Immigration/Foreign Policy
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Taft held a liberal view on immigration, vetoing in 1913 the Dillingham-Burnett bill that would have imposed a literacy test on all incoming migrants. With his veto, Taft wrote that by signing the bill into law he would be refusing not only “undesirable,” but also “desirable” immigrants, and that there was no way of knowing the difference from a literacy test. In this, he followed the example of Grover Cleveland, who did the same in 1897. Perhaps Taft took pity on embattled immigrant families, or perhaps he wanted a stream of cheap labor for American capital--whatever his reasoning, his signing of the act was defining.
Italian immigrants in New York, early 1900s
In foreign affairs, Taft took a much less confrontational approach than his predecessor, coining the approach he used “dollar diplomacy.” Rather than engage the United States in foreign conflicts, Taft far preferred to encourage American investment in Latin America and Asia, and to settle foreign disputes with international commissions and cooperative arbitration. Taft’s assertions that these efforts were humanitarian in nature are suspect, and it is more likely that his attitude was that peace was good for business and for the American economy. This, however was not universal.
In 1909, early in Taft's tenure, he sent a pair of warships to the coast of Nicaragua in retribution for the death of 500 pro-American revolutionaries. In response, the progressive Nicaraguan president José Santos Zelaya resigned from his position, eventually resulting in an American-backed oligarchic administration lead by Adolfo Diaz in 1911 and then a formal American occupation in 1912.
Taft visited the Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz in 1909, and positioned American troops on the border with Mexico in 1911 to ensure that the fighting in the subsequent Mexican Revolution against Diaz stayed on the far side of the Rio Grande. Notably, Taft did not intervene in the revolution to ensure the pro-American Diaz regime's survival--perhaps because of the logistical nightmare presented by an invasion of Mexico, but also likely because of Taft's dislike for military intervention. Regardless of the reason, it is a good microcosm of Taft's approach to foreign policy--methodical, calculated, practical, and preoccupied with keeping the peace for the sake of good business.