Friday, August 13, 2010

FDR Immigration Policy?

Time to ask for a little help: I had understood that during (or perhaps just before) World War II, Franklin Roosevelt allowed previously illegal immigrants to become citizens, in order to avoid the potential problem of these non-citizens being vulnerable to blackmail by enemy agents, and therefore becoming security risks.  However, a quick look around the series-of-tubes reveals no evidence of such an action.  Anyone out there know anything about it?  Myth?  Fact?  Exaggeration? 

Of course, I'm interested because of recent suggestions that the US should resume rounding up immigrants and placing them in camps for deportation, as was supposedly done in the 1940s and 1950s. 

Hmmm...I need to add something of value here...how about a link to Mark Thompson's case in favor of open borders for the the US. 

6 comments:

  1. Is this what you had in mind?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson_Act

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  2. No, that seems to be just about Chinese immigration...I'm looking for something more general.

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  3. I don't know...if there was an amnesty/path to citizenship in that, it isn't prominently featured in anything Google came up with.

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  4. Maybe you are confusing immigration with FDR's establishing the War Refugee Board in 1944.

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  5. Or ... maybe you are confusing FDR with Truman?

    http://www.southerninstitute.info/holocaust_education/ds11.html

    “In order to assuage that part of the American public that was against the admission of refugees, President Roosevelt pledged that the 982 refugees bound for Oswego would return to Europe after the war's end. In fact, the refugees were required to sign a document promising to do just that, although the overwhelming majority of the refugees had lost their entire families to the Nazis. Despite the pledge, the refugees were met by hostility on the part of many residents of Oswego. After the war, President Truman (who became president when FDR died in April 1945) issued an executive order permitting the Oswego refugees were permitted to remain in the U.S.”

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