there were political litmus tests embedded in us immigration law, right?

raharris1973

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i have a vague recollection that us immigration laws and us immigration authorities deliberately discriminated to exclude anarchists and communists? is that true? if so when did these laws and practices begin and end?
 
The 1903 Immigration Act (obviously influenced by the assassination of McKinley) was the "First measure to provide for the exclusion of aliens on the grounds of proscribed opinions by excluding ' “anarchists, or persons who believe in, or advocate, the overthrow by force or violence the government of the United States, or of all government, or of all forms of law, or the assassination of public officials.'" http://people.sunyulster.edu/voughth/immlaws1875_1918.htm

For decades after McKinley's assassination, immigration officials remained obsessed with "anarchists." This concern was if anything intensified by the Bolshevik Revolution, since the distinction between an Anarchist and a Bolshevik was a bit too subtle for US immigration officials. In Vladimir Nabokov's novel *Pnin* the anti-Bolshevik refugee Professor Timofey Pnin recalls how he came to the US: "'Nothing to declare?' 'Nothing.' 'Very well!' Then political questions. He asks: 'Are you an anarchist?' I answer ... 'First, what do we understand under "anarchism"? Anarchism practical, metaphysical, theoretical, mystical, abstractional, individual, social? When I was young,' I say, 'all these had for me signification.' So we had a very interesting discussion, in consequence of which I passed two whole weeks on Ellis Island ...." https://books.google.com/books?id=hbyVrt0J6E4C&pg=PA11
 
And the "Red Scare" of 1919 was based on maybe (?) 20 letter bombs being sent around the country. Perhaps roughly equivalent to the Unabomber.

But we kind of fed into their desired strategy by building them up, instead of just handling it as a routine criminal matter.
 
GK Chestern Facebook page said:
“Are you an anarchist?”

G.K. CHESTERTON·SUNDAY, JULY 3, 2016
WHEN I went to the American consulate to regularise my passports, I was capable of expecting the American consulate to be American. Embassies and consulates are by tradition like islands of the soil for which they stand; and I have often found the tradition corresponding to a truth. I have seen the unmistakable French official living on omelettes and a little wine and serving his sacred abstractions under the last palm-trees fringing a desert. In the heat and noise of quarrelling Turks and Egyptians, I have come suddenly, as with the cool shock of his own shower-bath, on the listless amiability of the English gentleman. The officials I interviewed were very American, especially in being very polite; for whatever may have been the mood or meaning of Martin Chuzzlewit, I have always found Americans by far the politest people in the world. They put in my hands a form to be filled up, to all appearance like other forms I had filled up in other passport offices. But in reality it was very different from any form I had ever filled up in my life. At least it was a little like a freer form of the game called 'Confessions' which my friends and I invented in our youth; an examination paper containing questions like, 'If you saw a rhinoceros in the front garden, what would you do?' One of my friends, I remember, wrote, 'Take the pledge.' But that is another story, and might bring Mr. Pussyfoot Johnson on the scene before his time.
One of the questions on the paper was, 'Are you an anarchist?' To which a detached philosopher would naturally feel inclined to answer, 'What the devil has that to do with you? Are you an atheist?' along with some playful efforts to cross-examine the official about what constitutes an ἁρχη [Greek: archê]. Then there was the question, 'Are you in favour of subverting the government of the United States by force?' Against this I should write, 'I prefer to answer that question at the end of my tour and not the beginning.' The inquisitor, in his more than morbid curiosity, had then written down, 'Are you a polygamist?' The answer to this is, 'No such luck' or 'Not such a fool,' according to our experience of the other sex. But perhaps a better answer would be that given to W. T. Stead when he circulated the rhetorical question, 'Shall I slay my brother Boer?'—the answer that ran, 'Never interfere in family matters.' But among many things that amused me almost to the point of treating the form thus disrespectfully, the most amusing was the thought of the ruthless outlaw who should feel compelled to treat it respectfully. I like to think of the foreign desperado, seeking to slip into America with official papers under official protection, and sitting down to write with a beautiful gravity, 'I am an anarchist. I hate you all and wish to destroy you.' Or, 'I intend to subvert by force the government of the United States as soon as possible, sticking the long sheath-knife in my left trouser-pocket into Mr. Harding at the earliest opportunity.' Or again, 'Yes, I am a polygamist all right, and my forty-seven wives are accompanying me on the voyage disguised as secretaries.' There seems to be a certain simplicity of mind about these answers; and it is reassuring to know that anarchists and polygamists are so pure and good that the police have only to ask them questions and they are certain to tell no lies.
~G.K. Chesterton: What I Saw in America, Chap. 1 “What is America?”

I love his comment about how the question assumes that people out to destroy the US would balk at lying....
 

raharris1973

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Related to this discussion, see law professor Jonathan Turley's article in Washington Post:

Use link for full article
https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...but-it-would-be-legal/?utm_term=.a23e5a682917

Headline below-

Trump’s ‘extreme vetting’ is harsh, but it would be legal

It might not be politically popular — or logistically workable — but the courts probably wouldn't stand in his way.

By Jonathan Turley August 16 Follow @jonathanturley
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.
 
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