When Immigration was a Dirty Word

The St. Louis in 1939

America's political elites want us to believe that the pending legislation that would offer citizenship to 11 million illegal (sorry, undocumented) aliens is simply about compassion and nothing more.

And anyone who thinks otherwise runs the risk of being labeled a bigot, racist or a xenophobe. 

Anyone who chooses to believe America's politicians and their media puppets probably suffers from an extremely low double-digit IQ. Unfortunately, many Americans fit that description as evidenced by the recent reelection of Barack Obama to a second term in the White House.

The pending immigration legislation isn't about compassion--it's about buying votes. And both of America's political parties are desperate to buy the votes of America's burgeoning Hispanic population that is currently on track to become America's ethnic majority by 2050. 

Certainly, there's nothing wrong with that. But Hispanics need to be forewarned that they shouldn't allow any political strings to be attached to their U.S. citizenship. Amnesty shouldn't come with a set of social, political and economic rules handed down by the government that tells a particular ethnic group how and where to live; how many children they can have, where they can educate their children, what kind of jobs they can do, how to think, how to worship and how to vote.

If you think that's being a bit paranoid then take a tour of any Indian reservation in the United States. Or take a tour (at your own risk) of almost any inner city neighborhood in America. Because those who allow themselves to be bought by big government invariably become hopelessly dependent upon big government for their survival.

Sadly, there was a time when America's big government political elites weren't so keen on immigration. That was in the late spring of 1939 when 937 passengers aboard the ship St. Louis that had sailed from Germany, sought asylum in Havana, Cuba. When the Cuban government refused to grant asylum, the St. Louis sailed for Florida where the passengers hoped that a more tolerant U.S. government would grant them asylum. 

America refused. President Franklin D. Roosevelt refused to allow the St. Louis to dock and unload its passengers. Instead, the ship turned around and headed back to Europe from where it came.

What was so significant about the human cargo aboard the St. Louis? They were German Jews who were attempting to flee Hitler's Holocaust. When the St. Louis was forced to return to Europe, many (not all) Jews were apprehended by the Nazis upon return and they were marched off to Hitler's death camps where they perished.

No one knows for sure why Roosevelt denied the Jews asylum. Some believe that he was anti-Semitic. Others believe that he was sympathetic to the Jews and their plight, but feared losing the vote of Southern Democrats who were vehemently racist and anti-Semitic.

Whatever Roosevelt's reason was for denying the Jews a safe haven in the United States from Hitler's hell, it left a dark stain on the history of American immigration. 

And that was a tragic time in America when immigration was synonymous with evil. Perhaps Jewish votes weren't worth very much in 1939.