Marking The Anniversary of ‘Illegal Immigration’
// May 7th, 2008 // Human Rights, Immigration, Racism
May 6, 1882 is the date for the birth of ‘illegal immigration.’ Like most social concerns that are only deemed as a ‘problem’ when it benefits the state, the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States, the so-called ‘yellow peril’ and ‘Asian invasion’ now required ‘documentation.’ The Chinese were constructed as unassimilable peoples, not eligible for citizenship under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Act also restricted Chinese immigration by excluding Chinese laborers from entering the country for the next 10 years under penalty of deportation and imprisonment. This would pave the way for more codes and statutes restricting Chinese immigration:
S 6 (22 Stat. 58, . 120), provides that every Chinese person other than a laborer, who may be entitled to come within the United States, shall produce a prescribed certificate of his identity and of his right to enter: and Act July 5, 1884, provides that this certificate “shall be the sole evidence
permissible on the part of the person so producing the same to establish a right of entry into the United States.” Act Oct. 1. 18X8. prohibits any Chinese laborer who had been, or was then, or might hereafter be, a resident within the United States, and who had departed or might depart therefrom, to return to or remain in the United States. Held, that since the passage of the latter act no Chinese person, formerly resident in the United States but temporarily absent
therefrom, is entitled to return without the
prescribed certificate.—Wan Shing v. United
State», 140 U. S. 424. 11 S. Ct. 729, 35 L. Ed. 03.
What led to the enacted of Chinese exclusion? Was it working class fears of Chinese immigrants taking their jobs (as is the excuse given today) or simply sheer racism that the anti-illegal immigrant lobby denies in contemporary times?
The Act was approved by Congress on May 6, and signed into law by the President on May 8. The headline in the Inter Ocean read “China Cornered: President Arthur Signs the Bill for Restricting Mongolian Immigration” (Inter Ocean, May 9 1882, page 2, vol. XI, iss. 36). A month earlier, President Arthur had vetoed a similar bill since he was afraid of retaliation from the Qing government of China but newspapers were full of headlines such as “The Mongol Wins” (San Francisco Bulletin, April 6 1882) and “The Victory of the Chinophiles” (San Francisco Bulletin, April 5 1882). Wading through old newspaper archives from this time, I caught hold of several interesting pieces that centered around justifying the exclusion of Chinese from citizenship.
Amid protests against President Arthur, including burning his effigy, a committee meeting was held by Republicans where the President was addressed:
“…unlike our people in form and feature, in habit and character, informed in the rites of a pagan religion, and disciplined under a cruel code by a despotic Government, they are not qualified for the exercise of the rights or duties of American citizens…and from their tenacity and inflexibility of nature, we believe they never can become loyal citizens of the United States.”
The address went on to claim the invasion of Chinese laborers and the threat they posed to every interest and class of society. At the same time, efforts were underway to differentiate Chinese immigration from European immigration in order to justify the exclusion. San Francisco Bulletin ran a story on “True and False Immigration” with the basic premise that the Chinese laborer is not a ‘true immigrant’ since this immigration is characterized by uneven number of sexes; it is rather an invasion, the article concluded (April 21, 1882).
The Chinese Exclusion Act was abolished in 1943 but the concept of ‘documenting’ the foreign Other was underway and ‘illegal immigration’ or undocumented immigration was born and the after-effects continue to reverberate in contemporary immigration control policy.
(You can access old newspaper archives via your university library Newsbank or Proquest database).
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Immigration restrictionism has always and everywhere been about racial exclusion. Americans have been unusually adamant about denying this axiom–hop the pond to just about anywhere else and people are much more forthcoming about this dynamic.
I appreciate the sentiment that underlies the American commitment to colorblindness, and I think ultimately it will be the only workable model. But it grates when it’s used to cover up blatant racial animus.
The problem with using terms like “racial exclusionism” and interjecting color in to the conversation is just so unfortunate not to mention innacurate and does nothing but stoke the flames of racial divisiveness.
The truth is that the exclusion of people from this country has rarely been due to someone’s “race” and was much more accurately connected with their “nationality”. Case in point, the Irish Catholics and the European Jews two of the most discriminated against immigrant groups in this nation’s history. Of course that never comes up in context of this debate. White English speaking Europeans and Jews don’t really serve the rhetoric much do they?
I don’t think either of your points are that mutually exclusive. The point is that immigration control policies are based on intolerance of the Other–whether a racial/ethnic minority, a minority by nationality, or even sexual orientation. It is correct that various nationalities of peoples were defined as undesirable to America i.e. Italians were criminally-minded, Jews were neurasthenic. At the same time, medical opinion and legal reconstruction was used to redefine various European nationalities as “white” and Asians as excluded from that category, which represents the social construction of race.
The Irish were persecuted as much as any immigrants ever were. They were white, christian, european and spoke english. Yave used terms like “racial exclusionism” and “racial animus”.
I question if you would “ever” write about the horrific persecution of the immigrant Jews or Irish. The positioning always seems to revolve around highlighting the plight of people of color. Not that their reality isn’t an important part of the big picture but it’s not the only one. Would you write about what happened to the Jews as you did about the Chinese?
You decry the integration of race into a conversation about immigration on the part of fringe white anti-immigrant forces and rightly so I might add. I suggest that to mainstream America you appear to do the same thing with the positioning of the problem that you use.
It’s race baiting, it’s divisive, it expands the chasm, it takes you further from where you want to get.
Dear We Need to Win,
I understand your position–Also know that I am the last person to view the world in black/white and don’t encourage anyone to do the same. Racial/Ethnic identity doesn’t drive my existence as a person or my politics. It is unfair to point out that I didn’t mention the Irish or Jew since I was specifically writing about the birth of ‘illegal immigration’ which does start with Chinese exclusion. It was not until 1924 that Southern/Eastern European immigrants were restricted along with a broader category of ‘Asians’ (I actually have written about this in the history of immigration control blog I did earlier). And in 1965, numbers of visas available to the Irish were reduced to allow for other national groups. You should know that I also don’t blog exclusively about Mexican or Asian immigration–DREAMers are a diverse group of people and I recognize that (I am also neither from Latin American nor Asia).
However, I think I have said this before but don’t mind restating it. The difference in the treatment of the Irish/German/Southern and Eastern European immigrants from that of the racially-defined Other (Chinese/Japanese…) is the permanent ‘foreigness’ of their national character. The latter category was simply considered absolutely unassimilable and denied citizenship, their ‘Americaness’ forever open to questioning. It’s best explicated by the World War II deportation of American citizens of Mexican ancestry. At this point I don’t think race and national origin are mutually exclusive issues. But I also don’t agree with throwing out terms like ‘racial exclusion’ etc. without careful study of what actually occurred. After all, race is socially constructed, and throughout our history, we have struggled to define and redefine ‘whiteness’ to the exclusion of certain nationalities, religious groups and then simply based on phenotypes.
Of late, the only thing I can remember is the Irish lobby trying to make a special backdoor immigration deal to gain legal status for 50,000 Irish immigrants in this country and it didn’t go down too well with other immigrant groups especially Hispanics, who truth be told, are hit hardest by deportation. And I would rather not highlight how different immigrant groups are bickering amongst themselves because that just makes me sad. If an issue of concern regarding the Irish or Jewish immigrants comes up, I would definitely blog about it. Thanks for pointing it out and I will keep it in mind the next time I am being geeky and going through historical archives.
Actually, the true “birth of illegal immigration” in this country was the foreceful homesteading by the colonialists who slaughtered Native Americans in the process. They were truly illegal in every sense of the word.
You say there is a difference between the Chinese exclusion and others and that is just not true. The eugenisists absolutely considered European Jews to meet the “permanent foreigness of their national character” criteria as you put it. The Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 targeted Jews primarily as well (along with Italians).
I still believe immigration restrictionism has historically been and today is primarily about race. “Whiteness” has been socially constructed throughout U.S. history–in the early 20th century, it excluded Mediterraneans. Mexicans for a time in the mid-20th century were legally construed by U.S. courts to be “white.”
“Whiteness” is not fixed; it is constructed and fluctuating. This absolutely applies to Jewish immigrants–now considered white, but it was not always so. Designation of a group as being “white” coincides with that group coming off the “dangerous other” list, then members from that group can in turn promote immigration restrictions against new groups. It’s cyclical and perverse.
I am so sick and tired of the racial divisiveness expressed by yb. Why not just be honest and come right out and say that you don’t like white people or Jews and that you ascribe many of the ills of the world to them.
You just said that Jews having come off the “dangerous other list” now “promote immigration restrictions against new groups”. Then you slyly link them to being perverse. Your anti-semitism is so transparent and your thinly veiled attempt to couch it in what you think is slick verbosity was an abject failure. Who are the Jews trying to restrict? Is there a Jewish conclave deciding this? Are all Jews the same? Do all Jews think alike?
And who designates a “group as being white” according to you? A conclave of bearded men in the sky? There is no master plot to “promote immigration restrictions against new groups” as you so diabolically put it.
You call it perverse, what is perverse is your racist agenda. I conclusively proved your premise wrong below and your interjection of “racial exclusionism” and “color” as a context for immigration debate is just not true aside from small fringe groups, it’s so divisive and intellectually feeble.
God I am so sick of crap like this as are millions of others; you give progressives a bad name and anger so many. No wonder you don’t get what you want politically. No wonder.
Yes, We Need to Win – You can make that comment but if I made that comment on this blog post,
I am sure you would have jumped me. Anyway, the point is irrelevant — Native Americans did
not work within the parameters of European law and mark them as ‘illegal immigrants’ that
would require documentation for x, y, z purposes. The point of the blog is the mark the birth
of ‘illegal immigration’ as a discourse, quite similar to how Foucault marks the birth of
homosexuality or madness with the conception of the nation-state and so on. Before that, the
naturally-occurring phenomenon does not matter–it is not labeled or constructed as a social
problem for society to legislate, regulate or medicate.
As for the second point, Southern/Eastern European includes Italians and European Jewss
obviously. But I don’t think you quite understood what I meant by the foreigness of national
character–it is a permanent marker in the case of the ‘non-white’ immigrant, including their
descendants. While the immigration of Southern/Eastern Europeans was restricted and Irish
immigrants at the bottom of the totem pole, the American-born children of European-Americans
were never excluded from citizenship (well, unless a white woman married a ‘colored’ man) and
let me not even get into the one-drop rule. I don’t imagine that in contemporary times an
Italian-American descendant is asked “where are you from? (implying nationality)” as an
implication of their foreign character. But it is the second or third question people would
ask anyone who looked like me followed by “no, where are you REALLY from?” when you tell them
you are from AMERICA. It is a simple question of who has been allowed to truly assimilate and
who has not. As Yave says, whiteness has been constructed and now it includes those national
subgroups of Europeans initially discriminated against. But despite the many cases brought in
front of the Supreme Court, the Japanese/Indian/Chinese, no matter how assimilated and
American, could never win the definition of ‘white’ in order to get ‘citizenship’ because they
were considered ‘unassimilable’ unlike other European immigrant minorities.
The 1882 article I quoted on ‘True and False Immigration’ highlights the difference in “our”
(European) immigration vs. their (Chinese) immigration right from the people living in those
times. I went through the archives and with regard to German or Irish immigration, there were
numbers and arrivals listed but nothing that referred to the “irish invasion” in the context
of immigration until after the construction of illegal immigration using Chinese immigrants.
Even when it comes up in a 1902 article, it is a small blip that refers to growing numbers of
Irish immigrants and nothing more quite unlike all the inappropriate articles on ‘Mongol
immigration.’ As for Jewish immigration, there are several articles in the 1820s promoting Jewish emigrants, to the point of picking out well-suitable states for them to settle-in, and encouraging these immigrants as being ‘good for America.’ The hysteria simply isn’t there. I can keep digging and if I find something contrary to what I have found so far, I would be sure to blog about it.
That said, I really don’t believe that contemporary immigration control revolves around ‘race’
or even ‘national origin’ ONLY. There are multitudes of factors, or rather, multitudes of
Otherness — Heck I would probably be a legal American citizen by now if I could legally marry
so my exclusion is not based on race, ethnicity or national origin, it is based on sexual
orientation. And I have blogged more than a fair amount on that.
P.S. Please don’t resort to ad-homs. I don’t think YB is anti-semite or hates white people. He hasn’t written anything that hints of that. And there are actually books written about “How the Irish became White” and “How the Jewish Became White Folks” and lengthy court cases where whiteness was defined. White by law: the Legal Construction of Race is a really great book and personally recommended.
There was nothing ad-hom about those comments. I have every right to be angry by what I perceive to clearly be anti-semitism, race baiting and racism. Especially when I believe it does harm to a cause I believe in and that is passing comprehensive immigration reform.
Those comments he made are not well received by mainstream Americans. They are devisive and come across as hateful, bitter, demaning and exclusive.
You can rationalize and quote statistics and muse intellectually about all sorts of variations on a theme. No race, religion or group of people has been more demonized, attacked, slaughtered and denied basic human liberties than the Jews throught recorded history. This includes immigration atrocities as well. And I say this as someone who is anti-Zionist and pro=Palestinian.
Many Latinos have no peronal markers after they assimilate. i.e Bill Richardson. Henry Cisneros, Antonio Villaregosa, etc. and countless millions of others who flourish and prosper here. Neither do countless Asians, Irish, or any other immigrant group for that matter.
Last point, for you to state that the hysteria against Jewish immigration just wasn’t there is preposterous and insulting. It is just not true no matter what some insignificant article said in 1820 or what you say. Do you care to know how many Jews died in concentration camps because they were denied immigration to America?
Often, ships with large numbers of Jews were turned back. On one occasion, a ship holding 20,000 Jewish children emigrating from Europe to America was turned back because the paperwork was insufficiently filled out.
I have no problem ‘admitting’ the various atrocities directed towards Jews or any other racial/ethnic/national/gender etc. group and I do know about ships of Jews being turned back. In the context of this blog post however, your list of documentation of other national/ethnic groups being discriminated against doesn’t do much but prove my point that the after-effects of the initial social and political construction of ‘illegal immigration’ have continued to reverberate in immigration control policy. My central point is that immigration control is imbued in ‘otherness’ and I don’t think that is disputable.
P.S. I read your post as an insult to YB’s personal beliefs which I think is ‘reaching’ since we know nothing about what he thinks about whites or Jews. It’s not fair to insinuate racism or race-baiting without understanding where someone is coming from. I could just as easily have labeled you as ‘white folk’ uncomfortable with talking about race matters or multitudes of otherness that we often find in Eth. Studies 101 classes, but that really is none of my business or my place. It doesn’t do much for your argument if you start making baseless personal attacks as a way of discrediting someone. But I do understand how mainstream America is uncomfortable talking about such things–we would rather sweep things under the carpet and pretend they don’t exist. In the short term, it’s fine with me if we get CIR or DREAM.
You can defend your posse all you want, I would expect nothing less. In my opinion his post was laced with subtle, anti-semitic, divisive race baiting and I find that insulting as well.
I am very comfortable talking about issues of race, in fact I think it is mandatory as the racial divide is as big a problem as exists today.
The problem is the double standard that exists.
Enough.
Could you explicate the ‘double standard?’ I am curious as I think it can be addressed if you are willing to talk about ‘race matters.’
Actually before that, I am more curious about your interest in CIR as it would help me understand you better. Is it just good old progressiveness or are you personally invested or both? In either case, I am glad to have your support.
I am 100% invested in wanting CIR for a multitude of reasons both personal and political. My first wife was an immigrant and I have travelled extensively and seen first hand some of the root causes of the flow of immigrants here. I also grew up in a housing project one of three caucasian families out of 900 and I get it.
Pragmatically, I am clear about the need to “win over” mainstream Americans. Without that, there is no hope of CIR. Timing is a huge part of that and unfortunately this is a dead issue until 2009-2010
and completely dependent upon a Democratic executive and legislative branch.
Also unfortunately, there is a dark side of the pro-immigration movement that whether intentionally or not comes across to mainstream America as hating caucasians and being anti-semitic. Mnay people have made this observation not just me and it does not serve your cause at all.
Thank you so much for sharing your background and commitment to CIR. It actually helps me understand your point of view better. I am Generation 1.5, meaning I grew up in two different cultures, speak different languages and know very distinct histories and ways of life. It’s a bit of a task for me to handle the responsibility of being a voice for DREAMers. There is a limit to how much I can acceptably criticize status quo American policies when we are petitioning to be Americans.
I think a lot of immigrant rights groups walk the same tightrope. Flying a Mexican flag at an immigration rally for example–can simply be a representation of cultural and national pride (the duality of being Mexican-American) and I think it is alright as long as that person pays their taxes and stays out of trouble with the law. But it is labeled and projected as divisiveness, which does not need to be true. Then there are people who really don’t like pressing 1 for English (Heck even I don’t like pressing 1 for English) but it’s made into a huge deal which I think is unnecessary. I think multiple languages and cultures are so beneficial and integral to this country; the hue and cry over bilingual education is perplexing to me since I come from a place where we are required to learn 3 languages from a young age. How do we begin to address our immigration laws without changing the way we think about the Other? Should pro-migrant literature just focus on the benefits of immigration to this country and not try to broach a discussion on race , immigration quotas based on national origin or sexual orientation?
I must say I have had people I consider community tell me not to link their gay right to emigrate with “those illegals.” It is disturbing to have so many immigrant groups with dif. agendas, some working against each other. And the comments on the Alternet article about A Dream Deferred was the most disheartening. Here were progressives–people I identify with–drawing us/them differences and launching personal attacks at students. I think I got called rich and privileged, a ‘fabricator’ along with calls to stop feeling so disempowered since I had no ‘right’ to. And that was the day I had worked long into the night getting arrestees from the war protest out of jail (without pay of course). I think, that, more than the race baiting and exclusionism, really made me feel like an outsider and ‘different.’
Anyway, how do you suggest we proceed? How should we invest our energies to be more productive? What kind of blog posts would you like to see on a drean deferred? I must say I have taken one of your suggestions from earlier and am working on a draft of why America needs DREAMers.
Since you asked . . . I think what is needed on the part of immigration reform advocates is a greater acknowledgement of how important public relations and image is in convincing the American public to support a cause. Remember that I say that in the context of the media intensive world in which we live and that fairly or not, one visual can have tremendous impact.
A person stomping on an American flag or flying a Mexican flag on a pole over an upside down American flag (images I have seen) at a pro-immigration rally can do irreparable harm.
It doesn’t matter that as you say, “Flying a Mexican flag at an immigration rally for example–can simply be a representation of cultural and national pride (the duality of being Mexican-American) and I think it is alright as long as that person pays their taxes and stays out of trouble with the law”. It’s the perception that becomes voters reality that hurts you. They do not have the opportunity to have a dialogue with the person to see that they are law abiding and that they pay taxes. They only see someone who came here illegally insulting this country.
By the way one of your bloggers has said here that they don’t care about their country of origin. Do you see the contradiction and the unecessary bad will that is broadcast?
This is not about the benefits of multi-culturalism, this country is a melting pot and even anti-immigrants forces often have their roots in other countries. This is about the perception of fairness, images and being pragmatic.
Most importantly, you would be best served by eliminating all communications that attack America’s past, and be very careful that your bloggers don’t promote the perception “whether inadvertent or not” that they are attacking white people, patriotism, Jews, etc. That is not going to get you anywhere.
Also remember that timing is everything so pick your time for the final assault carefully. When you have a Democratic Congress and President. No one is paying attention to what you say now. Election, war, gas prices, home foreclosures, jobs, the environment, etc. Pick your moment.
Stay totally positive, base your case on legality, humanity and how much you all want to be part of the American dream. If you appear to be a part of a fringe “hate America” faction in any way, you will never get where you want to go.
Quite valid and important points that should be taken into account. I agree that images and representation do hurt us since there is little discourse across the aisles.
As for the not caring about ‘country of origin’ question, I can’t speak for him. There are DREAMers who have been here from when they were a few months old to students that are Gen 1.5 like me. He really does not know much about his country of origin besides what he may have read and I believe that if he gives some hint that he ‘cares’ about where he is from, he will be told to ‘go back’ there. But for a lot of us, America is the only country we know or remember. Even Senator Durbin appealed for DREAM along these lines when he was talking about Marie Gonzalez and how Cuba isn’t her country; America is her country. There’s a reason I haven’t blogged anything about my own country of origin–it sends mixed signals that we know a home apart from the USA and that isn’t good for us either.
I think a Dem. President and Congress is vital for us to win CIR and DREAM. We have been so patient — I was 17 when DREAM was first introduced and now 24 at the end of the year. I always thought that I wouldn’t need CIR or any other immigration legislation to pass, that my parents UCSIS paperwork would come through like they had promised me time and again. So we live in-limbo, some of us with a sense of betrayal, some who cannot even go to college and others who cannot afford further studies, some facing deportation hearings later in the year, trying to get the inevitable delayed. I don’t know what I would do the day this wait ends. We would have to learn to live a new kind of life–learning to drive a car, building credit history, getting jobs, filing taxes, learning about mortgages, moving out on our own…Life might not get any easier I fear sometimes, but at least we would be living I suppose without the constant fear of being ripped apart from our families and homes.
Thank you for your suggestions once again. Much enjoyed conversing with you.
DA, you have a lot more patience than I do. WNTW, I suggest you not make baseless attacks and unsupported assertions. I don’t like white people? That would be a feat, being that I’m lily myself. Am I a self-hating white? Can’t wait to hear you explain that one … And anti-semitic … that’s just plain offensive. And completely unsupported. Not very neighborly.
You can flame away, blazing vitriol, but migrant advocates have to step carefully, never give offense, and never, ever question blind loyalty to God and country.
Yeah, that’s fair.
Like I said, DA, you’re a saint.
And I can’t get these GD comments to post at a reasonable length. Doh!