Dear Editor,
The growing national debate on creating and adopting a fair and reasonable immigration policy for all Americans has caused me to conduct some historical research and I would like to share one of these findings with your readers:
Theodore Roosevelt’s ideas on immigrants and being an American in 1907
[Ed. note: Roosevelt did not make these remarks in 1907 while he was President, but in a letter dated January 1919, the day before he died. The comments below come from that letter.]
“We should insist that if the immigrant who comes here does in good faith become an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed or birth-place or origin.
“But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American….There can be no divided allegiance here…. We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul [sic] loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.”
Here we are more than 100 years later [sic] and President Roosevelt’s views remain sound and continue to ring true for me. In fact, to do anything less should be considered to be Un-American!
Ron Wolfe
Ruskin