Freedom Files №4
More than a week after his famous farewell address and on the eve of leaving the White House, Ronald Reagan gave his last public speech as President of the United States. He was presenting his Secretary of State and lifelong public servant George Schultz the Presidential Medal of Freedom. President Reagan wanted to leave the world and all future generations with a clear-eyed vision of what is truly exceptional about America. Reagan said:
Now, tomorrow is a special day for me. I’m going to receive my gold watch. And since this is the last speech that I will give as President, I think it’s fitting to leave one final thought, an observation about a country which I love. It was stated best in a letter I received not long ago. A man wrote me and said: “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.’’
Yes, the torch of Lady Liberty symbolizes our freedom and represents our heritage, the compact with our parents, our grandparents, and our ancestors. It is that lady who gives us our great and special place in the world. For it’s the great life force of each generation of new Americans that guarantees that America’s triumph shall continue unsurpassed into the next century and beyond. Other countries may seek to compete with us; but in one vital area, as a beacon of freedom and opportunity that draws the people of the world, no country on Earth comes close.
This, I believe, is one of the most important sources of America’s greatness. We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.
America is unlike any other country in the world. As of 2022, the foreign-born population in the United States is estimated to be approximately 46.2 million people. The next country does not even come close — Germany has a foreign-born population of 16 million people. While the United States has a rich history of vacillating between inclusive and racist views on immigration and naturalization, for the most part, we have trended toward more openness.
In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo granted citizenship to ~80,000 Mexican residents in the ceded territories.
The Alaska Purchase in 1867 granted citizenship to ~33,000 Russian settlers and indigenous peoples in the Alaskan territory.
The 14th Amendment in 1868 granted citizenship to ~4 million formerly enslaved African Americans and gave birthright citizenship to their descendants and anyone else who is born here.
The Jones Act of 1917 granted citizenship to ~1.2 million residents of Puerto Rico.
The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 granted citizenship to about 125,000 Native Americans.
And the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, signed by President Reagan, granted citizenship to approximately 3 million undocumented immigrants.
President Reagan was debating former Vice President Walter Mondale in the 1984 Presidential Debates when the moderator asked Reagan about immigration. The President said, “…it is true our borders are out of control, it is also true that this has been a situation on our borders back through a number of Administrations. And I supported this bill, I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and who have lived here, even though some time back they may have entered illegally.”
Prior to becoming America’s first President, George Washington, captured the spirit of our country’s intended inclusivity at its founding in a letter he wrote in 1783, “The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent & respectable Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights & privileges, if by decency & propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.”
Between Presidents Washington, Reagan, and today, America has not always made forward progress on inclusivity of immigrants and non-white inhabitants and at times we have fallen back to more racist and xenophobic approaches. One of the most notable is the Immigration Act of 1924 which established quotas based on the 1890 census, heavily favoring white immigrants from Northern and Western Europe while restricting those from Southern and Eastern Europe, Jews, Arabs, and Asians. The quotas were explicitly designed to make the US a predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon, “Christian” nation. Hitler praised America’s 1924 race-based restrictions on immigration in his 1925 book Mein Kampf.
Another dark time in American history was when President Andrew Jackson signed and implemented the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which was the forced expulsion of more than 60,000 Native Americans from their homes and land, mainly in the Southern U.S., into the western territories. This ethnic cleansing resulted in the deaths of ~10,000–17,000 indigenous people widely known as the “Trail of Tears.” President Jackson viewed non-white people as “savages” and “inferior.” His expressed intent of removing Native Americans from their homes was for them to “cast off their savage habits and become an interesting‚ civilized‚ and Christian community,” but what he actually did was drive them to their death and near extinction.
Unless you are Native American, every American today descended from an immigrant family. For some of us, our ancestors were enslaved and forced to come to America. For some of us, our ancestors sought out America for freedom — to escape religious persecution or to seek prosperity or both. It is good to remember that the legality of your immigration status and mine is being determined within a system created by people who “illegally” settled here without documentation — conquering, decimating, and displacing the 5 million to 10 million indigenous people who were already living here. Recently, a former U.S. President and Presidential candidate called undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers “savage monsters.” It is no surprise that this is the same man who took down the Norman Rockwell painting of Working on the Statue of Liberty that hung continuously in the Oval Office through the Clinton, Bush, and Obama presidencies and replaced it with a painting of President Andrew Jackson.
