8 | NOVEMBER 3 • 2022

guest column
America’s 21st Century – Who
Will Write Our Next Chapter?
D

uring this year’s High
Holidays, I sat with
my family to watch
Ken Burns’ documentary
The U.S. and the Holocaust
and I barely
got through
with the first
episode when
I found myself
pulled into
the parallels
to the modern
day. The
documentary highlights both
America’s welcoming nature
as a place of refuge, evident
in the inspiring words of
Jewish poet Emma Lazarus
inscribed on the Statue of
Liberty, and the restrictive
nature of early 20th-century
U.S. immigration laws
built on some of the same
antisemitic foundations that
led to the rise of Nazism.
As the grandchild of
Eastern European Jews
who fled antisemitism (and
gratefully escaped tragic
death at the hands of the
Nazis — a fate that awaited
my grandparents’ siblings
and parents who did not
leave Europe), I was taught
that America was the land
of freedom and opportunity.
Postwar history has, in many
ways, undergirded that belief.
In my lifetime, the U.S. has
welcomed more refugees
than any other nation.
But Ken Burns’
documentary provides
an honest and disturbing
recollection of American
immigration in late 19th
and early 20th centuries.

Far from being the beacon
of religious tolerance
and welcoming land of
freedom, the U.S. was
gripped by rising populism
that demonized various
southern and eastern
European groups. Many
Americans embraced the
same antisemitic tropes that
fueled Adolf Hitler’s rise.
Far from opening the gates
of freedom, the U.S. rejected
hundreds of thousands of
Jewish immigration requests,
leaving countless European
Jews, like Anne Frank’s
family, to suffer tragic,
unspeakable terrors.
What stunned me during
my viewing was, that while
few popular leaders today
openly express patently
antisemitic words, the means
by which U.S. immigration
laws were tailored to keep
out those seeking refuge
in early 20th-century
America are the same as
those being promoted by
anti-immigration politicians
today. I mean the exact same

policies. Suddenly during
the first episode of the Ken
Burns’ documentary, the
narrator discusses the use of
the “public charge” and how
it was used to deny Jewish
requests for immigration.

WHAT IS THE
PUBLIC CHARGE?
For many viewers, the
reference to the “public
charge” would not register
as an important issue in
America’s story about Jews
in America or modern-day
immigration policy. But for
me, the executive director
of Global Detroit, a regional
economic development
organization that focuses on
the inclusion of immigrants
as a strategy to strengthen
Southeast Michigan’s
economy, the “public charge”
issue is important and one
that very much threatens
to reenact the immigration
barriers that, according to
the Ken Burns’ documentary,
kept hundreds of thousands
of Jews from escaping

tragedy in Europe.
U.S. immigration laws have
long included provisions
allowing immigration
officials the ability to deny
entry to immigrants if the
government deems that
person likely to become a
“public charge” or dependent
on government benefits.
This provision originated
in 1882, but saw growing use
during the 1920s and, with
intensifying anti-immigrant
attitudes during the Great
Depression and rising
antisemitism leading up to
the Second World War, even
more common use in the
critical years during which
European and German Jews
sought to flee the Nazis.
It fell into disuse after the
Second World War until
President Donald Trump
sought to greatly expand its
meaning and utilization to
close American borders.
In 2018, President
Trump and his then-Acting
Director of U.S. Customs
and Immigration Services
(USCIS) Ken Cucinelli
proposed a new federal rule
on the “public charge” that,
in effect, would have created
a wealth test for entry to the
United States — a wealth test
that I am fairly certain my
own grandfather would have
failed. Mr. Cucinelli went so
far as seeking to redefine the
Statue of Liberty’s inscription
of “Give me your tired, your
poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free,”
arguing that it only applies
to those who could “stand

PURELY COMMENTARY

Steve
Tobocman

USCIS.GOV