Could Your European Ancestors Have Qualified for Asylum?

Making the case of Hans Michel Finter, Württemberg (Germany), 1737

Wood engraving of Duke Karl Alexander of Würrtemberg. Interfoto/Alamy.com

Sometimes you hear Americans with European ancestry complain about the situation at the southern border today by saying, “They should have to do it legally, like my ancestors did.”

Well, illegal immigration has existed as long as there have been immigration restrictions. But yes, many of our ancestors, especially those from Europe who arrived before 1924, did enter the country lawfully – because there weren’t that many immigration laws to violate back then.

What if those immigrants had had to meet today’s standard? If you count any Europeans among your ancestors, as I do, would we be here today?

The Asylum Standard

To qualify for asylum, an applicant must show that they meet the definition of a “refugee” under Section 101(a)(42) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. A “refugee” is a person who is (1) outside their country of nationality, (2) unable or unwilling to return to or to avail themselves of the protection of that country because of (3) persecution or a well-founded fear of it (4) on account of (5) their “race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

Asylum lawyers and government lawyers argue about certain aspects of this definition all the time. First, what kinds of harm constitute “persecution”? Second, how can an applicant show that they were persecuted “on account of” their membership in one of those five protected categories? Fourth, what does it mean to be a member of a “particular social group”?

When you hear immigration opponents on TV say that people are abusing the asylum system, they’re conflating two different things. First, some people (and their legal representatives) do submit wholly fictitious asylum claims. That would violate anyone’s understanding of the immigration laws. But more often, those opponents are really advocating for a strict definition of those terms I mentioned above: “persecution,” “on account of,” or “particular social group.” They think applicants are succeeding in proving they meet those definitions more often than the opponent would like.

The Case of Hans Michel Finter

So how would our European ancestors have fared under today’s asylum standard? That’s a question I’ve been examining this week as I research the genealogy of my biographical subject, Wilbur J. Carr, a State Department official who helped draft and implement immigration restrictions in the early twentieth century.

I’ve been focusing on one of Carr’s maternal ancestors, Hans Michel Finter, who arrived in Philadelphia on the ship Townsend on May 10, 1737. Finter was born in Entringen, part of what is now the city of Ammerbuch in the southwest German state of Baden-Württemberg. He departed Germany from the then-new city of Karlsruhe on the Rhine, probably in late February or early March of that year. Like most German emigrants to America of that era, he made his way down the Rhine to the Netherlands, probably stopping in England before continuing on across the Atlantic.

In a way, it’s a trick question to ask whether Finter or any other European emigrant would have met our definition of “refugee.” Proving refugee status is highly fact-specific; in very few cases have enough records survived for us to know whether a particular person – like Hans Michel Finter – was “persecuted” on account of one of the five protected grounds. Until I can dig into the archives in Württemberg, I can’t know if any such evidence survived to show persecution of Finter.

Country Conditions: Württemberg, 1730s

But asylum lawyers do rely on “country conditions” evidence to support claims for asylum, and there we can begin to build our circumstantial case for Finter’s asylum claim.

In the years and months leading up to Finter’s departure, some crap was definitely going down in the Duchy of Württemberg. Württemberg had long been a Protestant stronghold, but when Duke Eberhard Ludwig died without an heir in 1733, Württemberg passed to his cousin Karl Alexander, who had converted to Catholicism in 1712. The duchy, however, remained Protestant; according to earlier peace settlements, local elites, not the ruler, set the local religion. These elites could even gain mileage from the duke’s Catholicism by attributing every unpopular policy to a papist plot to recatholicize Würrtemberg. Assuming Finter, like his descendants in the United States, was Protestant, he probably did not experience religious persecution by today’s standards. Besides, under today’s asylum laws, he would also have to prove that he couldn’t live safely anywhere else in the nation (although what defined his “nation” would have been subject to dispute in the days of the Holy Roman Empire in central Europe).

But there would soon be political fallout in Württemberg, too, that might have caught people in the crosshairs. Karl Alexander was far from a popular ruler, driving Württemberg to financial disaster. When he suddenly died on March 12, 1737 – right around the time of Finter’s departure – his political enemies arrested, convicted, and executed his Jewish financier, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, on vague charges of abuse of office. (Oppenheimer’s case has been the subject of several literary, dramatic, and biographical works, including an anti-semitic Nazi propaganda film in 1940. Getting at the “truth” behind the case has vexed historians, a dilemma that historian Yair Mintzker effectively addressed in a fascinating and highly readable account of the events from the perspectives of four different witnesses.) It’s possible that Finter held some position that recommended his rapid departure after the sudden death of the duke, which might qualify him as a refugee based on his political opinion (assuming he wasn’t barred for persecuting others, another hurdle modern asylum applicants have to clear).  

Most likely, though, Finter was a farmer or tradesman, like most German emigrants of the time, who simply couldn’t get by in his home country. Areas like Entringen had suffered disaster after disaster since the onset of the Thirty Years War in 1618. Conflicts between the French to their west and the Austrian Habsburgs to their east had left southwest Germany directly in the path of one of the longest and most destructive human storms Europe has ever known, surpassing even World War I and World War II combined in terms of percentage of population lost in Germany. Finter’s hometown, in particular, was part of a region that lost more than two-thirds of its population to death and disease. Further troubles, like harsh winters and the War of Spanish Succession that again plagued the Rhineland during Finter’s childhood, meant these regions did not recover their population or economy for as much as a century. Coupled with the religious restrictions and economic troubles of Karl Alexander, Finter may simply have felt he had to leave to support himself and his family in peace.

Seeking Refuge, but Not a “Refugee”

Perfect storms of hardship plagued many parts of Europe from which millions of people would eventually depart for North America until the early 20^th century. In some cases, extreme religious or political targeting might qualify some of those emigrants for asylum today. But the more pervasive (and no less fatal) combination of unrelenting war, famine, oppression, and natural disaster faced by many of those emigrants – my ancestors, maybe some of yours – would not be enough, at least not under the more stringent reading of the “refugee” definition that opponents of immigration argue for today.