Could You Identify Another Holocaust?

Lately I see a lot of people on Facebook comparing the treatment of illegal immigrants to the concentration camps of the Nazis and saying that this is how the Holocaust started. These arguments are based on two ideas: 1) That problems with immigration are unique to the Trump presidency and 2) That the treatment of undocumented immigrants at detainment centers is similar to that of prisoners in concentration camps in Nazi Germany. Neither of those ideas is accurate:

Timeline for Immigration Issues In the US Since the end of World War II

• 1952- McCarran Walter Act (immigration quota system upheld). This dictated how many immigrants from different parts of the world the US would accept, favoring some ethnicities over others. President Truman vetoes the bill calling it both absurd and cruel, but Congress overrules him.
• 1954- Eisenhower launches a nationwide sweep of undocumented immigrants.
• 1956- The Hungarian Revolution against the Soviet Union fails and Eisenhower uses a provision in the McCarran-Walter Act to provide emergency admission for aliens to allow increased admission of Hungarian immigrants. This is later used by other presidents to allow admissions for other refugees seeking political asylum.
• 1959- Castro takes over Cuba and thousands of Cubans flee to Florida. In response, the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act is passed to allow permanent resident status to Cuban refugees who arrive in the US after 1959.
• 1964- The Bracero program is ended under mounting pressure from labor activists over the abuse of Bracero workers. The Bracero program was instituted by the Mexican and American governments in 1942 to provide temporary work to Mexican citizens and resolve the labor shortage in the US created by World War II. The Bracero program contained stipulations for the protection of workers—protection from harm, free housing, affordable meals, and insurance. But the rules are broken by many employers. Illegal immigration from Mexico increases dramatically.
• 1965- Lyndon B. Johnson overturns the McCarran Walter Act and enacts the the Immigration and Naturalization Act which focuses on family reunification rather than maintaining ethnic quotas.
• 1974- In response to the human rights abuses of Soviet Jews, the US adds the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to its trade act which basically required Communist nations to allow free emigration of people wanting to leave a Workers’ Paradise if the Communist nation wanted to continue to trade with the US. Half a million Soviet Jews and Christians emigrate to the US.
• 1975- The Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act is passed to help refugees from the political turmoil of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
• 1980- Refugee Act broadens the scope of the definition of refugee and and allows for an almost threefold increase in visas.
• 1986- Regan enacts the Immigration Reform and Control Act which requires employers to ensure that their employees are not undocumented immigrants.
• 1990- President Bush signs the Immigration Act of 1990 which increases the number of visas again and adds highly skilled workers to a list of preferences for immigration. It also set a cap on the number of unskilled workers allowed and created a diversity lottery to distribute visas among immigrants in underrepresented countries.
• 1994- Operation Gatekeeper. President Clinton authorizes $50 billion to build a 14 mile security fence around the Tijuana border crossing. (Hhhhmmm… this sounds a little familiar.) Clinton also doubles the number of border patrol agents.
• 1995- Frustrated with the United States’ lax approach to Cuban immigration, Castro threatens to allow a mass exodus if the US does not take action against illegal boat departures from Cuba. Both countries sign an agreement stating that the US Coast Guard will no longer accept Cuban immigrants intercepted at sea without credible asylum claims, but those who make it to land will be allowed a path to citizenship.
• 2001- The DREAM Act is introduced to allow undocumented children to gain a clearer path to citizenship if they meet certain requirements like graduating from high school or serving two years in the military. The bill get through several revisions, but ultimately languishes. Obama vows to make it part of his comprehensive immigration reform in 2012.
• September 11- After the 9/11 attacks, Department of Homeland Security is created, dissolving the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Airport screenings are enacted and border patrol is strengthened. Men from predominantly Muslim nations are required to undergo additional screenings.
• 2008- George W. Bush initiates the Secure Communities program which allows local law enforcement to share data with Immigration and Customs Agency to target and deport undocumented immigrants who commit crimes. Barack Obama expands the program during his presidency.
• 2010- Arizona governor Jan Brewer signs SB 1070 into law that makes it illegal to transport, hire, or house undocumented immigrants and allows police to check immigration status during routine traffic stops (“papers please”). The federal government files suit over the bill and ultimately the Supreme Court strikes down several measures in the bill, but keeps the controversial “papers please”.
• 2012- Obama defers the deportation of undocumented immigrants who were childhood arrivals
• 2013- Obama introduces a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would allow a clear path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. It passes in the Senate but fails to clear the Republican led House.
• 2014-  More than two dozen states, mostly led by Republican governors, sue the Obama administration for failing to enforce the nation’s immigration laws. Also this year, some children who arrived as undocumented immigrants were released from the foster care system to sex traffickers.
• 2015- The US increases the number of refugees admitted in response to conflicts in several parts of the world. Also this year, Obama administration is criticized for allowing senior US diplomats to water down the data on human trafficking reports to give certain countries better rankings than were recommended.
• 2017- Trump signs in a travel ban that suspends the refugee program for 120 days, bans Syrian refugees indefinitely, and decreases the cap on refugee admissions to fifty thousand. It also bans nationals of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen from traveling to the United States for ninety days. In response to a restraining order on the ban from a federal judge, Trump makes modifications, like allowing Iraqi citizens back in. After Supreme Court review, the travel ban is revised to permit close family members of immigrants from the banned countries to travel to the US. (I just have to ask, “Why even bother if you’re concerned about terrorism and certain people are only banned for a few months? A terrorist could come in after the travel ban is over.)  Also, Trump’s funding proposal for a border wall are repeatedly turned down.

OK, let’s look at the first year that Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, 1933:

• January 30-Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany

• March 22- Dachau concentration camp opens
• April 1- Boycott of Jewish shops and businesses

• April 7-Laws for Reestablishment of the Civil Service barred Jews from holding civil service, university, and state positions

• April 26- Gestapo established

• May 10- Public burning of books written by Jews, political dissidents, and others not approved by the state

• July 14- Law stripping East European Jewish immigrants of German citizenship

So just to review, we have decades of immigration policy that has been welcoming or prejudiced to certain groups based on politics. And Hitler’s rise to power looks like nothing like the state of affairs in the US. We have no state mandated boycott of immigrant shops and businesses, immigrants are not barred from the civil service, we have no secret police, no public book burnings and no immigrants who have citizenship have been stripped of their citizenship. And no, we don’t have concentration camps. Detention centers for undocumented immigrants who are apprehended trying to enter the country bear very little resemblance to the places where undocumented immigrants are held:

Living conditions in detention centers for undocumented immigrants:

• Must provide food, clothing, some basic medical care in a relatively clean facility that has indoor plumbing
• Detain people who have legal citizenship elsewhere but have come to the United States without documents- which is illegal (not necessarily immoral, but illegal)
• Can not legally torture or abuse detainees; detainees can work with charitable organizations if they have complaints 
• Allow access to legal resources for asylum or immigration 

Living conditions in concentration camps (from Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning):

• Provided one extremely meager meal, one set of ragged clothes and no little to no medical care with no sanitation.
• Prisoners were stripped of their citizenship because their ethnicity or because they disagree with the government 
• Torture, medical experimentation, beatings and starvation were encouraged 
• Prisoners had no rights, legal or human

The need for immigration form is legitimate, but using the Holocaust as a comparison is not only illogical, but denies the suffering of the millions of people who experienced one of the world’s worst atrocities:

 

Detainees at a detention center for undocumented immigrants

Prisoners liberated from Ebensee concentration camp

 

But then, if Americans think that another Holocaust would look like the detention of undocumented immigrants, maybe that’s why we have missed so many genocides before:

Memorial for the victims of the Srebrenica massacre in 1995 under Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing campaign. 

Memorial at the Genocide Memorial Center in Kigali, Rwanda. Photos are of people killed in the genocide of 1994. 

Shoes exhumed from a mass grave of the victims killed in the 1988 Anfal genocide in Iraq