Mae M. Ngai is professor of history and Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies at Columbia University. Her books include The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America.

IMPOSSIBLE SUBJECTS

ILLEGAL ALIENS AND THE MAKING OF MODERN AMERICA

By Mae M. Ngai

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2004 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-16082-5

Contents

List of Figures and Illustrations, xi,
List of Tables, xiii,
Acknowledgments, xv,
Note on Language and Terminology, xix,
Foreword to the New Paperback Edition, xxi,
Introduction Illegal Aliens: A Problem of Law and History, 1,
PART I: THE REGIME OF QUOTAS AND PAPERS, 15,
One The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 and the Reconstruction of Race in Immigration Law, 21,
Two Deportation Policy and the Making and Unmaking of Illegal Aliens, 56,
PART II: MIGRANTS AT THE MARGINS OF LAW AND NATION, 91,
Three From Colonial Subject to Undesirable Alien: Filipino Migration in the Invisible Empire, 96,
Four Braceros, "Wetbacks," and the National Boundaries of Class, 127,
PART III: WAR, NATIONALISM, AND ALIEN CITIZENSHIP, 167,
Five The World War II Internment of Japanese Americans and the Citizenship Renunciation Cases, 175,
Six The Cold War Chinese Immigration Crisis and the Confession Cases, 202,
PART IV: PLURALISM AND NATIONALISM IN POST–WORLD WAR II IMMIGRATION REFORM, 225,
Seven The Liberal Critique and Reform of Immigration Policy, 227,
Epilogue, 265,
Appendix, 271,
Notes, 275,
Archival and Other Primary Sources, 357,
Index, 369,

CHAPTER 1

The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 and the Reconstruction of Race in Immigration Law

Each upthrust of nativism left a mark on American thought and society.... [T]he anti-foreign wave that flowed without pause for two decades in the early twentieth century ... must stand alone in its persistence, in its complexity, and in the massiveness of its institutional deposit.... [T]he country would never be the same again, either in its social structure or in its habits of mind. —John Higham

Although Congress legislated the first numerical restrictions in 1921, it would be nearly a decade before permanent immigration quotas were implemented. The intervening years were filled with contention and difficulty as Congress debated the design of a new system. All were keenly aware of the stakes: the new order would codify certain values and judgments about the sources of immigration, the desired makeup of the nation, and the requirements of citizenship.

The nativists who had led the drive for restriction believed there were serious flaws in the 3-percent quotas that were established in 1921. The law set the quotas according to the 1910 census because data from the 1920 census was not fully compiled at the time. Using 1910 as the base, the southern and eastern European countries received 45 percent of the quotas and the northern and western European countries received 55 percent. Although the quotas reduced southern and eastern European immigration by 20 percent from prewar levels, nativists believed it was still unacceptably high. They argued for a 2-percent quota based on the 1890 census. That was when, they argued, the sources of European immigration shifted, altering the racial homogeneity of the nation. The 1890 formula reduced the level of immigration to 155,000 per year and reduced the proportion of southern and eastern European immigration to a mere 15 percent of the total.

But, the 1890 formula was crudely discriminatory and therefore vulnerable to criticism. Opponents of the bill pointed out that using the 1920 census figures, the most up-to-date, was conceptually more sound, but since that gave even greater weight to the newer immigrants, it defeated the whole purpose of the quotas as far as the nativists were concerned. Proponents of restriction thus labored to devise a plan that would discriminate without appearing to do so. W. W. Husband, the commissioner general of immigration, advocated a plan to set quotas according to the rate at which each immigrant group became citizens. Naturalization was an indication of assimilation, Husband contended. Moreover, he believed that some nationalities "naturally" sought American citizenship, while others did not. Husband argued for disfavoring the immigration of those groups that resisted assimilation, rather than "advertising and going out into the highways and byways and dragging people into Americanization.... [W]hen you try to change [a man] by a hothouse process it does not work," he said. Not surprisingly, Husband found that the rate of naturalization was 67 percent among northern and western Europeans and 32 percent among southern and eastern Europeans.

Another proposal was introduced by David Reed, the Republican from Pennsylvania and chair of the Senate immigration committee, and John Trevor, a leading restrictionist and head of an immigration-restriction coalition of patriotic orders and societies. Trevor, a New York lawyer, sat on the board of the American Museum of Natural History and was an associate of Madison Grant, author of the best-selling tract The Passing of the Great Race. In March 1924 Trevor submitted a proposal for quotas based on "national origin" to the Senate immigration committee. Like other restrictionists, Trevor warned that the new immigration threatened to lower the standard of living and dilute the "basic strain" of the American population. But Trevor turned the debate on its head by arguing that the quotas enacted in 1921 discriminated against native-born Americans and northwestern Europeans. Those quotas were based on the number of foreign born in the population, leaving "native stock" Americans out of the equation. As a result, the 1921 act admitted immigrants from southern and eastern Europe on a "basis of substantial equality with that admitted from the older sources of supply," discriminating against "those who have arrived at an earlier date and thereby contributed more to the advancement of the Nation." To be truly fair, Trevor argued, the national origins of the entire population should be used as the basis for calculating the quotas. He calculated an apportionment of national origins quotas based on the nation's population in 1920, which gave 16 percent of the total to southern and eastern Europe and 84 percent to northern and western Europe. The quotas were nearly identical to those calculated at 2 percent of the foreign-born population in 1890, yet could be declared nondiscriminatory because they gave fair representation to each of the nation's "racial strains."

In May, Congress passed an immigration act based on Trevor's concept of national origins quotas. It restricted immigration to 155,000 a year, established temporary quotas based on 2 percent of the foreign-born population in 1890, and mandated the secretaries of labor, state, and commerce to determine quotas on the basis of national origins by 1927. The law also excluded from immigration all persons ineligible to citizenship, a euphemism for Japanese exclusion. Finally, Congress placed no numerical restrictions on immigration from countries of the Western Hemisphere, in deference to the need for labor in southwestern agriculture and American diplomatic and trade interests with Canada and Mexico.

Taken together, these three components of the Immigration Act of 1924 constructed a vision of the American nation that embodied certain hierarchies of race and nationality. At its core, the law served contemporary prejudices among white Protestant Americans from northern European backgrounds and their desire to maintain social and political dominance. Those prejudices had informed the...