Hidetaka Hirota | The Origins of Public Charge

The idea of denying outsiders based upon their likelihood of success in America is an enforcement, that predates immigration law itself. It’s the question of, are you likely to be a burden on society or not? In history, the faces and nationalities of who America deemed capable of carrying their weight, has changed throughout time. So today we take a historical approach to the idea and welcome History professor Hidetaka Hirota from Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. We discuss how culture, religion, and race have explicitly been used to determine who would be a drain on society within the eyes of ruling America.