A Connecticut Reader Quotes Robert Louis Stevenson On Resistance To Immigration
06/21/2014
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From: A Connecticut Reader [Email him]

I've been reading Across the Plains, by Robert Louis Stevenson which was published in 1879 and in Chapter 6 I came across this remarkable quote, this is non-fiction by the way:

“It seems, after all, that no country is bound to submit to immigration any more than to invasion; each is war to the knife, and resistance to either but legitimate defense.”

James Fulford writes: RLS was writing as an immigration enthusiast, and defending the Chinese immigrants of the 1870s against their criticsAmerican working men who were being “ruined by Chinese cheap labor” as the poet says.

But it’s worth remembering that there were critics of immigration back in the “Ellis Island” period of unrestricted immigration, and it led to the passage of immigration restriction laws.

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