Of course, we should approach the founding generation with deep skepticism. For one thing, we know that most of them were morally blind on the most important issue of their day, slavery. Thomas Jefferson kept people enslaved while knowing full well that it was wrong, and ignored the pleas of ex-slave Benjamin Banneker, who wrote to him personally to beg him to live up to the principles of the Declaration of Independence. The majority of Americans (women, Black people, Native Americans) were excluded from participating in democracy at the founding of the country, which undermines the legitimacy of the entire Constitution.
Nevertheless, it’s striking just how far the current president’s view of executive power departs from the original vision of the framers, the men that the American right ostensibly worships and whose “original” vision they say they want to emulate. Take borders, for instance. Trump recently proudly presided over the opening of a brutal new swamp prison for immigrants. Trump was amused at the prospect that if they tried to escape, the immigrants would be attacked and possibly eaten by alligators. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt boasted that “Alligator Alcatraz” was “isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife and unforgiving terrain.” Thousands of people will be housed in tents there even in the punishing Florida heat, part of Trump’s effort to fulfill his plan to kick millions of people out of the country who have done nothing except work difficult jobs in construction and agriculture.
It is worth remembering how alien this kind of rigid, violent state regulation of the country’s population would have been to its founders. Until the 20th century, this country had no immigration enforcement. The U.S. Border Patrol wasn’t introduced until 1924. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) dates from 2003, and was part of George W. Bush’s paranoid security crackdown after 9/11. It’s a popular talking point on the right that “unless you have border enforcement, you don’t have a country.” Well, it would have been news to the Founding Fathers that they did not, in fact, have a country.
Back then, you could just wander in. Under the Naturalization Act of 1790, which defined the procedures for becoming naturalized, you could become a citizen of the United States just by showing up and living here for two years (assuming you were also “free,” “white,” and “of good character”). The residency requirement was increased a few years later to five years. Then, in 1798, it was increased to 14 years, before being reduced back to five a few years later. In the early 1800s, when you arrived in the country, a clerk of court simply collected information including your “name, birthplace, age, nation of allegiance, country of emigration, and place of intended settlement, and granted each applicant a certificate that could be exhibited to the court as evidence of time of arrival in the United States.” Then once you had been here long enough, you could become a citizen.