Founding Fathers Immigration Quotes: Welcomes and Warnings

Quotes from the Founding Fathers on immigration pull in two directions at once. George Washington called America an “Asylum” for “the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations And Religions.” Alexander Hamilton warned that admitting foreigners “indiscriminately” would be like admitting “the Grecian horse into the citadel of our liberty.” Both men signed the Constitution. The founding generation genuinely believed the new republic should be open to the world, and it genuinely feared what open borders might do to a fragile experiment in self-government. The quotes below, grouped by what the founders were actually arguing about, show both sides in their own words.

The Welcoming Quotes

Thomas Paine set the tone in Common Sense in 1776, calling on Americans to “receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.” He described freedom as having been “hunted round the globe,” expelled from Asia, Africa, and Europe, with America as its last refuge.1Thomas Paine National Historical Association. Thomas Paine on Immigrants and America as an Asylum for Mankind

Washington used the same word repeatedly. Writing to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp in May 1788, he said: “I had always hoped that this land might become a safe & agreeable Asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.”2Mount Vernon. Quote: Safe and Agreeable Asylum Five years earlier, addressing recent Irish arrivals, he had said: “The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations And Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.”3Bill of Rights Institute. George Washington on Immigration Primary Source

Thomas Jefferson described America as “a sanctuary for those whom the misrule of Europe may compel to seek happiness in other climes,” where the persecuted would be “recieved as brothers.”4Forbes. Immigration, Nationalism and America’s Founders In his First Annual Message to Congress in December 1801, he asked: “Shall oppressed humanity find no asylum on this globe?”5Monticello. The Question of Immigration

Washington’s 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport gave the idea its most quoted form: the United States government “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,” asking only that those under its protection “demean themselves as good citizens.”6George Washington University. George Washington’s Letter to Hebrew Congregation in Newport

Immigration in the Declaration of Independence

The welcoming position was not just rhetoric. One of the charges leveled against King George III in the Declaration of Independence was that he had “endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.”7Gilder Lehrman Institute. Declaration of Independence Grievances Blocking immigration was, in the founders’ formal statement of their reasons for revolution, a tyrannical act.

What the Founders Said at the Constitutional Convention

The most direct back-and-forth on immigration among the founders happened on the floor of the Constitutional Convention in August 1787, over how many years a naturalized citizen should have to wait before serving in Congress.

George Mason of Virginia said he was “for opening a wide door for emigrants,” but added that he “did not choose to let foreigners and adventurers make laws for us and govern us.”8Legal Information Institute. Implied Power of Congress Over Immigration – Historical Background

James Madison “wished to invite foreigners of merit and republican principles among us,” arguing that “America was indebted to emigration for her settlement and prosperity” and that the regions that had encouraged newcomers most had “advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture, and the arts.”9Constitution Annotated. Implied Power of Congress Over Immigration When Gouverneur Morris proposed a fourteen-year citizenship requirement for senators, Madison objected that it would “discourage the most desirable class of people from emigrating to the U.S.” and “give a tincture of illiberality to the Constitution.”10Cato Institute. The Founding Fathers Favored a Liberal Immigration System

James Wilson of Pennsylvania, born in Scotland, spoke as an immigrant himself. He criticized the “discouragement and mortification” that foreign-born Americans would feel “from the degrading discrimination now proposed,” and said he objected to being “incapacitated from holding a place under the very Constitution which he had shared in the trust of making.”11National Park Service. Constitutional Convention – August 9

Benjamin Franklin, then eighty-one, said he “was not against a reasonable time, but should be very sorry to see anything like illiberality inserted in the Constitution.” An immigrant’s decision to come to America, he added, “is a proof of attachment which ought to excite our confidence and affection.”10Cato Institute. The Founding Fathers Favored a Liberal Immigration System

On the other side, Gouverneur Morris argued that every political community, “from a great nation down to a club,” had “the right of declaring the conditions on which new members should be admitted.”12Hillsdale College. Immigration and the American Founding Pierce Butler of South Carolina, an immigrant from Ireland, supported restrictions anyway, saying foreign habits and attachments made immigrants “an improper agent in public affairs.”11National Park Service. Constitutional Convention – August 9 The Convention settled on seven years for the House and nine for the Senate.

The Warning Quotes

The same generation produced some of the most severe restrictionist writing in American history. The recurring worry was that immigrants raised under monarchies would import habits incompatible with republican self-government.

Jefferson on Immigrants from Monarchies

In Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson wrote that immigrants would “bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth,” and might swing from that inheritance to “unbounded licentiousness” rather than “temperate liberty.” In proportion to their numbers, he warned, “they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.” He made an exception for “useful artificers,” skilled craftsmen, urging Americans to “spare no expence in obtaining them.”13Monticello. Notes on the State of Virginia – Query VIII

Hamilton as “Lucius Crassus”

Writing in 1802 under the name Lucius Crassus, Alexander Hamilton attacked Jefferson’s proposal to loosen naturalization. To admit foreigners “the moment they put foot in our country,” he wrote, “would be nothing less than to admit the Grecian horse into the citadel of our liberty and sovereignty.”14Providence Journal. Hamilton’s Actual View on Immigration National safety, he argued, depended on “the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice.” He doubted immigrants would arrive with “that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism.”15Institute of World Politics. Hamilton’s Actual View on Immigration The influx of foreigners, he concluded, “must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit.”

Hamilton had said something different at the Convention itself, where he acknowledged that “the advantage of encouraging foreigners was obvious and admitted.”10Cato Institute. The Founding Fathers Favored a Liberal Immigration System By 1802 he was writing against Jefferson, and against immigrants sympathetic to the French Revolution who he feared would strengthen the rival Democratic-Republicans.15Institute of World Politics. Hamilton’s Actual View on Immigration

Franklin on German Immigrants in Pennsylvania

Franklin’s Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, published in 1751, contains language that sits uncomfortably next to his Convention remarks. “Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements,” he asked, “and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours?” He worried that Pennsylvania would “become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them.”16Columbia University. Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind In a 1753 letter to Peter Collinson, he called German arrivals “generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation” and proposed distributing them “more equally,” mixing them with English settlers and establishing English schools.17Teaching American History. Letter to Peter Collinson

Washington on Settling in a Body

Washington’s welcome came with a preference for dispersal. In a 1794 letter to John Adams, he wrote that “except of useful Mechanics and some particular descriptions of men or professions, there is no need of encouragement” for immigration. His concern about immigrants “settling in a body” was that they would “retain the Language, habits and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures and laws: in a word, soon become one people.”3Bill of Rights Institute. George Washington on Immigration Primary Source

What the Quotes Turned Into: The Early Naturalization Laws

The debate produced four laws in twelve years, and the swings track the underlying disagreement.

The 1798 law provoked Madison’s most cutting line on the subject. In a letter to Jefferson, he called the Alien Act “a monster that must forever disgrace its parents.”20Library of Congress. Alien and Sedition Acts Digital Resources Madison also argued that constitutional protections applied to all people within the country, not only to citizens.21Gilder Lehrman Institute. Immigrants and the Alien and Sedition Acts

One boundary worth naming: the founding-era laws regulated citizenship, not entry. The federal government placed no restrictions on who could physically come to the United States. And every one of these acts limited eligibility to “free white persons,” a racial bar not lifted for people of African descent until 1870 and not fully removed until the twentieth century.19Constitution Annotated. Historical Overview of Naturalization

Reading the Contradictions

The same man could write both kinds of quote. Jefferson called America an asylum and warned that immigrants would render the legislature “a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.” Franklin defended immigrants at the Convention and mocked German settlers in his essays. Hamilton acknowledged the “obvious” advantages of encouraging foreigners in 1787 and warned against the Grecian horse in 1802.

What ties the two strands together is a shared belief in a natural right to leave one’s country combined with a shared anxiety about the political character of arrivals from monarchies. The founders’ answer to that anxiety was almost never to close the border. It was to require a waiting period before full political participation, to prefer geographic dispersal over ethnic enclaves, and to trust that “intermixture,” in Washington’s word, would eventually make newcomers “one people” with those already here. Whether that trust was warranted, and how long the wait should be, is what they were arguing about then and what the country has been arguing about since.