54 pages • 1 hour read
Mae M. NgaiImpossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Continuities in US Immigration Policy
While Ngai focuses on the period from 1924 through 1965, she explains how earlier immigration policies helped to shape the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924. Statutes, diplomatic agreements, and court rulings had racially excluded Asians from citizenship prior to that time. The 1924 law continued that policy. Establishing numerical restrictions for European immigration, the 1924 law broke new ground. However, it built on the restrictionist policies and attitudes prevalent in World War I and its aftermath. The Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965, though ensuring formal equality in the allocation of quotas, nonetheless retained numerical restrictions on the number of immigrants accepted annually. What is more, it extended numerical restrictions to the Western Hemisphere for the first time. Ngai highlights the continuity of this 1965 law, usually noted for its progressive break from the 1924 racist quotas, with the restrictionist laws of the past.
In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act passed. This law prohibited Chinese laborers from emigrating to the US. There were some exceptions for merchants, teachers, students, and diplomats, but the law drastically reduced Chinese immigration. In 1907, an agreement was reached with Japan to substantially reduce immigration from that country as well. Several court cases, most importantly the cases of Takao Ozawa in 1922 and Bhagat Singh Thind in 1923, established that Japanese persons and Asian Indians were not eligible for citizenship because they were unassimilable. Persons born in the US, whatever their ancestry, remained entitled to citizenship but, in practice, Asian Americans were treated as foreigners. The Immigration Act of 1917, passed during World War I, “excluded Asian Indians and all other native inhabitants of a ‘barred Asiatic zone’ that ran from Afghanistan to the Pacific” (18). In addition, the 1917 Immigration Act extended the statute of limitations on deportation of immigrants from one to five years and added “six excludable categories and harsher sanctions” (59).
The Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924 demonstrated continuities with past laws, as it excluded the immigration of persons, such as Japanese and Chinese, who were ineligible for citizenship. In addition, the Act restricted immigration to 155,000 per year and established temporary quotas based on 2% of the foreign-born population in 1890. A Quota Board, tasked with determining a quota system based on national origin, ultimately submitted a report heavily biased toward northern European immigration. Given incomplete records and poor assumptions, the oldest immigrants, or those who arrived before 1790, were significantly overrepresented. While the numerical restrictions were new, the favoritism of white, northern Europeans over southern and eastern ones was consistent with anti-immigrant attitudes during World War I: Eastern and southern Europeans were associated with radicalism and anarchism.
Although the Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965 ended the biased system of national origins quotas, it retained numerical ceilings on the number of immigrants admitted to the US each year and extended numerical restrictions to the Western Hemisphere, retaining the emphases on territoriality, border control, and visa requirements established in the aftermath of World War I. Prior to this law, a 1952 law had already established quotas on former British colonies in the Caribbean. To be sure, the Act offered more inclusion to eastern and southern Europeans as well as Asians and Africans. However, the total number of immigrants was restricted and priority went to those with needed occupational skills and with family ties to Americans. With those categories subtracted from the quotas, there were few spots for those without specialized skills and family ties to immigrate. In short, although the 1965 act eliminated the outright racism of the 1924 allocation of quotas, it continued a restrictionist approach to immigration.
Racial Hierarchies in US Immigration Law
Ngai highlights the presence and legacy of racial hierarchies in US immigration law throughout the book. Prior to the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924, Asian immigrants were deemed unassimilable and therefore unworthy of citizenship. That racist assumption was written into the 1924 law, which went further to create a “hierarchy of desirability” (24) in its allocation of quotas to European countries. For both those born in the country from certain racial and ethnic groups and for the immigrants themselves, the legacy of racial hierarchies marked them as different and excluded them from American society.
The legacy of racial hierarchies in the law was most evident in the treatment of Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants during World War II. Despite their citizenship, Japanese Americans were assumed to be disloyal to the US and were dismissed from military service. What is worse, they and Japanese immigrants on the West Coast were evacuated from their homes and sent to internment camps for the duration of the war. While the US was also at war with Germany and Italy, German Americans and Italian Americans were not treated so poorly. The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed during World War II given the United States’ alliance with China. Following the war, however, the US sought to curb Chinese immigration, fearing the infiltration of Communist spies. The US welcomed refugees from other Communist countries in Europe but assumed that Chinese immigrants were not seeking freedom like the others, but were working for their government. Race thus defined not only Asian immigrants, but Asian Americans. Even in the 21st century, Ngai laments the label of “model minority” for Asians. It contains a stereotype, which belies the diversity of Asian immigrants, and works to the detriment of Asian Americans.
The 1924 Immigration Act favored immigration from northern Europe and placed eastern and southern Europeans lower on the racial hierarchy. However, Ngai argues that, later, all Europeans were subsumed into the white category. With Asian immigration curtailed, agribusinesses recruited workers from the Philippines and Mexico. Since the Philippines was a colonial possession of the US at the time, Filipinos had no restrictions on their movement to the US. The Filipinos met with hostility in the West in the form of violence and race riots. Nativists reacted especially to their practice of dating white women, as racial mixing was condemned. In the 1930s, with the independence of the Philippines, many of the Filipino workers were repatriated and never allowed to return to the US. The quota of immigration for the Philippines was set at 50, below the minimum of 100.
Mexicans became the main source of agricultural labor and, in 1942, the government established the Bracero Program for Mexican guest workers at their behest. Agribusinesses took advantage of these workers, not paying the required wages and failing to provide adequate food and housing. Illegal migration from Mexico continued and those workers were paid even less. Without legal protection, Mexican immigrants became an exploited migratory workforce. What is worse, all Mexicans—citizens, legal residents, and illegal aliens—became tainted with the brush of criminality.
The enforcement of immigration law was biased racially as well. Authorities found loopholes to legalize the status of Europeans in the 1930s given the harsh restrictions of the 1924 Immigration Law. However, no such loopholes were invoked for Mexicans. Discretion in the enforcement of laws favored whites. Although the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act eliminated the racism of the 1924 system, its commitment to formal equality did not translate into the erasure of the racial hierarchy.
Illegal Aliens in Law and the American Imagination
In setting numerical restrictions on the number of immigrants or banning ethnic groups entirely, the laws themselves constructed the concept of the illegal alien. Borders hardened, with visa requirements implemented in the aftermath of World War I. The new emphasis on border control combined with numerical quotas, legislated in 1924, to criminalize persons who entered the country illegally. Border patrol officers did not limit themselves to apprehending persons at the border but went inland to arrest and deport persons. These “impossible subjects”—a legal impossibility but social reality (xxiv)—defined the immigration problem of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with which political leaders have grappled ever since.
The Exclusion Act of 1882 made the subsequent presence of most Chinese immigrants illegal. To change that status, Chinese immigrants claimed to be paper sons, or born in the US and taken to China as young children. Given the lack of accurate records, these claims were difficult to dispute. In fact, the legal challenges to Chinese claims of citizenship served to create a paper trail and establish citizenship in the majority of cases. The Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924 shifted the focus to the borders. Fearing the illegal entry of Europeans, enforcement was increased at the southern border. Such enforcement, which amounted to harassment of Mexican immigrants, had the effect of causing illegal crossings. Mexican immigrants could not afford the fees and wanted to avoid the humiliating experience, and therefore crossed in unauthorized areas. Ngai argues that the government thus created the problem of illegal immigration and then criminalized the persons accused of it.
When in its interest, the government had the discretion to change the status of immigrants from illegal to legal or vice versa. The government created the Chinese Confession Program in the 1950s to legalize the status of most Chinese immigrants already in the US and to stop the flow of others claiming to be paper sons. During World War II, the government created a process for Japanese American citizens, who were deprived of their liberty, to renounce their US citizenship. Sympathizing with mainly European immigrants who faced deportation for minor offenses in the 1930s, governmental administrators exploited a loophole in the 1917 Immigration Act to win citizenship for them. In contrast, Mexican immigrants, who crossed the border illegally, were not briefed on the possibility of using that law and were mainly deported. In short, the government made policy choices, in law and in its enforcement, about who was and was not an illegal alien.
The Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965 exacerbated the problem of illegal immigration. It not only retained numerical restrictions on the number of immigrants to be admitted each year, but established such quotas for the Western Hemisphere. The numerical maximum fell woefully short of the need for labor. The inevitable result was illegal immigration. People from poor countries will come to rich countries to fill low-wage jobs when in demand. For doing so, these immigrants were branded criminals. In the American imagination, criminality got associated with race and ethnicity. In the 21st century, those crossing the Mexican border from Central and South America are labeled “illegal aliens” and dubbed a problem. In times past, Chinese and Mexican immigrants as well as Americans had this association and were, as a result, excluded from acceptance in American society.
