Would Senator Chuck Schumer accept Teddy Roosevelt’s words? Schumer is an anti-American with an agenda that does not include Americans. TR was an American who thought as every regular man in America thought at the time. America first! I bet nobody in the world could get Schumer to say: “America first!” Too many others come before US. There is a well-played quote from Theodore Roosevelt, which expressed his views on immigration and immigrants. Roosevelt felt very similar to regular Americans today about this matter. Of course, back then in the early 1900’s it was not such a delicate subject. Popular sentiment was that both Americans and America were not only OK; we were special. It was a necessary fact of life. Roosevelt’s posture was quite easy to say and easy to understand. He felt that immigrants should assimilate, become loyal Americans, and speak English. Case closed! Amen! Though often attributed to a 1907 speech, these words from then former President Roosevelt were not written until January 3, 1919 in a letter to the President of the American Defense Society. Shortly afterwards, the speech was read publicly at a meeting on January 5, 1919. Roosevelt died the next day, on January 6, 1919. It can be argued that Roosevelt’s dying thoughts on official matters were on immigration and its importance to the country. As most of us know, unlike his more famous fifth cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States and at the time, the youngest to ever occupy the Oval Office. Ironically, Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of Franklin D., was TR’s niece. TR had been Vice President to President William McKinley when in 1901 McKinley was assassinated. At that time, the young Roosevelt took over at age 42. As an aside, at age 43 President John F. Kennedy was the youngest to ever be elected President. The actual text from Theodore Roosevelt’s letter is below: “We should insist that if the immigrant who comes here does in good faith become an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed or birth-place or origin. “But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn’t doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. . . We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.” Could President TR have made himself any more clear that America is for Americans, not foreigners. Some other famous Teddy Roosevelt quotes on immigration include the following: “Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or to leave the country… English should be the only language taught or used in the public schools.” Roosevelt gave this statement to the Kansas City Star in 1918. “We can have no “50-50″ allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.” “We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thousands of immigrants merely as industrial assets while they remain social outcasts and menaces any more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black man merely as an industrial asset and not as a human being. We cannot afford to build a big industrial plant and herd men and women about it without care for their welfare. We cannot afford to permit squalid overcrowding or the kind of living system which makes impossible the decencies and necessities of life. We cannot afford the low wage rates and the merely seasonal industries which mean the sacrifice of both individual and family life and morals to the industrial machinery. We cannot afford to leave American mines, munitions plants, and general resources in the hands of alien workmen, alien to America and even likely to be made hostile to America by machinations such as have recently been provided in the case of the two foreign embassies in Washington. We cannot afford to run the risk of having in time of war men working on our railways or working in our munition plants who would in the name of duty to their own foreign countries bring destruction to us. Recent events have shown us that incitements to sabotage and strikes are in the view of at least two of the great foreign powers of Europe within their definition of neutral practices. What would be done to us in the name of war if these things are done to us in the name of neutrality?” In his book, On America, TR captures the sentiments of all patriotic Americans. “The foreign-born population of this country must be an Americanized population – no other kind can fight the battles of America either in war or peace. “It must talk the language of its native-born fellow-citizens, it must possess American citizenship and American ideals. It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in word and deed and must show that in very fact it has renounced allegiance to every prince, potentate, or foreign government. “It must be maintained on an American standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in important plants and at critical times. None of these objects can be secured as long as we have immigrant colonies, ghettos, and immigrant sections, and above all they cannot be assured so long as we consider the immigrant only as an industrial asset. “The immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them. “The policy of “Let alone” which we have hitherto pursued is thoroughly vicious from two stand-points. By this policy we have permitted the immigrants, and too often the native-born laborers as well, to suffer injustice. Moreover, by this policy we have failed to impress upon the immigrant and upon the native-born as well that they are expected to do justice as well as to receive justice… that they are expected to be heartily and actively and single-mindedly loyal to the flag no less than to benefit by living under it. “ As a final quote for this book, to set the stage for an America first and Americans first immigration plan, let’s examine this final quote in this book from Theodore Roosevelt: “The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else….” We would do well to include as many of Roosevelt’s principles in any plan adopted as any plan should be as Roosevelt would have it: “For Americans First.” This Chapter sets the stage for the rest of this book and how it is more than feasible to have an immigration plan that benefits Americans more than foreign nationals. Just as Theodore Roosevelt was a regular and good American, his thoughts and words, not the thoughts and words of faux Americans such as Chuck Schumer and the gang of eight tyrants, should be the guiding principles for how we fashion our future comprehensible and sane immigration policies. Roosevelt did not complain about the laws, he enforced the laws. If our current administration and the administrations before and after Reagan enforced the laws already on the books, perhaps a 1200 page odyssey bill would not be what the progressive socialists in Congress think we now need. America in the early twentieth century was not plagued as badly as today by crooked politicians whose selfishness was unabated by a countervailing force. President Theodore Roosevelt was a true American and he was the countervailing force against the socialist progressive activists in Europe and in the US. Moreover, the American people were better schooled on history in Roosevelt’s time and they understood its consequences on their lives. They also understood the meaning of tyranny. Therefore, the notion of giving people who had broken US laws a free pass and free lodging and free food was an idea Roosevelt would never believe could happen in his America. Yet, in some ways, Roosevelt is chronicled as a progressive himself. But, he was not a communist or a leftist socialist radical interested in disrupting the Founders’ America. TR’s philosophy was a far cry from the progressive-socialists-on-steroids Alinsky-Obama model of today. In fact, in 1912, TR’s Progressive Party (“Bull Moose”) ran against Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party. So, unlike some popular conservatives, one in particular with whom I most often agree, I happen to like TR as a great learner and an honest broker of the truth as he understood it at the time. TR did a lot of good for America, and his thoughts on immigration are about the best I have seen. I think that if TR were alive today, he would be more of a libertarian than a progressive. TR would be 100% against the gang of eight tyrants’ amnesty or any amnesty. He would have said: “Get a job!” If he could have gotten the great group the Silhouettes, to sing the song, it would be sung throughout America. It would have become as patriotic of a theme as “It’s a grand ole flag!” America is for Americans!
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 03:48:32 +0000
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