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On December 7, 1897, President Grover Cleveland included the following passage in his Fourth Annual Message to Congress (essentially the 19th-century equivalent of the State of the Union address):
“It has never been the policy of this Government to discourage immigration upon any ground other than that of the personal unfitness of the immigrant. There is room in America and brotherhood for all who will support our institutions and aid in our development. But those who come to disturb our peace and dethrone our laws are aliens and enemies forever. We have no desire to be ungenerous or inhospitable, but we have the right and the duty to protect ourselves against the importation of crime, pauperism and disease.”
(Source: Grover Cleveland’s Fourth Annual Message, December 7, 1897, available in the American Presidency Project and Congressional Record)
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