The price of sanctuary: how the US conditions asylum on economic utility and assimilation

“ But when they come as outcasts, made doubly paupers by physical and moral oppression in their native land, and thrown upon the long-suffering generosity of a more favored community, their migration lacks the essential conditions which make alien immigration either acceptable or beneficial. So well is this appreciated on the Continent, that, even in the countries where anti-Semitism has no foothold, it is difficult for these fleeing Jews to obtain any lodging. America is their only goal. [43]
The United States offers asylum to the oppressed of all lands. ”

“ There remains no longer any place for prejudice or selfishness. Reports are made that some Jewish refugees have already been sent back from this country for fear that they may become a public charge. This must not be. Without shame we cannot remain idle and cold spectators and see this done under our very eyes. Ever since the establishment of our nation, it has been its just boast that it was the asylum of the toiling and oppressed people of all other countries, who in good faith sought our shores with a view of permanent residence and citizenship. ”

“ By the revival of antisemitic laws, long in abeyance, great numbers of those unfortunate people have been constrained to abandon their homes and leave the Empire by reason of the impossibility of finding subsistence within the pale to which it is sought to confine them. The immigration of these people to the United States—many other countries being closed to them—is largely increasing and is likely to assume proportions which may make it difficult to find homes and employment for them here and to seriously affect the labor market. ”

“ It pains us that consideration for so many unemployed citizens in our own nation prevents us from offering a protecting asylum to the suffering refugees, who, like wild game, are chased from country to country. <56> At least let us do for them all that is in our power! When in the next few days a general collection is made for the benefit of these refugees, among whom are not a few who, although Jewish by birth, are of the Christian faith and thus a part of the Evangelical Church, let us open our hearts and hands and express loving-kindness towards these remorselessly persecuted people. ”

“ It cost London £70,000 a year to maintain this number in asylums. He further argued that an additional sum of half a million sterling must be put down as representing the cost of providing the necessary asylum accommodation for these 2,700 inmates, the creation of our slums.
"So if the public refuse to spend a few hundreds [Pg 165] on improving the homes and conditions of the poor, they are compelled to spend tens of thousands after the slums have robbed their denizens of health and reason. I know some of the poor do not live the cleanest and best lives. They live down to their environment. ”

“ At this moment there are twenty-one counties in England and Wales without any asylum whatever, public or private. The expense is one cause. In some cases the cost of construction has been exceedingly great. The asylum most cheaply constructed is that of Wakefield, of which the average cost per head was £111, whilst the highest price was that of Gloucester, which had cost on the first accommodation £357 per head. In many cases the cost of construction had exceeded £200 per head. The cost of the Bedford Asylum, for 180 patients, was £20,500; that of Gloucester, for 261 patients, £51,366 ”

“ Probably the prevailing tactics of parish officers may at times contribute to delay the application for relief, but the great obstacle to bringing insane paupers under early and satisfactory treatment in the authorized receptacle for them—the County Asylum, is the prevalence of an economical theory respecting the much greater cheapness of workhouse compared with asylum detention. ”

“ Outside the Metropolis there is no specialised Poor Law provision for idiots, who, if not received into the county asylum, must either be placed in non-Poor-Law institutions at considerable expense, or detained in the workhouse. In 1885 the Central Authority even suggested that harmless and aged lunatics had, on grounds of economy, better be retained in the workhouse, rather than removed to an asylum. ”

“ Liberalism and Americanization will eventually break down the exclusiveness of even so large a number as we now have among us. But if practically free immigration continues and five millions, or ten millions, of Jews come to us within the next generation—then we shall have a people within a people, a state within a state, and the sad conditions of Poland or Roumania will be re-enacted in America. A two per cent. Jewish population can be, ultimately, thoroughly Americanized. A ten per cent. Jewish population will lead us from danger unto danger. ”

“ The American Jew does not assimilate. This is stated, not to blame him, but merely as a fact. The Jew could merge with the people of America if he desired, but he doesn’t. If there is any prejudice existing against him in America, aside from the sense of inquiry which his colossal success engenders, it is because of his aloofness. The Jew is not objectionable in his person, creed, or race. His spiritual ideals are shared by the world. But still he does not assimilate; he cultivates by his exclusiveness the feeling that he does not “belong.” ”

“ Now, that principle may do for other countries, but not for the United States. If the Jew is wise, he ought speedily to take warning that in this country the old line of action will not succeed. If Jews continue to show a disposition to defend the malefactors of their race against the just expostulations of the rest of the people, they must not be surprised if the public begins to view them as all one crowd—an inner nation set against the outer nation. ”

“ Thus the present war has again demonstrated the great truth that, in times of struggle as in times of peace, the Jews constitute a most valuable asset to those nations that accept them as an integral part of their population and permit them to develop freely, but wherever an autocratic government demoralizes its people by confronting them with the spectacle of an unprotected minority denied all human rights, the government itself feels the reaction and the moral tone of the nation is thereby impaired. ”

“ A large proportion of those who remain here is made up of the idle, the sickly, the destitute, the worthless, who would become a burden instead of a help to our people, were it not for the wise institution of that fund which, at the least possible cost to the immigrant, yet still at a cost that relieves him from the degradation of eleemosynary aid, provides him with shelter and support. ”

“ For an asylum for the poor of both sexes, of all ages and castes of color, where they may be sheltered, clothed, fed, and taken care of, made useful according to their respective degrees of health, strength, and capacity, and mendicity thereby be banished from the streets of the cities, he gives one eighth, or twelve and a half per cent of the net revenue of rents, until the sum shall reach six hundred thousand dollars, when it shall cease. ”

“ Humanity forbids us to answer—let them linger and die like beasts upon our pavements. An asylum must be provided for them; and our charitable institutions are no more than a compliance with this moral obligation. If there be abuses, correct them; but do not let the abuses, if they exist, or pecuniary considerations, so far harden our hearts, or blind our judgments, as to induce us to abandon the poor to the precariousness of the individual charity they may chance to meet. ”

“ Moreover, the life under the machinery of an "Institution" does not prepare for the thousand petty hand-labors of a poor man's cottage. But, greatest of all objections, the asylum system is, of necessity, immensely expensive, and can reach but a comparatively small number of subjects. ”

“ Consequently, before overseers or guardians can with any propriety contrast the workhouse charges of maintenance with those of asylums, it is their business to estimate what an adult pauper lunatic costs them per week, instead of, as usual, quoting the cost per head calculated on the whole of the inmates, old and young, sane and insane. ”

“ Now as the rate of maintenance is calculated on the whole population of a workhouse, adults and children together, it necessarily follows that it falls much within that of asylums, in which almost the whole population is adult. This very material difference in the character of the inmates of the two [Pg 43] institutions may fairly be valued as equivalent to a diminution of one-fourth of the expense of maintenance in favour of workhouses; and without some such allowance, the comparison of the cost per head in asylums and union-houses respectively is neither fair nor correct. ”

“ Moreover, we cannot refrain from thinking that a parochial medical officer is not always sufficiently independent, as a paid employé, to certify to the propriety of asylum care so often as he might do, where the guardians or other directors of parish affairs are imbued with rigid notions of economy, and hold the asylum cost for paupers in righteous abhorrence. ”

“ No one surely, who considers the question, and reflects on the necessary consequences of the present legal requirement that, for a lunatic to enjoy the advantages of a public asylum, towards which he may have for years contributed, he must be formally declared chargeable to the rates as a pauper,—can deny the conclusion that it is a provision which must entail a social degradation upon the lunatic and his family, and act as a great impediment to the transmission of numerous recent cases to the County Asylum for early treatment. ”

“ Sufficient, we trust, has been said to demonstrate the evils of the present system of pauperizing patients to qualify them for admission into County Asylums, and the desirability of opening those institutions to all lunatics of the middle classes whose means are limited, and whose social position as independent citizens is jeopardized by the existence of their malady. This class of persons, as before said, calls especially for commiseration and aid; being so placed, on the one hand, that their limited means must soon fail to afford them the succour of a private asylum ”

“ His friends, worn out and impoverished in their charitable endeavours to sustain him in his independent position as a private patient, are obliged to plead their poverty, and to sue as paupers the parish officials for the requisite order to admit their afflicted relative to the benefits of the public asylum as a Pauper Lunatic. In short, they have to pauperize him; to announce to the world their own poverty, and to succumb to a proceeding which robs them of their feelings of self-respect and independence, and by which they lose caste in the eyes of their neighbours. ”

“ In the case of the insane poor, whose condition, circumstances, and social position have been such that whenever any misfortune, want of work, or sickness has overtaken them, the workhouse affords a ready refuge, the requirement of pauperization to qualify for admission to the County Asylum is in itself no hardship and no obstacle to their transmission to it. ”

“ In the United States of America, every tax-payer and holder of property is entitled as a tax-payer, when insane, to admission into the Asylum of the State of which he is a citizen. He is considered as a contributor to the erection and support of the institution, and as having therefore a claim upon its aid if disease overtake him. The cost of his maintenance is borne by the township or county to which he belongs, and the question of his means to contribute towards it is determined by the county judge and a jury. ”

“ On the continent of Europe and in the United States of America we obtain ample evidence that the plan of pauperizing patients in order to render them admissible to public asylums, is by no means necessary. Most continental asylums are of a mixed character, receiving both paying and non-paying inmates, and care is taken to investigate the means of every applicant for admission, and those of his friends chargeable by law with his maintenance. ”

“ The condition of pauper lunatics boarded with their friends or with strangers demanded special notice, as did the long-complained-of evils of sending unfit cases to the county asylums, often to the exclusion of recent and curable ones, which might by proper treatment be restored to health and society. Turning to the consideration of our public asylums, considered as curative institutions, the disposition to extend them to an unmanageable size, and to substitute routine for treatment, has called for animadversion, as an error pregnant with numerous evils to their afflicted inmates. ”

“ Poverty is, truly, the great evil; it has no friends able to help. Persons in middle society do not put away their aged relatives because of their infirmities, and I think it was not always the custom for worn-out paupers to be sent to the asylum. May not this practice be justly regarded as an abuse of the asylum? It is one more of the ways in which, at this day, the apparent increase of insanity is sustained. It is not a real increase, since the aged have ever been subject to this sort of unsoundness. ”

“ They, moreover, supply facts to prove that the neglect in transferring proper cases for asylum treatment, and the inexcusable folly of sending to asylums the victims of second childishness, the imbecile paralytics, the peevish and perverse sufferers from chronic organic disease, such as poor consumptives, whose days are measured by the shortest span, tend to promote the accumulation of incurable inmates, to raise the mortality, and to increase the expenditure of these institutions. ”

“ There is a Jewish court sitting in a public building in the city of New York every week, and other courts, for the sole advantage and use of this people whose spokesmen deny that they are a "separate people," are in formation everywhere. The Zionist plan has already been used in some of the smaller European countries to confer an extra-citizenship upon Jews who already enjoy citizenship in the lands of their residence, and in addition to that a degree of self-rule under the very governments which they demand to protect them. ”

“ Their great and constant fear is to be denounced as strangers in the land of their birth, of which they are free citizens. They fear that this will be more than ever the case, if a large section of the Jewish people [40] openly claim for themselves rights as an autonomous nation, and still worse, if anywhere in the world a political and intellectual center of Judaism should really be created, in which millions of Jews would be grouped together, united as a nation. ”

“ There are also Jews who favour a more moderate Zionism, and fear that setting up a Jewish state will make trouble both in Palestine and in the countries where Jews are now citizens with a part in business and public affairs. ”

“ According to annual surveys conducted by the American Jewish Committee, in 2020, 43% US Jews feel less secure than a year ago, and in 2017, 41% say antisemitism is a serious problem in the US, up from 21% in 2016, 21% in 2015, and 14% in 2013.
⁠The bullying of Americans of Asian descent is increasing in the US. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, there have been growing cases of Asian Americans humiliated or attacked in public places. Statistics from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation indicate that hate crimes against people of Asian descent rose by 76% in the US in 2020. ”

“ Palestine has become the theatre of an undisguised anti-Semitic policy. Elementary equality of rights is denied the Jewish inhabitants; the Holy City, where the Jews are by far the largest community, has been handed over to a militantly anti-Semitic municipality; violence against Jews is tolerated, and whole districts are closed to them by threats of such violence under the very eyes of the authorities; high officials, guilty of acts which any Court would qualify as instigation to anti-Jewish pogroms, not only go unpunished, but retain their official positions. ”

“ Recent anti-Semitic incidents indicate that Arab youths are increasingly behind attacks on and harassment of the country's Jews. In May, an American orthodox Jew in Berlin was attacked by a group of teenagers who appeared to be of Arab origin. The attack was the fourth in a series of similar incidents in which Arab youths would verbally harass, spit on, and physically assault a person who appeared Jewish. ”

“ It is here and it cannot be twisted into something else by the adroit use of propaganda, nor can it be forever silenced by threats. The Jews of the United States can best serve themselves and their fellow-Jews all over the world by letting drop their far too ready cry of "anti-Semitism," by adopting a franker tone than that which befits a helpless victim, and by seeing what the Jewish Question is and how it behooves every Jew who loves his people to help solve it. ”

“ But so handy and so untrustworthy an explanation as “anti-Semitism” does not account for the failure of Jewish financial interests to become absolutely dominant in a country like the United States. Anti-Semitism among the people does not surge high enough to injure those securely entrenched behind great financial influence. The silent resistance of the Wall Street financial group or of the New York Stock Exchange, for example, is not anti-Semitism. It is not a hindrance to the Jews in doing business ”

“ The two countries will use the tools at their disposal to fight every scourge and source of antisemitism and to respond whenever legitimate criticism crosses over into bigotry and hatred or attempts to undermine Israel’s rightful and legitimate place among the family of nations. ”

“ And antisemitism must be rejected wherever it appears, whether on the left or on the right, whether in the halls of universities or in the halls of the United Nations. For Peace to prevail, the Palestinians must stop spewing Jew hatred, finally reconcile themselves to the Jewish state. By that I mean not only to the existence of the Jewish state, but to the right of the Jewish people to have a state of their own in their historic homeland – the land of Israel. ”

“ The problem of housing for the poor is one of the most acute facing the Nation. The poor are relegated to ghettos and are beset by substandard housing at exorbitant rents. Because of their lack of bargaining power, the poor are made to accept onerous lease terms. Summary eviction proceeds are the order of the day. Default judgment in eviction proceedings are obtained in machinegun rapidity, since the indigent cannot afford counsel to defend. Housing laws often have a built-in bias against the poor. Slumlords have a tight hold on the Nation. ”

“ Whereas discriminatory policies and practices based upon race, color, creed, or national origin now operate to deny many Americans the benefits of housing financed through Federal assistance and as a consequence prevent such assistance from providing them with an alternative to substandard, unsafe unsanitary, and overcrowded housing ”

“ The same is true here, for in the ordinary case an alien, becoming indigent and unable to work, will be unable to live where, because of discriminatory denial of public assistance, he cannot 'secure the necessities of life, including food, clothing and shelter.' State alien residency requirements that either deny welfare benefits to noncitizens or condition them on longtime residency, equate with the assertion of a right, inconsistent with federal policy, to deny entrance and abode. ”