I’m happy to be fact checked,” Earnest replied.

Suspending immigration is not a new concept.

It’s been done before…for over 40 years.

The following information is courtesy of u-s-history.com

During the Harding administration, a stop-gap immigration measure was passed by Congress in 1921 for the purpose of slowing the flood of immigrants entering the United States.

A more thorough law was signed by President Coolidge in May 1924. It provided for the following:

The quota for immigrants entering the U.S. was set at two percent of the total of any given nation`s residents in the U.S. as reported in the 1890 census;
after July 1, 1927, the two percent rule was to be replaced by an overall cap of 150,000 immigrants annually and quotas determined by “national origins” as revealed in the 1920 census.

College students, professors and ministers were exempted from the quotas. Initially immigration from the other Americas was allowed, but measures were quickly developed to deny legal entry to Mexican laborers.

The clear aim of this law was to restrict the entry of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, while welcoming relatively large numbers of newcomers from Britain, Ireland, and Northern Europe.

The 1921 law had used the 1910 census to determine the base for the quotas; by changing to the 1890 census when fewer Italians or Bulgarians lived in the U.S., more of the “dangerous` and “different” elements were kept out. This legislation reflected discriminatory sentiments that had surfaced earlier during the Red Scare of 1919-20.

Total
Entering U.S.
Country of Origin
Great
Britain
Eastern
Europe*
Italy
1920
430,001
38,471
3,913
95,145
1921
805,228
51,142
32,793
222,260
1922
309,556
25,153
12,244
40,319
1923
522,919
45,759
16,082
46,674
1924
706,896
59,490
13,173
56,246
1925
294,314
27,172
1,566
6,203
1926
304,488
25,528
1,596
8,253
*Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, D.C., 1960), p. 56.

A provision in the 1924 law barred entry to those ineligible for citizenship — effectively ending the immigration of all Asians into the United States and undermining the earlier “Gentlemen`s Agreement” with Japan. Efforts by Secretary of State Hughes to change this provision were not successful and actually inflamed the passions of the anti-Japanese press, which was especially strong on the West Coast.

Heated protests were issued by the Japanese government and a citizen committed seppuku outside the American embassy in Tokyo. May 26, the effective date of the legislation, was declared a day of national humiliation in Japan, adding another in a growing list of grievances against the U.S.

(The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 upheld the national origins quota system established by the Immigration Act of 1924, reinforcing these quotas.)

In 1965, the Hart-Cellar Act abolished the national origins quota system that had structured America`s immigration policy since the 1920`s, replacing it with a preference system that emphasized immigrants` skills and family relationships with citizens or residents of the United States.

Additionally, in April of 1980, during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, President Jimmy Carter cancelled all visas issued to Iranians for entry into the United States and warned that they would be revalidated only for “compelling and proven humanitarian reasons or where the national interest requires.”

So, what Trump proposed has been done before

Evidently, no one ever told Obama and his Administration that when you point your finger at someone, there are 4 other fingers pointing back at you.

On January 7th of this year, Abraham H. Miller wrote the following blog, featured on thehill.com…

At the end of World War II, the Jewish survivors of Europe’s Holocaust found that nearly every door was closed to them. “Tell Me Where Can I Go?” was a popular Yiddish song at the time. Decades later, the Christians of the Middle East face the same problem, and the Obama administration is keeping the door shut.

America is about to accept 9000 Syrian Muslims, refugees of the brutal war between the Assad regime and its Sunni opposition, which includes ISIS, Al Qaeda, and various other militias. That number is predicted to increase each year.  There are no Christian refugees that will be admitted.

Why? Because the Department of State is adhering with all the rigidity of a Soviet era bureaucracy to the rule that only people at risk from massacres launched by the regime qualify for refugee status. The rapes of Christian women and the butchery of Christian children do not count. No matter how moved Americans were this Christmas season by the plight of their fellow Christ followers in Syria and Iraq, no matter how horrific the visuals of beheadings, enslavement, and mass murder, the Christians fleeing death do not engender the compassion of this president.

The Christians are being raped, tortured, and murdered by militias, not by the Syrian government. This technicality condemns them to continue to be victims without hope. And this technicality is being adhered to with all the tenacity with which President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s State Department manipulated quotas and created subterfuges  to keep out the Jews fleeing the oppression of Nazi Germany. Obama no more wants the Middle East’s Christian refugees than Roosevelt wanted Europe’s Jewish refugees.

We have seen in the last several weeks that President Obama has no difficulty using his “phone and his pen,” as he dramatically boasts, to circumvent the law. When it comes to immigration, he had no difficulty enacting an amnesty that a federal judge  subsequently ruled unconstitutional. He has had no problem circumventing Congress to change the relationship with Cuba. This president has shown that he will push back on the constraints of law when he wants to get something done.

But there are not even such constraints when it comes to the Middle East’s Christians fleeing the brutality of ISIS and Al Qaeda. The Department of State chooses to adhere to a definition of refugees as people persecuted by their own government. What difference does it make which army imperils the lives of innocent Christians?  Christians are still be slaughtered for being Christian, and their government is incapable of protecting them. Does some group have to come along—as Jewish groups did during the Holocaust—and sardonically guarantee that these are real human beings?

The Christians would barely have to be vetted for ties to terror organizations, which by their very nature do not take Christians. Meanwhile, there is the uncomfortable issue that among the Sunni refugees there are some in league with the Sunni terror militias. And beyond that there is the equally uncomfortable question of the acculturation of segments of the Muslim community.

That our Muslim neighbors are as worthy of being good Americans as anyone else is not an issue. That a highly active and prominent minority in the Muslim community seeks to transform America is an issue and one that cannot be overlooked, when taking in Muslim refugees.  Will they be vetted for seeking the transformation of America through jihad?

Whether the recent violence in Australia, the murder of two New York policemen, the Boston Marathon bombings, the growing list of victims of honor killings in Western societies, the forced closing of streets in Paris for Muslim prayers, the Muslim no-go and Sharia patrol areas of Britain, the rape of infidel women in Sweden, or the call by Council on Islamic American Relations that Islam is not in America to be another religion but to transform America, there is a Muslim problem. That it is not a problem precipitated by a majority of Muslims does not lessen its dangers.

No doubt the majority of the Muslim refugees will become good American citizens, but the real concern is that a significant minority will not. Yet, the Middle East Christians, even as a minority, do not pose remotely the same kind of threat.

With Christmas fresh in our minds, it is time for all people of good will to say to the Obama administration that telling Christians awaiting death that there is no room for them in the inn is not only unacceptable, it is also, to use President Obama’s own words, “not who we are.” This season, Christians  need to make their voice heard. They should not act as the Jews did, waiting for a president who had no intention of doing anything, to do something.

If you were watching Saturday morning cartoons in 1977 on ABC, you would have seen this Schoolhouse Rock musical cartoon titled The Great American Melting Pot.  It extolled the unique greatness of  our American heritage.
For a while now, that heritage has been under attack.
The Immigration Act of 1924 was passed because America had experienced an overwhelming flood of immigrants, which strained the resources of our nation.
This act allowed all of these immigrants to be assimilated into American Society and to actually become Americans, in thought, word, deed, and LOYALTY.
An Liberal President Jimmy Carter stopped Iranians from immigrating, because, just like the situation we faced today with Radical Islam, we were AT WAR.
As the article from thehill.com shows, Obama and his Administration are themselves being restrictive in whom they allow to immigrate to America.
The only reason that they are mad at Donald J. Trump is that he is attempting to thwart their plans to rapidly import thousands of Muslims, and potential Democrat Voters, into our country.
Like all Liberals, they remain oblivious of their own hypocrisy.
Until He Comes,
KJ