This from an article in Century magazine, circa 1888, written by T.T. Munger. While it bears a terribly florid Victorian tone, there are many parts that apply to today's immigration situation:
"It can hardly be said that this nation developed its institutions; it decreed them, and the struggle has been to live up to them. We are finding out that we have too much liberty and too little restriction; enough law but a vast amount of lawlessness."
"We turn it into a cry: 'It is a free country, keep it free; the asylum of the poor and oppressed, let them come; the refuge from tyranny, open all the ports; the land of equal rights, give every man an equal chance.' It will not be denied that these are brave words, full of noble sentiments, nor that the realization of them is to be sought. The only question is whether we can carry all this sail of lofty purpose and keep a steady keel; whether we must not ballast the ship of State with solid citizenship instead of filling its decks with a promiscuous throng. There is no question as to the value of liberty and equality and humanity as social factors, but only by what process they are to be realized."
"... those who would settle this question of immigration with the brief logic that we are free nation and must continue free; that, having started out as the asylum of the poor and oppressed, we should continue in this line, come what may."
"The Declaration of Independence has been thought to stand in the way of a restricted immigration. It is a brave utterance, but it is not a binding document. The organic law of the country offers no impediment to a sharply restricted immigration."
"It is a sound political principle that it is the first duty of a nation to secure the conditions necessary to its physical life."
"This nation began its career with a fair degree of homogeneousness. The Puritan and Cavalier, the Dutchman and Quaker, at least understood each other, and cooperated intelligently to the formation of the government. But we are today breeding a diversity in religions, languages, customs, conditions, blood, sentiments, and temperaments such as no nation, except possibly Russia, ever experienced. Granting the assimilating power of free institutions, of climate, food, education, and moral effort, the question remains whether the nation is able to digest the heterogeneous masses it is taking in. If we could rid ourselves of that blind optimism which seems to be the political vice of the American people, and look at this process with a calm and measuring eye, it would wear its proper cast of audacity."
"'Let them come' cries the political optimist. 'We can take care of them', indifferent to the possibility of a social compound that may explode, like carelessly mixed chemicals."
"Five hundred years of political training lie behind and enter into the American citizen; it has taken that time to teach men how to vote and to govern themselves, but are now creating their peers in as many months. These foreigners are not simply here, but they are here clad with citizenship, to act and to be used, make-weights to be thrown on the side of any party that may win them, the special tool of the saloon politician, open to bribery, ready to be massed in labor troubles and the chief factor in them."
"Capital and blind statesmanship are simply reaping what they have sown; they wanted cheap labor but, having got it, they are finding it dear."
"The statistics of foreign immigration and the sources of it are so well known that they scarcely need mention. In the last thiry years, seven and half millions of immigrants have come to us, a considerable fraction of the present population. They and their children number fifteen millions, or one-fourth of the people. During the last decade the immigration numbered about four millions.."
"It is urged that it is not just and merciful to close our ports against the poor, the ignorant, the oppressed, and the debased of other lands."
"It is not a slight thing for a man to change continents, language, citizenship, institutions, customs, hereditary surroundings, and present ties and throw himself into an environment new in every respect save the sky above him. Such an act should be made difficult, so that men shall not rashly undertake it..."
"Immigration is an act fraught with tremendous risks, not only to those who undertake it, but to those among whom it is consummated."
"It is the foreign element that poisons politics, blocks the wheels of industry, fills our prisons and hospitals, defies law, perplexes our schemes of education, lowers the grade of public virtue, confuses labor, supplants the caucus by the saloon, feeds the evil of drink, and turns municipal government into a farce and a shame."
"It is getting felt in many quarters that this process has gone far enough, and that it may be well to exchange our grand idealism for a little common sense and practical statesmanship. The passport seems to be the only available means of restricting immigration so as to exclude that which is undesirable."
"It is not proposed to prohibit foreign immigration; but it is proposed to make it, at least, not so easy a matter as it is at present."
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