Mistakes and Apologies

The idea that immigrants come from “prisons” or “mental institutions,” especially in reference to immigrants from South America, expresses a theme that is an entrenched part of the American narrative.

When laws that specifically target one group are passed, they are seen as necessary at the time, driven by the perceived need to protect national security. However, history inevitably reveals them as moments when our nation was deeply mistaken. Despite the lessons these mistakes should teach us, we repeatedly fail to learn from them, allowing fear and prejudice to shape our policies again and again.

Trump recently invoked the Alien Enemies Act that was passed in 1789, when the French were the target of our collective fears. If the Quasi-War with France expanded from a naval conflict to a land war, which side would the French be on? The act made it easier to deport suspected spies and made it harder to become a citizen. If Trump were a better student of American history, he would know that most historians agree that the passage of that law was the low point of Adams’ presidency. Even Adams later claimed that “this law was never executed by me, in any sense.”

In 1882, the Chinese became the target of intense national xenophobia, with accusations that they were stealing jobs from Americans, driving down wages, and engaging in vices such as gambling and opium smoking. In response to these prejudices, the U.S. government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a law that aimed to halt Chinese immigration. In 1943 they were suddenly no longer a menace. We needed an alliance with China in order to win World War II and the law was repealed. As Franklin Roosevelt said at the time, “Nations like individuals make mistakes. We must be big enough to acknowledge our mistakes of the past and to correct them.”

In 1988 it was President Ronald Reagan’s turn to apologize when he signed a bill that provided restitution for the wartime internment of Japanese-American civilians. Reagan admitted that “This action was taken without trial, without jury. It was based solely on race…we must recognize that the internment of Japanese-Americans was just that: a mistake.”

Sometimes, it’s not the passage of legislation, but the absence of it, that becomes a national disgrace. After World War II, the fear of communism coupled with deep-seated antisemitism, prevented the U.S. from passing a law that could have offered refuge to some of the war’s most aggrieved victims. In 1945, a proposal to increase the number of Jewish refugees allowed into the United States was blocked by Congress. Critics at the time argued that “many of those [Jewish refugees] who seek entrance into this country have little concept of our form of government.”

Some even described the rejection of this legislation as a “betrayal of our basic American tradition.” But in reality, it was a continuation of our darker traditions—one that persists to this day.