Ben Carson, Your Descendants From Africa Were Not Involuntary Immigrants. They Were Slaves.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson is attempting to water-down the history of a people who were kidnapped from their family, culture, possessions and country, and in chains, sold as property and forced into labor.

Quotation source, the Washington Post.

In 2016, Ben Carson did not say that Obamacare was the worst thing since “involuntary immigrants” — he said “slavery.”

I could go into all of the comparisons between immigrants and what Secretary Carson calls “involuntary immigrants,” but I think that everyone already knows the comparisons, including Ben Carson.  I want to address his statement from another perspective — that of this nation’ rule of law.

A definition of “rule of law” is:

“The principle that all people and institutions are subject to and accountable to law that is fairly applied and enforced; the principle of government by law.”

The principal foundation of America’s rule of law is our constitution.

Ben Carson’s statement that slaves were “involuntary immigrants” violates the constitution’s rule of law. He stated:

 “I think people need to actually look up the word immigrant. Whether you’re voluntary or involuntary, if you come from the outside to the inside, you’re an immigrant. Whether you’re legal or illegal, you come from the outside to inside, you’re an immigrant. Slaves came here as involuntary immigrants but they still had the strength to hold on.”

In our original constitution was Article I, Section 9, and the U.S. Senate in its archives of the constitution says of this now obsolete provision that it “was designed to protect the slave trade from congressional restriction for a period of time.”

That section stated;

“The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.”

Slaves were “imports,” not “immigrants”. 

Then there’s Article IV, Section I that still stands today. It says:

“The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.”

I’m sure that Ben Carson must have heard about the Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case.  In March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks — slaves as well as free — were not and could never become citizens of the United States.

Immigrants can apply to become citizens of the United States.  Carson’s “involuntary immigrants” could not. 

It took the 13^th and 14^th Amendments to the Constitution for “involuntary immigrants” to be free from their involuntary bondage and become citizens of the United States.

The U.S. Senate’s explanation for the 14^th Amendment states:

“In the Dred Scott decision of 1857, the Supreme Court had said that African-Americans were not citizens. This amendment declared that every person born or naturalized in the U.S. was a citizen.”

Secretary Carson, according to our U.S. Constitution, to this nation’s foundation rule of law, those people kidnapped from Africa and their descendants born on this land, were never “involuntary immigrants.”  They were property.  They were not given the rights and privileges of immigrants from other lands and could not become citizens until the constitution said so in 1868.

Ben Carson is said to be a Seventh Day Adventist.  E.G. White was a Seventh Day Adventist prophetess.  Her understanding of humanity’s creation in the image of God with freedom of choice made her vocal in her support that slaves be free and have freedom to choose their own eternal destiny. (The Southern Work [J. E. White, 1898, 1901], p. 61.)

Secretary Carson, even E.G. White did not consider kidnapped Africans and their descendants to be “involuntary immigrants.”  She called them “slaves” and she was against its institution.