The Resolution passed by the House of Representatives on July 16th to condemn Trump for his recent comments began as follows:

“Whereas the Founders conceived America as a haven of refuge for people fleeing from religious and political persecution, and Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison all emphasized that the Nation gained as it attracted new people in search of freedom and livelihood for their families;”

To the contrary.  Jefferson was anti-immigrant and worried over the many disadvantages resulting from immigration. “It is for the happiness of those united in society,” wrote Jefferson, “to harmonize as much as possible in matters which they must of necessity transact together.” Our form of government was different from all others in that it was based on principles of freedom.  Folks coming from countries with traditions different from ours could be a problem. “They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.” With their foreign principles they will distort our legislation.  “They will infuse into it their spirit,” Jefferson predicted, and “warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.” Jefferson concluded that mass immigration would make our country “more turbulent, less happy, less strong.” [1]

Don’t distort Jefferson to fit the political moment.

[1] Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on the State of Virginia,” The Portable Thomas Jefferson, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985), 125.