It’s a hot political topic today, but immigration has played a key role in past American political debates as well. Recent Calvin Coolidge biographer Amity Shlaes devotes a new Forbes magazine column to the 30th president’s response to the immigration controversies of the 1920s.
The stereotype involving Coolidge is that he was a snobby New Englander, a member of the Mayflower crowd, who disliked the foreign born. Coolidge’s ancestors had come over with the first Puritans, and he did like a Mayflower–the presidential yacht of that name. But Coolidge was no snob when it came to opportunity: “No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat,” he told a crowd of thousands in Omaha, Nebr.
What Coolidge did believe in was “Americanism.” By this he meant assimilation in one’s public life, such as using English at work or in school and serving the country in war. Coolidge thought that if a newcomer wanted to be American, he deserved to be. “Whether one traces his Americanism back three centuries to the Mayflower, or three years to the steerage, is not half so important as whether his Americanism of today is real and genuine,” the President said.
Coolidge believed immigrant communities had a strong role to play in America. One of the remarkable documents I came across was the transcript of a 1924 conference call between Coolidge in Washington and Jewish philanthropists in New York–the Jews, of course, being one of the groups whose entry was restricted by the new law. Coolidge told the philanthropists that he was grateful to the group for investing in their own community chest and for paying, when they could, for the poor or weak in their community. “I want you to know,” the President told the group, “that I feel you are making good citizens, that you are strengthening the Government, that you are demonstrating the supremacy of spiritual life.”
