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The Bill of Rights and the Foreign Born

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2018

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Extract

The United States, as Walt Whitman said, is a “nation of nations,” a nation essentially of immigrants. Their sacrifices, courage, and imagination created factories, farms, mines, and a rich intermingling of cultures.

Our country has two traditions: one that welcomes the stranger who, as Benjamin Franklin noted, is in the forefront of defending democracy; and another that in times of crisis uses the foreign bom as a scapegoat for unsolved social problems. In Jefferson's words, “the friendless alien is the safest subject for a first experiment, but the citizen will soon follow.”

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1975

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