DETROIT – There’s little doubt that immigration is a major issue in this year’s presidential campaign.
How it will affect the outcome is not certain. But what you might not know is that exactly a century ago, the issue of immigration, and keeping unwanted people out was an enormous issue nationally and in Michigan.
And a courageous young Detroit attorney stood up to challenge the bigots, and eventually won a major victory in federal court and got a bitterly anti-immigrant law declared unconstitutional.
First, a little background: You may think of the Ku Klux Klan as something in the Deep South. But in 1924, they were hugely powerful in Michigan and the Midwest, too. They held a huge rally in Jackson, that attracted more than 100,000 people.
They paraded past the state capitol in Lansing, down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. and for a time, controlled the government of Indiana. The rise in nativist sentiment led to Congress passing the Immigration Act of 1924 that May, a law clearly racist by design. It essentially outlawed new arrivals from Asia, and put severe and strict limits on immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe; those supporting it stated that they wanted fewer immigrants in general, and to make sure that America remained a white nation mostly composed of the descendants of northern and western Europeans.
That bill, called the Johnson-Reed Act, was wildly popular in much of the nation, but not Detroit, then one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation, and immigrant labor was needed in the auto factories. Theodore Levin knew how unfair it was. His parents had come from the Russian Empire; he had put himself through the University of Detroit law school, and he and his brother had just started an immigration-based practice.
Though he was just 27, he wrote a resolution for Detroit City Council opposing the act as “casting a slur upon the patriotism and economic and cultural desirability of the peoples of Eastern and Southern Europe.” which was unanimously passed by Detroit City Council. But it didn’t stop the nativist tide.
The anti-immigration act was overwhelmingly passed by Congress, signed into law and remained in force till 1952. Among other things, it severely limited the number of people who could later be saved from the Holocaust.
Later studies by economists showed it hurt the American economy as well. But things got worse for immigrants once the Great Recession began. There were fewer jobs, and increased fears that immigrants were taking jobs that should belong to native-born Americans, plus worry that immigrants were secretly spreading Communist subversion.
Those fears led to Michigan passing one of the most draconian anti-immigrant bills in the nation’s history: The Alien Registration Law of 1931. It required all persons of foreign birth — even, apparently, naturalized citizens — to register with the state and prove they had a right to live in Michigan.
Otherwise, they would be deemed an “undesirable alien” and forbidden to enter, work or live in Michigan. There were hints of possible arrests and deportations.
Civil liberties groups were outraged, and they turned once again to Theodore Levin to challenge the law in federal court.
He agreed, found a British-born contractor named George Arrowsmith to challenge the law, and took the case to federal court.
“I do not believe there is a single section of (the 1931 law) that is constitutional,” he said, adding that it was one of the “most badly drafted pieces of legislation he had ever seen.”
What was especially remarkable about his opening oration is that he made it in an unairconditioned courtroom on a July day that was so hot that factories were forced to close and 19 people died of heatstroke.
Five months later, in Arrowsmith v. Voorheis, three federal judges unanimously agreed that the Alien Registration Act was completely unconstitutional, because “the admission and exclusion of aliens are a subject within the exclusive control of Congress,” and states could not therefore make their own immigration policy.
That decision is still cited today; one wonders if flamboyantly anti-immigrant governors like Greg Abbott in Texas and Ron DeSantis in Florida are aware of it.
The next year, Patrick O’Brien, Levin’s co-counsel, defeated the man who had tried to defend the act, Michigan Attorney General Paul Voorheis, though anger at all Republicans over the depression also certainly was a factor.
Theodore Levin was himself eventually named a federal judge, and went on to become one of the most important in state history, developing a nationwide standard for sentencing reform.
He remained on the court until his death in 1970, and gave his name to the Theodore Levin United States Courthouse in Detroit.
His oldest son Charles later served many years as a judge on the Michigan Supreme Court, and his two nephews, U.S. Sen. Carl Levin and U.S. Rep. Sander Levin, each served for 36 years in Congress.
But if the Immigration Act of 1924 had existed in 1880, none of the Levins would ever have made it to America. Those who are opposed to more immigrants might want to think about that.
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(Editor’s Note: A version of this column appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
