A museum has opened in the Antwerp warehouse through which, between 1873-1934, more than 2 million emigrants left for America. It’s a challenge to convey the sheer magnitude of what happened while retaining the human scale.
Here was a transcontinental movement the likes of which had never been seen; yet the passengers on those Red Star liners, from Albert Einstein in his first class cabin to the penniless Poles who had sold everything for a place in steerage, were as much the center of their own universe as you are.
Here you’ll find, among many others, the story of a Ukrainian Jewish woman bringing her five children to join their father in New York after eight years. On arrival, she was told that her youngest girl, then eight years old, was suffering from a contagious eye disease, and wouldn’t be allowed in the U.S. She faced an agonizing choice: to return to Europe or to divide the family.
In the end, she sent her daughter back across the Atlantic alone. Two years later, having been cared for in the mean time by a Jewish charity in Antwerp, the girl tried again, only to find that she still had traces of the infection. Only on her third crossing, aged 14, was she allowed to join her family.
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American immigration policy at that time was hard, unsentimental and enormously successful. The country needed able-bodied workers, and could afford to pick and choose. Some entrants were turned away on medical grounds, like the unfortunate Ukrainian child. Others because they couldn’t read. Still others on account of their political opinions: America wanted no trade union agitators. From the 1920s, there were also restrictions by nationality, aimed at preventing ethnic ghettos.
Immigration, America has proved, can be immensely productive, provided it is regulated. This point is missed mulishly by leftists in Britain. “We’ve always been a nation of immigrants,” they say, loftily. “Celts, Romans, Saxons, Danes, Normans.” Yup: And each of those newcomers brought calamity to the previous population. That’s the difference between legal migration and uncontrolled settlement.
It’s fair to say that even controlled settlement tends to be unpopular. Every generation of Americans takes the same attitude toward immigration, namely that it has been fine and dandy up until now, but “this time it’s different.” And there was always some apparently plausible reason why this time it might be different.
The new immigrants weren’t from the British Isles; they weren’t Protestants; they weren’t white. Go back a hundred years and you find newspapers complaining in remarkably familiar language about the lack of assimilation, about kids growing up speaking Italian or Polish or Yiddish, about the compatibility of this or that group with American values.
Is it truly different this time? Obviously, there are some changes. One new factor is the Internet, which makes it much easier to remain connected to your country of origin. When I was growing up in Lima, it never occurred to me to speak English to other Anglo-Peruvian children — largely, I think, because we had been acculturated by the local TV. Now, it’s a different story: I often meet teenage kids in my constituency who were born in Britain, but who talk to their classmates in Urdu or Punjabi, because those languages are not, for them, associated only with their parents.
These, though, are manageable challenges. As long as the host country is assertive in defense of its values, newcomers will adopt those values. This is especially true in the Anglosphere, because our values — private property, the rule of law, personal autonomy, sanctity of contract, religious pluralism, equality for women, liberty — are more attractive than any alternative package.
It all comes back to the question of legality. People will accept the case for more immigration provided they feel there is some control over who is coming and in what numbers. Migrants, for their part, will assimilate more easily if they feel a sense of achievement at having won their place. If they arrive by cheating the system, they will begin with an understandable sense of contempt for their new country.
Which brings us to the migratory flows in both Europe and America. I’m sure they are made up of brave and resourceful people: No one makes these journeys lightly. But, to repeat, it’s all about legality. Are we going to take those who have applied properly within the rules? Or are we going to contract our immigration policy to people traffickers?
Dan Hannan is a British Conservative MEP.
