Analysis: Presidential Proclamation 2527: Alien Enemies—Italians
The analysis of Presidential Proclamation 2527 highlights the legal measures taken by the U.S. government during World War II against individuals classified as "alien enemies," specifically targeting Italian nationals. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, fears of espionage and national security prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to authorize a series of restrictive policies affecting Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants. This proclamation was part of a broader trend of suspicion towards foreign nationals, particularly those from countries at war with the United States, reflecting a climate of heightened anxiety regarding loyalty and security.
By 1940, Italians constituted a significant immigrant population in the U.S., yet many faced discrimination and were viewed with suspicion due to the rise of Italian fascism under Benito Mussolini. The proclamation mandated that Italian nationals adhere to strict regulations, including travel restrictions and reporting requirements, and opened the door to potential detention or deportation. This action raises important questions about civil liberties and the balance between national security and individual rights, as the federal government expanded its powers during a time of conflict. The implications of Proclamation 2527 continue to resonate in discussions about immigration, national security, and the treatment of minority communities in times of crisis.
Analysis: Presidential Proclamation 2527: Alien Enemies—Italians
Date: December 8, 1941
Author: Franklin D. Roosevelt
Genre: law
Summary Overview
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, US entry into World War II was certain, despite a long effort to maintain official neutrality. Fearful of another direct attack and concerned over possible spies within the nation's border, the US federal government instituted new policies placing legal restrictions on citizens of foreign countries at odds with the United States in the conflict. Even before war had been formally declared against the two main Axis powers, Germany and Italy, US president Franklin D. Roosevelt signed presidential proclamations authorizing the US Department of Justice to investigate and detain so-called enemy aliens of Japanese, German, and Italian descent resident within the nation's borders. As for Italian Americans, thousands were arrested over the course of the war, more than ten thousand on the West Coast were forced to leave their homes, and hundreds of thousands more experienced special legal scrutiny and restrictions on their activities.
Defining Moment
Beginning in the late 1800s, Italian immigrants flocked to the United States seeking economic opportunity or joining family and friends who had already made the move. By the time of World War II, millions of Italian immigrants and their Italian American descendants populated the nation's cities. By 1940, Italians made up the single largest immigrant group residing in the United States; of the country's roughly 11.4 million foreign-born inhabitants, some 1.6 million originally hailed from Italy. Despite their ubiquity, Italian American immigrants experienced hostility from some native-born Americans. Immigrants also feared that their children would lose their cultural ties to Italy as they assimilated into US society and adopted American cultural practices. Indeed, many of these immigrants had become naturalized US citizens, but others—some hopeful of a return to their native country after saving up earnings, some too new to the United States to have completed the naturalization process, some simply long-standing residents who had never applied for naturalization—remained Italian nationals.
In Italy, fascist dictator Benito Mussolini had begun to build political power in the 1920s. Channeling a widespread popular belief among Italians that their contributions to World War I had gone underappreciated under the Treaty of Versailles, Mussolini appealed to Italian nationalism. His message of strong pride in Italian society and culture found support both domestically and among ethnic Italian communities in the United States. Some newspapers and radio programs intended for the Italian American audience praised Mussolini's government and its policies. As Italian actions increasingly generated concern among US leaders during the 1930s, however, these pro-Mussolini statements drew unwelcome attention to the Italian American community.
Worries over national security were running high by 1940, when US Congress passed the Alien Registration Act, which among other provisions required all foreign-born noncitizens to register with their local post offices. The federal government had also begun to develop a list of foreign nationals it believed might pose a threat to US interests, identifying both those who spoke in support of Axis governments or their policies and those who simply seemed to have a potentially strong psychological tie to native Axis lands. Mainstream popular opinion increasingly turned toward the Allies as the Axis thrust through Europe showed the powers' desire to gobble up land and subjugate neighboring peoples. Although the United States maintained an official position of neutrality, the American war machine began to mobilize. US defense plants built arms, ammunition, and vehicles for sale to Allied countries. Most Americans came to believe that supporting Great Britain against Axis attack was vital to US security. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor then cemented US sentiment against the Axis powers and thrust the country into war.
Author Biography
President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved Presidential Proclamation 2527 in a time of great international tumult. Roosevelt, by then in an unprecedented third term as president, had guided the nation through the challenges of the Great Depression and for years maintained a high awareness of the potential threats to the United States posed by the rise of dictatorships in Europe during the 1930s. Roosevelt had sought in the late 1930s to generate support among the American public for the Allied, and especially British, cause while balancing the political necessity of maintaining official neutrality in a time when isolationist sentiment ran high. Roosevelt worried that Mussolini and the Axis alliance formed a threat to national security and democratic ideals around the world, and saw resisting the aggression of the Axis powers as key to hemispheric security even though their strongholds lay far from US territory.
Document Analysis
Presidential Proclamation 2527, restricting the actions of Italian nationals residing within US territory, was the third in a series of similar orders applying individually to Japanese, German, and Italian Americans. All three of these proclamations were issued in response to fears among political leaders and the American public that some immigrants to the United States might feel a greater loyalty to the lands of their birth—then engaged in hostilities with the United States—than to their adopted homeland. To this end the language of the document reflects a primary goal of maintaining national security by stating that the affected aliens are “enjoined to preserve the peace… to refrain from crime against public safety.… and to refrain from actual hostility or giving information, aid or comfort to the enemies of the United States or interfering by word or deed with the defense of the United States.”
Much of the proclamation draws on the language and tenets of the Alien Enemy Act of 1798, one of the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts passed not long after American independence. This law grants the president the right to detain, imprison, or deport so-called alien enemies—nonnaturalized immigrants or citizens of countries engaged in hostilities against the United States aged at least fourteen years—in order to protect public safety. Proclamation 2527 thus asserts that the Axis country of Italy presents a direct threat to the United States, and that therefore its nationals resident within US borders are deemed alien enemies and thus subject to detention, internment, deportation, and other regulations. These regulations reflect those established under Presidential Proclamation 2525 restricting the activities of Japanese Americans, and broadly limit the ability of those deemed alien enemies to travel, change jobs, enter any area determined by the authorities to be potentially sensitive, or own goods such as radios, cameras, or weapons.
The proclamation further placed the administration of its orders under the jurisdiction of the US military and the US Department of Justice, which in turn allocated implementation to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Affected aliens were required to register and report their activities to these agencies, and faced the very real possibility of hearings or detention. The order thus gave the federal government and military great power over the civil rights of affected Italian Americans, an action that historians have questioned as a challenge to US ideals and constitutional protections.
Bibliography and Additional Reading
Behen, Scott M. “German and Italian Internment.” Encyclopedia of Immigration and Migration in the American West. Ed. Gordon Morris Bakken and Alexandra Kindell. Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2006. Print.
“Brief Overview of the World War II Enemy Alien Control Program.” National Archives. US Natl. Archives and Records Administration, 2014. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.
DiStasi, Lawrence. Una Storia Segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment during World War II. Berkeley: Heydey, 2001. Print.
TenBroek, Jacobus, Edward N. Barnhart, and Floyd W. Matson. Prejudice, War, and the Constitution. Berkeley: U of California P, 1954. Print.