Theodore Roosevelt on immigration

Timely words from the past for the U.S. today.

From More Liberty, 23 April 2006.

"The following is one of my favorite thoughts on the issue of immigration. It's from President Theodore Roosevelt in a letter to the American Defense Society in 1919, 10 years after his presidency."

--Lou Dobbs, CNN Commentator

"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...

There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

--Theodore Roosevelt, 1919

Congressman John J. Duncan, Jr.