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Negotiating Protection: Illegal Immigration and Party Machines

Lisa Rose Mar

in Brokering Belonging: Chinese in Canada's Exclusion Era, 1885-1945

One of the most curious aspects of anti-Chinese policies was officials’ practice of hiring immigrant Chinese interpreters, thus foiling exclusionary laws. The clash of two titans, Yip On and David ... More

One of the most curious aspects of anti-Chinese policies was officials’ practice of hiring immigrant Chinese interpreters, thus foiling exclusionary laws. The clash of two titans, Yip On and David Lew, shows how political alliances across racial lines compromised enforcement of anti-Chinese immigration policies. The study of interpreters and the politics through which they won, held, and lost their posts reveals a new understanding of how immigration policy was made. As an ethnic collaborator, the interpreter engaged in policy-making from a distinctive position. He had a duty to carry out the mandates of Parliament, but he gained political leadership from supporters who viewed anti-Chinese laws as illegitimate.Less

American Futures Past: The Counterfactual Histories of Chinese Invasion

Edlie L. Wong

in Racial Reconstruction: Black Inclusion, Chinese Exclusion, and the Fictions of Citizenship

By the final decades of the nineteenth century, the notion of an Asiatic threat was well established in U.S. culture, in part through “Yellow Peril” propaganda, a product of the Pacific Coast ... More

By the final decades of the nineteenth century, the notion of an Asiatic threat was well established in U.S. culture, in part through “Yellow Peril” propaganda, a product of the Pacific Coast anti-Chinese movement. Chapter 3 reads sensationalized Chinese invasion narratives alongside the key legal and political contexts that gave them narrative shape to tease out the racial fictions and counterfactual imaginings of this popular subgenre. From legal discourse to the forgotten novels of Pierton Dooner, Robert Woltor, and Arthur Dudley Vinton, the invasion trope dominated U.S.-China relations. The Janus-faced depictions of Chinese labor migrants as abject coolie-slaves and villainous agents of foreign aggression embodied the contradictions of American industrial modernity. In imagining the tragic consequences of unfettered Chinese immigration, the subgenre absorbed and refracted white anxieties over the end of western expansion—American Manifest Destiny—and the changing composition of the national polity after black citizenship and enfranchisement.Less

“A Pressing Problem of Interracial Justice”: Repealing Chinese Exclusion, 1937–1943

Madeline Y. Hsu

in The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority

This chapter describes how international war compelled repeal of the Chinese exclusion laws, which were seen as unacceptable insults to a wartime ally. As the first liberalization of immigration law ... More

This chapter describes how international war compelled repeal of the Chinese exclusion laws, which were seen as unacceptable insults to a wartime ally. As the first liberalization of immigration law since 1924, the campaign for repeal showcased long-simmering contradictions between foreign policy agendas, nativist racism, ethnic and religious groups, organized labor, and economic priorities that would channel and distort the long struggle for immigration reform and eventual passage of the Hart–Celler Act of 1965. With her Christian upbringing, American education, and proximity to power in China, Madame Chiang Kai-shek served as a potent symbol of the humanity and assimilability of Chinese as well as the possibility that long-cherished missionary dreams for the transformation of China into a Christian, democratic nation might be realized.Less

War, Revolution, and Political Realignment

Charlotte Brooks

in Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years

Chapter Two explores the political ferment in Chinese American communities during and immediately after World War Two. Chinese politics remained a major obsession, and the Chinese civil war split the ... More

Chapter Two explores the political ferment in Chinese American communities during and immediately after World War Two. Chinese politics remained a major obsession, and the Chinese civil war split the community. But after the 1943 repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which gave Chinese immigrants the ability to become naturalized citizens, American politics began to attract the attention of more of the Chinese American population. An influx of thousands of China-born wives under the provisions of 1946 “war bride” legislation compounded this effect: war veterans of Chinese ancestry pleaded with Congress to allow continued family immigration and an end to immigration officials’ harassment of their wives. By 1947 and 1948, the growing importance of American domestic politics, and the increasingly poor reputation of the Nationalists, signaled the declining power of conservative leaders and organizations in Chinese American communities.Less

Choosing New Members: The Rise of Immigration Restriction

Desmond King

in The Liberty of Strangers: Making the American Nation

This chapter focuses on assimilability, which was the talked-about word of the new immigration policy established in the 1920s. It demonstrates that throughout the 19th century and into the opening ... More

This chapter focuses on assimilability, which was the talked-about word of the new immigration policy established in the 1920s. It demonstrates that throughout the 19th century and into the opening decades of the 20th the experience of segregation and discrimination made some African Americans conceive of a life beyond the United States. Immigration of Chinese laborers had been restricted since the 1870s. The Chinese exclusion policy exhibits how group-based discrimination could be implemented and shows how this shaped the values carried by the United States in its overseas adventures. Congress broadened the restrictions on Chinese laborers to those in Hawaii and the Philippines. A system of national origin categorization is also discussed. The definition of membership enshrined in immigration law would haunt American nationalism abroad as well as at home for a long time.Less

Traversing the Line: Border Crossers and Alien Smugglers

in Making the Chinese Mexican: Global Migration, Localism, and Exclusion in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

This chapter discusses inconsistencies of border enforcement at the southern U.S. border and the way in which Chinese smugglers blazed illegal pathways across the Arizona and California lines. The ... More

This chapter discusses inconsistencies of border enforcement at the southern U.S. border and the way in which Chinese smugglers blazed illegal pathways across the Arizona and California lines. The backdoor route was so successful that it spurred American politicians to seek a diplomatic solution to end illegal entry of Chinese at the country's northern and southern borders, although Canada was more inclined than Mexico to accommodate American requests. By the turn of the twentieth century, enforcing Chinese exclusion laws remapped the U.S.–Mexico borderlands on the basis of a new sense of territoriality.Less

Segregation, Exclusion, and the Chinese Communities in Georgia, 1880s-1940

Daniel Bronstein

in Asian Americans in Dixie: Race and Migration in the South

This chapter examines the impact of various state apparatuses, including exclusion laws, on the little remarked but fascinating Chinese American merchant communities in Atlanta, Augusta, and ... More

This chapter examines the impact of various state apparatuses, including exclusion laws, on the little remarked but fascinating Chinese American merchant communities in Atlanta, Augusta, and Savannah, Georgia. Federal Chinese Exclusion laws established a highly selective exemption system designed to prevent most Chinese from entering and reentering the United States. The law explicitly barred the first-time entry of laborers but allowed Chinese to come over as merchants, students, government officials, teachers, and U.S.-born citizens. Since most Chinese in Augusta were in the grocery business, they were allowed to travel under the exempted merchant category and their wives and children as merchant dependents. As such, Augusta's Chinese community grew in size and became one of the largest Chinese communities in the South before 1965.Less

America's First Culinary Revolution, or How a Girl from Gopher Prairie Came to Dine on Eggs Fooyung

Susan B. Carter

in Economic Evolution and Revolution in Historical Time

This chapter, which discusses the employment opportunities of Chinese Americans through a history of the spread of Chinese restaurants in America, examines the impacts of the Chinese Exclusion Act of ... More

This chapter, which discusses the employment opportunities of Chinese Americans through a history of the spread of Chinese restaurants in America, examines the impacts of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 on the industrial and geographic distribution of the Chinese immigrants and their offspring.Less

First Downpour: Chinese Immigrants and Gilded Age Politics, 1876–1882

Lon Kurashige

in Two Faces of Exclusion: The Untold History of Anti-Asian Racism in the United States

This chapter examines the first policy to restrict Chinese immigration to the United States by tracing its background in broad political transformations during the Gilded Age, including the end of ... More

This chapter examines the first policy to restrict Chinese immigration to the United States by tracing its background in broad political transformations during the Gilded Age, including the end of Reconstruction, rapid industrialization, and swings in the business cycle. It provides a close analysis of congressional voting patterns during two Congresses that approved bills to restrict Chinese labor immigrants, the first (passed in 1879) was vetoed by the president, while the second (passed in 1882) became the law of the land. The debate over both policies revealed the polarization of views in Congress and the broader society about the Chinese. The return of the Democrats to power and the Midwestern revolt against big businesses (often identified with the Republicans) combined with racial prejudice to win support for the restriction of Chinese workers.Less

The Chinese Exclusion Act and Chinatown Theaters

Nancy Yunhwa Rao

in Chinatown Opera Theater in North America

This chapter focuses on immigration policies in the United States and how they impacted Chinatown opera theaters from their burgeoning in the nineteenth century through the passage of the Chinese ... More

This chapter focuses on immigration policies in the United States and how they impacted Chinatown opera theaters from their burgeoning in the nineteenth century through the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and into the early twentieth century. Whereas Chinese theaters rose to prominent entertainment in the 1870s, with four concurrent theaters in San Francisco, late nineteenth century exclusionary regulations severely curtailed previously vibrant Chinatown opera theaters. It eventually cut off the flow of performers and limiting companies’ performance opportunities by early 20th century. The chapter identifies a turning point when the continuing demand for Chinese performers prompted American entrepreneurs and others to circumvent U.S. policies and advocate for exceptions to the stultifying rules in the second decade of the20th century. As a result, increasingly itinerant performers were allowed to cross national borders, and theaters were allowed to stage performances, but each existed in a precarious relationship with immigration officials and boards that enforced exclusionary principles and practices.Less

“Hunting for Chinamen”

Julian Lim

in Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Through a close, on-the-ground reading of U.S. immigration records and newspaper accounts, this chapter shows how Chinese immigrants repeatedly improvised new cross-racial strategies to gain entry ... More

Through a close, on-the-ground reading of U.S. immigration records and newspaper accounts, this chapter shows how Chinese immigrants repeatedly improvised new cross-racial strategies to gain entry into the United States during the era of Chinese Exclusion. Their actions not only forced local immigration officials to continually adjust their own practices in response, but to focus increasing attention on racial differentiation. In the process of distinguishing Chinese from Mexican, and rooting out smuggling rings that depended upon the cooperation of Chinese sponsors and immigrants, Mexican guides, and black railroad workers, these street-level bureaucrats not only enforced U.S. immigration law, but did so through practices that rendered multiracial relations and identities suspect and illegitimate. Moreover, as immigration officials and the immigrants they sought to police drew the attention of the federal government to the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez border, they brought the American state into the borderlands. The chapter thus connects local enforcement practices at the border with the broader goals of federal immigration law and nation-building at the turn of the century.Less

Evening the Odds through Chinese Exclusion

Tara Fickle

in The Race Card: From Gaming Technologies to Model Minorities

This chapter uncovers the influential role of gambling in the passage of late nineteenth-century immigration laws barring Asian laborers. Although historians have long treated Asian American gambling ... More

This chapter uncovers the influential role of gambling in the passage of late nineteenth-century immigration laws barring Asian laborers. Although historians have long treated Asian American gambling as a minor phenomenon or exaggerated stereotype, gambling was a significant source of recreation and revenue for Chinese American communities and, further, took center stage in exclusion debates. Exclusionists depicted Chinese Americans as “inveterate gamblers” and dissolute cheaters whose “cheap labor” constituted not only unfair competition for other immigrant laborers but an affront to the “fair play” on which U.S. democracy was ostensibly founded. This chapter analyzes the congressional and literary record of these debates to show how ludo-Orientalist rhetoric crucially elevated economic arguments to the transcendent realm of ethics and ideals. By aligning (white) American values with ludic ideals and Asian immigrants with the degradation of these ideals, exclusionist rhetoric weaponized Asian Americans’ association with gambling, a process made possible in part through the “misreading” of satirical works like Bret Harte’s “The Heathen Chinee.” This first chapter also sets the stage for the rest of the book by showing how Orientalist fictions about Asiatic threats are inextricable from national fictions about the United States as an idealized game space.Less

Not Imprisonment in a Legal Sense

Kelly Lytle Hernández

in City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965

The third chapter is a western tale of national and global import. That tale, which sutures the split between the history of incarceration within the United States and the history of deportation from ... More

The third chapter is a western tale of national and global import. That tale, which sutures the split between the history of incarceration within the United States and the history of deportation from the United States, swirls around the passage of the 1892 Geary Act, a federal law that required all Chinese laborers in the United States to prove their legal residence and register with the federal government or be subject to up to one year of imprisonment at hard labor and, then, deportation. Chinese immigrants rebelled against the new law, refusing to be locked out, kicked out, or singled out for imprisonment. Launching the first mass civil disobedience campaign for immigrant rights in the history of the United States, Chinese immigrants forced the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a set of sweeping and enduring decisions regarding the future of U.S. immigration control. Buried in those decisions, which cut through Los Angeles during the summer of 1893, lay the invention of immigrant detention as a nonpunitive form of caging noncitizens within the United States. It was then an obscure and contested practice of indisputably racist origins. It is now one of the most dynamic sectors of the U.S. carceral landscape.Less

Changing Chinese Settlement

Wei Li

in Ethnoburb: The New Ethnic Community in Urban America

This chapter examines the transformation of Chinese settlement in U.S. urban areas from traditional ghettos and ethnic enclaves to sites for international investment and urban renewal efforts, with ... More

This chapter examines the transformation of Chinese settlement in U.S. urban areas from traditional ghettos and ethnic enclaves to sites for international investment and urban renewal efforts, with particular emphasis on the emergence of the ethnoburb. It first provides a background on Chinese settlement in the United States before 1965, focusing on the anti-Chinese sentiment that Chinese immigrants had to endure and the legislation passed by Congress to address Chinese immigration, including the Chinese Exclusion Act and the War Brides Act, and how the Chinese tried to cope with the harsh conditions imposed by the host society. The chapter then considers the state of Chinese immigration since 1965 and concludes by discussing the racialization and spatialization of the Chinese community in Los Angeles.Less

Toward a Historical Archaeology of the Chinese in Montana and a Transnational Lens

Christopher Merritt

in Chinese Diaspora Archaeology in North America

Chinese immigrants started arriving in Montana in 1862 to participate in the region’s growing economic growth from gold mining. Over the next 80 years, the Chinese population contributed to the ... More

Chinese immigrants started arriving in Montana in 1862 to participate in the region’s growing economic growth from gold mining. Over the next 80 years, the Chinese population contributed to the cultural fabric of the state, while contending with a number of challenges, including growing anti-Chinese sentiment, collapse of their population after passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, and lack of opportunity for families and entrepreneurial interests. Framing the historical and archaeological story of the Chinese in Montana in regional and transnational trends can broaden the analytical lens compared to other more site-specific narratives.Less

Eye of the Storm: The Laboring of Exclusion, 1882–1904

Lon Kurashige

in Two Faces of Exclusion: The Untold History of Anti-Asian Racism in the United States

This chapter traces the growing consensus on hardening the restriction of Chinese labor immigrants, moving towards exclusion for merchants and other classes of Chinese. Such efforts took place amid ... More

This chapter traces the growing consensus on hardening the restriction of Chinese labor immigrants, moving towards exclusion for merchants and other classes of Chinese. Such efforts took place amid the growing power of national labor unions as well as widespread concerns about the deleterious impact of immigrants on U.S. society. Concerns about U.S. imperialism through the Spanish-American War and the colonization of the Philippines introduced a new dimension to the debate over Chinese exclusion. Yet the egalitarian opposition to Chinese exclusion, continued to protect exempt classes of Chinese and to prevent exclusion from spreading to Japanese immigrants.Less

The Diplomatic Origins of Immigration Law

Adam B. Cox and Cristina M. Rodríguez

in The President and Immigration Law

This chapter explores the origins of immigration law in the United States. Until the late nineteenth century Congress created few rules to govern immigration, beyond setting a uniform rule for ... More

This chapter explores the origins of immigration law in the United States. Until the late nineteenth century Congress created few rules to govern immigration, beyond setting a uniform rule for naturalization. Instead, presidents facilitated immigration through the negotiation of commercial treaties that ensured reciprocal protections for foreign nationals in the United States and Americans abroad—first with nations in Europe, and later with China during the California Gold Rush. State and local governments simultaneously acted as de facto regulators through the use of their inspection and taxation powers. In the 1880s, however, circumstances changed. In response to growing resentment of Chinese immigration on the West Coast and pressure from eastern seaboard states struggling to manage immigrant flows, Congress finally enacted significant legislation, passing the Chinese Exclusion Acts and beginning the American experiment with immigration restriction. By the close of the twentieth century, foreign affairs and national defense were no longer necessary contexts for the assertion of broad presidential leadership or power. Presidents continued to rely on their foreign affairs powers to significant effect through World War II, and diplomacy remains relevant to immigration policy today. But the rise of the administrative state and the President’s role in steering an ever-expanding bureaucracy ultimately became the preeminent source of executive authority to control immigration law.Less

Forged in Revolution

Julian Lim

in Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

This chapter analyzes the multiracial intersections of the Mexican Revolution, using the case of Pershing’s Expedition into Mexico in 1916 1917 to explore the escalating importance that both states ... More

This chapter analyzes the multiracial intersections of the Mexican Revolution, using the case of Pershing’s Expedition into Mexico in 1916 1917 to explore the escalating importance that both states attached to race, immigration, and citizenship in the borderlands. South of the border, military service clarified the citizenship status of African Americans while Mexicans and Chinese immigrants found themselves caught in a dangerous space between two states – one state (Mexico) that could not sufficiently protect them from revolutionary violence and another (the United States) that remained uncertain about whether to protect them at all. As U.S. immigration officials tightened the border against thousands of men, women, and children fleeing for their safety and security, the power of the U.S. state became more clearly visible in the borderlands. This chapter analyzes how people caught between revolution and exclusion renegotiated their relationship with the state. In desperate straits, Mexican immigrants reconstructed their identities from political refugees to desirable laborers, while Chinese immigrants re-branded themselves as deserving refugees rather than excludable laborers. The chapter thus elaborates the ways in which immigrants and officials refined the distinctions between the diverse groups in the borderlands.Less

Immigration: Privilege or Right?

Nancy Yunhwa Rao

in Chinatown Opera Theater in North America

This chapter is a case study that examines close-up one theater’s tug-of-war with Immigration Bureau to gain legitimacy at various junctures. It focuses on San Francisco Mandarin Theater’s struggle ... More

This chapter is a case study that examines close-up one theater’s tug-of-war with Immigration Bureau to gain legitimacy at various junctures. It focuses on San Francisco Mandarin Theater’s struggle against exclusionary immigration policies. The Mandarin’s path to becoming the fastest growing Chinatown theater in the 1920s was filled with difficult hurdles, from obtaining permission, to extension of actor permit, and to expansion of the quota and operation. Using letters, interviews, legal briefs, etc., the chapter reveals the nuance of arguments and decisions, namely, the everyday life of the regulations of Chinese Exclusion. The attorney also drew from recent precedents: two landmark Supreme Court cases regarding wives of Chinese merchants. At a crucial juncture, the attorney’s right-based argument won the theaters permission to expand, and established the legal status of these performers as non-immigrant. Mandarin’s eventual success was due to the prudence, financial prowess, and business skill of Chinese merchants, as well as the mobilization of legal professionals.Less