Immigration – an issue that’s been part of American society since the 1800’s, if not earlier. America was always considered a safe haven from persecution by totalitarian regimes – it was also seen as a “land of opportunity” by those expanding business and commerce. Immigrant labor was historically cheap labor and plentiful labor. Immigrant labor was labor no one else was willing to do (pick fruit and vegetables, clean toilets, build roads) – and with the majority of immigrants landing with virtually nothing to their names, any labor that paid a wage was decent labor.
Many have said the peak of the immigration wave to America was during World War 2 when potential workers were either drafted into the services or hired to work in defense plants. What that left was an enormous gap in the non-war effort labor force, one that needed filling urgently. It was also a period where illegal immigration to the U.S. skyrocketed because jobs paid better than they did in their original countries.
By the end of World War 2 America was faced with another issue; the vast number of displaced persons whose homes were obliterated by the war were flocking to the U.S by the promise of a better life. So what America was facing was now a glut of labor; returning veterans were now eager to join the workforce again and the wave of displaced persons, many highly educated who would be an asset to the country were now in competition for jobs.
So now it was a dilemma with no easy solution in sight. The question, as is pointed out in this program, was should the quota for immigration be increased. It made for lively debate as the subject became a hot button issues for years and decades to come.
No easy answers then and certainly no plausible solutions now. Illegal immigration has seen massive crackdowns over the years, but it’s still a problem that won’t go away, now made worse by the fact that the vast majority of those “illegal immigrants” have been raising families, paying taxes and are law-abiding citizens. The wrong-headed solution has been to stage mass deportations with little concern but rather to reach quotas and ruin lives in the process.
In 1947 the issue of quotas was different – in 1947 it was an issue of limiting how many people could emigrate to the U.S. in a given year – should that number be increased, left the same or be reduced?
Certainly different sets of circumstances but it was all about one thing; a search for a better life – in 1947 it was offering one.
Here is that discussion on immigration as presented by The Mutual Network program Northwestern Reviewing Stand from February 23, 1947.
