Exiles and Refugees in American History

Abstract

DISPERSION of political exiles and refugees from oppressed countries constitutes but one phase of the larger population movement. Forced migration is not emigration in the modal sense, since the former is conditioned upon a rigid, compulsory ejection; the latter upon a loose, voluntary rejection. Hunger marchers from Europe's remote rural soilways have walked in larger armies, with heavier tread, than freedom seekers from the Old World's familiar cities and towns. Headless, formless, without organization, the Economic Army casts its shadow before, while the Political Army, shadow behind, has to date, unlike its economic prototype, spread little fear or apprehension in this asylum of the oppressed. Approximately 60 per cent of the total population movement of the world has come to rest in the United States. Quantitatively this movement has been economic. Qualitatively it has been political.1 Colonial immigrants were political refugees in the cause of re-