What will Obama do about amnesty?

Our immigration policy has seen some strange twists and turns since its inception. In 1790 our founding fathers deemed that only whites could come to our shores.

However, thousands of Chinese came during California's gold rush era. A labor shortage had made them welcome. When gold became harder to find they went on to help build our transcontinental railroad and upon completion entered the general labor pool. Employers hired them as cheap labor. Budding resentment soon had the electorate and unions lobbying for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1890, which put Chinese immigration on hold for decades.

By 1920 white Anglo-Saxon America felt threatened by increasing immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, viewing this phenomenon as changing the face of America. They were seen as "different" - mostly Catholics, speaking many different languages, having strange customs. The electorate, unions and some lawmakers quickly enacted a quota system. As a result, only some 6,000 Italians, Greeks, Poles and only 600 Romanians would now immigrate yearly. Changing politics by 1963 offered some reforms.

Our immigration system faced a humanitarian test in the years up to World War II when European Jewry frantically tried to come to our shores to escape Hitler's wrath. Very few entered as quotas and governmental indifference enabled just a few to come. President Reagan was next to face an unusual immigration problem. He had inherited millions of illegal immigrants on his watch. He would exacerbate the problem by giving blanket amnesty. It just encouraged millions more to sneak in.

Now Reagan's precedent raises a question: Will Obama heed the voices of the electorate and their concerns over blanket citizenship for illegal millions in view of our high unemployment, or does he see better pay back from the unions and the powerful lobbies that delivered the votes to put his medical plan in place?

Walter Santi

Bloomingdale