Citizens and Aliens II

I thought I'd continue the last post by appending relevant quotes on immigration from the Founding Fathers:


John Adams: (Referring to public office applicants) "Among the number of applications..., cannot we find an American capable and worthy of the trust? ...Why should we take the bread out of the mouths of our own children and give it to strangers?" (Letter to Sec. State John Marshall, Aug. 14, 1800)

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Benjamin Franklin: "The importation of foreigners into a country that has as many inhabitants as the present employments and provisions for subsistence will bear, will be in the end no increase of people, unless the new comers have more industry and frugality than the natives, and then they will provide more subsistence, and increase in the country; but they will gradually eat the natives out. Nor is it necessary to bring in foreigners to fill up any occasional vacancy in a country for such vacancy will soon be filled by natural generation." ("Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind and the Peopling of Countries," 1751)

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Thomas Jefferson: "Yet from such [absolute monarchies], we are to expect the greatest number of emigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. Their principles with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us in the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass." ("Notes on Virginia," 1782)

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Alexander Hamilton: "The opinion advanced [by Jefferson] is undoubtedly correct, that foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity, and to its particular customs and manners. They will also entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived; or, if they should be led hither from a preference to ours, how extremely unlikely is it that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, [italics in original] so essential to real republicanism? There may, as to particular individuals, and at particular times, be occasional exceptions to these remarks, yet such is the general rule. The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all-important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency." ("Examinations of Jefferson's Message to Congress of December 7th, 1801," Jan. 12, 1802)

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James Madison: "Our kind reception of emigrants is very proper, but it is dictated more by benevolent than by interested consideration, tho some of them seem to be very far from regarding the obligations as lying on their side." (Letter to Richard Peters, Feb. 22, 1819)

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George Washington: "My opinion, with respect to emigration, is that except of useful mechanics and some particular descriptions of men or professions, there is no need of encouragement, while the policy or advantage of its taking place in a body...may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the Language, habits, and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them." (Letter to John Adams, Nov. 15, 1794)