My Blog

Blog Post #1

Daniel Kanstroom argued in the book, Deportation Nation, that there are two basic types of deportation laws, specifically the law of Extended Border Control and Post-Entry Social Control. These laws are hypothesized by Kanstroom to be unjust, unlawful, and originating from the overall concept of a United States that regained control of its borders. Extended border control was a method to regulate who would be allowed to enter the country, while Post-Entry Social Control could be interpreted as a more stringent concept to socially control who can remain in the United States.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was a method of extended border control targeted towards Mexican immigrants. Per Daniel Kanstroom, “The law created a new mechanism for the recruitment and hiring of agricultural workers and sought to “regain control of the country’s borders”. (Kanstroom, 12). This would imply that the United States, while benefiting from the labor force developed from Mexicans still wanted to control the paradigm of border control. The law was created to clear those who were eligible to contribute to the labor force while funneling out those who were fully cleared to work in the United States. Additionally, President Bill Clinton expanded border control manpower in 1996 to make it tougher for illegal immigrants to easily get into the country, using anti- immigrant rhetoric.

There are many examples of post-entry social control listed in the book. The Palmer Raids were a method of deporting people who were suspected of being leftists from the United States. On the heels of World War I, the United States targeted those with ties to their foreign homeland, with the focus being on the Germans, the Irish, and the British. The feeling was that these “outsiders” had the potential to develop propaganda that would be detrimental to the United States. This law was closely related to the Red Scare which was purely targeted to control communist ideals and deport any individual who had even the slightest link to it. The Red Scare was also a method of post-entry social control which also used anti- immigrant rhetoric, that of President Woodrow Wilson.

I think understanding deportation law using these two examples is very useful. When you look at how the deportation construct is created, most think it is literally getting rid of those who already reside in the country, whether legally or illegally. But when you look at the other side of the spectrum regarding what goes into determining what is sufficient grounds for deportation, it develops a deeper understanding into why certain people are unfairly removed from their families and their lifestyle. To understand the current social climate of 2017, we must look at the origins. Donald Trump’s policies, whether you agree with them or not, are stemmed in both of Daniel Kanstroom’s theorized laws. The laws center on profiling from within and afar. Those policies, while stemmed in more racial concepts at the beginning of the 20^th Century, now focus on another basis of discrimination which focus on the fundamental religion of an individual in the United States.

References

Kanstroom, Dan. Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2010. Print.

Blog Post #2

In the book Deportation Nation by Daniel Kanstroom, Chapters 3 and 4 explore the era of deportation that discussed specific targets of immigration reform such as the Chinese and Mexicans, as well as individual dissidents. These chapters have similar developments but focused on different entities. In contrasting comparison, Chapter Three focused specifically on the immigration of the Chinese labor force while Chapter Four focused on later subjects of immigration topics such as the Russians, the Mexicans, and events involving other individuals such as Marcus Garvey, a Negro from Jamaica. Additionally, there are similar themes in the discussion, such as the resentment of the prosperity seemingly stolen by immigrants and elements of post-entry social control that involved individuals such as the case of Chae Chan Ping vs. The United States in Chapter Three and John Turner in Chapter Four. There were comparably dramatic acts of the resistance to immigrants such as violence in the Western states and the Bisbee Deportation. The chapters have the similar discussion of anti- immigrant sentiment towards labor forces in America and themes of absolute power in terms of controlling who can come and stay within the United States. The developments in Chapter Four did not show any refinement in modern deportation laws because they still had foundations in racism as they did in the previous chapters we discussed.

The obvious difference is how Chapter Three focused on the growing numbers of Chinese immigrants that arrived in the United States during the gold rush and the attempt to limit them even if they were established in the country, which is the dispute in the Chae Chan Ping case I will discuss later. Chapter Four focused more on immigrants of different ideals who were already in the country, such as John Turner, Emma Goldman, and black nationalists such as Marcus Garvey. In the case of Emma Goldman, her deportation was the result of her ideology, not her citizenship status. The chapter concludes discussing the difficulties Mexican immigrants faced in the United States while reaffirming how Mexican labor was a bit less desired than that of the Chinese.

The similarities of the chapters discussed examples of post-entry social control. In Chapter Three, Kanstroom notes that the case of Chae Chan Ping vs. the United States, Ping was a victim of post-entry social control when he was not allowed to return to the United States after leaving due to the passage of the Scott Act. The closest comparison in Chapter Four is that of John Turner, where he was determined to be illegally in the country after having been on American soil. A law that preceded his case, just like Chae Chan Ping, was the deciding factor. There were similar instances of violence in both chapters. In Chapter Three, Kanstroom discussed the violence against the Chinese immigrants in the 1885 incident where two white workers were killed and the result was the development of a mob to chase out Chinese laborers. Rock Creek, Wyoming had similar violent events where Chinese workers were murdered. In Chapter Four, the events in Bisbee, Arizona, while not as violent as the events in Chapter Three, involved escalating potential physical violence as immigrants were rounded up and surrounded by armed men. Those who resisted were physically loaded on boxcars and then taken to New Mexico.

Another prevailing similarity was anti-immigrant sentiment towards immigrant labor in the United States. In Chapter Three, legislation was passed to discourage labor from China. Daniel Kanstroom writes that the Page Act of 1875 “forbade the entry of certain Asian laborers brought into the United States involuntarily and also excluded certain convicts and prostitutes” (Kanstroom pg. 93). In Chapter Four, “crimes involving moral turpitude” (Kanstroom pg. 135) were used as gauges to determine who would be able to stay in the country, but were vague and judgmental in nature.

The events and laws of Chapter Four, as I mentioned before do not show refinement of modern deportation laws. In the cases of Marcus Garvey, J. Edgar Hoover used his disdain for the Negro to develop a case to heavily track and eventually deport Marcus Garvey. The 1924 laws towards Mexicans were racially motivated, as Mexican immigrants were subject to harsh conditions. Kanstroom writes that the experience of Mexicans crossing the border and being subject to U.S inspectors was, “A painful and abrupt event permeated by racism and control” (Kanstroom pg. 159). The laws and events were no different than those of the late 1800’s in theory but they incorporated other ethnic groups. The mindset at the time reflected prejudice and racism as one can interpret through Edward Grant’s Scum of the Melting Pot, written in protest of certain ethic groups arriving in the United States.

References

Kanstroom, Daniel. Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2010. Print.

Insert text here.

Blog Post #3

At the end of the book, Deportation Nation, Daniel Kanstroom states, “As a 100-plus years social experiment, the U.S. deportation system has caused considerable harm and done little demonstrable good. It is poorly planned, irrationally administered, and, as a model on which to base other enforcement systems, dangerous… In the end, the history of deportation law shows us how integral the removal impulse has been to our nation of immigrants” (Kanstroom p. 243, 246). Based off the exploration of deportation laws and attitudes towards immigrants outlined by Kanstroom, I strongly agree with both statements. Using examples in the text, beginning at the inception of the United States, deportation laws have been decidedly one-sided towards people of other nations, specifically those from the non-European countries such as China, Japan and Mexico. The irony is that the United States itself was formed by immigrants. The Chinese had several exclusionary laws towards them such as Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), which was the first law to exclude immigrants on the simple basis of race. The law barred basic rights for those from China and other Asian countries due to growing anti-Asian sentiment in California. This also spawned the Alien Land Act of 1913, aimed directly at Japanese immigrants created in the same racially discriminatory vein of the Chinese Exclusion Act. There were laws based off ideals such as the Red Scares which were based off the impulse to prevent the spread of Communism in the United States. Most of the propaganda was based of personal paranoia and the desire for the majority to get rid of “others” living in the United States. The paranoia thought the early 20^th century rose to dangerous levels as enemy alien detentions and internment of Japanese immigrants was the norm during World War II. As Daniel Kanstroom mentioned, these laws were irrationally administered when examining the concept of extended border control and post-entry social control. In Chapter 1, he writes, “Such post-entry social control deportation laws derive from what might be termed an “eternal probation” or an “eternal guest” model. The strongest version of this model would suggest that the millions on non-citizens among us, including long-term lawful permanent residents, are harbored subject to the whim of the government and may be deported for any reason” (Kanstroom, pg. 6). These laws would also be used as basis to create other laws that would be used to unlawfully profile many Unites States citizens, such as the time after the September 11^th, 2001, and even before when Bill Clinton signed into law the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act in 1996. This law made it harder to argue habeas corpus for non-citizens. Ultimately these laws have been very ineffective, as the Chinese and Japanese have created strong communities within urban areas of the United States, and the size of the labor force from Mexican immigrants has grown immensely to the point where the United States economy simply cannot handle the absence of their portion of the labor.

The Red Scare was propaganda aimed towards the exclusion of those who would be tied to Communist ideals particularly after World War I and World War II, respectively. This included those immigrates who just happened to be from Russia. Some years before, The United States passed the Immigration Act of 1917, which was the first federal law to impose restriction on immigration to the United States by administering literacy tests to immigrants. The law took into account that English was not a first language for immigrants thus inevitable in its counterproductive nature. Even with the veto of the act by Woodrow Wilson, the law went into effect based off white American attitudes and not hard evidence. The Red Scare had its genesis in the hysteria around the threat of the American way of life, worship and lifestyle.

The first act that perpetuated American racist attitudes towards specific immigrants was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. At the beginning of the gold rush, Chinese immigrants were accepted conditionally because the American settlers were reaping the benefits. Eventually, due to the volume of mining, gold became scarce in the Western United States. With that, economic hardship lead to strong Anti-Chinese rhetoric. Individuals such as Denis Kearny, a labor leader, lead to increasing levels of racism towards Chinese immigrants including various violent incidents. This led to the Act being passed and in turn being the first immigration reform that openly and blatantly discriminated against people of a specific race.

The Japanese were subject to their own immigration based laws on the heels of the Chinese Exclusion Act. The period during World War II was another example of racial discrimination towards immigrants. Immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, immigrants from certain countries became the target of the Unites States Government, but the targeting also spread to actual citizens of the United States. Kanstroom notes, “Although the enemy alien detentions were limited to aliens, citizenship status did not completely protect all suspects” (Kanstroom pg. 208). Japanese internments during this time were in the thousands and ultimately due to the racial discrimination led to the deportation of actual American citizens who happened to be in the United States legally.

Mexican Removals during the depression were based on the large number of Mexican immigrants to the United States mostly for the purposes of working in the country. Mexicans, while partially tolerated were perceived as a threat and as William Doak wrote in his 1931 annual report the Department of Labor would spare “no reasonable effort to remove the menace of unfair competition” (Kanstroom, pg. 216). Once again, rhetoric caused by general attitude versus actual quantifiable data. Daniel Kanstroom writes “As we have seen, the modern archetype of Mexican border crossers as “illegal aliens “tends to ignore the fact that large-scale migration of Mexicans has occurred continuously for more than a century” (Kanstroom pg. 214). This would support his earlier synopsis that these immigration laws have been largely ineffective. According to Migration Policy Institute website, “The number of Mexican immigrants in the United States labor force nearly doubled between 1990 and 2000, increasing from 2.6 million to 4.9 million, according to the results of Census 2000. By 2000, almost four percent of the civilian labor force age 16 and over was born in Mexico, compared to just two percent in 1990” (Grieco and Ray, para. 1).

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 signed by President Bill Clinton, had very little historical past reference because it was in response to the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, which was widely considered to be an act of terrorism by an immigrant within the United States. The bombing perpetrator was discovered to be Timothy McVeigh, a native of New York. After the second bombing of the World Trade Center of September 11^th, 2001, calls for racial profiling towards immigrants were at an all-time high as immigrants in the United States as well as natural-born citizens were profiled, harassed constantly, and ultimately excluded in indirect ways, albeit not to the level of the laws mentioned from the early 20^th century.

During my exploration of this topic, I learned that immigration reform has never had a uniform system of implementation. Laws were ratified, then vetoed, then brought to life again through a subsequent act. I hope that in my lifetime, the United States develops a system of immigration that allows foreigners to live the “American Dream”, keeps our borders safe, and does not allow for the perpetuation of racial discrimination among its citizens.

References

Grieco, Elizabeth, and Brian Ray. "Mexican Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Force." Migrationpolicy.org. N.p., 02 Mar. 2017. Web. 08 Aug. 2017. <http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/mexican-immigrants-us-labor-force/>.

Kanstroom, Dan. Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2010. Print.