Give me your tired, your poor,
     Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
     The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
     Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
     I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

– The New Colossus, Emma Lazarus

Immigration is subject to federal regulation, not state regulation. So, as your representative, I do not expect the issue to occupy much, if any, of the time I spend working for you. Nevertheless, I have thought about it. There is much to dislike.

People have lived in what is now the USA for over 10,000 years. The First People came from East Asia in at least three waves. Their descendants were still here when Europeans started arriving. Spain started sending colonists in the 1500s, followed by the English, Dutch, Swedish, and French. They did not ask permission from the people who were already here. With guns, germs, and steel, they took what they wanted while infecting and killing most of the First People, and coercively relocating many others.

Millions of African people were enslaved and shipped from Africa from the 1500s into the 1800s. Millions more died en route. Spain founded the first successful city at St. Augustine in Florida in 1565. In the late 1700s, the English colonists, having subjugated the Dutch and Swedish colonists, as well as more First Peoples, declared independence from England.  After seven years, they were successful. More European colonists arrived from the United Kingdom and Germany.

In the 1850s, the California Gold Rush, then railroad companies, drew Chinese to the Pacific Coast, especially California. They competed with and reduced the wages of European colonists. In the 1870s, amidst a recession, political pressure grew to restrict immigration. As a result, America’s very first immigration restrictions were embodied in the 1875 Page Act, excluding “any subject of China, Japan, or any Oriental country” who “entered into a contract or agreement for a term of service within the United States, for lewd and immoral purposes.” It significantly reduced the number of Chinese women immigrating.

Personally, since there were zero immigration restrictions for the first century of USA history, when the last of my mother’s ancestors arrived in the USA, from Germany in 1870, they, like their predecessors, were not subject to any restrictions.

     Matthew 25:35 “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

The Page Act was followed in 1882 by the Chinese Exclusion Act, which declared that “the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States be, and the same is hereby, suspended” for 10 years. That suspension was extended by 10 years in 1892 and made permanent in 1902. As an aside, the law itself is explicitly about Chinese laborers, and says so over 30 times. China at the time had a caste system. It was less complicated than in India, but more structured than what was in Europe or the USA. Laborers were the lowest caste, then merchants, then civil servants and government officials. Castes were an explicit part of the approval process before leaving China.

When the USA took over in Hawai’i in 1898, all my father’s grandparents-to-be were already there, all of them still children. His Portuguese and German/Native Hawai’ian grandmothers were automatically granted citizenship. His Chinese and Japanese grandfathers, however, were not. Immigration laws were applied to them retroactively. It was 1953 before they were allowed to apply and become citizens – which they did. Oregon’s anti-miscegenation law, passed in 1866, was not repealed until 1951. Otherwise, my parents’ wedding in Portland in 1957 would have been illegal.

The 1917 Immigration Act broadened the restrictions to all of Asia, including India and the Middle East. It also introduced quotas with ratios based on who was already here, especially affecting Italian and East European people. Much like mestizo Latinos today, for many years Italians were not considered “White” enough because of their language, skin color, and Catholicism. Columbus Day only became a federal holiday in 1971, in part as an indirect acceptance of Italian Americans. Many Italian Americans observe Columbus Day as a celebration of their heritage and not of Columbus himself. As for the East Europeans, they were mainly Jews from the Russian Empire, Poland, Austria-Hungary, and Romania. You may be familiar with some of the history of anti-Jewish discrimination.

Temporary agricultural workers from Mexico were permitted by the 1942 Bracero Agreement. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act exempted immigrants from the Western Hemisphere countries from the law’s system of “preference categories” for people who were admitted. However, the law provided that beginning in 1968, there was a cap of 120,000 on the total number of permanent residents who could be admitted from the Western Hemisphere. There are more recent immigration laws, but I’ll end my chronicle of them here for now.

As a programmer, I am harmed by H1B visas that bring in foreigners to compete against me. Otherwise, my wages would be higher and more American-born people would be incentivized to be programmers and the other high-but-they-would-be-even-higher wages of doctors, architects, financial analysts, and university professors. I would much prefer an agnostic process that treats all applicants the same.

While American immigration control laws are permeated with a selfishness justified by the crackpot pseudoscience of racism and the economic maneuverings of corporations and laborers, they are much less significant in our district than in the rest of Oregon or the country as a whole. Foreign-born people here are 4.2% of the population versus 9.8% in Oregon and 14% nationally. Latinos represent just 22% of HD 31’s foreign-born people. 34% are from Asia and 28% are from Europe. In Oregon as a whole Latinos are 44% of the foreign born, Asians are 32%, and Europeans are 14%. Nationally 51% of foreign-born people are Latinos, 31% are Asians, and 10% are Europeans. So while foreign-born Latinos are 7.2% of the population nationally and 4.3% in Oregon, they’re less than 1% here – 0.9%.

Immigration control laws have an intrinsic IGMFU hypocritical hubris in colonial states like the USA, compounded by the treatment of First People and the importing of Africans as slaves. China is the same size as the USA but with four times the people, and instead of a lush West Coast, they have mountainous deserts in Tibet and Sinkiang bordering on the steppes and deserts of Central Asia. We could accept everyone who wants to come here – granted, a much smaller number of people than 18 months ago, due to the current administration. It would be better to not let everyone in at once, to have a smooth and equitable process. However, the federal process as applied by the current administration is a deep stain on us and our humanity.

     Exodus 12:49 “There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.”