In 1837, Massachusetts began the first mass immigrant deportation program in the history of the United States. As Hidetaka Hirota’s new history of the Massachusetts deportations, Expelling the Poor, reveals, the program would last for more than a half a century and would deport over 50,000 immigrants. The deportees were not undocumented (there were few restrictions on immigrants coming into the country then).

Massachusetts law, however, permitted state officials to board ships and send some immigrants home because they seemed likely to seek public assistance or welfare, becoming a “Public Charge.” Later amendments to the law sent state officials on regular inspections of poorhouses or asylums searching for immigrants already living in the United States who had become public charges and could then be deported to “home” countries that some had not seen in decades. The state even deported immigrants like Hugh Carroll, who had become American citizens. Many of the deportees were mothers, abandoned or widowed, often with young children, who could not find work that allowed them to earn a living and raise their kids at the same time. They had no alternative but the poorhouse. All of these immigrants, as a contemporary newspaper pointed out, were evicted from Massachusetts “for the crime of being poor.”

Advocates of the law insisted that the deportations were necessary; foreign paupers were flooding the state, they argued, becoming “leeches upon our taxpayers.” Of course, there were other, powerful motives behind the law beyond a concern for the public purse.

Over the law’s course of fifty years the vast majority of the deportees were Irish Catholics; that was no coincidence. The deportation program began in the 1830s, when Irish immigrant numbers in Massachusetts were rising and native residents of Massachusetts responded with frenzied assaults on Irish Catholic neighborhoods and institutions like the Ursuline Convent in nearby Charlestown. The deportations reached their high point in the mid-1850s when the virulently anti- Catholic and anti- immigrant Know Nothings attacked Catholic Churches and took control of the state government, strengthening the deportation law, and fiddling with immigrant voting rights. To supporters and administrators of the law, Irish Catholic and pauper was a distinction without a difference: Irish Catholics were by their nature paupers or inevitably on their way to becoming ones. “Celtic pauperism is our stone of stumbling,” a prominent nativist leader stated, the Irish Catholic “ will not work when he can exist by begging.”

Now, the Trump administration has proposed expanding the federal criteria for determining whether a documented immigrant living in the United States is a “public charge.” The old criteria included receiving cash welfare payments, but the new rule would include participation of an immigrant or their dependent children– including U.S. citizens–  in “almost any form of welfare or public benefit,” including: the Earned Income Tax Credit, state Children’s Health Insurance Programs (CHIP), or federal health insurance subsidies. If defined as a public charge under this new rule, legal immigrants could be denied green cards or extension of their work visas and thus be forced to leave the country.

The Trump administration, of course, claims that it is only trying to “protect the American taxpayer,” just as Massachusetts’ old Know Nothings did a century and a half ago. Yet, as the Washington Post reported, changes in the definition of a public charge are frankly designed to “reduce the number of foreigners living in the United States,” which, of course, is also what the Know Nothings in Nineteenth century Massachusetts were trying to do.  Only the names, the homelands and often the races of the deportees are different. The same anti-immigrant sentiment has no place in our federal policies today.

During the Civil War, Peter Welsh, color sergeant in the 28^th Massachusetts, a part of the Irish Brigade, died of wounds inflicted in the battle of Spotsylvania.  Earlier in the war, he had written home to his wife explaining why he was fighting for the Union: what, he asked, would have been the fate today of “hundreds of thousands of the sons and daughters of poor old oppressed Erin if they had not a free land like this to emigrate to, famine and hunger staring them in the face.”

After the Senate’s failure to pass DACA legislation, a small group of moderate Republican House members facing tough reelections are pushing to bring an immigration vote to the House floor. One such member is California Representative Jeff Denham (CA- 10), who has invoked an obscure House rule called the “Queen of the Hill” to vote on DACA legislation. Representative Denham has a total of 247 cosponsors on this resolution, which includes 195 Democrats and 52 Republicans (Find the complete list of cosponsors here.) Since the rule has greater support than the 218 needed, it was up to Speaker Paul Ryan to move the rule forward.

Due to Speaker Ryan’s failure to act, however, moderate Republicans have begun a discharge petition, which is a way to get the rule to the floor without the Speaker’s approval. The discharge petition will need 218 votes to be filed, requiring signatures from the entire House Democratic caucus and at least 25 Republicans. The current petition has 18 Republicans signed on and the Democratic caucus plans sign on when the Republican votes are secured, to ensure 218 votes.

This “Queen of the Hill” rule would trigger votes on four DACA bills. The bill with the most votes after the 218 majority will pass the House and continue to the Senate for consideration. Representative Denham’s office has reported that bills for consideration are the Dream Act (H.R. 3440), the Uniting and Securing America Act (USA Act, H.R. 4796), and Rep. Goodlatte’s Securing America’s Future Act (H.R. 4760). While both the Dream Act and USA Act offer DACA recipients protection from deportation and a pathway to citizenship, Rep. Goodlatte’s bill aims to cut legal immigration and provides no pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients. Although ordering of the votes for the Queen of the Hill proposal is up to Representative Denham, he left a fourth slot for any bill of Speaker Paul Ryan’s choosing. By offering Speaker Ryan the fourth slot, Rep. Denham has provided the Speaker with an opportunity to weigh in on the vote.

While all eyes are on the House for action around “Queen of the Hill,” the courts have also had significant movement around DACA these past few months. On May 1, 2018, a federal judge’s order prevented the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from arbitrarily cancelling a young man’s DACA status after the government failed to prove that he had committed a crime. Another blow to the administration’s attempt to end of DACA came when a federal judge ordered the government to continue the DACA program and begin accepting new applications for the first time in several months. This has not gone into effect yet, however, as the judge gave the Trump administration 90 days to provide a compelling reason for shutting down the DACA program.

To complicate matters further, most recently, seven states led by Texas have brought a class action suit against the federal government for failing to end the DACA program completely. As these cases become more entangled and national injunctions begin to contradict one another, pressure for resolution will increase as well as the likelihood of the Supreme Court’s involvement.

Ultimately the DACA issue must be resolved with a legislative fix from Congress which could include a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients, bringing resolution to this issue. NETWORK will continue to monitor this process and call on members of Congress to move towards a permanent legislative solution.