Teddy Roosevelt – Not Racist, And Not Open Borders Either

Originally posted 9/7/2006, and reposted in light of the current shamnesty bill. If I believed for one moment that Congress had any intention of enforcing the border provisions – which are restatements of laws already passed which are not being enforced – then I would be willing to consider the amnesty portion of the bill. And yes, it’s amnesty, in the most important sense of the word: people who are here illegally, will stay here legally. They’ll be treated better than the tens of thousands of people who are waiting patiently for their turn to come here legally. This bill makes it faster, cheaper and easier to break the law than to obey it.

John McCain says he’ll “build the God d***ed fence!” I say, “When?” At this point I think the Republicans who have signed on to this bill are desperate for a win for the sake of having a win. But they don’t want the amnesty enough to give us the enforcement first, and there’s no benefit to trusting them again after repeated slaps in the face. Stalemate?

Here’s a solution that I think people could agree to – others much like it have been posted all over the web, and people are saying that they’ve communicated thoughts like these to their Senators and Representatives repeatedly over the last few years, every time immigration legislation is crafted:

Start with a big ol’ fence. Yes, some will object. First let’s build it where landowners are clamoring for it to be built. That has the added benefit of steering traffic toward lands where people didn’t ask – and if history is any guide, before long they WILL be asking for a fence. Next, let’s honestly look at the environmental impact of illegal border-crossers on the land and have a real debate on what’s more harmful to wildlife, address the issues at hand. Use eminent domain where necessary; a border fence certainly qualifies. The one designed by the Minutemen is a good start, fortified electronically and with a beefed-up border patrol who are empowered to do their jobs, this will make a real difference. It will take some time, as did building our highway system, but it is easily achievable. The border will never be 100% sealed, but this is a reasonable plan.

*While* that is going on, we can also crack down on law-breaking employers, which will discourage new illegals from entering the country, if they are worried about getting jobs. This also goes FAR toward restoring confidence in the rule of law, and fining the crap out of Tyson and other violators, for example, can help fund associated immigration projects.

*While* that is going on, we should streamline and expedite the legal immigration system. People who have attempted to work through the existing system and have broken no laws should have a security check, if they haven’t already, a health exam, which they are already required to have, and if nothing prohibits them coming in, let them in right now on even better terms than we were just about to give illegal aliens. Permanent residency, fast track citizenship, job placement assistance so that employers who want to hire legal immigrants have a convenient way to do so. In just a couple of years, there has been a major bureaucratic shakeup with the creation of DHS. We can certainly eliminate obstacles and streamline the immigration system faster than we funded, created, organized and staffed a whole new umbrella department.

After all the backlogged fully legal applicants are in (and continue giving them preference throughout), address the problem of visa over-stayers. Make them pay a small fine – anywhere from $1,000 to 5,000, then permanent residency, fast track citizenship. This way we’re still being selective about who we’re letting in, in terms of decent health and reasonable expectation to earn a living, and the taxpayer burden is low to non-existent.

All during this time, illegal immigrants have the option of going home and applying legally. Nothing prevents it. If they are so anchored here that they don’t want to leave even temporarily, then after those who have followed the law have their chance, do the security check, do the health exam, and if they pass give them permanent residency, no chance ever of citizenship or entitlement programs.

No one solution – a fence alone, for example – will solve the problem, but a combination of a fence, improved legal immigration, and employer enforcement, will go far toward solving this problem.

But much of our leadership ignores these common-sense ideas. It’s enough to make you think they’re playing a different game entirely – one for which they’re willing to risk their political futures.

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People like myself, who are in favor of stopping as much illegal immigration as possible, are often charged with racism and being isolationist.

Was Teddy Roosevelt racist? Compared to today, certainly, but less so than most people of his time.

Although Roosevelt did some work improving race relations, he, like most leaders of the Progressive Era, lacked initiative on most racial issues. Booker T. Washington, the most important black leader of the day, was the first African American to be invited to dinner, on October 16, 1901, at the White House, where he discussed politics and racism with Roosevelt. News of the dinner reached the press two days later. The white public outcry following the dinner was so strong, especially from the Southern states, that Roosevelt never repeated the experiment.

Publicly, Roosevelt spoke out against racism and discrimination, and appointed many blacks to lower-level Federal offices, and wrote fondly of the “Buffalo Soldiers,” led by “Black Jack” Pershing, who had fought beside his Rough Riders at the Battle of San Juan Hill in Cuba in July 1898. Roosevelt opposed school segregation, having ended the practice as Governor of New York. T.R. also did not subscribe to anti-Semitism—he was the first to appoint a Jew, Oscar S. Straus, to the Presidential Cabinet.

Like most intellectuals of the era, Roosevelt believed in evolution. He saw the different races as having reached different levels of civilization (with whites at the top and blacks at the bottom). Every race, and every individual, was capable of unlimited improvement, Roosevelt felt. Furthermore, a new “race” (in the cultural sense, not biological) had emerged on the American frontier, the “American race,” and it was quite distinct from other ethnic groups, such as the Anglo-Saxons. Roosevelt thought himself as Dutch, not Anglo-Saxon. After criticism of Washington’s invitation to the White House, Roosevelt seemed to wilt publicly on the cause of racial equality. In 1906, he approved the dishonorable discharges of three companies of black soldiers who refused his order to testify regarding a riot in Brownsville, Texas, known as the Brownsville Raid.

Was he isolationist? Emphatically, NO.

Theodore Roosevelt Presidential achievements are impressive. In foreign affairs he led us into the arena of international power politics, thrusting aside the American tradition of isolationism, while on the domestic scene, he reversed the traditional federal policy of laissez-faire, and sought to bring order, social justice, and fair dealings to American industry and commerce.

So what was his take on legal immigration?

“Let us say to the immigrant not that we hope he will learn English, but that he has got to learn it. Let the immigrant who does not learn it go back. He has got to consider the interest of the United States or he should not stay here. He must be made to see that his opportunities in this country depend upon his knowing English and observing American standards. The employer cannot be permitted to regard him only as an industrial asset.

“We must in every way possible encourage the immigrant to rise, help him up, give him a chance to help himself. If we try to carry him he may well prove not well worth carrying. We must in turn insist upon his showing the same standard of fealty to this country and to join with us in raising the level of our common American citizenship.

“If I could I would have the kind of restriction which would not allow any immigrant to come here unless I was content that his grandchildren would be fellow-citizens of my grandchildren. They will not be so if he lives in a boarding house at $2.50 per month with ten other boarders and contracts tuberculosis and contributes to the next generation a body of citizens inferior not only morally and spiritually but also physically.”

He also said, “This is a nation — not a polyglot boarding house. There is not room in the country for any 50-50 American, nor can there be but one loyalty — to the Stars and Stripes.”

As with every other politician in our history, I may not agree wholeheartedly with everything Roosevelt did and stood for – but on this topic, he could not have been more right.

Trackposted to Right Pundits, Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Random Yak, DeMediacratic Nation, Right Truth, Maggie’s Notebook, Adam’s Blog, Webloggin, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Conservative Cat, Rightlinx, third world county, stikNstein… has no mercy, Pirate’s Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, Planck’s Constant, The Pink Flamingo, Right Voices, Gone Hollywood, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.