Aliens or Americans? Part 3

AIM: TO REALIZE OUR RESPONSIBILITY IN RECEIVING ONE MILLION ALIENS A YEAR

I. _To Learn by Comparison the Magnitude of a Million Aliens._

1. At what rate per annum is our population now being increased by immigration?

2. What are the sources of this invasion? Its princ.i.p.al gateway?

3. What comparison helps you most to realize the number of immigrants?

4. What are some of the largest groups in the ma.s.s, as cla.s.sified by nationality? By race? By knowledge or ignorance? By fitness for labor?

5. What states may be compared with last year's arrivals?

II. _To Realise the Proportion of Our Population that has Immigrated since 1820._

6. How does the total number of our immigrants compare with the population of Germany? England? Canada?

7. Has the number of immigrants been increasing steadily? Will it tend to increase?

8. Has the present rate been long continued? What proportion of the population of the United States is derived from immigration subsequent to the American Revolution?

9. * Do you think there is any serious menace in such large numbers of immigrants? Why?

III. _Why do Aliens Come_?

10. Name the princ.i.p.al causes of immigration. The princ.i.p.al cla.s.ses.

11. What American ideals have the greatest attractive power? What opportunities?

12. Give some typical instances of immigrants' stories. * Would you have wished to come under the same circ.u.mstances?

13. What other forces stimulate immigration to the United States?

What agencies?

IV. _What Should be our Att.i.tude toward Aliens, and What is our Individual Responsibility for Them_?

14. * What is the Christian att.i.tude toward these newcomers? How can we remove prejudice?

15. * What is our personal responsibility as Christians in improving the condition of aliens?

REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDY.--CHAPTER I

I. Compare modern immigration with the migration of peoples in earlier times; for example, those of the Hebrews, Aryans, Goths, Huns, Saracens, and other races.

Any good Encyclopedia or General History.

II. What resemblances and what differences between the Colonial settlement of America, and the later immigration, say, during the Nineteenth Century?

III. _The Causes of Immigration._

Hall: Immigration, II.

Lord, et al: The Italian in America, III, VIII.

Warne: The Slav Invasion, III, IV; 78, 83.

Holt: Undistinguished Americans, 35, 244-250.

IV. What agencies can you name and describe that are trying to receive the immigrants in a humane and Christian spirit? For example, the United States Government, American Tract Society, New York Bible Society, Society for Italian Immigrants, and other organizations and agencies. Study especially any that work in your own neighborhood.

_As for immigrants, we cannot have too many of the right kind, and we should have none of the wrong kind. I will go as far as any in regard to restricting undesirable immigration. I do not think that any immigrant who will lower the standard of life among our people should be admitted._--President Roosevelt.

II

ALIEN ADMISSION AND RESTRICTION

Unrestricted immigration is doing much to cause deterioration in the quality of American citizenship. Let us resolve that America shall be neither a hermit nation nor a Botany Bay. Let us make our land a home for the oppressed of all nations, but not a dumping-ground for the criminals, the paupers, the cripples, and the illiterate of the world.

Let our Republic, in its crowded and hazardous future, adopt these watchwords, to be made good all along our oceanic and continental borders: "Welcome for the worthy, protection to the patriotic, but no shelter in America for those who would destroy the American shelter itself."--_Joseph Cook._

It is not the migration of a few thousand or even million human beings from one part of the world to another nor their good or bad fortune that is of interest to us. We are concerned with the effect of such a movement on the community at large and its growth in civilization.

Immigration, for instance, means the constant infusion of new blood into the American commonwealth, and the question is: What effect will this new blood have upon the character of the community?--_Professor Mayo-Smith._

It is advisable to study the influence of the newcomers on the ethical consciousness of the community--whether there is a gain or a loss to us.

In short, we must set up our standard of what we desire this nation to be, and then consider whether the policy we have hitherto pursued in regard to immigration is calculated to maintain that standard or to endanger it.--_Idem._

II

ALIEN ADMISSION AND RESTRICTION

_I. Method of Admission_