Our fear of aliens

President
George Bush’s sweeping order to screen thousands of Middle Easterners suspected
of espionage and other crimes is not the first time this country has been
gripped by anti-alien fever.

                  (The Nisei who were interned
during World War 11 were different. These were largely American-born or
naturalized citizens who remained in this country.)

                  A closer parallel to this
year’s post-September 11 events occurred in 1798 during the administration of
our second president, John Adams.

                  Freedom-seeking immigrants had
flocked to these shores from the repressive French regime after the French
Revolution, together with blacks and whites from the Caribbean, some of them
indentured servants. While the young nation received reports of flagrant French
piracy on the high seas, French schools, French restaurants and boardinghouses
teemed with foreigners speaking a foreign language, together with refugees
fleeing the Irish Rebellion.

                  And an insecure president who
had been chosen by only three electoral votes over Thomas Jefferson (echoing
last year’s election) mirrored the insecurity of the young nation teetering on
the edge of a war with its recent ally in the Revolutionary War. Striving to
guard against perceived internal threats as well as to quell the strident
editors who accused President Adams of both internal repression and external
acts that could provoke war with France, the Adams administration enacted the
Alien, Naturalization, and Sedition Acts.

                  Echoing the USA-Patriot Act,
the Alien Act authorized the president to deport aliens deemed dangerous or
suspected of “treasonable or secret” inclinations. The Naturalization Act
extended the period of residence required before naturalization to 14 years,
almost tripling the requirement set only three years before.

                  The Sedition Act, aimed
primarily at reckless and caustic editors, made it criminal to publish “any
false, scandalous, and malicious writing against the Congress, or the President
or any attempt to excite against them… the hatred of the good people of the
United States, or to stir up sedition.” Notwithstanding the First Amendment to
the Constitution that John Adams had recently championed, a number of partisan
and critical editors, mostly from the Northeast, were fined and/or jailed for
criticizing the president or the Congress.

                  The secret military courts
ordered by George W. Bush have in common with the Alien Act of 203 years ago
that both are based on extraordinary and exigent perceptions of threats to
national security; both are aimed at foreigners, and both challenge, if not
undermine, sections of the Bill of Rights guaranteeing due process of law.
Under his wartime powers as Commander in Chief, President Bush has ordered
secret investigations of Middle East men; authorized military courts to be held
in secret, and sharply narrowed the attorney-client privilege of
confidentiality.

                  In the early days of the
Republic, when candidates for high office ran independently of one another,
Vice President Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the Democratic-Republican
Party, not only opposed the Alien, Naturalization, and Sedition Acts, he
denounced them as “the reign of witches.” After he defeated Adams for the
presidency, he pardoned all those convicted.

                  Eventually the tumult both at
home and abroad moderated, and war with France was averted during Adams’ term.
And 203 years ago there were no horrific events that remotely compared with the
horrific World Trade Center and Pentagon events, which sparked the war on
terrorism and changed the American world and domestic landscape.

                  But in Adams’ day there was
truth-in-labeling. Repression wasn’t spun the way the USA-Patriot Bill has
been. By creating the secret courts under his wartime powers, President Bush
was spared having to sign and identify himself with legislation authorizing the
secret military courts that will try dark-complexioned aliens who look like
Arabs.

                  Nevertheless, a secret
nationwide screening of possibly thousands of Middle Easterners is currently
underway, and the secret military courts are, as the Alien and Sedition trials
were during Adams’ day, drawing intense media scrutiny. Recently those military
courts were derided as “kangaroo courts” in the press.

                  And such events are bound to
be compared to the Alien, Naturalization and Sedition Acts, which, as much as
anything, defeated the re-election bid of that doughty patriot, John Adams, who
had spent his life as a revolutionary activist, as Continental Congress
delegate, champion of the Declaration of Independence, ambassador to several
European nations, and as vice president and president during some of the most
perilous and tumultuous days of the young republic.

                  A journalist for over 50 years, Mitchell Kaidy of Rochester has worked
for three daily newspapers, radio, and television, and won a Project Censored
Award in 1993.

This article appears in Nov 6-12, 2002.