The Jewish Trail of Tears The Evian Conference of ... - Haruth.com

problems “similar to those which other countries have had to tackle.” Likewise,
limitations on the entry of physicians and lawyers were necessary to prevent the creation
of an “intellectual proletariat” that would threaten the “unbridled power of [the Peruvian]
upper class. 24
The national essence, based on a “Spanish nucleus” with its Latin and Catholic
traditions, must be preserved. “An unorganized influx [of non-Catholic and non-Latin
immigrants] would be dangerous” but the Government was willing to consider admission
of aliens on an individual, case-by-case basis. Calderón recalled the changes in the
immigration statutes of the United States. Prior to 1890 an open door admissions policy
was followed but since that time the American Government adopted “farsighted”
legislative changes in 1921 and 1924 which severely restricted the entry of aliens. The
primary motivation for such limitations was the preservation of the “Nordic heritage and
[the] Anglo-Saxon race” against the invasion and contamination of other peoples.
Calderón cited The Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant as supportive of such
restrictions. 25 The peace of the Americas could only be guaranteed by avoiding the
24 “Proceedings,” July 9, 1938, 28. Calderon (April 8, 1883-July 1, 1953) was a Peruvian writer who
later served as Minister to Belgium. Gerhard Schoenberner, The Yellow Star: The Persecution of the Jews
in Europe, 1933-1945 (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2004), 4.
25 Madison Grant was a prominent eugenicist of the early Twentieth Century who postulated that
biological differences separated the races into an inherent hierarchy. The interbreeding of the different
races would result in “racial suicide” that would lead to the demise of the superior white Anglo-Saxon
culture and civilization. He warned that the offspring of miscegenation would “belong to the lower type [of
race and]” and predicted the “importance of transmitting in unimpaired purity the blood inheritance of ages
will be appreciated at its full value.” Grant’s views and those of his co-travelers such as Charles Davenport
and Harry Laughlin would lay the groundwork for the restrictive National Origins Act which established
the annual immigration quota system which allocated visas on the basis of position in the hierarchy of the
races. Calvin Coolidge, while Vice President, noted that “biological laws tell us that certain divergent
people will not mix or blend.” “Eugenic Laws against Race Mixing,” Image Archive on the American
Eugenics Movement Dolan DNA Learning Center Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory available from
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay7text.html; Internet; accessed September 4, 2010.
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