Father Imprisoned for Genital Cutting Is Deported to Ethiopia
Khalid Adem in 2006.
JASON BRAVERMAN / GWINNETT DAILY POST, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
By DANIEL VICTOR
MARCH 14, 2017
A man who in 2006 became the first person in the United States to be convicted of female genital cutting was deported on Monday to his home country, Ethiopia, after serving 10 years in prison, federal authorities said.
The man, Khalid Adem, 41, used scissors to remove the clitoris of his 2-year-old daughter in his family’s Atlanta-area apartment in 2001, prosecutors in Gwinnett County, Ga., said. He was convicted of aggravated battery and cruelty to children.
The case led to a state law prohibiting the practice, which was already prohibited by a federal law and is a common social ritual in parts of the world but is broadly condemned.
“A young girl’s life has been forever scarred by this horrible crime,” Sean W. Gallagher, a field office director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The elimination of female genital mutilation/cutting has broad implications for the health and human rights of women and girls, as well as societies at large.”
The World Health Organization has estimated that more than 200 million girls and women have been cut in 30 countries, mostly in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The procedure, which involves the removal of parts of the genitalia, is typically performed on girls before they turn 15 and leads to a wide range of lifelong health consequences, including chronic infection, childbirth complications, psychological trauma and pain during urination, menstruation and intercourse.
The practice is far from unheard-of in the United States. Though it is illegal under federal law, about half a million women have undergone the procedure or are likely to be subjected to it, according to a 2012 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Cutting has presented new challenges for doctors as the number of African immigrants in the United States has grown. In 2013, lawmakers extended the federal ban to include “vacation cutting,” in which American-born girls are sent to other countries to have the cutting performed.
I.C.E. has arrested at least 380 people and has deported 785 known or suspected human rights violators since 2003, the agency said.
In 2016, Unicef said the rate of cuttings had declined over three decades, with adolescents about one-third less likely to be cut than 30 years ago.
Customs are changing in some counties where the practice used to be widespread. In 2015, a doctor in Egypt became the first person in that country to be convicted of the practice. Somalia’s prime minister signed a petition in 2016 that called for his government to ban it. The country of Georgia outlawed genital cutting in January.
Executive Order Protecting The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States
EXECUTIVE ORDER
- - - - - - -
PROTECTING THE NATION FROM FOREIGN TERRORIST ENTRY INTO THE UNITED STATES
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the
laws of the United States of America, including the Immigration and
Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1101 et seq., and section 301 of title
3, United States Code, and to protect the Nation from terrorist
activities by foreign nationals admitted to the United States, it is
hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Policy and Purpose. (a) It is the policy of the United
States to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks, including those
committed by foreign nationals. The screening and vetting protocols and
procedures associated with the visa-issuance process and the United
States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) play a crucial role in
detecting foreign nationals who may commit, aid, or support acts of
terrorism and in preventing those individuals from entering the United
States. It is therefore the policy of the United States to improve the
screening and vetting protocols and procedures associated with the
visa-issuance process and the USRAP.
(b) On January 27, 2017, to implement this policy, I issued Executive
Order 13769 (Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the
United States).
(i) Among other actions, Executive Order 13769 suspended for 90 days
the entry of certain aliens from seven countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya,
Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. These are countries that had already
been identified as presenting heightened concerns about terrorism and
travel to the United States. Specifically, the suspension applied to
countries referred to in, or designated under, section 217(a)(12) of the
INA, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12), in which Congress restricted use of the Visa
Waiver Program for nationals of, and aliens recently present in, (A)
Iraq or Syria, (B) any country designated by the Secretary of State as a
state sponsor of terrorism (currently Iran, Syria, and Sudan), and (C)
any other country designated as a country of concern by the Secretary of
Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the
Director of National Intelligence.
In 2016, the Secretary of Homeland
Security designated Libya, Somalia, and Yemen as additional countries of
concern for travel purposes, based on consideration of three statutory
factors related to terrorism and national security: "
(I) whether the
presence of an alien in the country or area increases the likelihood
that the alien is a credible threat to the national security of the
United States;
(II) whether a foreign terrorist organization has a
significant presence in the country or area; and
(III) whether the
country or area is a safe haven for terrorists." 8 U.S.C.
1187(a)(12)(D)(ii). Additionally, Members of Congress have expressed
concerns about screening and vetting procedures following recent
terrorist attacks in this country and in Europe.
(ii) In ordering the temporary suspension of entry described in
subsection (b)(i) of this section, I exercised my authority under
Article II of the Constitution and under section 212(f) of the INA,
which provides in relevant part: "Whenever the President finds that the
entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States
would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by
proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend
the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or
nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may
deem to be appropriate." 8 U.S.C. 1182(f).
Under these authorities, I
determined that, for a brief period of 90 days, while existing screening
and vetting procedures were under review, the entry into the United
States of certain aliens from the seven identified countries -- each
afflicted by terrorism in a manner that compromised the ability of the
United States to rely on normal decision-making procedures about travel
to the United States -- would be detrimental to the interests of the
United States. Nonetheless, I permitted the Secretary of State and the
Secretary of Homeland Security to grant case-by-case waivers when they
determined that it was in the national interest to do so.
(iii) Executive Order 13769 also suspended the USRAP for 120 days.
Terrorist groups have sought to infiltrate several nations through
refugee programs. Accordingly, I temporarily suspended the USRAP
pending a review of our procedures for screening and vetting refugees.
Nonetheless, I permitted the Secretary of State and the Secretary of
Homeland Security to jointly grant case-by-case waivers when they
determined that it was in the national interest to do so.
(iv) Executive Order 13769 did not provide a basis for discriminating
for or against members of any particular religion. While that order
allowed for prioritization of refugee claims from members of persecuted
religious minority groups, that priority applied to refugees from every
nation, including those in which Islam is a minority religion, and it
applied to minority sects within a religion. That order was not
motivated by animus toward any religion, but was instead intended to
protect the ability of religious minorities -- whoever they are and
wherever they reside -- to avail themselves of the USRAP in light of
their particular challenges and circumstances.
(c) The implementation of Executive Order 13769 has been delayed by
litigation. Most significantly, enforcement of critical provisions of
that order has been temporarily halted by court orders that apply
nationwide and extend even to foreign nationals with no prior or
substantial connection to the United States. On February 9, 2017, the
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit declined to stay or
narrow one such order pending the outcome of further judicial
proceedings, while noting that the "political branches are far better
equipped to make appropriate distinctions" about who should be covered
by a suspension of entry or of refugee admissions.
(d) Nationals from the countries previously identified under section
217(a)(12) of the INA warrant additional scrutiny in connection with our
immigration policies because the conditions in these countries present
heightened threats. Each of these countries is a state sponsor of
terrorism, has been significantly compromised by terrorist
organizations, or contains active conflict zones. Any of these
circumstances diminishes the foreign government's willingness or ability
to share or validate important information about individuals seeking to
travel to the United States. Moreover, the significant presence in
each of these countries of terrorist organizations, their members, and
others exposed to those organizations increases the chance that
conditions will be exploited to enable terrorist operatives or
sympathizers to travel to the United States. Finally, once foreign
nationals from these countries are admitted to the United States, it is
often difficult to remove them, because many of these countries
typically delay issuing, or refuse to issue, travel documents.
(e) The following are brief descriptions, taken in part from the
Department of State's Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 (June 2016), of
some of the conditions in six of the previously designated countries
that demonstrate why their nationals continue to present heightened
risks to the security of the United States:
(i) Iran. Iran has been designated as a state sponsor of terrorism
since 1984 and continues to support various terrorist groups, including
Hizballah, Hamas, and terrorist groups in Iraq. Iran has also been
linked to support for al-Qa'ida and has permitted al-Qa'ida to transport
funds and fighters through Iran to Syria and South Asia. Iran does not
cooperate with the United States in counterterrorism efforts.
(ii) Libya. Libya is an active combat zone, with hostilities between
the internationally recognized government and its rivals. In many
parts of the country, security and law enforcement functions are
provided by armed militias rather than state institutions. Violent
extremist groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS),
have exploited these conditions to expand their presence in the country.
The Libyan government provides some cooperation with the United
States' counterterrorism efforts, but it is unable to secure thousands
of miles of its land and maritime borders, enabling the illicit flow of
weapons, migrants, and foreign terrorist fighters. The United States
Embassy in Libya suspended its operations in 2014.
(iii) Somalia. Portions of Somalia have been terrorist safe havens.
Al-Shabaab, an al-Qa'ida-affiliated terrorist group, has operated in
the country for years and continues to plan and mount operations within
Somalia and in neighboring countries. Somalia has porous borders, and
most countries do not recognize Somali identity documents. The Somali
government cooperates with the United States in some counterterrorism
operations but does not have the capacity to sustain military pressure
on or to investigate suspected terrorists.
(iv) Sudan. Sudan has been designated as a state sponsor of
terrorism since 1993 because of its support for international terrorist
groups, including Hizballah and Hamas. Historically, Sudan provided
safe havens for al-Qa'ida and other terrorist groups to meet and train.
Although Sudan's support to al-Qa'ida has ceased and it provides some
cooperation with the United States' counterterrorism efforts, elements
of core al-Qa'ida and ISIS-linked terrorist groups remain active in the
country.
(v) Syria. Syria has been designated as a state sponsor of
terrorism since 1979. The Syrian government is engaged in an ongoing
military conflict against ISIS and others for control of portions of the
country. At the same time, Syria continues to support other terrorist
groups. It has allowed or encouraged extremists to pass through its
territory to enter Iraq. ISIS continues to attract foreign fighters to
Syria and to use its base in Syria to plot or encourage attacks around
the globe, including in the United States. The United States Embassy in
Syria suspended its operations in 2012. Syria does not cooperate with
the United States' counterterrorism efforts.
(vi) Yemen. Yemen is the site of an ongoing conflict between the
incumbent government and the Houthi-led opposition. Both ISIS and a
second group, al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), have exploited
this conflict to expand their presence in Yemen and to carry out
hundreds of attacks. Weapons and other materials smuggled across
Yemen's porous borders are used to finance AQAP and other terrorist
activities. In 2015, the United States Embassy in Yemen suspended its
operations, and embassy staff were relocated out of the country. Yemen
has been supportive of, but has not been able to cooperate fully with,
the United States in counterterrorism efforts.
(f) In light of the conditions in these six countries, until the
assessment of current screening and vetting procedures required by
section 2 of this order is completed, the risk of erroneously permitting
entry of a national of one of these countries who intends to commit
terrorist acts or otherwise harm the national security of the United
States is unacceptably high. Accordingly, while that assessment is
ongoing, I am imposing a temporary pause on the entry of nationals from
Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, subject to categorical
exceptions and case-by-case waivers, as described in section 3 of this
order.
(g) Iraq presents a special case. Portions of Iraq remain active
combat zones. Since 2014, ISIS has had dominant influence over
significant territory in northern and central Iraq. Although that
influence has been significantly reduced due to the efforts and
sacrifices of the Iraqi government and armed forces, working along with a
United States-led coalition, the ongoing conflict has impacted the
Iraqi government's capacity to secure its borders and to identify
fraudulent travel documents. Nevertheless, the close cooperative
relationship between the United States and the democratically elected
Iraqi government, the strong United States diplomatic presence in Iraq,
the significant presence of United States forces in Iraq, and Iraq's
commitment to combat ISIS justify different treatment for Iraq. In
particular, those Iraqi government forces that have fought to regain
more than half of the territory previously dominated by ISIS have shown
steadfast determination and earned enduring respect as they battle an
armed group that is the common enemy of Iraq and the United States. In
addition, since Executive Order 13769 was issued, the Iraqi government
has expressly undertaken steps to enhance travel documentation,
information sharing, and the return of Iraqi nationals subject to final
orders of removal. Decisions about issuance of visas or granting
admission to Iraqi nationals should be subjected to additional scrutiny
to determine if applicants have connections with ISIS or other terrorist
organizations, or otherwise pose a risk to either national security or
public safety.
(h) Recent history shows that some of those who have entered the
United States through our immigration system have proved to be threats
to our national security. Since 2001, hundreds of persons born abroad
have been convicted of terrorism-related crimes in the United States.
They have included not just persons who came here legally on visas but
also individuals who first entered the country as refugees. For
example, in January 2013, two Iraqi nationals admitted to the United
States as refugees in 2009 were sentenced to 40 years and to life in
prison, respectively, for multiple terrorism-related offenses. And in
October 2014, a native of Somalia who had been brought to the United
States as a child refugee and later became a naturalized United States
citizen was sentenced to 30 years in prison for attempting to use a
weapon of mass destruction as part of a plot to detonate a bomb at a
crowded Christmas-tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon. The
Attorney General has reported to me that more than 300 persons who
entered the United States as refugees are currently the subjects of
counterterrorism investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
(i) Given the foregoing, the entry into the United States of foreign
nationals who may commit, aid, or support acts of terrorism remains a
matter of grave concern. In light of the Ninth Circuit's observation
that the political branches are better suited to determine the
appropriate scope of any suspensions than are the courts, and in order
to avoid spending additional time pursuing litigation, I am revoking
Executive Order 13769 and replacing it with this order, which expressly
excludes from the suspensions categories of aliens that have prompted
judicial concerns and which clarifies or refines the approach to certain
other issues or categories of affected aliens.
Sec. 2. Temporary Suspension of Entry for Nationals of Countries of
Particular Concern During Review Period. (a) The Secretary of Homeland
Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director
of National Intelligence, shall conduct a worldwide review to identify
whether, and if so what, additional information will be needed from each
foreign country to adjudicate an application by a national of that
country for a visa, admission, or other benefit under the INA
(adjudications) in order to determine that the individual is not a
security or public-safety threat. The Secretary of Homeland Security
may conclude that certain information is needed from particular
countries even if it is not needed from every country.
(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the
Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, shall
submit to the President a report on the results of the worldwide review
described in subsection (a) of this section, including the Secretary of
Homeland Security's determination of the information needed from each
country for adjudications and a list of countries that do not provide
adequate information, within 20 days of the effective date of this
order. The Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide a copy of the
report to the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Director
of National Intelligence.
(c) To temporarily reduce investigative burdens on relevant agencies
during the review period described in subsection (a) of this section, to
ensure the proper review and maximum utilization of available resources
for the screening and vetting of foreign nationals, to ensure that
adequate standards are established to prevent infiltration by foreign
terrorists, and in light of the national security concerns referenced in
section 1 of this order, I hereby proclaim, pursuant to sections 212(f)
and 215(a) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and 1185(a), that the
unrestricted entry into the United States of nationals of Iran, Libya,
Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen would be detrimental to the interests
of the United States. I therefore direct that the entry into the United
States of nationals of those six countries be suspended for 90 days
from the effective date of this order, subject to the limitations,
waivers, and exceptions set forth in sections 3 and 12 of this order.
(d) Upon submission of the report described in subsection (b) of this
section regarding the information needed from each country for
adjudications, the Secretary of State shall request that all foreign
governments that do not supply such information regarding their
nationals begin providing it within 50 days of notification.
(e) After the period described in subsection (d) of this section
expires, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the
Secretary of State and the Attorney General, shall submit to the
President a list of countries recommended for inclusion in a
Presidential proclamation that would prohibit the entry of appropriate
categories of foreign nationals of countries that have not provided the
information requested until they do so or until the Secretary of
Homeland Security certifies that the country has an adequate plan to do
so, or has adequately shared information through other means. The
Secretary of State, the Attorney General, or the Secretary of Homeland
Security may also submit to the President the names of additional
countries for which any of them recommends other lawful restrictions or
limitations deemed necessary for the security or welfare of the United
States.
(f) At any point after the submission of the list described in
subsection (e) of this section, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in
consultation with the Secretary of State and the Attorney General, may
submit to the President the names of any additional countries
recommended for similar treatment, as well as the names of any countries
that they recommend should be removed from the scope of a proclamation
described in subsection (e) of this section.
(g) The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security
shall submit to the President a joint report on the progress in
implementing this order within 60 days of the effective date of this
order, a second report within 90 days of the effective date of this
order, a third report within 120 days of the effective date of this
order, and a fourth report within 150 days of the effective date of this
order.
Sec. 3. Scope and Implementation of Suspension.
(a) Scope. Subject to the exceptions set forth in subsection (b) of
this section and any waiver under subsection (c) of this section, the
suspension of entry pursuant to section 2 of this order shall apply only
to foreign nationals of the designated countries who:
(i) are outside the United States on the effective date of this order;
(ii) did not have a valid visa at 5:00 p.m., eastern standard time on January 27, 2017; and
(iii) do not have a valid visa on the effective date of this order.
(b) Exceptions. The suspension of entry pursuant to section 2 of this order shall not apply to:
(i) any lawful permanent resident of the United States;
(ii) any foreign national who is admitted to or paroled into the United States on or after the effective date of this order;
(iii) any foreign national who has a document other than a visa, valid
on the effective date of this order or issued on any date thereafter,
that permits him or her to travel to the United States and seek entry or
admission, such as an advance parole document;
(iv) any dual national of a country designated under section 2 of
this order when the individual is traveling on a passport issued by a
non-designated country;
(v) any foreign national traveling on a diplomatic or
diplomatic-type visa, North Atlantic Treaty Organization visa, C-2 visa
for travel to the United Nations, or G-1, G-2, G-3, or G-4 visa; or
(vi) any foreign national who has been granted asylum; any refugee
who has already been admitted to the United States; or any individual
who has been granted withholding of removal, advance parole, or
protection under the Convention Against Torture.
(c) Waivers. Notwithstanding the suspension of entry pursuant to
section 2 of this order, a consular officer, or, as appropriate, the
Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), or the
Commissioner's delegee, may, in the consular officer's or the CBP
official's discretion, decide on a case-by-case basis to authorize the
issuance of a visa to, or to permit the entry of, a foreign national for
whom entry is otherwise suspended if the foreign national has
demonstrated to the officer's satisfaction that denying entry during the
suspension period would cause undue hardship, and that his or her entry
would not pose a threat to national security and would be in the
national interest. Unless otherwise specified by the Secretary of
Homeland Security, any waiver issued by a consular officer as part of
the visa issuance process will be effective both for the issuance of a
visa and any subsequent entry on that visa, but will leave all other
requirements for admission or entry unchanged. Case-by-case waivers
could be appropriate in circumstances such as the following:
(i) the foreign national has previously been admitted to the United
States for a continuous period of work, study, or other long-term
activity, is outside the United States on the effective date of this
order, seeks to reenter the United States to resume that activity, and
the denial of reentry during the suspension period would impair that
activity;
(ii) the foreign national has previously established significant
contacts with the United States but is outside the United States on the
effective date of this order for work, study, or other lawful activity;
(iii) the foreign national seeks to enter the United States for
significant business or professional obligations and the denial of entry
during the suspension period would impair those obligations;
(iv) the foreign national seeks to enter the United States to visit
or reside with a close family member (e.g., a spouse, child, or parent)
who is a United States citizen, lawful permanent resident, or alien
lawfully admitted on a valid nonimmigrant visa, and the denial of entry
during the suspension period would cause undue hardship;
(v)the foreign national is an infant, a young child or adoptee, an
individual needing urgent medical care, or someone whose entry is
otherwise justified by the special circumstances of the case;
(vi) the foreign national has been employed by, or on behalf of, the
United States Government (or is an eligible dependent of such an
employee) and the employee can document that he or she has provided
faithful and valuable service to the United States Government;
(vii) the foreign national is traveling for purposes related to an
international organization designated under the International
Organizations Immunities Act (IOIA), 22 U.S.C. 288 et seq., traveling
for purposes of conducting meetings or business with the United States
Government, or traveling to conduct business on behalf of an
international organization not designated under the IOIA;
(viii) the foreign national is a landed Canadian immigrant who applies for a visa at a location within Canada; or
(ix) the foreign national is traveling as a United States Government-sponsored exchange visitor.
Sec. 4. Additional Inquiries Related to Nationals of Iraq. An
application by any Iraqi national for a visa, admission, or other
immigration benefit should be subjected to thorough review, including,
as appropriate, consultation with a designee of the Secretary of Defense
and use of the additional information that has been obtained in the
context of the close U.S.-Iraqi security partnership, since Executive
Order 13769 was issued, concerning individuals suspected of ties to ISIS
or other terrorist organizations and individuals coming from
territories controlled or formerly controlled by ISIS. Such review
shall include consideration of whether the applicant has connections
with ISIS or other terrorist organizations or with territory that is or
has been under the dominant influence of ISIS, as well as any other
information bearing on whether the applicant may be a threat to commit
acts of terrorism or otherwise threaten the national security or public
safety of the United States.
Sec. 5. Implementing Uniform Screening and Vetting Standards for All
Immigration Programs. (a) The Secretary of State, the Attorney
General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of
National Intelligence shall implement a program, as part of the process
for adjudications, to identify individuals who seek to enter the United
States on a fraudulent basis, who support terrorism, violent extremism,
acts of violence toward any group or class of people within the United
States, or who present a risk of causing harm subsequent to their entry.
This program shall include the development of a uniform baseline for
screening and vetting standards and procedures, such as in-person
interviews; a database of identity documents proffered by applicants to
ensure that duplicate documents are not used by multiple applicants;
amended application forms that include questions aimed at identifying
fraudulent answers and malicious intent; a mechanism to ensure that
applicants are who they claim to be; a mechanism to assess whether
applicants may commit, aid, or support any kind of violent, criminal, or
terrorist acts after entering the United States; and any other
appropriate means for ensuring the proper collection of all information
necessary for a rigorous evaluation of all grounds of inadmissibility or
grounds for the denial of other immigration benefits.
(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security, in conjunction with the
Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Director of National
Intelligence, shall submit to the President an initial report on the
progress of the program described in subsection (a) of this section
within 60 days of the effective date of this order, a second report
within 100 days of the effective date of this order, and a third report
within 200 days of the effective date of this order.
Sec. 6. Realignment of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for Fiscal
Year 2017. (a) The Secretary of State shall suspend travel of refugees
into the United States under the USRAP, and the Secretary of Homeland
Security shall suspend decisions on applications for refugee status, for
120 days after the effective date of this order, subject to waivers
pursuant to subsection (c) of this section. During the 120-day period,
the Secretary of State, in conjunction with the Secretary of Homeland
Security and in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence,
shall review the USRAP application and adjudication processes to
determine what additional procedures should be used to ensure that
individuals seeking admission as refugees do not pose a threat to the
security and welfare of the United States, and shall implement such
additional procedures. The suspension described in this subsection
shall not apply to refugee applicants who, before the effective date of
this order, have been formally scheduled for transit by the Department
of State. The Secretary of State shall resume travel of refugees into
the United States under the USRAP 120 days after the effective date of
this order, and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall resume making
decisions on applications for refugee status only for stateless persons
and nationals of countries for which the Secretary of State, the
Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of National
Intelligence have jointly determined that the additional procedures
implemented pursuant to this subsection are adequate to ensure the
security and welfare of the United States.
(b) Pursuant to section 212(f) of the INA, I hereby proclaim that the
entry of more than 50,000 refugees in fiscal year 2017 would be
detrimental to the interests of the United States, and thus suspend any
entries in excess of that number until such time as I determine that
additional entries would be in the national interest.
(c) Notwithstanding the temporary suspension imposed pursuant to
subsection (a) of this section, the Secretary of State and the Secretary
of Homeland Security may jointly determine to admit individuals to the
United States as refugees on a case-by-case basis, in their discretion,
but only so long as they determine that the entry of such individuals as
refugees is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the
security or welfare of the United States, including in circumstances
such as the following: the individual's entry would enable the United
States to conform its conduct to a preexisting international agreement
or arrangement, or the denial of entry would cause undue hardship.
(d) It is the policy of the executive branch that, to the extent
permitted by law and as practicable, State and local jurisdictions be
granted a role in the process of determining the placement or settlement
in their jurisdictions of aliens eligible to be admitted to the United
States as refugees. To that end, the Secretary of State shall examine
existing law to determine the extent to which, consistent with
applicable law, State and local jurisdictions may have greater
involvement in the process of determining the placement or resettlement
of refugees in their jurisdictions, and shall devise a proposal to
lawfully promote such involvement.
Sec. 7. Rescission of Exercise of Authority Relating to the Terrorism
Grounds of Inadmissibility. The Secretary of State and the Secretary of
Homeland Security shall, in consultation with the Attorney General,
consider rescinding the exercises of authority permitted by section
212(d)(3)(B) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182(d)(3)(B), relating to the
terrorism grounds of inadmissibility, as well as any related
implementing directives or guidance.
Sec. 8. Expedited Completion of the Biometric Entry-Exit Tracking
System. (a) The Secretary of Homeland Security shall expedite the
completion and implementation of a biometric entry exit tracking system
for in-scope travelers to the United States, as recommended by the
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.
(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security shall submit to the President
periodic reports on the progress of the directive set forth in
subsection (a) of this section. The initial report shall be submitted
within 100 days of the effective date of this order, a second report
shall be submitted within 200 days of the effective date of this order,
and a third report shall be submitted within 365 days of the effective
date of this order. The Secretary of Homeland Security shall submit
further reports every 180 days thereafter until the system is fully
deployed and operational.
Sec. 9. Visa Interview Security. (a) The Secretary of State shall
immediately suspend the Visa Interview Waiver Program and ensure
compliance with section 222 of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1202, which requires
that all individuals seeking a nonimmigrant visa undergo an in-person
interview, subject to specific statutory exceptions. This suspension
shall not apply to any foreign national traveling on a diplomatic or
diplomatic-type visa, North Atlantic Treaty Organization visa, C-2 visa
for travel to the United Nations, or G-1, G-2, G-3, or G-4 visa;
traveling for purposes related to an international organization
designated under the IOIA; or traveling for purposes of conducting
meetings or business with the United States Government.
(b) To the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of
appropriations, the Secretary of State shall immediately expand the
Consular Fellows Program, including by substantially increasing the
number of Fellows, lengthening or making permanent the period of
service, and making language training at the Foreign Service Institute
available to Fellows for assignment to posts outside of their area of
core linguistic ability, to ensure that nonimmigrant visa-interview wait
times are not unduly affected.
Sec. 10. Visa Validity Reciprocity. The Secretary of State shall
review all nonimmigrant visa reciprocity agreements and arrangements to
ensure that they are, with respect to each visa classification, truly
reciprocal insofar as practicable with respect to validity period and
fees, as required by sections 221(c) and 281 of the INA, 8 U.S.C.
1201(c) and 1351, and other treatment. If another country does not
treat United States nationals seeking nonimmigrant visas in a truly
reciprocal manner, the Secretary of State shall adjust the visa validity
period, fee schedule, or other treatment to match the treatment of
United States nationals by that foreign country, to the extent
practicable.
Sec. 11. Transparency and Data Collection. (a) To be more
transparent with the American people and to implement more effectively
policies and practices that serve the national interest, the Secretary
of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Attorney General, shall,
consistent with applicable law and national security, collect and make
publicly available the following information:
(i) information regarding the number of foreign nationals in the
United States who have been charged with terrorism-related offenses
while in the United States; convicted of terrorism-related offenses
while in the United States; or removed from the United States based on
terrorism-related activity, affiliation with or provision of material
support to a terrorism-related organization, or any other
national-security-related reasons;
(ii) information regarding the number of foreign nationals in the
United States who have been radicalized after entry into the United
States and who have engaged in terrorism-related acts, or who have
provided material support to terrorism-related organizations in
countries that pose a threat to the United States;
(iii) information regarding the number and types of acts of
gender-based violence against women, including so-called "honor
killings," in the United States by foreign nationals; and
(iv) any other information relevant to public safety and security as
determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security or the Attorney
General, including information on the immigration status of foreign
nationals charged with major offenses.
(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security shall release the initial
report under subsection (a) of this section within 180 days of the
effective date of this order and shall include information for the
period from September 11, 2001, until the date of the initial report.
Subsequent reports shall be issued every 180 days thereafter and
reflect the period since the previous report.
Sec. 12. Enforcement. (a) The Secretary of State and the Secretary
of Homeland Security shall consult with appropriate domestic and
international partners, including countries and organizations, to ensure
efficient, effective, and appropriate implementation of the actions
directed in this order.
(b) In implementing this order, the Secretary of State and the
Secretary of Homeland Security shall comply with all applicable laws and
regulations, including, as appropriate, those providing an opportunity
for individuals to claim a fear of persecution or torture, such as the
credible fear determination for aliens covered by section 235(b)(1)(A)
of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1225(b)(1)(A).
(c) No immigrant or nonimmigrant visa issued before the effective date
of this order shall be revoked pursuant to this order.
(d) Any individual whose visa was marked revoked or marked canceled as
a result of Executive Order 13769 shall be entitled to a travel
document confirming that the individual is permitted to travel to the
United States and seek entry. Any prior cancellation or revocation of a
visa that was solely pursuant to Executive Order 13769 shall not be the
basis of inadmissibility for any future determination about entry or
admissibility.
(e) This order shall not apply to an individual who has been granted
asylum, to a refugee who has already been admitted to the United States,
or to an individual granted withholding of removal or protection under
the Convention Against Torture. Nothing in this order shall be
construed to limit the ability of an individual to seek asylum,
withholding of removal, or protection under the Convention Against
Torture, consistent with the laws of the United States.
Sec. 13. Revocation. Executive Order 13769 of January 27, 2017, is revoked as of the effective date of this order.
Sec. 14. Effective Date. This order is effective at 12:01 a.m., eastern daylight time on March 16, 2017.
Sec. 15. Severability. (a) If any provision of this order, or the
application of any provision to any person or circumstance, is held to
be invalid, the remainder of this order and the application of its other
provisions to any other persons or circumstances shall not be affected
thereby.
(b) If any provision of this order, or the application of any
provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be invalid because
of the lack of certain procedural requirements, the relevant executive
branch officials shall implement those procedural requirements.
Sec. 16. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and
Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or
benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by
any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or
entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
If you are 18 or older, you do have to carry your green card with you. Section 264(e) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (I.N.A.) requires all lawful permanent residents (LPRs) to have “at all times” official evidence of LPR status.
Failing to have your green card with you is a misdemeanor and if you are found guilty you can be fined up to $100 and put in jail for up to 30 days. (I.N.A. Section 264(e).) A copy is not good enough, because the law does not use the word “copy” or refer to “other evidence” of LPR status.
The official evidence of LPR status that most people eventually receive is an “alien registration receipt card,” also known as Form I-551 or, more commonly, a “green card.” Sometimes, people do not have their green card, but are already LPRs. For example, when somebody first arrives in the U.S. with an immigrant visa, they first receive an “I-551 stamp” in their passport. Weeks later, they receive the actual green card in the mail. In the time before receiving the green card in the mail, the LPR would have to carry his or her passport “at all times” or risk breaking the law.
If you decide to carry a copy of your green card instead of the original because you want to keep the original safe, you will be violating the law. Will you actually be stopped by immigration, prosecuted and fined or jailed for not having your original green card with you? It's unlikely. Like any other government agency, immigration authorities have limited resources and cannot spend precious government time and money on prosecuting people for not carrying their green card “at all times.”
But there have been cases where LPRs are detained or arrested during workplace enforcement actions for not having their green card on them. So to be on the safe side, and obey the law, you should actually carry your green card with you everywhere you go. And it probably goes without saying that if you will be traveling internationally, you should take your original green card with you to board a plane or boat back to the U.S. and to reenter the U.S. as an LPR.
A former Nasa engineer has been hired by taxi-hailing firm Uber to help its research into flying cars.
Mark Moore is joining Uber's Elevate division as its director of engineering for aviation.
Uber's
interest in flying cars was outlined in a White Paper in October, which
discussed vertical take-off and landing on-demand (VTOL) aviation.
It welcomed Mr Moore's appointment, adding its wider role was as a catalyst to the "growing VTOL ecosystem".
Uber is already investing in self-driving cars, with partnerships with Volvo and Daimler.
In its White Paper,
Uber said that on-demand aviation "has the potential to radically
improve urban mobility, giving people back time lost in their daily
commutes".
"Just as skyscrapers allowed cities to use limited land
more efficiently, urban air transportation will use three-dimensional
airspace to alleviate transportation congestion on the ground."
It envisaged a network of small, electric aircraft that would take off and land vertically.
Mr Moore explored a similar concept in a paper published while he was at Nasa.
He
said that electric propulsion was a "potential game changing
technology" for aircraft, adding that the only thing holding it back was
current battery storage.
Slovakian company Aeromobil is one of several working on a prototype flying car, which it is aiming to commercialise this year.
Trump’s anti-immigration playbook was written 100 years ago. In Boston.
How a trio of Harvard-educated blue bloods led a crusade to keep the “undesirables” out and make America great again.
By Neil Swide
I’ve fallen into a pattern lately. Time
and again, I find myself looking up from the reading I’ve been immersed
in and calling over to my wife, “You’ll never believe what he said now.”
The phrases have jumped out at me, one after
another. The vow to “drain that great swamp.” The prediction that “the
race which has made our country great will pass away.” The promise to
beat back the “invading hostile army” of “criminal immigrants” that are
the “mentally or physically defective” dregs of their homelands and “not
the stuff of which patriots are made.”
Maybe sentiments like these have also jumped
out at you, in the news about immigration you’ve been consuming. The
difference is that the writings on my reading list are more than a
hundred years old.
These familiar themes about bans, borders,
and walls — and especially about how the radical and dangerous new
immigrants don’t measure up to the “quality” ones we used to get —
weren’t crafted by Donald Trump or his Breitbart consigliere, Steve
Bannon, sitting in Trump Tower channeling the grievances of the white
working class. Instead, they are part of an immigration Ur-text
painstakingly assembled, brick by nativist brick, in Boston, by three
Brahmin intellectuals, beginning in 1894. That’s when the trio founded
the Immigration Restriction League, the equivalent of a modern-day think
tank, just five years after all three had graduated from Harvard.
Leading the group was Prescott Farnsworth
Hall, a lawyer and Brookline homebody who was largely unknown, even in
his day. But in the words of his contemporary Madison Grant, a prominent
intellectual who hobnobbed with presidents and authored the influential
book The Passing of the Great Race, Hall was the “guiding hand” who “saw with the vision of a prophet a full generation ahead of his countrymen.”
Prescott Farnsworth Hall was the driving force behind the Immigration Restriction League.
Pallid and gaunt, Hall didn’t like to stray
far from his beloved backyard garden, where he could identify by name
every plant and insect in residence. Just the sight of a cat with a
mouse in its jaws, his wife once said, “distressed him unbearably.”
How this hypersensitive insomniac managed to
create the underpinnings of a revolution in immigration policy is as
surprising as it is remarkable. And now feels like the perfect time to
understand his reasoning. After all, the argument he advanced in the
horse-and-buggy age is being re-injected, sometimes practically word for
word, into our Make America Great Again debate about immigration in the
21st century.
At the close of the 19th century, Hall and
his colleagues began warning the nation about the consequences of
unchecked immigration. Their chief ally in Washington was Senator Henry
Cabot Lodge, owner of two of the most storied surnames in Massachusetts
history. For all their connections and zeal, though, these men had
little to show for their anti-immigration efforts after 20 years.
But they made a large leap exactly 100 years
ago. On February 5, 1917, the restriction advocates scored their first
big win with the passage of the federal Immigration Act of 1917. Getting
the law approved required a congressional override of a presidential
veto.
The sweeping law opened a new epoch in the
nation’s handling of immigration. While there had been earlier measures
relatively limited in scope or specific to certain groups, the 1917 law
asserted a federal framework for broadly restricting, rather than merely
regulating, immigration. It imposed an $8 head tax on each arriving
immigrant and froze out everyone from a huge swath of the globe known as
the “Asiatic Barred Zone.” It also expanded the list of prohibited
“undesirables” — which already included epileptics, “imbeciles,” and
prostitutes — to encompass vagrants, alcoholics, a wider class of alien
radicals, and the opaque “persons of constitutional psychopathic
inferiority.” Most important, and reflecting the centerpiece of Hall’s
argument, the law imposed a new literacy test that shut out any
foreigners who lacked basic reading ability in their native language.
Hall and his fellow Brahmin restrictionists
celebrated the passage of the 1917 law with a quiet dinner at the Union
Club on Boston’s Beacon Hill. Far from being content, they were just
getting started. Their efforts would have a more lasting payoff in
subsequent years, culminating with a Draconian quota law signed by
President Calvin Coolidge. A former governor of Massachusetts, Coolidge
had lamented that the country was becoming a “dumping ground” and
pledged that “America must remain American.”
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Public opinion on immigration
hardened in the 1890s in response to economic troubles and the growth of
foreigners coming from Southern and Eastern Europe, as editorial
cartoons from that time period demonstrate.
Heated rhetoric about Muslim bans, Mexican
walls, and Mexican rapists has elicited harrumphs and horror in
progressive Massachusetts, especially in the precincts around Harvard
Yard, where Hillary Clinton trounced Trump. (He won just 4 percent of
the vote there.) So it may turn more than a few faces crimson to learn
that, like basketball, the microwave oven, and public education, the
intellectual playbook for anti-immigration policy was made right here in
Massachusetts.
If you want to understand just how divided
the American mind has always been on immigration, a good place to start
would be the immortal words from Emma Lazarus’s 1883 poem displayed
inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. “Give me your tired, your
poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse
of your teeming shore.’’
Those 20 words perfectly capture the story we
tell ourselves about how this “nation of immigrants” has historically
welcomed foreigners with open arms. Yet they also highlight the ways in
which we’ve often kept them out with a stiff arm.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Immigration peaked in 1907 when
1.3 million foreigners were allowed into the country, the vast majority
of them coming through Ellis Island. Families found ways to pass time
while waiting to get through.
Boston College Law School professor Daniel Kanstroom, a specialist in immigration law who wrote a book called Deportation Nation,
likes to show our less welcoming past by annotating Lazarus’s poem for
his students. “Give me your tired?” he says. “No, if you can’t work, you
can’t get in. Your poor? No, if you’re poor, you’re likely to become a
‘public charge,’ so you can’t get in. Your huddled masses yearning to
breathe free? No, you sound like an anarchist, so you’re not getting in.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore? No, you probably have a
disease, so stay out!”
“It’s an eternal tension — always like this,”
Kanstroom tells me, theatrically smashing his two fists together. “The
struggle for the soul of the country has played out over immigration.”
The tension is older than the nation. In
Colonial times, individual towns decided which outsiders got in, and
they tended to be zealous in keeping out low-income transients, referred
to as “the strolling poor.” New England towns were in the vanguard in
establishing what Kanstroom calls a “proto-deportation” system known as
“warning out.” Basically, all newcomers born elsewhere were on lengthy
probation. If they got sick, committed a crime, got pregnant out of
wedlock, or even just kept an annoying dog, a council made up of
propertied residents could vote them out of town. Like a nitpicking
condo association, these councils had wide latitude and enjoyed using
it. In 1734, the village of Canton soured on a newcomer after
discovering that “a glass of good liquor stands a very narrow chance
when it lies in his way.”
Must-read features and columns from the Boston Globe’s award-winning Sunday Magazine, delivered right to your inbox.
For much of the country’s first
century, the federal government left immigration controls to the states
and cities. The primary exception was the Alien and Sedition Acts of
1798, passed as the drumbeat for war with France intensified. Although
President John Adams averted war (in part by hiding out in Quincy for
five months), he signed legislation that lengthened the residency
requirement for naturalization to 14 years and blocked the pathway to
citizenship for immigrants from “enemy nations.”
It was an early indicator of what would
become the nation’s MO. For long stretches when the economy is good,
most of us don’t get very worked up about the immigrants landing here,
especially if the numbers seem manageable. But when the going gets
tough, history shows that it doesn’t take long for us to turn on them.
Most often, the pattern has followed Newton’s
third law: For every action — in this case a huge spike in immigration
flow — there is an equal and opposite reaction. In the mid-1800s, the
potato famine in Ireland and unrest following a failed revolution in
Germany sent an unprecedented flood of migrants from those countries to
American shores. Enter the American, or Know-Nothing, Party.
Fig. № 1 Statistical diagram showing irish and german immigrants granted lawful permanent residence in the US
That party got its name because, when pressed, members professed, Hogan’s Heroes
style, to know nothing about their anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant
agenda. The Know-Nothings got enough traction to put the word
“nativism’’ on the map. They even recruited a former president — albeit
one of the duds, Millard Fillmore — to make another White House run on
their behalf. Ironically, the Massachusetts Know-Nothings were
responsible for the desegregation of Boston public schools, which they
pushed through partly to keep black voters in their coalition.
Inevitably, though, the Know-Nothings petered
out. Their undoing was the Civil War, which unified the North at the
same time it dramatically lowered new immigration: Desperate residents
of war-torn countries tend not to migrate to other war-torn countries.
The next equal and opposite reaction was the
Chinese Exclusion Act, approved in 1882, a few years after the US
Supreme Court had ruled that immigration oversight rested with the
federal government rather than the states. The 1849 Gold Rush and
subsequent construction of the transcontinental railroad had brought
waves of Chinese laborers to California and other Western states. They
quickly became big business’s favorite form of cheap labor, largely in
the West, but also in the post-slavery South.
The presence of all these foreigners stoked
resentment among natives, especially when an economic panic dragged on
through much of the 1870s, bringing hardship, wage cuts, and
unemployment. Organized labor got into the nativist act, arguing with
some justification that this large supply of cheap foreign labor was
turning their bargaining power into so much weak tea. Workingmen’s Party
leader Denis Kearney blended this practical economic argument with some
high-test racism to gain serious political power. A native of Ireland,
Kearney had been an immigrant laborer himself. But he embraced the
close-the-door-behind-me mentality that immigrants have been adopting
probably since Siberians first crossed the Bering Land Bridge to get to
Alaska. Kearney wrapped up all his speeches with this drop-the-mike
line: “And whatever happens, the Chinese must go.”
They went.
Fig. № 2 Statistical diagram showing chinese immigrants granted lawful permanent residence in the US
The Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited new
immigration from China and blocked those already here from becoming
naturalized citizens. The act applied only to one ethnic group,
concentrated largely in the West, but a far bigger change to the
national landscape occurred over the course of the 1880s, when a new
flood of mostly European immigrants arrived here. Fleeing hardship at
home, they came for jobs at American factories that were humming at the
start of the Second Industrial Revolution. Thanks to technological
advances, factories could get by with much lower-skilled (and cheaper)
workers, and steamship lines could offer immigrants much quicker travel
than in the past. Instead of carrying 200 passengers for a journey that
took weeks, a high-speed ship would eventually be able to transport
2,000 from Europe to Boston or New York in just five days. It was a very
profitable business, and steamship agents soon fanned out around the
globe to drum up customers.
Although most of these immigrants were
European, as the 1880s turned into the ’90s, the tide shifted on which
parts of Europe they hailed from. In the 1880s, close to 4 million
immigrants came from England, Germany, and other parts of northern and
western Europe, compared with fewer than 1 million from eastern and
southern Europe. By the 1890s, that ratio had completely flipped. Now
the weary faces of the arrivals belonged to southern Italians, Poles,
Hungarians, Russians, and lots of Eastern European Jews, as well as
Greeks and Syrians. (By 1910, the eastern and southern Europeans would
outnumber their northern/western counterparts 3 to 1.)
Most of the newcomers were poor and
congregated where the jobs were, in the big industrial cities, taking
over swaths of blocks, filling the air with the foreign sounds and
scents of their homelands. By the end of the 19th century, immigrants
and their children would account for a stunning three-quarters of the
populations in Boston, New York, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago,
and San Francisco.
Among the leaders who found themselves
profoundly unsettled by this new wave of immigrants was Henry Cabot
Lodge, who had moved from the US House to the Senate in 1893. With his
deep Brahmin lineage and his Harvard PhD in history (under the tutelage
of Henry Adams, no less), Lodge channeled the pride of his white
Anglo-Saxon Protestant forebears.
Getty Images
Distinguished Massachusetts
senator Henry Cabot Lodge relied heavily on Prescott Hall and the
Immigration Restriction League in the campaign to enact literacy test
for immigrants.
He was a complicated guy. In 1890, he
coauthored a bill guaranteeing federal voting protection for
African-Americans. A year later, following an incident in which 11
Italian immigrants were lynched in New Orleans, Lodge penned a
blame-the-victim essay.
He pushed for restrictions on these “new”
immigrants, who tended to be so much more alien and less savory than the
nice, upstanding ones America used to get from England, Germany, and
Belgium. The earlier arrivals, he wrote, came from the kind of “races
which had thus far built up the United States, and which are related to
each other either by blood or language or both.” These new Italians, he
suggested, were probably criminal types, tied in somehow with the Mafia.
Lodge, joined by other notable New Englanders
of Brahmin stock, pushed repeatedly for immigration restrictions. MIT
president Francis Walker called these newcomers from the less desirable
ports of Europe “beaten men from beaten races; representing the worst
failures in the struggle for existence.” Yet in the nation’s capital few
others were getting as worked up about immigration.
Things started to change when a severe
depression hit in 1893, followed by violent strikes and economic skies
that grew only darker. That shrunk the flow of new immigrants while
tipping the scales even more in the direction of those from eastern and
southern Europe. In 1894, voters responded to the depression by tossing
the Democrats out of Congress and turning over control to the
Republicans. That same year, Prescott Hall and his fellow young Harvard
grads founded their restriction club, which would help give the nativist
movement the lift it needed to take flight.
Fig. № 3 Statistical diagram showing european immigrants granted lawful permanent residence in the US
Disaffected Rust Belt voters were the stars
of the 2016 election narrative, members of the working class feeling
left behind by the bracing changes of globalization and pining for the
security of their grandfathers’ economy.
More than a century earlier, Prescott Farnsworth Hall could have felt their pain.
The late 1800s was a period of reckoning for
the Brahmin class, having lost its dominance in politics, in commerce,
even in culture. Rates of divorce and suicide among native-born
Protestants jumped while their birth rates plummeted, says University of
Massachusetts Boston historian Vincent Cannato, noting the spike in
those being diagnosed with a depression-type ailment called
neurasthenia.
Irish pol James Michael Curley once cracked
that the future was preordained because a good Irish family had seven or
eight kids and a good Brahmin family had dogs. Catholics represented
more than three-quarters of all births in New England by the late 1870s.
(The dog population presumably remained flat.)
Some WASPs adapted to the new world, moving
into emerging areas like investment banking. Others whiled away their
fading days through liquid lunches at the Somerset Club. Hall chose a
third way. He undertook a root-cause analysis of the Brahmins’ downfall,
then set about trying to reverse it. He was warning the nation not to
make the same mistake with new immigrants that the WASPs had made in
failing to block the Irish ascendancy.
Hall, whose ancestors arrived in America from
England in the 1600s, grew up in a family marked by sadness. His father
lost his first wife shortly after she delivered their first child. His
second wife, Prescott’s mother, had lost her only other child when that
boy was 2, then lost her first husband to suicide. A 45-year-old invalid
by the time she delivered Prescott, she took no chances with him. “He
grew up a frail little hothouse plant,” Hall’s wife once wrote, “for he
was never allowed to romp, to climb, and to be reckless, as other boys
were.”
Hall went directly from Harvard to Harvard
Law School, then set about building his practice. He also found time to
play Wagner on the piano, make a failed run for state representative,
and, despite his dour demeanor, become a member of the Brookline Comedy
Club.
Studying immigration patterns, however,
became his passion — and the cause of his mounting alarm. By age 25, he
was sure he knew why the nation was losing its Anglo-Saxon soul: the
enormous waves of “undesirable” immigrants crashing onto American
shores.
In May 1894, in a law office on State Street in Boston, Hall and two classmates from his undergrad years at Harvard founded the Immigration Restriction League,
or IRL. His cofounders, lawyer Charles Warren and climatologist Robert
DeCourcy Ward (whose mother was a Saltonstall), came from purebred Mayflower families.
Climatologist Robert DeCourcy
Ward (left) and Charles Warren, a lawyer and historian (right), were
Prescott Hall’s classmates at Harvard and cofounders of the Immigration
Restriction League.
Hall took the lead, pushing for a new
literacy test and other regulations to keep “low-stock” immigrants from
getting past the border. He combed statistics and employed
social-science techniques to give his writings the weighty feel of
academic papers. At times, he made insightful observations about the
excesses of a porous, overtaxed immigration system. Just as often, he
presented as fact musings built on lazy stereotypes. He explained that
northern Europeans were distinguished for “energy, initiative, and
self-reliance” in contrast to “emotional, fiery” southern Italians, who
were “partly African, owing to the negroid migration from Carthage to
Italy.”
Despite the decline of the Brahmin class,
Hall never surrendered his sense of entitlement. A year after founding
the IRL and shortly before he married, Hall contacted the superintendent
of the three-year-old federal immigration operation at Ellis Island and
invited himself in to inspect it.
During several visits in 1895 and ’96, he,
Warren, and Ward were granted remarkable access, allowed to interview
staff, test the literacy of arriving immigrants, and observe all aspects
of the operation. After his first visit, Hall told the Boston Herald,
“In the case of the Italians whom I saw at Ellis Island, there was in
general a close connection between illiteracy and general
undesirability.” Warren reported that 10 percent of the immigrants who
claimed to be literate were lying.
Vincent Cannato’s book about the history of Ellis Island, called American Passage,
is a page turner that captures the controlled chaos of the place. He
describes inspectors conducting rapid-fire but sometimes wildly invasive
medical inspections of immigrants, turning away people for everything
from an ulcer of the vulva to masturbation habits. For some reason, the
biggest concern for the Ellis Island medical team was a mildly
contagious eye disease called trachoma. In their search for symptoms,
inspectors wielded a button-hook device to peel back immigrants’
eyelids, inflicting pain on the person being searched and dread in
everyone else in line. (Contrary to the widely held belief, there’s no
evidence that a single immigrant surname was changed by Ellis Island staff. Name changes typically happened years later.)
getty images
Arrivals to Ellis Island were subject to medical exams, including checks under the eyelids for a disease called trachoma.
With such human drama on display at Ellis
Island, it’s telling that Hall and his colleagues focused almost
exclusively on immigrants’ reading abilities. He saw the literacy test
as the most feasible way of keeping out all those uneducated souls from
“undesirable” precincts of Europe.
On that point, there was no disagreement
between him and Henry Cabot Lodge, who introduced the IRL’s literacy
test bill in the Senate in 1895. In a letter to Hall the following year,
Lodge wrote of the test, “I consider it one of the most vitally
important measures which has been before Congress in my time.”
As chairman of the Senate Immigration
Committee, Lodge courted the support of Hall, at one point writing, “I
shall be glad to have any improvements which you may suggest.” Another
time, he sent Hall this urgent telegram: “German steamship Companies
making great effort against bill. Anything you can do should be done at
once.”
Why was the distinguished senator from Massachusetts so solicitous of a young, largely unknown lawyer?
The IRL never came close to attracting a mass
following, but Hall was extremely effective at using the organization,
and its output, to influence the influencers. Some notables were members
of his group, like publisher Henry Holt and the presidents of Harvard,
Bowdoin, and Stanford. Many more were leading politicians, business
leaders, and newspapermen, who were on the receiving end of Immigration
Restriction League policy papers, stats-dense talking points, and survey
results. The IRL also directly lobbied Congress and supplied
ghostwritten editorials to newspapers around the country.
The Immigration Restriction League was founded in a law office on State Street in Boston in 1894.
Hall effectively weaponized statistics — even
those of dubious provenance — to sow fear. “The concentration of these
large bodies of ignorant foreigners in the slums of our Eastern cities
is a serious matter,” he once wrote. “Foreigners furnish 1½ times as
many criminals, 2‚ times as many insane, and 3 times as many paupers as
natives.”
In yet another move that would be reprised in
the 2016 campaign, Hall raised the specter of thousands of immigrants
with “fraudulent naturalization papers” — a purported 50,000 in New York
City alone — turning into fraudulent voters.
In January 1897, both houses of Congress
approved the literacy bill, which would bar all immigrants over the age
of 16 who were unable to read a 25-word passage of the US Constitution
that had been translated into their native language. Hall cheered the
breakthrough.
However, President Grover Cleveland vetoed
the bill on his way out of the White House. He told nativists it wasn’t
long ago that “the same thing was said of immigrants who, with their
descendants, are now numbered among our best citizens.”
Lodge and Hall went back at it. The booming
economy at the end of the 1890s, though, created stronger headwinds for
them. The steamship companies got a powerful boost from the
manufacturing lobby, which more than ever needed cheap foreign labor to
keep all those factories humming. In 1907 alone, 1.3 million immigrants
arrived, the vast majority at Ellis Island. The Wall Street Journal and other pro-business newspapers dropped their earlier restrictionist stances to join the let-’em-in crowd.
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The Statue of Liberty with its
message of ‘Give us your tired’ was a beacon for immigrants sailing into
New York Harbor. Others in the country, however, weren’t always so
welcoming.
The literacy test remained stalled.
Angry at being repeatedly thwarted, Hall
intensified his anti-immigration argument with rhetoric far more
inflammatory than anything seen in the election of 2016.
Although his father had been one of 12
children, Hall, who had divorced and remarried, remained childless. He
began blaming high immigrant birth rates for the depressed fertility of
WASPs. His argument boiled down to this: When new immigrant parents have
lots of children, despite being unable to provide for them, that dims
the prospects for everyone in the next generation. Responsible
native-born parents opt to have only one or two children, rather than
risk seeing them grow up to work alongside immigrant offspring in
low-paying jobs. “The main point,” Hall wrote, “is that the native
children are murdered by never being allowed to come into existence, as
surely as if put to death in some older invasion of the Huns and
Vandals.”
He compared immigrant Jews to “germs of
infectious disease” who should be dealt with in the same way one would
handle “noxious weeds” or “insect pests.”
The IRL’s rhetoric grew only nastier
beginning in 1909, when Madison Grant joined the group as a vice
president. Grant was a noted conservationist who helped save the
American bison and create the Bronx Zoo. He was also a full-bore racist
who thundered about “half Asiatic mongrels” and the “great mass of
worthless Jews and Syrians who are flooding our cities.” Grant likely
did more than any other American to popularize the junk science of
eugenics, which would lead to the sterilization of tens of thousands of
“inferior” Americans. (Hitler once sent him a mash note, calling Grant’s
1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race, “my Bible.”)
Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum
A cartoon from 1903 shows waves of ‘outlaw,’ ‘pauper,’ ‘degenerate,’ and ‘anarchist’ immigrants threatening American society.
Hall had always been interested in medicine
and science (as well as the occult, once writing that “prunes make the
blood able to attract spiritual power”). Grant’s eugenic principles gave
scientific justification to Hall’s long-held theories about European
immigrants. Grant referred to Hall’s preferred northern Europeans as the
Nordic race, superior in every way to the “Alpine” and Mediterranean
varieties.
Hall and IRL cofounder Robert DeCourcy Ward
began pumping out journal articles that added a eugenic overlay to their
immigration argument. “Here in the United States,” Hall wrote, “we have
a unique opportunity, through our power to regulate immigration, of
exercising artificial selection upon an enormous scale.” (Eugenics
historian Daniel Kevles notes that this was a time when the field began
to enjoy wide support from educated progressives and conservatives
alike, based on the emerging “science” behind it.)
In 1913, Congress once again passed the
literacy test. A few weeks before he left office, President William Taft
announced “with great reluctance” he was vetoing it.
Hall couldn’t contain his rage, writing, “To hell with Jews, Jesuits, and steamships!”
Things would be different with Woodrow Wilson
in the White House. Prescott Hall was sure of it. After all, in the
five-volume history of the United States that Wilson had written when he
was a Princeton professor, the future president described eastern and
southern European immigrants pretty much the same way Hall had. They
were “of the lowest class,” having “neither skill nor energy nor any
initiative of quick intelligence.”
Imagine Hall’s shock in 1915 when, after the
literacy test had once more passed Congress, Wilson struck it down with
the stroke of his pen. The literacy requirement, Wilson explained, would
serve as a test not of an alien’s character but rather of his
opportunity.
Madison Grant’s fury took the form of a
Birther cry. “Wilson himself did not come from native American stock,”
he fumed, “and consequently had little pride in American antecedents or
traditions.” (Wilson was born in the segregated South, but his mother
had emigrated from England, and his grandparents were from Ireland and
Scotland.)
Two years after the Wilson setback, Hall
finally got his way. This time when Wilson vetoed the Immigration Act of
1917, Congress had the votes to override him. Twenty-three years after
Hall began his crusade, the literacy test finally became law.
Fig. № 4 Statistical diagram showing european immigrants granted lawful permanent residence in the US
What put the issue over the edge this time? In a word, Germany.
In the one momentous week between Wilson’s
veto on January 29 and Congress’s override on February 5, Germany
announced its U-boats would be prepared to attack passenger ships in the
Atlantic. When Germany sank the American liner Housatonic, Wilson broke off diplomatic relations.
Heading down the path to war, the nation
erupted in jingoism. For decades, German-Americans had been perhaps the
strongest political force blocking immigration restrictions. More than
any other hyphenated group, they tended to remember their immigrant
heritage and resist the “close-the-door-behind-us” mentality. Now, on
the cusp of America’s entry into war, they found themselves under
attack. That opened a wide lane for nativists.
After the win, Hall reached out to Henry
Cabot Lodge, but not to offer his gratitude. Instead, he wanted Lodge to
push for deeper anti-immigrant measures. Lodge could not conceal his
fatigue. “It would be extremely difficult if not impossible to secure
further restrictive legislation at this time,” the senator replied. He
added that after 24 years serving on the Immigration Committee, he was
leaving it.
Hall didn’t have to look far for another
lawmaker to take up his cause. Massachusetts congressman Augustus
Peabody Gardner immediately filed legislation to cap the number of
immigrants admitted to the US each year at 200,000. His aunt was
Isabella Stewart Gardner. And his father-in-law? None other than Henry
Cabot Lodge.
In 1918, the first full year after the
literacy test’s passage, only 110,000 immigrants were let into the
United States, the lowest number since the Civil War. But that surely
had more to do with the new war.
In the end, the literacy test wasn’t as
effective at keeping out “undesirables” as Hall had hoped. For example,
although there was a clear correlation between being poor and being
illiterate, many European countries had improved basic education in the
decades Hall was working to get the bill passed. And most Eastern
European Jewish males, even impoverished ones, had no trouble passing
the test because they had learned to read the Torah. The literacy test
also entirely missed Mexicans, since the law didn’t apply to immigrants
from the Western Hemisphere.
Still, the Immigration Act of 1917 opened a
new age in how this nation — weary from a bloody, seemingly fruitless
war in Europe — would treat foreigners. Many news outlets have traced
Trump’s “America First” slogan back to the isolationist group of the
same name that was founded in 1940. In fact, the slogan’s nativist roots
can be traced to 1917, when James Murphy Ward published his book, The Immigration Problem, or America First.
Anti-immigrant sentiment grew in response to fears of Bolshevik
radicals and the deadly bombings by anarchists — the Islamic terrorists
of their day. It reached a fever pitch in 1919 and 1920 with the Palmer
Raids, the mass arrests and deportations of thousands of Eastern
European immigrants. A key tool in those roundups had been the Espionage
Act of 1917, which Hall’s IRL cofounder Charles Warren had drafted
during a stint in government.
In 1921, with Hall ailing, Madison Grant took
the lead in pushing for the passage of a strict new immigration law.
This one imposed low, if temporary, ceilings on the number of immigrants
allowed in from each country. Hall lived to see that 1921 “quota” law
pass — but nine days after it was signed into law, he died at the age of
52.
Nativists continued to ride the
anti-immigrant wave, and in 1924, Congress approved a tougher, permanent
quota law. It cagily capped the number of immigrants allowed in each
year from any particular nation to 2 percent of the total number of
foreign-born people of that nationality who’d been here in 1890, before
the big flood of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe.
Nativists were literally able to turn back
the clock. Overnight, immigrants from northern and western Europe were
effectively given free passes to come to the United States. Meanwhile,
the total number of Syrians allowed into the country in 1925 was 100.
That imbalance remained in place, more or less, for the next four
decades.
Yet because nativists hadn’t been thinking
about immigrants from this hemisphere, the quota laws had an unintended
consequence: They opened the spigot on immigration across the nation’s
southern border. In the first decade of the 20th century, about 30,000
Mexican immigrants came here. In the 1920s, the number shot up to nearly
half a million.
“Oftentimes you’re fighting the last war,”
says Marian Smith, longtime historian of what used to be called the
Immigration and Naturalization Service, and keeper of its institutional
memory. She notes that big employers, troubled by the “radical”
unionizing of many Eastern European immigrants, were happy to welcome
Mexicans as the new cheap labor, perceiving them to be “more docile.”
Even so, the movement Hall and company had
set in motion managed not only to rebalance immigration in favor of
“desirable” European nationalities, but also to slash this country’s
percentage of foreign-born residents. In 1850, 9.7 percent of the US
population was foreign-born, according to the Pew Research Center. By
1890, it had jumped to 14.8 percent, spurring Hall into action. In 1920,
though, that figure began its steady drop, and by 1970 it had plummeted
to 4.7 percent.
By 2015, fueled largely by surging
immigration from Latin America, it had rebounded to 13.7 percent, nearly
the same level that Hall had found so intolerable at the start of his
crusade.
Fig. № 5 Statistical diagram showing percentage of foreign-born nationals living in the US
“We always look back at the
immigrants from the distant past much more fondly,” Smith says. That
explains the warm feelings many second- and third-generation Americans
have for Ellis Island, where their poor-but-scrappy ancestors arrived to
make a new life. Someday, she suspects, Americans will view Mexican
immigrants in the same light.
Americans are more likely to look favorably
on immigration if they sense there’s a logical system guiding it. Back
in 1955, historian John Higham wrote what is considered the seminal book
on nativism, Strangers in the Land. He penned a new epilogue
for the book when it was reissued in 2002. In it, Higham said he wished
he hadn’t painted nativists with such a broad brush. While many had
clearly been motivated by xenophobia and racism, others had been making
valid points about the system’s need for reasonable controls. Even a
nation of immigrants shouldn’t let in more arrivals than it has the
capacity to assimilate.
In the years prior to his death in 2003,
Higham warned lawmakers that their inability to tackle sensible and fair
immigration reform would likely enable the return of the “acrid odor”
from the 1920s, when “the forces of ethnic self-interest and national
hysteria took over.”
Session after session, Congress failed to
pass comprehensive immigration reform, and illegal immigration continued
to rise. Then Trump came along with his vows to turn back time,
building a wall to keep out Mexicans and imposing a ban to keep out
Muslims. He undoubtedly got more traction than he would have if there
had not been a national consensus, among liberals and conservatives
alike, that the current immigration system is broken.
A close reading of history reminds us that
there are no new ideas in immigration, just new people espousing them.
Also, the pendulum always swings back — though sometimes it sure takes
its time.
I drive through an open wrought-iron gate and
up a sloped driveway to get to the house. It’s a handsome hip-roofed
place of gray stucco, with white columns and black window boxes.
“The gate’s a bit ostentatious, isn’t it?” Janet Baer says, welcoming me into the foyer.
As she gives me a tour of her Brookline home,
it’s clear Baer knows a lot about its history. It was built in 1908,
and the absence of an enclosure between the front door and the foyer
suggests the Brookline house had been used as a summer place by Brahmins
who “wintered” in Boston. The house sits high up in a neighborhood
where so many doctors used to live that it was called “Pill Hill.” The
Irish help tended to live in congested housing at the base of the hill,
known as “Whiskey Point.”
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The diversity that drew Janet Baer to her Brookline neighborhood was the very thing that her home’s first owner feared.
Baer takes me up an elegant staircase,
through a fireplaced second-floor study, past the former maid’s
quarters, and then down a back staircase that the help would have used
to get to the kitchen. The three-basin sink in the basement, she tells
me, suggests that the family had three maids.
As we stroll the garden on a cold winter day,
she points out the rose of Sharon shrubs that have rimmed the perimeter
for more than a century.
Baer and her husband moved into the place in
1989. Given her knowledge of the home, it surprises me that she had not
heard of its first occupant. I’d requested the tour because the house
had once belonged to Prescott Farnsworth Hall. I wondered if standing in
the study where he wrote with such fervor might somehow help me better
understand him. What explained his single-minded crusade for what he
called “segregation on a large scale, by which inferior stocks can be
prevented from diluting and supplanting good stocks.”
As Baer makes us coffee in her kitchen, I ask
her about the world map resting on the windowsill. It’s covered with
pushpins. “Have you been to all those places?” I ask.
“Those are just the ones my husband and I have visited together,” she replies. “He’s been to a lot more places for his work.”
One of the reasons they chose this
neighborhood was its diversity, she tells me. When their now-adult
children were in kindergarten, 17 languages had been spoken at the
school.
It’s hard to miss the contrast between Baer
and the homebody Hall, who viewed diversity as a dirty word. When he
wasn’t railing against immigrants, Hall found time to write a Brookline
ordinance that prohibited wooden three-decker apartment houses because
he feared they would attract more of the wrong type of people to town.
It remained on the books for years.
When I tell Baer the line of Prescott’s that I
can’t get out of my head — “To hell with Jews, Jesuits, and
steamships!” — she looks momentarily stunned, before letting out a
chuckle. She is Jewish and her husband is Irish Catholic, she explains.
I knew it wouldn’t be hard to find evidence
disproving Prescott’s predictions that “low-quality” immigrants would
dilute the superior stock that made America great. And here it is, in
his own house. Baer, whose family had fled Germany and Eastern Europe,
is a noted radiologist. Her husband, Peter Waters, whose family had fled
County Mayo, is a world-renowned pediatric hand surgeon as well as the
chief of orthopedic surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital.
As Baer walks me to my car, I ask if I can
take a photo of her. She agrees, but instead of saying “Cheese,” she
improvises a substitute. Smiling for the camera, she says, “You lose,
Mr. Hall.”
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