纽约、康涅狄格和佛蒙特州周二宣布，他们已对准备实施特朗普政府仇外和种族主义“公共指控”移民规则的联邦机构提起诉讼。
在一份言辞激烈的声明中，纽约司法部长莱蒂西亚·詹姆斯谴责政府“几乎不加掩饰地只允许那些符合他们狭隘的民族、种族和经济标准的人进入我们的国家”
美国的移民历史是以经济繁荣、国家安全和公共安全的名义颁布的这种歧视性排斥政策的延续:非裔美国人、妇女和土著居民一度没有被纳入公民行列；移民配额非常有利于北欧和西欧；《亚洲排斥法》禁止了整个大陆的人；现在整个宗教团体都被穆斯林禁令禁止。
但是每一次，时间都揭示了这些政策和法律的本来面目:种族主义和仇外心理的代名词。
上周，代理美国公民和移民服务局局长肯·库奇内利为公共收费规则辩护，该规则将拒绝向贫困的合法移民发放绿卡，其依据是联邦政府“100多年来”一直遵循的原则
这种以财富为基础的移民标准确实有历史渊源。毕竟，在国家移民法规的基础上，美国第一部普通移民法包括了公共收费条款。1882年的联邦法律拒绝了“任何不能在不成为公共指控的情况下照顾自己的人”。
就像此后出现的所有公共收费法一样，它与歧视和偏见联系在一起。这些法律当时是种族主义和仇外心理的，今天仍然如此。
特朗普政府公共收费规则赋予国土安全部巨大的权力拒绝申请或接受各种公共福利的人的移民身份。根据837页的规定，美国政府将只向被视为“移民”的人开放永久居留的大门自给自足的他说:「这是一项高度酌情处理的程序，将于今年十月生效。
政府声称该规则将为美国政府节省数十亿美元，因为那些有资格享受公共福利的人将放弃或被剥夺资格，以避免在新政策下被剥夺永久地位。它还声称，由于公共福利的可获得性较低，该政策将对移民来美国起到威慑作用。
别搞错了:用“自给自足”和“经济储蓄”作为移民政策的理由一直是歧视的借口。
19世纪40年代，马铃薯饥荒肆虐爱尔兰，大批爱尔兰移民来到美国东北部海岸，却遭遇了残酷的偏见。“本土主义者”是一个新兴的反移民政治运动，他们担心寻求摆脱贫困和饥饿的爱尔兰天主教徒会用他们教皇的影响稀释这个新国家，并指责他们给新世界带来疾病、酗酒和堕落。
伴随这种宗教偏见和仇外心理的是自力更生的问题。移民们是否不应该从他们的新家中获益？他们会降低美国的质量吗？
但是内战后，移民劳工是一种必需的商品，因为国家正在修建运河和铁路，所以在整个重建期间，移民的大门在联邦一级基本上是敞开的。就像时钟一样，美国的故事又一次被写了出来:首先是关于种族灭绝和原住民的迁移，然后是关于奴隶劳动的背后，最后是长期以来被认为不受欢迎的强迫劳动者和移民的汗水。
然而，不久之后，国会通过了1882年的移民法案，联邦政策从那时起就一直对贫困移民设置障碍。对意大利人、犹太人、中国人和其他被认为在他们初到美国时不受欢迎的人，公共指控政策也被武器化了。
现在，特朗普政府的扩大规则是在用于剔除潜在“公共费用”的因素中增加公共项目，如医疗补助和食品券，这些项目直到20世纪中期才存在
大约在1880年，移民到达纽约埃利斯岛。1882年《移民法》拒绝了“任何不能在不成为公共指控的情况下照顾自己的人”
在许多情况下，让这条新规则的仇外影响更加复杂的是，它把固有的主观自给自足的决心留给了国土安全部官员。换句话说，未来谁有可能成为公众人物的复杂决定将被一个联邦雇员的个人偏见和偏见所影响。
今天，目标不是爱尔兰人，而是那些到达我们南部边境的人。今天，指控不是酗酒、堕落或被教皇控制，而是帮派成员、恐怖主义和犯罪。爱尔兰人最终会被同化为白人，不受吉姆·克劳法律的影响，与其他欧洲裔美国人通婚。然而，对于有色人种来说，对政府依赖的指控将持续几代人。
将公共收费法的扩张作为历史依据进行辩护，忽略了其背后的根本动机。当时和现在一样，要求驱逐和排斥穷人、病人和受抚养者的政策是试图关闭美国少数民族大门的伪装。
奈米恩·阿拉斯图是纽约大学法学院的副教授，移民和非公民权利诊所的联合主任。
TRUMP'S PUBLIC CHARGE RULE IS A COVER-UP FOR RACISM—WITH DISTURBING HISTORICAL ORIGINS | OPINION
New York, Connecticut and Vermont announced Tuesday that they have filed a lawsuit against the federal agencies that are set to implement the Trump administration's xenophobic and racist "public charge" immigration rule.
In a blistering statement, New York Attorney General Letitia James denounced the administration's "thinly veiled efforts to only allow those who meet their narrow ethnic, racial and economic criteria to enter our nation."
America's immigration history is a continuum of such discriminatory policies of exclusion, enacted in the name of economic prosperity, national security and public safety: African Americans, women and Native populations were once not included as citizens; immigration quotas have heavily favored Northern and Western Europeans; a whole continent of people was banned under the Asian Exclusion Act; and now an entire religious community is being barred with a Muslim ban.
But at every turn, time unveiled these policies and laws for what they were: proxies for racism and xenophobia.
Last week, acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli defended the public charge rule, which would deny green cards to poor legal immigrants, as based on principles that the federal government has followed "for more than 100 years."
It's true that this wealth-based immigration standard has historical origins. After all, building upon state regulation of immigrants, one of America's first general immigration law included a public charge provision. The 1882 federal law rejected "any person unable to take care of him or herself without becoming a public charge."
And just like every public charge law that has come since, it was tied to discrimination and bigotry. These laws were racist and xenophobic then, and they remain so today.
The Trump administration's public charge rule gives the Department of Homeland Security vast powers to deny immigration status to people who apply for or receive any of a wide array of public benefits. According to the 837-page regulation, the U.S. government will open the doors of permanent residence only to immigrants deemed "self-sufficient" through a highly discretionary process to go into effect this October.
The administration claims the rule will save the U.S. government billions of dollars, as those who qualify for public benefits will forego them or disenroll to avoid being barred from permanent status under the new policy. It also claims the policy will serve as a deterrent to immigrants coming to the United States due to the lower availability of public benefits.
Make no mistake: Using "self-sufficiency" and "economic savings" as justification for immigration policies has always been a pretense for discrimination.
As potato famine ravaged Ireland in the 1840s, masses of Irish immigrants arrived on the shores of America's Northeast, only to be met by brutal prejudice. The "nativists," a burgeoning anti-immigrant political movement, worried the Irish Catholics seeking refuge from poverty and starvation would dilute the new nation with their papal influences and accused them of bringing disease, drunkenness and depravity to the New World.
Paired with this religious bigotry and xenophobia were questions of self-reliance. Were the immigrants undeservedly deriving benefits from their new home? Would they lower the quality of America?
But immigrant labor was a needed commodity after the Civil War, as the nation was constructing its canals and railroads, and so the doors of immigration remained mostly open at the federal level throughout the Reconstruction period. Like clockwork, the American story was being written once again: first on the genocide and removal of Native populations, then upon the backs of slave labor and finally on the sweat of forced laborers and immigrants long deemed undesirable.
Soon after, however, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1882, and federal policy has maintained barriers against poverty-stricken immigrants ever since. Public charge policies have also been weaponized against the Italians, Jews, Chinese and others deemed undesirable upon their early arrival to the United States.
Now, the Trump administration's expanded rule is adding public programs like Medicaid and food stamps, which didn't exist until the mid-20th century, to the factors used to weed out potential "public charges."
Immigrants arrive to Ellis Island, New York, circa 1880. The Immigration Act of 1882 rejected “any person unable to take care of him or herself without becoming a public charge.”
To compound this new rule's xenophobic impact, in many scenarios, it leaves the inherently subjective self-sufficiency determination in the hands of a Department of Homeland Security officer. In other words, the complex determination of who is likely to become a public charge in the future will be colored by the personal biases and prejudices of a single federal employee.
Today, it isn't the Irish being targeted, but those arriving at our southern border. Today, the accusations are not of drunkenness, depravity or control by the pope, but of gang membership, terrorism and criminality. The Irish would eventually assimilate into the white populace, unaffected by Jim Crow laws, intermarrying with other European Americans. For people of color, though, allegations of government dependence would stick for generations to come.
To justify the expansion of public charge laws as historically based ignores the root motivations behind them. Then, as now, policies that called for the deportation and exclusion of the poor, sick and dependent are a guise for attempts to slam America's door shut to minorities.
Nermeen Arastu is an associate law professor and co-director of the Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic at the CUNY School of Law.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
