Immigration and Executive Orders
The executive order below was signed by Theodore Roosevelt, and came about through a concerted campaign and intense lobbying by the “Asiatic Exclusion League”. This organization was formed in 1905 by European immigrant labor leaders and so-called “white” Americans up and down the Pacific Coast of the USA, who blamed Asian immigrants (including those from India and China, as well as Japan and Korea) for their own economic difficulties.
Members of the Asiatic Exclusion League (AEL) were explicit in their determination that the USA should remain “a white man’s country”.
Roosevelt was not the first, nor would he be the last US president, to use executive orders instead of legislation as a form of populist “display”.
Remember Executive Order 13769? From 2017?
There will be more on the way, if things turn out badly this November 5th…
*****
Executive Order 589 (1907) by President of the United States
Regulating the Entrance of Japanese or Korean Laborers into U.S. Territories
Whereas, by the act entitled ‘‘An Act to regulate the immigration of aliens into the United States,’’ approved February 20, 1907, whenever the President is satisfied that passports issued by any foreign government to its citizens to go to any country other than the United States or to any insular possession of the United States or to the Canal Zone, are being used for the purpose of enabling the holders to come to the continental territory of the United States to the detriment of labor conditions therein, it is made the duty of the President to refuse to permit such citizens of the country issuing such passports to enter the continental territory of the United States from such country or from such insular possession or from the Canal Zone;
And Whereas, upon sufficient evidence produced before me by the Department of Commerce and Labor, I am satisfied that passports issued by the Government of Japan to citizens of that country or Korea and who are laborers, skilled or unskilled, to go to Mexico, to Canada and to Hawaii, are being used for the purpose of enabling the holders thereof to come to the continental territory of the United States to the detriment of labor conditions therein;
I hereby order that such citizens of Japan or Korea, to-wit: Japanese or Korean laborers, skilled and unskilled, who have received passports to go to Mexico, Canada or Hawaii, and come therefrom, be refused permission to enter the continental territory of the United States.
It is further ordered that the Secretary of Commerce and Labor be, and he hereby is, directed to take, thru the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization, such measures and to make and enforce such rules and regulations as may be necessary to carry this order into effect.
Theodore Roosevelt
The White House,
March 14, 1907.
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!