Tennessee Governor Brownlow created state-level commission in 1869 and published handbook to attract immigrants in 1870

"Workers were sorely needed to rebuild the state, and outside capital was necessary to stimulate a sluggish economy."

Greg Siskind: "Immigration as stimulus"

A lot of people have been calling for a leveraging of immigration policy to address the current economic crisis, including the following:

• Memphis' Greg Siskind ("Immigration As Stimulus - 10 Ideas for Using Migration Policy to Jump Start the Economy and Create Jobs");
• The Center for Global Development ("Solve the Crisis by...Kicking Out the World's Best and Brightest?"); and
• MTSU's Martin Kennedy (pointing to Alex Tabarrok's "Buy a House, Get a Visa") (hat tip: Post Politics)

Although the crises created by the Civil War and the one we find ourselves in at the start of the 21st century are worlds apart, there is Reconstruction-era precedent for attracting immigrants to the State of Tennessee in a time of economic crisis. Tennessee Governor William Brownlow created a state-level Immigration Commission for this purpose in 1868, which in turn published The Tennessee Handbook and Immigrant's Guide in 1869. Robert Donald Rogers, in his M.A. thesis The Tennessee Staatszeitung, writes that Governor Brownlow's personal view of immigrants was quite negative, but the practical reality was that "[w]orkers were sorely needed to rebuild the state, and outside capital was necessary to stimulate a sluggish economy."

Despite the suggestions of Tennesseans Greg Siskind and Martin Kennedy, the prospect of using immigration as stimulus does not appear to be incorporated into any of the state-level proposals on immigration that are described in today's article in the Tennessean.

Labels: business, history, immigrants, justice

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