On the whole, the economic motive seems to have been uppermost in the minds of both those who fostered and those who opposed foreign immigration into the United States, up to, say, 1870.  Likewise in perhaps more than ninety-nine of every hundred cases the economic motive holds in the mind of the present day immigrant, or his protagonist.  Escape from political tyranny or religious persecution, at least since the revolutionary period of 1848, has operated only as a secondary motive.  The industrial impulse is all the more striking in the so-called “new immigration” from the Mediterranean and South-Eastern Europe.  The temporary migrant laborer, the “bird of passage,” roams about seeking his fortunes in much the same spirit that certain Middle Age Knights or Crusades camp followers sought theirs.  This is in no way to his discredit.  It is simply a fact that we are to reckon with when called upon to work out a satisfactory immigration policy.  At least its recognition would eliminate a good deal of wordy sentimentality from discussions of the immigration problem.

Professor Fairchild discovered that three things attract the Greek immigrant.  First and foremost, financial opportunities.  Second, corollary to the first, citizenship papers which will enable him to return to Turkey, there to carry on business under the greater protection which such citizenship confers.  There is a hint here to the effect that mere naturalization does not mean assimilation and permanent acceptance of the status and responsibilities of American citizenship.  Third, enjoyment of certain more or less factitious “comforts of civilization.”

But the Greeks are by no means untypical.  The conclusion of the Immigration Commission as to the causes of the new immigration is that while “social conditions affect the situation in some countries, the present immigration from Europe to the United States is in the largest measure due to economic causes.  It should be stated, however, that emigration from Europe is not now an absolute economic necessity, and as a rule those who emigrate to the United States are impelled by a desire for betterment rather than by the necessity of escaping intolerable conditions.  This fact should largely modify the natural incentive to treat the immigration movement from the standpoint of sentiment, and permit its consideration primarily as an economic problem.  In other words, the economic and social welfare of the United States should now ordinarily be the determining factor in the immigration policy of the Government.”

This delimitation of the immigration problem to its economic aspects led the Immigration Commission to recommend a somewhat restrictionist policy.  That they were not without warrant in so delimiting it is evident from the utterances of such ardent opponents of restriction as Dr. Peter Roberts and Max J. Kohler.  The latter, writing in the American Economic Review (March, 1912) said:  “In fact, the immigrant laborer is indispensable to our economic progress today, and we can rely upon no one else to build our houses, railroads and subways, and mine our ores for us.”  Dr. Roberts’ plea is almost identical.