Shortly after the publication of Roy Beck’s op-ed (“Congress Should Learn from the Immigration Act of 1924,” May 28), former President Donald Trump visited a black church in Detroit and claimed that immigrants were “causing tremendous harm to our black population,” calling them inhumane and “animals.”
This rhetoric is not new for Trump. At the start of his 2016 campaign, he referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists.” Beck’s opinion urged black Detroiters to learn from the 1924 immigration law. When America closed its doors to immigrants, employers were suddenly forced to hire black workers. But the facts do not bear out his attempt to revise US history.
From 1915 to 1920, numerous blacks from the Deep South moved to Detroit, and Ford was the largest employer of black Detroiters in the early 1920s, before the Immigration Act of 1924.
The claim that immigrants are taking jobs away from black workers must be refuted. Historically, black unemployment has been significantly lower in states and metropolitan areas with high immigration rates than in communities with low immigration.
Research from Global Detroit, a local nonprofit dedicated to building an inclusive regional economy (note that while we are writing this letter as individuals, we both work at Global Detroit), found that vacancy, blight, crime, and other signs of neighborhood deterioration largely reversed after immigrants moved in. Black residents of these neighborhoods reported more optimism and satisfaction in their neighborhoods than residents of similar neighborhoods without immigration.
The Immigration Act of 1924 imposed strict quotas on each country, favoring immigrants from Western and Northern Europe over other countries. It closed the door to most immigrants from Asia and excluded Jews and refugees fleeing the religious persecution that fueled the Holocaust.
Trump has referred to African countries as “shithole countries” and pointed out that he favors immigrants from countries like Norway. This cynical appeal to black voters is rooted in a skin- and class-based advocacy that calls on those voters to put down immigrants.
When a candidate opposes raising the minimum wage, seeks to repeal Obamacare, or opposes the child tax credit, one must question his support for black priorities.
The path to economic opportunity and prosperity for black people does not lie through the oppression of immigrants, and certainly not through those who are interested in reviving the racist immigration policies of a century ago.
Steve Tobocman and Alaina Jackson
Detroit