What John Quincy Adams Said About Immigration Will Blow Your Mind
John Quincy Adams: 'Emigrants from Germany or from elsewhere, coming here, are not to expect favors from the governments.'

August 18, 2014 By D.C. McAllister

We often hear about the glory days of immigration when America threw open her arms to the huddled masses, but one thing you don’t hear about is how those people had to make it on their own without a government safety net. There was plenty of private charity, which was highly encouraged, but health care, a minimum-wage job, college entrance, housing, legal representation, and education certainly weren’t promised—not like today.

In 1819, John Quincy Adams wrote a letter as secretary of State under President James Monroe to a man named von Fiirstenwarther, who had written a report about emigration in Germany and wanted the U.S. government to give him a job if he immigrated to the United States from his native country. The letter gives great insight into attitudes about immigration at a time when it was becoming a serious issue; the nation was in a financial crisis because banks were printing too much money, and the country was expanding at an overwhelming rate. Jobs weren’t as easy to come by as they had been in the past (sound familiar?). The idea of immigrants receiving government subsistence was nonsensical. The borders were open, but it was up to each individual to make his or her own way in the New World. Americans then valued personal responsibility and liberty more highly than security and public welfare.

Adam’s letter reveals this fact like nothing else. It is difficult to find (it was printed in Niles’ Weekly Register, Volume 18, in 1820), and it would be a surprise if most politicians today have even read it—but they should.

Here it is, in full (italics added). Let its wisdom be a lesson for today as we throw open our borders to the poor in an age of government largesse.

Read more: The Federalist

"But there is one principle which pervades all the institutions of this country, and which must always operate as an obstacle to the granting of favors to new comers. This is a land, not of privileges, but of equal rights. Privileges are granted by European sovereigns to particular classes of individuals, for purposes of general policy; but the general impression here is that privileges granted to one denomination of people, can very seldom be discriminated from erosions of the rights of others."

"They come to a life of independence, but to a life of labor—and, if they cannot accommodate themselves to the character, moral, political, and physical, of this country, with all its compensating balances of good and evil, the Atlantic is always open to them, to return to the land of their nativity and their fathers. "


How many of the PTB would have the spine to say this today ?