Start-up Nation

adopted by Israel’s founders. During the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, immigration to the United States was essentially open, and, at times, immigrants were even recruited to come to America to help with the settlement of undeveloped areas of the country. Until the 1920s, no numerical limits on immigration existed in America, although health restrictions applied and a literacy test was administered.

But as racial theories started to influence U.S. immigration policy, this liberal approach began to tighten. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee employed a eugenics consultant, Dr. Harry H. Laughlin, who asserted that certain races were inferior. Another leader of the eugenics movement, author Madison Grant, argued in a widely selling book that Jews, Italians, and others were inferior because of their supposedly different skull size.

The Immigration Act of 1924 set new numerical limits on immigration based on “national origin.” Taking effect in 1929, the law imposed annual immigration quotas that were specifically designed to prevent entrance of eastern and southern Europeans, such as Italians, Greeks, and Polish Jews. Generally no more than one hundred of the proscribed nationals were permitted to immigrate each year.¹⁰

When Franklin Roosevelt became president, he did little to change the policy. “Looking at Roosevelt’s reactions over the full sweep of 1938 to 1945, one can trace a pattern of decreasing sensitivity toward the plight of the European Jews,” says historian David Wyman. “In 1942, the year he learned that the extermination of the Jews was under way, Roosevelt completely abandoned the issue to the State Department. He never again dealt really positively with the problem, even though he knew the State Department’s policy was one of avoidance—indeed, obstruction—of rescue.”¹¹

With the onset of World War II, America’s gates remained barred to Jews. But the chief problem that faced Jews seeking refuge in the 1930s and the early 1940s was that America did not stand alone. Latin American countries opened their doors in only limited ways, while European countries, at best, tolerated only for a time the many thousands who arrived “in transit” as part of unrealized plans for permanent settlement elsewhere.¹²

Even after World War II ended and the Holocaust became widely known, Western countries were still unwilling to welcome surviving Jews. The Canadian government captured the mood of many governments when one of its officials declared, “None is too many!” British quotas on immigration to Palestine became increasingly tight during this period, as well. For many Jews, there literally was no place to go.¹³

Deeply aware of this history, when Britain’s colonial term in Palestine expired, on May 14, 1948, “The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel” was issued by the Jewish People’s Council. It stated, “The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people—the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe—was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness. . . . THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration.”¹⁴

Israel became the only nation in history to explicitly address in its founding documents the need for a liberal immigration policy. In 1950, Israel’s new government made good on that declaration with the Law of Return, which to this day guarantees that “every Jew has the right to come to this country.” There are no numerical quotas.

The law also defines as a Jew “a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism.” Citizenship status is also granted to non-Jewish spouses of Jews, to non-Jewish children and grandchildren of Jews, and to their spouses, as well.

In the United States, an individual must wait five years before applying for naturalization (three years if a spouse of a U.S. citizen). U.S. law also requires that an immigrant seeking citizenship demonstrate an ability to understand English and pass a civics exam. Israeli citizenship becomes effective on the day of arrival, no matter what the language spoken by the immigrant, and there are no tests at all.

As David McWilliams describes it, most Israelis speak Hebrew plus another language, which was the only language they spoke upon arrival. In some Israeli towns, he says, “there is a Spanish-language paper published every day in Ladino, the medieval Spanish spoken by Sephardic Jews kicked out of Andalucia by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. . . . In Tel Aviv’s busy Dizengoff Street, old cafes hum with German. The older German immigrants still chat away in Hoch Deutsch—the language of Goethe, Schiller, and Bismarck. . . . Further down the street, you are in little Odessa. Russian signs, Russian food, Russian newspapers, even Russian-language television are now the norm.”¹⁵

Like Shai and Reuven Agassi, there are also millions of Israelis with roots in the Arab Muslim world. At the time of Israeli independence, some five hundred thousand Jews had been living in Arab Muslim countries, with roots going back centuries. But a wave of Arab nationalism swept many of these countries after World War II, along with a wave of pogroms, forcing Jews to flee. Most wound up in Israel.

Crucially, Israel may be the only country that seeks to increase immigration, and not