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Blog Post #1

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Blog Post #2

Chapters 3 and 4 revealed many similarities between the time of anti Chinese settlement, and the time of the Bisbee deportations. The two time periods, both marked with new immigration acts for the era showed governmental social control by using deportation and immigration to filter the “types” of people the government wanted in the United States. Chapter 3 contains information about the Immigration Act of 1864, which created to lure labor workers from European countries into the U.S. This contrasts greatly with the information in Chapter 4, during the time of the bisbee deportations, and the Immigration Act of 1917, which began to restrict immigration, especially the majority of the labor workers which were Mexican. Though the chapters differ on their opinions of immigrant labor workers, they do share a major similarity. The government exercises examples of social control in both chapters. In Chapter 3, the Page Act of 1875 is introduced. Many asian people, like Chy Lung were affected by this, as it made it very hard for people from asian countries to enter the U.S. and many were sent away, at the same time the government was hoping for Europeans to come in. This bias and social control is seen again in Chapter 4, during the John Turner case, someone who had declared his entry to the United States, but was deported for being an anarchist.

I think Chapter 4 as a whole is an “expansion and refinement of modern deportation law”. Many things surfaced in this era that have guided opinions, politics, and movements in modern times, and recent history. Marcus Garvey is a great example, as he was an African American icon who shaped current opinions of the rights that people from immigrant countries deserve. It is movements like this that show up in modern times. We can now see many African Americans in power, like former President Barack Obama. On the contrast, many negative opinions of

immigrants from other countries are an expansion of ideologies from this era. An example of this is seen in the current Trump Administration. Many deportation ideas and opinions of the current Administration can be seen in the Bisbee Deportation, an event targeting and deporting immigrants from Mexico. Crime involving moral turpitude can be translated into modern immigrant ethics as well. Many crimes committed in the United States do not come from a place of moral and reason, but from a place of ethnic hatred, and ideologies involving immigrants that was curated in the era mentioned in Chapter 4. Examples of this can be traced all the way back to Chapter 3, in the violence in the west. Many Chinese massacres, including tragedies like the massacre of Chinese labor workers in Rock Creek Wyoming. Theses killings were based upon the ethnicity of the person and are an example of moral turpitude, or moral wickedness. Though mass massacres like this are not quite as common now, crimes of moral turpitude still exist in crimes based upon ethnicity. Shootings, like the recent Philando Castile shooting shows that moral turpitude crimes are still in existence today, and have been refined by the immigrant standards of the early 1900’s as mentioned in the Chapter. These examples go to show that the current system involving immigrants, deportation laws, and ethnicity is a reflection of the event set in motion in Chapter 4.

Blog Post #3

After an intensive semester long study of the United States’ Immigration and deportation laws and movements, I agree with Kanstroom in his stating, “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” (p. 243, 246) Throughout his book we have seen numerous examples in how much harm the system has caused to people, their lives, and their cultures. In many cases this can come from the system trying to do “demonstrable good”, but these efforts end up creating harm.

One example of this is seen in Lesson 5. A 1951 law that was authorized by the Labor Department sought to control Mexican Labor Immigration. The idea was to feed agricultural workers into the needed areas of the United States. This meant where there are no domestic laborers who were, “able, willing, and qualified”.This backfired in the sense that working conditions and wages for domestic workers did not improve, and remained open to Mexican immigrants seeking labor jobs. This just created an even larger surge of immigrants. Soon thereafter they put a cap on how many immigrants could legally enter into the United States, making most workers who came from mexico have no choice but to be in the United States illegally. This goes to show that the system is, “poorly planned, and irrationally administered”, (p. 243) and even when our flawed system tries to demonstrate good, it ends up harming immigrants.

Lesson 6 begins in the 1960’s, and starts by stating, “Taken as a whole, U.S immigration and deportation laws of the last four decades have had a rather schizophrenic cast.” and as the lesson begins to dive into detail about the laws that surfaced in the 1960-1980’s, Kanstroom again backs up the argument by defining these laws as, “laws that are harsher, less forgiving, and more insulated from judicial review.” (226) Fear drove many of these harsh laws, as post war terrors created more radical views on immigration. Immigration even intensified with the communism scare, and created many court cases in which legal immigrants were deported in fear of a belief. This creates harm in communities, and in the lives of those deported and uprooted from their lives on a fear basis. This spiraled into specific laws such as the Immigration Marriage

Fraud Amendments and the Anti-drug abuse act which, “again targeted criminal aliens.” (227) Cases that were this specific and targeted was very harmful to immigrants and their families, as the fear created very unfair and biased court cases.

The end of Lesson 6 recaps how the modern deportation system, shaped throughout the history of lessons one through five. Kanstroom states, “As for extended border control and deportation, history shows how poorly that system has actually worked. It has functioned primarily as a labor control device, a kind of extra tool in the hands of big businesses.” (245) This section goes on to mention how the immigration system has directly harmed people in the way of racial profiling, suffering from cheap and rightless labor, given free hands to the government and courts, and the use of fear for social control of the United States.

The immigration system is more harmful than helpful to individuals because the system bribes immigrants by creating immigrant laws that benefit the state rather than benefit the person trying to enter into the United States of America. One example of this is the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. “The act was supposed to end most of the problems of illegal immigration”(226) When the act passed, President Reagan even stated that the Act was supposed to enable the United States to “regain control of our borders”. The problem with this is that it was a carrot and stick act. The stick side of the argument enacted that employers must show proof that they had verified their employees were of legal status to work in the United States.

This majorly impacted who could get jobs and harmed many immigrants. Then the government created the carrot side of the argument, for benefit to the state. The carrot side made way for a Special Agricultural Worker program so existing illegal immigrants could stay and work for cheap, hard, and rightless labor, and the state and employers wouldn't have to find domestic workers to fill those conditions. The Immigration Reform Act harmed rather than hurt because immigration did not show much, illegal immigrants still filled labor jobs, and lost its confidentiality, so fear was still instilled in immigrants to come forward.

And so, as the book Deportation Nation highlights, “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”(Kanstroom). There are many examples that go to show that the immigration system of the United States is harmful, including mass murders, racial exclusion, selective immigration, minupliatave immigration, and denying many of those who seek refuge in the country basic human, or constitutional, rights. A nation that was built around the metaphor of a ‘melting pot’, has excluded, banished, killed, prosecuted and jailed those seeking new lives here, and as the system makes small improvements as time passes, the majority of the effects of the immigration system are harmful.