The story of Texas is a story of migration. In telling this story, a few key factors emerge.
First, whether you trace your ancestors back to the Lipan Apache, Spanish explorers or Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred, when you search back far enough you find that we are all the descendants of people from somewhere other than the area now known as Texas.
Second, as any casual observer of human behavior knows, when new neighbors move in, conflicts can arise.
Third, given these two factors, Texas is no newcomer to the immigration debate.
And fourth, the reasons people moved to Texas in the past are pretty near the same as the reasons people move to Texas today.
Texas, and indeed the United States, is a land of people from all over the globe because of our rich history of immigration. In Colonial America, there were few restrictions on immigration. For the most part, if you could secure passage and you weren't a known criminal, you could become a colonist. Yet, even at this time when the colonists were intentionally (by way of guns) and unintentionally (by way of disease) killing American Indians and pushing them further west, thereby freeing up more land for which they needed more laborers, there was a tension ? even a hostility ? between the early arrivals and the recent arrivals.
Life in Colonial America was less crowded and cleaner, land was cheap, and food was abundant. The settlers didn't want Old World problems of overcrowding, filth, disease and poverty following them across the Atlantic with a surge of immigrants. Yet, the need for labor to secure their economic future and the need for people to secure their holdings from ?hostile? Indians meant immigrants were a necessity.
By the 1790s, U.S. citizenship was defined along racial lines that benefited immigration from Europe ? open to free white persons ? a strategy that quickly populated the new country.
The Spanish (later Mexican) Empire to the south had a similar need to populate its northeast territory, our beloved Texas.
In 1790, New Spain's population of five million surpassed that of the United States by about one million. However, that trend quickly reversed, and by 1830, the U.S. population was double that of Mexico, aided by its liberal immigration policy.
With colonizing Texas an increasing defense priority ? both to protect it from raiding Indians and the land-hungry eyes of the United States ? Mexico repeatedly encouraged immigration into Texas. But, both in the United States and Mexico, the immigrants who arrived were not always the immigrants the government envisioned as its future citizens.
In the case of Texas, the typical settlement contract required that the colonists be Catholic, of good character, and ready to swear allegiance to the government and follow its laws. Instead, the majority of the settlers were not Catholic, many brought slaves despite the illegality of slavery in Mexico, and others engaged in land speculating and smuggling.
Despite an 1830 immigration law designed to crack down on those flouting the rules, the government largely turned a blind eye to these infractions because of the need for warm bodies.
Texas Mexicans found themselves in a strange situation when they ?immigrated? twice without actually moving, first in 1836 with Texas independence and again in 1845 when Texas joined the United States.
The period of transition from Mexico to Republic of Texas to U.S. also saw the arrival of large numbers of Anglos, Irish, African-Americans and Germans. Indeed Germans made up the largest immigrant group to come directly from Europe.
The German Belt extending from Houston to Hondo is a classic example of chain migration in which a handful of immigrants led to a steady stream. In 1990, it was estimated that 17.5 percent of Texans were at least part German.
Of course, immigration to Texas didn't stop with statehood. After the Civil War, a new wave of immigrants arrived.
The short-lived Texas Bureau of Immigration might sound like an agency for policing Texas' borders against immigrants, but, in fact, from 1871 to 1876, it sought to promote Texas as a destination of choice for immigrants. Agents lectured on the virtues of Texas in northern and southern states, as well as Europe, and also published brochures such as ?Texas, the Home for the Emigrant, From Everywhere.?
Unsurprisingly, conflicts arose. Just as the Mexican government bemoaned the lack of acculturation demonstrated by some Anglo settlers, later Texans complained about people they deemed to be unfit Texans.
Early debates about immigration centered on people who were considered too different to be able to blend into the American fabric. Make no mistake, our immigration laws have long reflected our views on race and class, sometimes revealing the nastiest strains of nativism running through our society.
One such racially proscriptive law, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which forbade the immigration of Chinese workers who had previously been recruited to come work in the U.S., was largely responsible for the establishment of a border patrol.
Though the U.S. Border Patrol would not be officially established until 1924, beginning in 1904, Mounted Guards, or Chinese Immigration Agents, patrolled the U.S.-Mexico border from El Paso to California, looking for Chinese immigrants attempting to enter the United States.
For Mexicans who had crossed the border with few restrictions, new literacy tests and fees were introduced in 1917.
The tension between the need for workers and the desire to keep out certain people re-emerged throughout the 20th century. Whether it was recruited Mexican workers who were then forcibly repatriated during the Depression or Filipinos whose U.S. national status was revoked in 1934, only to be reclassified as U.S. citizens in 1942 when they were needed to fight in WWII, the United States has a fickle immigration history.
Despite all this, the desire to immigrate has not faltered.
Earlier this month marked the 106th anniversary of the arrival of the passenger ship SS Cassel in Galveston Bay. This ship carried 87 Jews fleeing the Russian pogroms. Upon arrival, the immigrants were greeted by Rabbis Henry Cohen and Ya'akov Gellar, as well as the mayor of Galveston, Henry Landes.
One man remarked in Yiddish, ?We are overwhelmed that the ruler of the city should greet us. We have never been spoken to by the officials of our country except in terms of harshness, and although we have heard of the land of great freedom, it is very hard to realize that we are permitted to grasp the hand of the great man. We shall do all we can to make good citizens.?
This last sentence rings true for me.
The Institute of Texan Cultures recently opened ?Why We Came,? an exhibit about the immigration experiences of 16 new Texans. In interviewing these modern-day immigrants for the exhibit, I encountered people who were recruited to come to Texas, who came to join family, who were forced to flee their home country and who came to seek out a better life.
The exhibit reveals that the reasons immigrants come to Texas today are no different from the reasons people came 100 or more years ago. There is a need for labor, land is comparatively cheap, opportunities exist, and war forces people to move.
The achievements of our state's new citizens are particularly impressive. They are business owners, educators, inventors, artists, doctors and activists. They are all doing what they can to make good citizens.
Dr. Sarah Zenaida Gould is the lead curatorial researcher at the University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures.
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