Police Officer Preparation & Law Enforcement Resource - Archive

"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 person's becoming in every facet 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... 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 1907

Question - and please note this is not a smart-arse foreigner criticising domestic policy - was Teddy Roosevelt every considered a "nativist"?

I'm interested in the debate which can roughly be categorised as "multiculturalism" v "assimilation/integration" because it's so complex and because it's been on for hundreds of years in my country as well. I won't take the thread to the issues in my country because that would derail the thread. So, was Teddy a nativist demanding total integration or was he a multiculturalist?

Question - and please note this is not a smart-arse foreigner criticising domestic policy - was Teddy Roosevelt every considered a "nativist"?

I'm interested in the debate which can roughly be categorised as "multiculturalism" v "assimilation/integration" because it's so complex and because it's been on for hundreds of years in my country as well. I won't take the thread to the issues in my country because that would derail the thread. So, was Teddy a nativist demanding total integration or was he a multiculturalist?

It sounds to me from the quote that he is a multiculturalist. He seems to be in full support of imigration, but what he is stating is this. When you become a citizen here, you are becomming an American. Not a Meximerican, not a Japamerican, not a Greekamerican, you are becomming American! Yes you may have those ancestries in your background, but once you become a citizen, you become 100% American. It is like religon, as you can't be a Jewish Catholic, it just doesn't work that way.

For the record, we don't need 2 or 3 languages here, we want one. Learn it or get out, because though it is beneficial, I do not want my future children having to learn 3 languages to survive this country. If I come to another country, I will learn to speak theirr language as best I can, or I won't come, and they should do the same for me. I would not become a citizen of a country without first learning the language and culture, and I sure as hell would not come and support America if I wanted to be a Frenchman (or whatever). Is some countries, you can get KILLED for flying the American flag. Fortunately, our country is not as brutal and savage, but flying another flag in our country should not come without punishment.

I have a couple Indian (from India) friends who became citizens. They support America, our culture, and everything about it, as America is giving them a huge oportunity. And they don't support the country they were attempting to get away from. They are now 100% American, and I treat them as I would any of my fellow Americans. Illeagals will always be treated like they should, because yes, they are criminals, and hopefully felons soon.

T.R. was one of the greatest presidents we have ever had.

(Trivia tidbit, his son Brig. General T.R. Jr. won the CHM on Omaha Beach June 6, 1944. Sadly he died of a heart attack several weeks later. He is buried in Normandy beside his brother Quentin who was shot down and killed in WWI.)

He certainly wasn't a multiculturalist, as he obviously believed in a distinct American culture:


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 couldn't be called a nativist either, since he was for immigration.

I think the best word to desrcibe him would perhaps be assimilationist.

Thanks for the insights, gives me lots to think about.

Theodore Roosevelt indeed wrote these words, but not in 1907 while he was still president. The passages were culled from a letter he wrote to the president of the American Defense Society on January 3, 1919, three days before Roosevelt died.

"Americanization" was a favorite theme of Roosevelt's during his later years, when he railed repeatedly against "hyphenated Americans" and the prospect of a nation "brought to ruins" by a "tangle of squabbling nationalities."

He advocated the compulsory learning of English by every naturalized citizen. "Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or to leave the country," he said in a statement to the Kansas City Star in 1918. "English should be the only language taught or used in the public schools."

He also insisted, on more than one occasion, that America has no room for what he called "fifty-fifty allegiance." In a speech made in 1917 he said, "It is our boast that we admit the immigrant to full fellowship and equality with the native-born. In return we demand that he shall share our undivided allegiance to the one flag which floats over all of us."
Source (http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_roosevelt_on_immigrants.htm)

Also via Woodrow Wilson - "Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready."

And at that time, if I remember my history correctly, the US was just coalescing into a nation that was beginning to have a world view and feeling world (as opposed to western hemisphere) influence early in the 20th Century. So, small wonder Teddy's views were expressed in that way. That's a in your history that has always fascinated me. Anyway he was a really intersting man.