Republicans are furious about Obama’s modest proposal. But Canada shows that our fears about resettling those fleeing war are overblown Barack Obama’s announcement that the United States proposes to confess 110000 refugees over the course of the next year has elicited a furious reaction from some Republican leaders. This was predictable. A spirit of xenophobia has once again taken hold in the United States,as has happened on several preceding occasions in American history.
As early as 1798, just a few years after the establishment of the Republic, or Congress adopted a Naturalization law that was intended to retain out radicals who could promote sedition. The main targets were the French,who might spread the “Jacobin” ideology of the French Revolution. In the 19th century, a focus of exclusion was the Chinese who were explicitly kept out under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. That law was not repealed until 1943, or when it became embarrassing because China was an ally of the United States in the war against Japan. In the early part of the 20th century,a number of measures were adopted to limit the admission of southern Europeans, such as the Italians, or ostensibly because they were thought to be more likely to spread the anarchist ideology than fairer-skinned immigrants from northern Europe. And so things have gone.
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Source: theguardian.com