This paper is from the mid 90s, the last time this country dealt with the ussue of immigration, but serves as a decent primer to black thought on the topic. Im not super familiar with the site, but i was just looking for a summary. One thing our ancestors couldnt have foreseen is that black immigrants would come here and be turned into a buffer class/ model minority equivalent to the chinese or latinos.
"On the issue of immigration, contemporary Americans, and especially African Americans, need to be guided by two lessons from history. The first, from the New Testament, says that "without vision, the people perish." The second warns that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Unfortunately, many African American political leaders and intellectuals do not heed these lessons with regard to immigration. They either are ignorant of the insights of their forerunners or they fail to understand how similar today's conditions are to those during the previous wave of mass immigration.
At the same time, it is clear from poll after poll that African Americans as a whole have much sounder views [than their policians] regarding today's record levels of immigration. One result of this intellectual and political dissonance is that African Americans are in danger of much greater future suffering because of the political choices and actions taken today on their behalf.
As is clear from this compilation, "Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are": Black Americans on Immigration, one of the facts of American history that is not widely discussed is the nation's long-standing preference for immigrant labor, when the alternative was to train and employ native-born African Americans..."
Booker T. Washington in his famous 1895 Atlanta exposition speech pleaded with industrialists not to look to European immigrants to man their new factories but rather to the black and white labor supply in the South.
cis.org