The Racialisation of literacy: Educational Tests for Immigration Restriction in the United States, 1894–1924

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Christian Watkins ◽  
John L. Rury
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Restriction ◽  
Educational Tests

Immigration restriction: rethinking period and place from settler colonies to postcolonial nations

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Bashford
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Immigration Restriction ◽  
Immigration Laws ◽  
Nation States ◽  
World Nation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

AbstractImmigration acts have long been analysed as instrumental to the working of the modern nation-state. A particular focus has been the racial exclusions and restrictions that were adopted by aspirationally white, new world nation-states: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. This article looks again at the long modern history of immigration restriction in order to connect the history of these settler-colonial race-based exclusions (much studied) with immigration restriction in postcolonial nation-states (little studied). It argues for the need to expand the scope of immigration restriction histories geographically, temporally and substantively: beyond the settler nation, beyond the Second World War, and beyond ‘race’. The article focuses on the Asia-Pacific region, bringing into a single analytical frame the early immigration laws of New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and Canada on the one hand and those of Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Fiji on the other.

The Diplomatic Origins of Immigration Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-46
Author(s):  
Adam B. Cox ◽  
Cristina M. Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Immigration Law ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Immigration Restriction ◽  
Chinese Exclusion ◽  
Executive Authority ◽  
State And Local

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.

Race or Politics? Henry Cabot Lodge and the Origins of the Immigration Restriction Movement in the United States

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Gratton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Ethnic Differences ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Biological Theory ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Restriction ◽  
Political Response ◽  
New Immigrants ◽  
Class Anxiety

Abstract:This article addresses the origins of the immigration restriction movement in the late 19th century United States, a movement that realized its aims in the early 20th. It critiques the dominant scholarly interpretation, which holds that the movement sprang from a racism that viewed the new immigrants of this period as biologically inferior. It argues first that activists did not have at hand a biological theory sufficient to this characterization and did not employ one. It argues second that the movement arose as an adroit political response to labor market competition. The Republican Party recognized the discontent of resident workers (including those of older immigrant origin) with competition from new immigrants. The Party discerned ethnic differences among new and old immigrants and capitalized on these conditions in order to win elections. Ethnocentrism and middle-class anxiety over mass immigrant added to a movement that depended on bringing working class voters into the Party.

Before Restriction Became Exclusion

2014 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth Lew-Williams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Restriction ◽  
Immigration Control ◽  
Chinese Exclusion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Workers ◽  
Exclusion Act ◽  
Important Shift

The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) marked a turning point in the history of U.S. immigration control, but it was not as definitive a move toward gatekeeping as historians have suggested. Contemporaries called the 1882 law the “Chinese Restriction Act,” reserving the term “exclusion” for its successor in 1888. The rhetorical change paralleled an important shift in policy. During Chinese Restriction (1882–1888), the United States so valued its relationship with China that it made immigration restriction subject to diplomatic negotiation. Only after the Restriction Act failed and China signaled capitulation did the United States enact Chinese Exclusion (1888), which prohibited Chinese workers, asserted America’s sovereign power to exclude, and developed modern systems of enforcement. The transition from diplomatic Restriction to unilateral Exclusion represents a powerful aggrandizement of American power.

Franz Boas

Anthropology ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vernon J. Williams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Restriction ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
European Immigrants ◽  
Prejudice And Discrimination

Franz Boas was a scholar, professional, and activist who almost single-handedly transformed American anthropology from a field dominated by amateurs to a full-fledged professional, academic discipline. A German-born Jewish immigrant who had experienced anti-Semitism in his native land and in the United States, Boas was especially effective in dismantling hierarchical theories of race, language, and culture. As a consequence, most of his works centered on Native Indians, African Americans, and southern and eastern European immigrants in the United States and on the themes of race, language, and culture. As an activist, he expressed his revulsion against immigration restriction and anti-black prejudice and discrimination, the erasure of Native Indian cultures, and anti-Semitism. Boas suffered a fatal heart attack while vociferously protesting the exterminations by the Nazis during World War II.

Ethnic Politics in American History

2020 ◽  
pp. 294-311
Author(s):  
James J. Connolly
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
Ethnic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Immigration Restriction ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Late Twentieth

This chapter traces the ways that ethnic politics evolved in the United States. During the mid-nineteenth century, amid heavy immigration from Europe, ascendant mass parties mobilized newcomers rapidly, spurring nativism. Although the incorporation of immigrants gradually slowed after 1870 and Congress established immigration restriction laws during the 1920s, pluralism remained strong enough to allow the gradual integration of ethnics into the nation’s civic life. The revival of immigration after 1965, chiefly from Latin America and Asia, reinvigorated arguments about ethnic inclusion and nationalism. These debates developed in an altered civic environment, one marked by interest group activism and an emphasis on multiculturalism. Despite these differences, the preponderance of evidence suggests that the incorporation of ethnics during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries proceeded at a pace and in a manner comparable to previous eras.

‘Treated like Chinamen’: United States immigration restriction and white British subjects

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-260
Author(s):  
Anne Rees
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Quota System ◽  
Immigration Restriction ◽  
East Europe ◽  
South East Europe ◽  
United States Immigration ◽  
States Immigration ◽  
Anglo American

AbstractIn 1921, the United States introduced national immigration quotas. Although designed to curb the arrival of ‘undesirables’ from south-east Europe, this quota system also applied to Britain and its white Dominions. By 1929, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa were each allocated 100 quota places per annum. The British quota was far greater, but still struggled to meet demand. Through a focus on the Australian example, this article investigates how an immigration regime intended to bolster America’s ‘Anglo-Saxon’ identity also exposed the limits of Anglospheric kinship by closing the gates to white Britons. Although the quotas had a comparatively minor impact on Britons, their exclusion held great significance in the context of Anglo-American relations, where the rhetoric of transnational white solidarity produced expectations of unqualified welcome in the United States. After 1921, as such welcome disappeared and then failed to rematerialize, the global community of white men’s countries was shaken and remade.

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