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John Quincy Adams on Immigration, 1820

Posted by khalling 8 years, 6 months ago to History
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H/T: Marsha Enright, Gulch Scholar

so many great pull-quotes, but this one I found most interesting:

"We expect therefore very few, if any transplanted countrymen from classes of people who enjoy happiness, ease, or even comfort, in their native climes. The happy and contented remain at home, and it requires an impulse, at least as keen as that of urgent want, to drive a man from the soil of his nativity and the land of his father’s sepulchres. Of the very few emigrants of more fortunate classes, who ever make the attempt of settling in this country, a principal proportion sicken at the strangeness of our manners, and after a residence, more or less protracted, return to the countries whence they came."
SOURCE URL: http://thefederalist.com/2014/08/18/what-john-quincy-adams-said-about-immigration-will-blow-your-mind/#.VhbV6gUQ1TY.facebook


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  • 20
    Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago
    "It took centuries of intellectual, philosophical development to achieve political freedom. It was a long struggle, stretching from Aristotle to John Locke to the Founding Fathers. The system they established was not based on unlimited majority rule, but on its opposite: on individual rights, which were not to be alienated by majority vote or minority plotting. The individual was not left at the mercy of his neighbors or his leaders: the Constitutional system of checks and balances was scientifically devised to protect him from both. This was the great American achievement—and if concern for the actual welfare of other nations were our present leaders’ motive, this is what we should have been teaching the world." Capitalism the Unknown Ideal, p.183
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    • Posted by sfdi1947 8 years, 6 months ago
      Excellent observation, something Progressives, both Democrat and Republican alike, seek to curtail ~Individual Rights~ Which is why Progressives, as a whole, Obama, Hillary, Hitler, Stalin and they're ilk all seek to take away our weapons, our ability to resist their tyranny.
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  • 12
    Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 6 months ago
    I am the 1st gen. American on my mom's side, 2nd gen. on my dad's. They were early 20th century immigrants, and their stories are legion. By then, it was well established in eastern Europe, that if you could get to America you could not only find work, but you might even get the opportunity to have a business of your own. For the great majority of Russians, Poles, Czechs, Romanians this was almost mythical. So they came, often spending everything they had just to get here and having someone vouch for them. My uncle Benny was sent into the Gulag after WW2. He escaped and walked, rode, hitched from Siberia to West Germany. It took him two years. Instead of merely saving his money to get to the USA he knew he needed to do a lot of bribing because he had no papers, so he bought commodities which were in short supply and sold them at a profit as well as saving his salary. He was a tailor. It took him two years to find my grandma in Detroit. She added to his "wealth" with whatever she could afford as did my dad. He got on a ship with his forged papers a couple changes of clothes and a sack full of cameras which he sold on the ship so that he not only had relatives waiting for him but a wad of cash. All in all, the whole trip took him ten years, but he made it to NYC, found a job, became a citizen, got married and lived his dream. How many of us could have done it? It sure took determination and will. Never underestimate the desire to be free. He had one camera left over which he gave to me. A 1934 Retina 35 mm camera which got me started in photography. I still have the camera today. Actually "Uncle" Benny might not have even been a relative but a family friend from the old country. Who knows?
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    • Posted by hattrup 8 years, 6 months ago
      I really like the story.

      But it is real concern that it can no longer happen...
      part of the reason would be -
      "made it to NYC, found a job, became a citizen"
      I think today you would not even be allowed in, or perhaps soon deported.
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      • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 6 months ago
        No doubt.
        I hope that when it comes to immigration we can, with a few caveats, return to what was rather than what is.
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        • Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago
          yet, we are plagued, even on this site, with Us vs them. I wonder what my anti-immigration friends would have done if born in Iraq or Syria? My good friend immigrated from Iraq in the 90s. She was able to do this because her husband was a famous soccer player and the Denver team picked him up. They came over and she did not work against capitalism. She embraced it. started her own business with her skills, brought her family over, divorced her Sharia loving husband and made a new life for herself-her parents as well. Don't play poker with her :)
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    • Posted by ycandrea 8 years, 6 months ago
      WOW! It was these kinds of immigrants that made this country so great! Very inspiring!
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      • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 6 months ago
        1st and fourth generation in those terms and I'm sad to report the 5th generation is largely x+y=zero. I am to borrow a phrase from Louis L'Amour one of many who can claim the title "Last Of The Breed." The rest of you take a bow. When we go the amount that can claim the title Patriot will diminish rapidly.
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  • Posted by coaldigger 8 years, 6 months ago
    I have the highest respect for the United States of John Quincy Adams and his cohorts and a diminishing respect in direct proportion to the deviation from those principles over the last century.
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  • Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 6 months ago
    Yes, a rational attitude when immigrants would be coming to an untamed land with only their individual abilities to help them survive. JQA would likely have a completely different view today given the socialist incentives. He also hadn't seen 50 million arrrive in a few years trashing the "manner" of the previous residents along with the manner of self reliance and any understanding of liberty.
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  • Posted by Temlakos 8 years, 6 months ago
    In other words, who would want to pull up stakes and migrate anywhere, except desperate people? The more wrong it becomes, then, to hand out "goodies" to people, even beyond the basic question of stealing from some for the unearned, unpaid benefit of others. Because you don't want your country to be a handout magnet.
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    • Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago
      but your country is a hand out magnet. somehow you are OK with those who have the accident of birth in the US, and others from 3rd world or 2nd world countries you see as immoral. hmmm
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      • Posted by not-you 8 years, 6 months ago
        No, khalling, immoral people exist everywhere. A=A People here who work hard and pull the wagon have just as many objections to those born here to parents who are already citizens being moochers, too. A=A And, yes, we DO oppose the mass importation of whole flotillas of even MORE moochers who have NO clue how a democratic republic works--nor do they give sh*t. We are also not happy with the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment to include automatic birthright citizenship for the off spring of people who are not citizens--it causes moochers to enter and to 'game the system.' Such situations result when people appointed to high courts by politicians with agendas have an opportunity to read their own beliefs (however subjective) into vaguely stated premises rather than specifically codified law. I am well aware that you support open borders and unrestricted migration...which you euphemistically refer to, "freedom to travel." And we are just as sick as you are of the immigration debate which (btw) is not going to end on this forum or anywhere else because we ignorant old pragmatists clearly understand that before the principles and premises of Objectivism could be instilled culture wide [I means how's it worked for you so far? Kind of slow going, eh?] the nation as it is currently governed would collapse under the weight of unrestricted, "Ya'll Come!" Unrestricted migration works well when there is NO welfare state and laissez faire capitalism is the economic system, yes. But the REALITY of the matter is that the USA has a generous welfare state, and under the present circumstances it is economic and social suicide to have an open border policy. Too many of those who come here to avail themselves of the welfare state will NEVER democratically vote to eliminate or severely restrict said existing welfare state. When the plane is going down, one puts on his own oxygen mask before attempting to help others. The same principle applies to preventing unrestricted illegal and legal immigration UNTIL the welfare state is done away with. Do you see that happening any time soon? Call me pragmatic, xenophobic, an a-hole or any other excoriative term you like, but A remains A...even for pragmatists. It does NO good to shut the stall door AFTER the horse has escaped=REALITY. Go ahead and down vote. I don't care. Even most pragmatists just aren't into immediate self-immolation. Let me put it into the vernacular for you: We have more than enough 'home-grown' moochers without importing more.
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  • Posted by cjferraris 8 years, 6 months ago
    John Quincy Adams had a unique perspective. He had grown up around the founding of this country and had plenty of opportunity to see the world from an aristocratic point of view. He was one actually being groomed to be President from a young age. He was given vision that far outweighed his age and that, in some ways, alienated him from many of "the people". He was not the tough battle-forged frontiersman that the country was looking for in that post-Jefferson Purchase generation, that's why he only served one term. In my opinion, he was the last of the Presidents that was a "Thinker", and the Presidency changed forever after he left office.
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  • Posted by term2 8 years, 6 months ago
    Correct immigrants don't want to assimilate into OUR culture. They just want more goodies than they get in their culture and to bring their culture here
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    • Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago
      that is a collectivist statement. Most immigrants that I know, including my great grandparents, wanted an opportunity to make a living. the problem is the welfare system and how it is used.
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      • Posted by term2 8 years, 6 months ago
        Spelling checker changed my first word- should have been "current". I stand by my comment. I live in Las Vegas and the great proportion of the immigration here from South America are looking for the freebies we give them. Mexico is a socialist country in many ways, so they come here and are delighted by the government handouts available here that aren't possible in poorer Mexico. Surely there are some immigrants who want to come here because of our freedoms and values, and they learn English and add to our cultures

        My point is that these are increasingly fewer and farther between, especially within the hordes which have come from South America. I see this every day unfortunately
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