“Hunting for Chinamen”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Lim
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
El Paso ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Chinese Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Immigration Law ◽  
Ciudad Juarez ◽  
Railroad Workers ◽  
Chinese Exclusion

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.

Empires and Immigrants

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Lim
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
El Paso ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Ciudad Juarez ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Demographic Shift ◽  
International Boundary ◽  
Diverse Groups

This chapter frames the nineteenth century borderlands as a theater of movement that had long been marked by imperial contestations and diverse migrations. Native American, colonial, Mexican, and American migrations shaped the region, keeping territorial boundaries porous, and racial and national identities blurred. Following the transformation of the indigenous borderlands to a capitalist borderlands, the chapter traces the seismic demographic shift that drove the region’s rapid industrialization; as the borderlands connected into national, transnational, and global circuits of migration, and oceanic lines fed back into railway connections, white, black, Mexican, and Chinese immigrants descended on the border from all directions. Focusing on the multiple boundaries that intersected at the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez border – namely, the international boundary as well as the limits of Jim Crow that ended where Texas met New Mexico – this chapter shows how and why the late 19th century borderlands looked so promising for these diverse groups. It begins to develop a transborder framework for understanding immigration, emphasizing how the narrowing of economic opportunities, political rights, and social freedoms in both the United States and Mexico contributed to such diverse men and women coming together in the borderlands.

“Our Sisters in China Are Free”: Visual Representations of Chinese and Chinese American Suffragists

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 634-641
Author(s):  
Cathleen D. Cahill
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Chinese American ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Chinese Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Law ◽  
Chinese Revolution ◽  
Public Events ◽  
The Press

AbstractBoth white and Chinese American suffragists in the United States closely watched and discussed the events of the Chinese Revolution of 1911 and the establishment of the Chinese Republic (1912–1949). They were aware of the republican revolutionaries’ support for women's rights, which conflicted with American stereotypes of China as a backward nation, especially in its treatment of women. Chinese suffragists, real and imagined, became a major talking point in debates over women's voting rights in the United States as white suffragists and national newspapers championed their stories. This led to prominent visual depictions of Chinese suffragists in the press, but also their participation in public events such as suffrage parades. For a brief time, the transnational nature of suffrage conversations was highly visible as was the suffrage activism of women in U.S. Chinese communities. However, because Chinese immigrants were barred from citizenship by U.S. immigration law, white activists tended to depict Chinese suffragists as foreign, resulting in the erasure of their memory in the U.S. suffrage movement.

Digital Resources: The Wheelan Collection of Photographs of the Mexican Revolution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anton DuPlessis
Keyword(s):  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
El Paso ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ciudad Juarez ◽  
Land Reforms ◽  
Northern Mexico ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Military Commander ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Ardent Supporter

The John D. Wheelan Collection primarily contains photographs taken along the Texas-Mexico border in the areas of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, México. The processed collection, housed at Texas A&M University’s Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, comprises nearly 700 photographs documenting the Mexican Revolution and the war’s spillover into the United States, during a span of 1912 to 1919. Other portions of the image collection document American soldiers stationed in New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. The images have been digitized as JP2 files and can be viewed at the library’s institutional repository as well as downloaded. While most of the photographs derive from the film stock shot for The Life of General Villa, there are also portraits, scenes of daily life, and landscapes produced by El Paso studio photographers, photo postcards, and postcards. With the exception of some postcards, nearly all the images are black and white. The photos themselves vary in their measurements, though 3.5" x 5" and 5" x 7" predominate; each image’s dimensions is included in the accompanying metadata found in the repository. John Wheelan, already active in the fledging Texan motion picture industry, was one of numerous reporters and photographers who covered the Mexican Revolution. He probably arrived in northern Mexico early in the winter of 1913–1914, when General Francisco “Pancho” Villa held Ciudad Juárez. Villa was considered the most able military commander among the Constitutionalists, a loose coalition of revolutionaries against General Victoriano Huerta’s provisional government. In February 1913, Huerta had conspired in the overthrow of the constitutionally elected government of President Francisco Madero. Villa, an ardent supporter of Madero, was one of several leaders in northern Mexico who were fighting for both the restoration of constitutional government and revolutionary agrarian land reforms.

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.

The potential to improve water quality in the middle Rio Grande through effective wetland restoration

2010 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 501-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Rodriguez ◽  
Vanessa L. Lougheed
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
El Paso ◽  
Treatment Plant ◽  
Rio Grande ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ciudad Juarez ◽  
Irrigated Agriculture ◽  
Nutrient Chemistry ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
United States Mexico

The Rio Grande, which forms the United States—Mexico border for much of its course, receives diverse pollutants from both urban and agricultural areas, most notably in the sister cities of El Paso (TX, USA)—Ciudad Juárez (CHI, Mexico). This study aimed to describe regional trends in water quality in waters near the El Paso–Ciudad Juárez metroplex and to examine the potential for water quality improvement through the use of a created wetland. Very few differences in nutrient chemistry were found among drains, canals and the Rio Grande, with the exception of elevated chloride and lower phosphorus levels found in the drains. Overall, chloride concentrations increased with distance downstream, likely due to concentration of salts via evaporation from irrigated agriculture. A wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) contributed substantially to total phosphorus and nitrate levels, which, together with ammonia, tended to exceed state criteria for water quality downstream of the WWTP outflow. The created Rio Bosque wetlands reduced nitrate concentrations in the water, possibly via denitrification enhanced by algae; algae increased in biomass as water flowed through the wetlands. However, the diversion of water for irrigated agriculture, resulting in the absence of water, and thus aquatic plants, in the wetland in the summer has limited the ability of this wetland to improve regional water quality.

scholarly journals Forgotten Border Actors: the Border Reinforcers. A Comparison Between the U.S.–Mexico Border and South American Borders

2002 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Grimson ◽  
Pablo Vila
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
El Paso ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ciudad Juarez ◽  
South American ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
History Of ◽  
Good Neighbor ◽  
The U.S

This article is a critique of two different types of essentialisms that have gained widespread acceptance in places as distant as the U.S.-Mexico border and different Mercosur frontiers. Both essentialisms rely on metaphors that refer to the concept of "union," and put their emphasis on a variety of "sisterhood/brotherhood" tropes and, in particular, the "crossing" metaphor. This kind of stance tends to make invisible the social and cultural conflict that many times characterizes political frontiers. The article wants to reinstall this conflictive dimension. In that regard, we analyze two different case studies. The first is the history of a bridge constructed between Posadas, Argentina and Encarnación, Paraguay. The second is the community reaction toward an operation implemented by the Border Patrolin 1993 ("OperationBlockade") in a border that for many years was considered an exemplar of the "good neighbor relationships" between Mexico and the United States, the frontier between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. Key Words: U.S.-Mexico border, Operation Blockade, Mercosur frontier, political frontier, Argentina, Paraguay, Mexico, United States, Posadas, El Paso , Encarnación, Ciudad Juárez, Border Patrol.

scholarly journals Chinese Immigration during the 1800s in the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Qian Guo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Chinese Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Academic Factors ◽  
Chinese Exclusion ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
The Us ◽  
Exclusion Act

The first wave of Chinese immigration was between 1849 to 1882, and 110,000 Chinese immigrants had settled on the west coast of the US, attracted by “Gold Mountain” in California and the large employment of railroad workers (Hsieh). When some anti-immigration acts passed, especially the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 which banned Chinese immigration for ten years, only certain documented immigrants were allowed to come to America (Carlin). The Chinese Exclusion Act was not repealed until 1943 when the US need a smooth relationship with China in World War II (Ashabranner). Although the Immigration Act of 1965 continuously had a restrictive impact on Chinese immigrants, productive Chinese immigrants made great contributions to the US economy and politics in a large number of industries and business. One example is building the long railroad which allowed communications between the West and the East, and unified the country after the Civil War. They also brought their cultures to the add to diversity in the United States (Documentary :Silent Chinese laborers in the US). As time went on, more and more Chinese started their new lives in the land which across the Pacific Ocean from their hometowns because of political, economic, and academic factors (Hsieh).

Prosecutors and the Immigration Enforcement System in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 430-446
Author(s):  
Jennifer Chacón
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Immigration Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Law ◽  
Immigration Enforcement ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Criminal Convictions ◽  
Different Types ◽  
State Prosecutors

The interdependence of criminal enforcement and immigration enforcement systems in the United States now takes several different forms, each with implications for criminal prosecutors. Over time, federal officials have increased the number of immigration prosecutions they pursue in a given year. The immigration consequences of criminal convictions have expanded and intensified. Some state criminal prosecutors have used their charging authority to supplement the immigration enforcement efforts of the federal government, while others have applied the criminal law of the state in ways that mitigate the immigration effects of a criminal conviction. Finally, federal immigration law gives state prosecutors the authority to designate non-citizen victims of certain crimes for specialized visas that protect them from removal. These different types of interactions between criminal enforcement and immigration enforcement make state prosecutors important players in federal immigration policy and practice.

A Promiscuous Crowd

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Lim
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
El Paso ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ciudad Juarez ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
White People ◽  
Mexican Families ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Local Newspapers ◽  
To Come

Focusing on the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez border, this chapter demonstrates how Chinese, Mexicans, and African Americans blurred color lines to create dynamic social environments as well as new legal dilemmas in the borderlands. Drawing upon local newspapers, legal documents, city records, maps, and census materials, the chapter illuminates the various freedoms that non-white people struggled to realize together – particularly in work, public spaces, homes, and marriages. But the chapter also shows how the realities of multiracial life in the borderlands encountered the pressures of an escalating ideology of racial purity and segregation in the United States, culminating in the migration of black-Mexican families across the border into Mexico. Such de-facto expulsions would be a preview of the massive legal expulsions that were yet to come.

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