My Blog

Blog Post #1

Through our readings and our lessons so far, we have learned about America’s history of deportation. In the book Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History by Daniel Kanstroom, Kanstroom argues that there are two different types of deportation laws. The first type is extended border control, and the second type is post entry social control. (Kanstroom 5) In this blog post we will be discussing the way in which certain events and laws in the United States’ history has enforced these.

The first major event I would like to discuss would be the Palmer raids. The Palmer raids were two major raids on suspected alien anarchists conducted by General A. Mitchell Palmer during the first Red Scare. During this time, the United States were shaken up by the thought of Anarchism, communism, and Bolshevism that was spreading at the time in the wake of World War 1. In order to stop the General A. Mitchell Palmer attempted to arrest anarchists, however it was ruled that they were only exercising their freedom of speech. Palmer, however, figured out that if aliens were suspected of practicing anarchism, it would be grounds for deportation. Palmer used this knowledge and targeted alien workers unions that were anarchists and managed to deport them. These deportations were not based in a genuine concern for public safety, or even on a violation of the law. As we learned in our readings, this would absolutely be a post entry social control deportation law situation. These immigrants had done nothing wrong other than question the governmental status quo in the United states, which is a perfectly legal thing for any United States citizen to do, no matter how frowned upon, but because these people were aliens they were forcibly removed from the country.

The second major event I want to discuss is the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Alien and Sedition acts are a very interesting piece of American history. The Alien and Sedition Acts were laws that past in 1798 and each did something unique to shape the United States’ deportation system. First was the Alien Friends act which allowed the president to deport any non-citizen that was considered dangerous by the president. Second was the Alien Enemy act which allowed the president to deport any non-citizen from a hostile nation. Lastly there was the Naturalization act which made it significantly harder to become a citizen by increasing the amount of time you needed to reside in the United states before becoming a citizen from five years to fourteen years. I feel as though these acts fall under both types of deportation laws as outlined by Kanstroom. The Alien Friends act allowed the president to deport non-citizens that he saw as dangerous, which may sound like a good safety measure at first, but it completely goes around the checks and balances of the executive branch and allows the president to be judge and jury based on his ow perception. This allows it to fall under both types of deportation laws. The Naturalization act, allowed the United states more time to decide to deport someone because it made non-citizens wait longer before becoming citizens.

In conclusion, I feel as though it is useful to look at deportation laws through the two types as outlined by Kanstroom. They offer a good look at why we deport people, and allow us to question what the government tells us about deportation. Most importantly I feel that it humanizes these deportations. When you hear about deportations as a number or an argument about safety it’s easy to not think much of them for some people, but when you think about them as an aspect of societal control in order to enforce a social norm, it’s hard to take people’s lives out of the equation.

Blog Post #2

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Blog Post #3

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