@asa The reason I bring it up is that America has always been a nation of immigrants but not really from all over for much of its history.
I put a lot of work into learning more about immigration and the USA and white supremacy etc. and came away understanding that the country was founded by people with very different ideas of what they were planning on building. So the USA has been both pro immigrant and anti immigrant in different ways its entire history, it hasn't ever been unambiguously one or the other.
@sun when I was younger I had the idea that the world is very big and there is many opportunities, for example I would have assumed that thousands of different people worked as English-Cambodian translators just in the US.
@Nudhul@asa I have a book about the history of Iowa and it is old enough that it has a section talking about immigration in less than 100% positive terms. It mentioned that immigrants from Hungary were overwhelmingly anti-vaccine and regularly made everyone around them sick until places started enacting overt violence to force them to vaccinate (Hungarian immigrants were already using violence to oppose vaccination.)
> In his autobiography, Jefferson recounted with satisfaction that in the struggle to pass his landmark Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786), the Virginia legislature "rejected by a great majority" an effort to limit the bill's scope "in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan." George Washington suggested a way for Muslims to "obtain proper relief" from a proposed Virginia bill, laying taxes to support Christian worship. On another occasion, the first president declared that he would welcome "Mohometans" to Mount Vernon if they were "good workmen" (see page 96). Officials in Massachusetts were equally insistent that their influential Constitution of 1780 afforded "the most ample liberty of conscience … to Deists, Mahometans, Jews and Christians," a point that Chief Justice Theophilus Parsons resoundingly affirmed in 1810.
The earliest treaty, or one of, in American history was to Morocco.
@asa@Nudhul it went to the supreme court and they decided the government could fine you but not force you. But in some places the government literally just forced you
@sun@Nudhul was it America or Iowa though, of course plenty of tyrannical things have been done in the states but I think the point was that each state self governs so if you don’t like it in your state you can move to the next.
Most problems would be solved by giving power back to the states and taking it away from the federal government, just by free market competition.
> ...most of the representatives at the convention opposed the Morris amendment for fear of, as future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Oliver Ellsworth put it, “discouraging meritorious aliens from emigrating to this Country.” Alexander Hamilton argued that the “advantage of encouraging foreigners was obvious and admitted,” asserting that “persons in Europe of moderate fortunes will be fond of coming here where they will be on a level with the first Citizens.”
> Father of the Constitution James Madison “was not averse to some restrictions on this subject, but could never agree to the proposed amendment” in part “because it will discourage the most desirable class of people from emigrating to the U.S.” In other words, not only were the Founders opposed to restricting the free movement of people into the United States, but they opposed restrictions on citizenship that they felt would discourage immigrants from using that freedom. Madison spoke of “great numbers” who would wish to come to the United States.
They wanted money. All the money. From anyone, anywhere. It's one of the reasons they encouraged freedom of religion instead of just no State religion.
There's a better source in the Founder's Constitution but I don't have a searchable copy, only the physical books
@feld@Nudhul@asa I forget where I read but at some point somebody asked "but what about chinese etc" and some of the people were like "fuck no". it was a really mixed bag
@sun@asa what a stupid fucking ruling "we cant force you we'll just drain your accounts until you're a vagrant living in a filthy gutter. for public health reasons"