Michele Bachmann: U.S. Immigration ‘Worked Very, Very Well’ Under The Asian Exclusion Act

[pampango]

In 1924, (a republican) Congress passed a package of immigration laws (which were signed by a republican president) — including the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924">National Origins Act and the Asian Exclusion Act — establishing a quota system giving preferential treatment to European immigrants. Under these laws, the number of immigrants who could be admitted from a given country was capped at a percentage of the number of people from that nation who were living in the United States in 1890. Because Americans were overwhelmingly of European descent in 1890, the practical effect of these laws was an enormous thumb on the scale encouraging white immigration.

These quotas were eliminated by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (passed by a Democratic congress and signed by a Democratic president), an act which is widely credited for opening up our nation to new Americans of Asian and Central and South American descent. At last night’s CNN/Tea Party Republican presidential candidates’ debate, however, Bachmann claimed this decision to eliminate our past, misguided immigration policy was a big mistake.

"The immigration system in the United States worked very, very well up until the mid-1960s when liberal members of Congress changed the immigration laws. What works is to have people come into the United States with a little bit of money in their pocket, legally, with sponsors so that if anything happens to them they don’t fall back on the taxpayers to take care of them."

It is anyone’s guess why Bachmann thinks America was better off when our immigration policy actively fought to maintain the nation’s white majority and wrote Asians out of the American story.

Video of Bachmann's response: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgQQiqadN3s&feature=player_embedded

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/09/13/317735/michele-bachmann-white-immigration/

[pink-o]

1. So does that mean she thinks we should send Michelle Malkin back to Manila?

I truly do not understand the fear of mingling with other cultures, it's such an obvious natural progression to our social evolution. In the early part of the 20th century it might've made more sense than now.

But that's exactly what these Repigs want to do: take America back a few hundred years when White was Right and everyone else knew their place.