By ©2025 Sarah Becker
“Inasmuch as our country is extensive and new, and the countries of Europe are densely populated, if there are any abroad who desire to make this the land of their adoption, it is not in my heart to…prevent them from coming,” President-elect Abraham Lincoln [born Feb. 12, 1809, IL] said in 1861.
The Republican Party platform of 1860, the platform upon which President Lincoln was elected, “opposed any change in our naturalization laws.” Especially as regards “free homestead policy” and or construction of “a railroad to the Pacific ocean.”
In 1862 President Lincoln, an architect of a political-economic type signed four Acts into law. They were the Department of Agriculture Act, the Homestead Act [May 20, 1862], the Pacific Railway Act, and the Morrill Act. The 123-year Homestead Act [1863-1986] allowed citizens to acquire up to 160 acres by settling on public land for five years and paying $1.25 per acre. As of 2018 ninety-three million Americans were descended from Homesteaders.
Lincoln’s want: to send skilled mechanics to Eastern manufacturers; to populate the homesteading West and agricultural South with farmers, laborers, free blacks depending—northern newspapers did not publish Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation until September 1862—and femme soles.
“I again [recommend] establishing a system for the encouragement of immigration,” President Lincoln said in 1863. “The mineral resources of Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, New Mexico, and Arizona are proving far richer than has been heretofore understood.”
“Although this source of national wealth and strength is again flowing with greater freedom than for several years before the insurrection occurred,” Lincoln continued, “there is still a great deficiency of laborers in every field of industry, especially in agriculture, and in our mines.” Virginia, Spotsylvania County especially mined gold from 1804 until 1947.
In 1865 the Union-friendly restored government of Virginia rejected a bill “to incorporate the Virginia Immigration and Land Company.” Why, “because the bill was a money-making enterprise, [en route] to Wall street.” It proposed “to confer vested rights of unusual character upon the corporators.”
By the end of the Civil War “roughly 25 percent” of the Union Army was foreign born. It was the reassembled, 1866 post-war Virginia Legislature that voted “To induce and encourage the immigration into Virginia of [sober and industrious] laborers [and their families] from Europe, [especially England and Scotland];…to cause to be published such information as will show the natural resources of this State,…and for the purpose of acquiring lands to be re-sold to parties arriving from abroad.”
Said Virginia’s Land and Immigration Company in 1868: “It is…delusional to hope that immigrants…will…come into Virginia and remain merely as laborers…But as actual settlers—as landed proprietors, they will…The Company offered to sell land “to actual settlers, [especially British and German], on such terms as will induce them to come.”
Amendment 14, Section 1, as ratified July 28, 1868: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States….” The United States v. Wong Kim was decided 1898.
Today incumbent President Donald J. Trump [R-NY, FL] favors not only greater border security, but also changes to America’s naturalization laws.
Virginia rejoined the divided Union in 1870, before peace and prosperity had wholly dawned. Fast forward 100 years and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s [D-TX, 1963-1969] Immigration Act of 1965 was in “full effect.” It “established a limit of 170,000 on annual immigration from countries outside the Western hemisphere and put a ceiling of 120,000 on the number who could enter from within the Hemisphere.”
The stated order of preference: “immediate relatives of those who were already U.S. citizens or alien residents; professionals or others with special talents or education, and refugees who had fled a Communist dominated country [like Cuba], or the Middle East.” Skilled or unskilled laborers, of the type who established America’s pre-eminence during the industrial revolution, were among the last to be considered.
“The accent on reuniting families…has drastically altered the immigration mix,” The Washington Post reported in 1966, “so much so, in fact, that an American-Irish Immigration Committee was formed recently in New York City to protest the unaccustomed difficulty that the Irish were having getting in.”
“The Immigration Act of 1965 changed the racial narrative in America,” The Boston Globe reported in 2008. “It transformed a nation 85% white in 1965 into one that’s one-third minority today, and on track for a nonwhite majority by 2042.” In 1970 one in every 100 Virginians was foreign born. In 2012 the number was one in nine.
In 1981 President Ronald Reagan [R-CA, 1981-1989] described the U.S. relationship with Mexico as “special. A number of our states [Texas among them] have special labor needs.” In 1986 he signed legislation which legalized approximately 3 million undocumented aliens who had been continuously, unlawfully present since 1982. Legalized aliens’ families had to otherwise “wait in line.”
“I see history as a book with many pages,” President George H.W. Bush [R-TX, 1989-1993] said in his 1989 Inaugural Address. “The new breeze blows, a page turns, the story unfolds.” Now the Immigration Act of 1965 is hardly mentioned when recounting the high points of 1960s liberalism.
In 1990, on President Bush’s watch, Congress again approved broad immigration changes including a permanent Family Unity program. Approximately 1.5 million relatives benefited. The downside: by 1995-1997 the educational level of new immigrants was lower, immigration applications for Supplemental Security Income [SSI] higher. Today’s means test relates more to family reunification, than job skills.
Sanctuary cities became a fact of life in 2007. Alexandria declined the descriptor: it was “a welcoming community” only. Governor Glenn Youngkin [R-VA] referred to Alexandria when discussing his December 2024 Sanctuary Cities Ban. It seems Alexandria “still blocks ICE from detaining and deporting individuals” of a type.
In 2008 Presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Barack Obama [D-IL, 2005-2008] spoke of cultural diversity, of heritage and a new generation of Americans. “Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity,” President Obama [2009-2017] said, “until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country.”
In 2011 citizen Trump falsely claimed Obama’s birth certificate was “Fake.” Soon after, he fostered the Birth-er movement. As America’s 45th President [2017-2021], Trump sought to build an impenetrable, possibly solar panel wall to secure the border between Mexico and the United States. He also issued a controversial 90-day anti-terrorism travel ban.
The combined effects of immigration, free trade and technology have made the white, working class male’s job less secure. Immigrants [H1B] and robots [AI], such workers claim, have negatively impacted wages. The Middle East refugee crisis; illegal Hispanic immigrants are in addition.
“I regard our emigrants as one of the principal replenishing streams which are appointed by Providence to repair the ravages of internal war, and its wastes of national strength and health,” President Abraham Lincoln messaged Congress in 1864.
Columnist’s Note: If Valentine’s Day is your reading pleasure, several have told me it is, visit oldtowncrier.com/2024/02/01/rosalynn-and-jimmy-carter-true-valentines/
Sarah Becker started writing for The Economist while a graduate student in England. Similar publications followed. She joined the Crier in 1996 while serving on the Alexandria Convention and Visitors Association Board. Her interest in antiquities began as a World Bank hire, with Indonesia’s need to generate hard currency. Balinese history, i.e. tourism provided the means. The New York Times describes Becker’s book, Off Your Duffs & Up the Assets, as “a blueprint for thousands of nonprofit managers.” A former museum director, SLAM’s saving grace Sarah received Alexandria’s Salute to Women Award in 2007. Email: abitofhistory53@gmail.com.