At 40, I had my first Letter to the Editor published--it was about Israel bombing Iran's nuclear reactor. Daniel Okrent’s “The Guarded Gate’’ examines how bigotry and eugenics came together in the Immigration Act of 1924.

The movement to restrict immigration gained steam in the 1890s among New England patricians like Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge. But with its gallery of scientifically dubious, mean-spirited, and flat-out racist characters (so many they become difficult to distinguish), the current book is a much grimmer enterprise. The German-born Boas “made no effort to cloak his disregard for the prevailing race theories” that fueled restrictionism. That law, with its minuscule national quotas, impeded the escape of untold numbers of Polish and Russian Jews and others from the Nazi death trap. Julia M. Klein, a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia, has been a two-time finalist for the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing.

That was the first time he said that. A parade of men (and the occasional woman) would take up the banner: Charles Davenport, who founded the Eugenics Record Office in 1910; H. Fairfield Osborn, the paleontologist who became president of the American Museum of Natural History and “the most prominent scientific advocate for eugenic restrictions on immigration;” the fabulously wealthy Mary Harriman, who funded most of Davenport’s research; Harry H. Laughlin, America’s foremost exponent of involuntary sterilization.
Okrent notes that the young Eleanor Roosevelt espoused the casual anti-Semitism of her class and era. It is required reading for anyone who wants to understand what underlies our current debate about immigration, legal and illegal. So we’re reminded in Daniel Okrent’s often surprising history, “The Guarded Gate.” Okrent underlines the politically salient linkages between eugenics, pseudo-scientific racism, and anti-immigration sentiment in early 20th-century America. It is a distressing history but must be confronted and exposed if we want to work our way past this sorry chapter of our history. One of the book’s few heroes is the anthropologist Franz Boas, who emphasized the importance of environmental, rather than genetic, factors in shaping individual traits. Simultaneously, the movement to improve the human species by promoting reproduction by individuals of the finest stock began in England and spread to social elites in America. Among Lodge’s allies in that battle was Joe Lee, a well-regarded Democratic philanthropist who fretted over the massive immigrant influx of Catholics and Jews.

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The move means immigration status won’t get in the way of otherwise qualified people as they seek professional licenses in New Jersey. It made me cry but also kept me reading the paper every day. WHYY's Radio Times is an engaging and timely call-in program that tackles wide-ranging issues of concern to listeners in the Delaware Valley. Grant authored one of the key restrictionist documents, the 1916 screed, “The Passing of the Great Race.” Hitler would pronounce himself a fan. Together we can reach 100% of WHYY’s fiscal year goal. Both anti-Semitism and racism were hardly limited to the radical fringe. Follow her on Twitter @JuliaMKlein. He also delineates the close connections between American and German eugenicists before World War II.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter. 4:44 AM. It is required reading for anyone who wants to understand what underlies our current debate about immigration, legal and illegal. Julia M. Klein, a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia, has been a two-time finalist for the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. My father called from Florida to tell me he saw the letter and that he was proud of me.

When I was seven, my father began to leave a copy of the "New York Times" on the breakfast table each morning before he went to work. Any student of American history knows that the xenophobic currents animating the current immigration debate are hardly new. If you haven't, pick up a copy. Trump administration rescinds rule on foreign students. Even Margaret Sanger, best known for her birth-control advocacy, was firmly in the eugenics camp.

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