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Natasha Stapp

Passionate Leader at Starbucks

Blog Post #1

Looking back at the models of deportation that our world has overcome in the past we can see the change. We are able to see that we have allowed others into our land and befriend them and we have also forcibly sent them away. This is a repeat cycle that may never end. It truly is a roller coaster ride for everyone, not just certain countries.

The two deportation models are Extended Border Control and Post-Entry Social Control. Kanstroom explains that the Extended Border Control is the method that a country takes to ensure that their borders are only being crossed by the appropriate people and for the appropriate reasons. Whereas the Post-Entry Social Control is where people are basically held within the United States with illegally and have the idea that they could be deported at any given point.

This ultimately ties back to the Alien Sedation Act, because it shows how we have changed over time as a country. It proves that coming in as immigrants and taking over someone else’s homeland we are protective over what we took. We won’t allow people to come to the United States to work and send money back home to make their families lives better. The Alien Sedation Acts show how we are making it harder for “outsiders” to take a role in society.

The Palmer Raids or the Palmer Red Raids, were in 1920 right before World War 1. This was a time where the government was attempting to arrest anyone who they felt was a threat to the government. According to Britannica, “raids conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1919 and 1920 in an attempt to arrest foreign anarchists, communists, and radical leftists, many of whom were subsequently deported.” (Dehler, 2013)

To tie it all together the Freedom of Movement Law made it so that people were restricted to where they were allowed to go and with what types of papers they were allowed to use. This law made it you need a Visa to be able to enter certain countries if you planned on staying longer than a vacations worth of time. The Soviet Union “further required that their citizens, and sometimes foreign travelers, obtain an exit visa to be allowed to leave the country.” (Wikipedia, 2017)

Even Kanstroom provides information that visas are only given to people who have a legitimate reasoning. “For example, a person who enters the United States as a student must maintain a full course load, and a with a work visa must work for a particular employer.” (Kanstroom, 2010)

Now, going even further back in time than I started at the beginning of my post, the transportation act happened in 1717. This was when the British Government was sending inmates from Great Britain to North America to allow them to live a different life and serve their punishment in a new land that they were not familiar with or had family to fall back on. They were being sent to a land where they were either going to survive on their own or they had to befriend others to ensure survival. Now these people who were forced to North America are living in this area that they are not familiar with and know only the people that they rode on the boat with are trying to survive.

This was not the only time something similar to the transportation act occurred. In 1919 and 1920 “This ‘scare’ was caused by fears of subversion by communists in the United States after the Russian Revolution" (The Red Scare) The red scare was when we thought that communists were going to come into our country and “infect” us with ill thoughts about our nation. Our watch for other people not from the United States went up. We were even more distrusting than before.

Even though the topics that we have covered are not in sequential order they reflect how our society has formed as a whole. It shows that we have been riding this rollercoaster of what is and what is not allowed within our transportation needs for people. I do not think that it will ever platue and stay with one side. I believe that it will always be up and down and never allow people the full rights to enter any land.

References:

Dehler, G. (2013, November). Palmer Raids. Retrieved July 12, 2017, from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Palmer-Raids

Freedom of movement. (2017, July 11). Retrieved July 12, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement

Kanstroom, D. (2010). Deportation nation: outsiders in American history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Red scare. (n.d.). Retrieved July 12, 2017, from http://www.dictionary.com/browse/red-scare

Transportation Act 1717. (2017, April 26). Retrieved July 12, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Act_1717

Blog Post #2

The themes that these two chapters have in common is an obvious one: immigration. They have this in common because it is a continuous part of our development as a country and these two chapters show proof of how we have grown.

Parallels between chapter 3 and 4 would be purifying America, to make it (sorry) great again. The chapters talk about how America is coming to a place where they need to ban Chinese as well as alcohol. The Volstead act of 1919 and the Scott act of 1888 are two that stuck out the most.

The Volstead Act of 1919 is the banning of alcoholic beverage sales. The Scott Act of 1888 made it so any Chinese travelers who planned on traveling to America were redirected and told that they were not welcome in America.

I would deem these two things as trying to purify America because you are making sure that there are no alcohol sales. Which leads to less time spent in Pubs and more time working. As well as no Chinese, which people hatted for some reason in the 1800’s. I think that they hatted them so much because Chinese can do twice as much work as an American and possibly even better than an American.

The ways that chapter 3 and 4 differ is the aggressiveness that is taken to accomplish the goals that were sought. Chapter 3 came across as peaceful with the people trying to get laws passed via courts and treaties being signed. In the court case Fong Yue Ting vs. United States (1893) Fong Yue Ting was about Chinese people who have fallen under the Geary Act and were going to be deported. They went to court and were eventually deported for having the correct certificates.

One quote that stood out from page 129, is talking about how Justice Brewer was trying to get Fong Yue Ting to be able to stay in America since he was a legitimate citizen with his residence certificate. “In dissent, Justice Brewer, who had also vigorously dissented in Fong Yue Ting, called the decision ‘appalling’. He argued that life and liberty interests required greater protection than property and that he could believe that Congress intended to deprive a citizen of constitutional protection ‘simply because he belongs to an obnoxious race’…” (Kanstroom)

This was not a good ending to a court case for Fong Yue Ting but it started something and helped guide people to look at things a little differently.

The treaty of Burlingame was put together because America wanted to have China for trades. They “forgave” each other for the rough past that they had just so Chinese could be allowed in American again because America wanted the trade routes back.

These two would be tamer and relaxed forms of developments that chapter 3 contained. Chapter 4 came across as aggressive with Bisbee, slacker raids and the IWW.

Slacker raids were implemented because men who were suspected of not joining the draft for World War 1. Men would be stopped in town and asked for their draft card and if they didn’t have one they were detained or arrested by people who were not authorized to do so.

Another aggressive act was Bisbee, and the round-up of mine workers who wanted to be a part of a union. The government didn’t like the idea of a union and round up all the miners who wouldn’t denounce the IWW were put on a train and sent to New Mexico with nothing but the clothes on their backs. “1,186 men who refused to join the vigilantes were loaded onto boxcars, accompanied by 186 armed guards.” (Kanstroom)

The IWW is known as Industrial Workers of the World, a union company that wanted to create safer working conditions especially for mine workers. “the IWW presented demands to the Bisbee companies that included improvements to safety and working conditions and an end to discrimination against foreign and minority workers.” (Kanstroom) The reason that the IWW came across as aggressive is because of the reaction that others took to the union workers. People didn’t like the idea of change especially with change that was created under the nose of the government.

I do agree that the developments in chapter 4 show an “expansion and refinement of modern deportation law” because it shows dominance. Meaning America is showing other countries that they can and will ban people from the country if they wanted to.

On the other hand, I think that it shows America as a first world country is greedy and doesn’t want to help other countries in need. In the chapters that we read we observed that America wanted to purify and rid other countries, which shows that we are not willing to provide work for families that are in need.

Overall, I believe that everything that the United States endured has developed us as a country. It has bettered us even with the back fall of deportations and banning of people. The things that we go through as a country are things that will grow and help develop us for the future that we hold.

References:

Kanstroom, D. (2010). Deportation nation: outsiders in American history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Blog Post #3

The statement that Kanstroom argues about deportation law being impulsive and dangerous is something that you could find to be either agreeable or disagreeable. In this case I found it to be agreeable, that it was poorly planned, sloppy, and dangerous. It caused a lot of harm to families due to having to go back to a worse off life than what they have in the U.S. in most cases.

In 1943, President Hoover made a statement that all persons of Asian descent “the naturalized citizen whose cloak of citizenship is a sham and who is dangerous to the nation’s security.” Hoover didn’t particularly seem to enjoy having aliens in the country even if they were taking jobs that citizens didn’t want to work.

This lead to persons of Asian descent forced into Internment camps to “detain” them to ensure the safety of the citizens. The use of these camps was to weed out the communists that were spoiling the pot for the rest of the people that lived there. These camps were similar to the camps that were in Germany during WW1, just without the killing part. “We cannot assimilate with them… must exclude them from our shores… and prohibit them from owning land.”

The 1913 Alien Land Act came around the same time as the internment camps. “Couched in ostensibly race-neutral language, but grounded in immigration and citizenship laws (it was aimed at ‘alien’s ineligible to citizenship’), the law precluded the Japanese from purchasing land.” This act made it so people who were not born in the United States could not own land, especially those from Japan. With this being the case, and the Japanese being held captive we are now short our farm workers and our men who are at war, so the United States reaches out for some help.

Which leads to the Bracero Program that was launched in 1942 to help with labor loss due to the war. “Initiated by a 1942 agreement between Mexico and the United States, for the Temporary Migration of Mexican Agricultural Workers to the United States.” This was due to the lack of men the United States had during this time period due to the draft for World War 1.

A more derogative term for the Bracero Program is “Operation Wetback”. It was a feared time for many farm owners because they refused the services of Mexicans who came to the United States on a work contract. This contract stated that the Mexican’s are here to help with the labor needs that we are lacking and once the need is fulfilled they need to go back to Mexico. Texas was a state that refused the services of the bracero contract, they wanted nothing to do with the Mexicans. “No Texas farmers requested braceros in 1942. Many growers also continued to hire undocumented workers, who were less expensive and involved fewer regulations than did a bracero contract.”

In 1965 things changed, the quotas became a larger part of how the country does things. The 1965 Immigration Act abolished the old quota act that was in place. “The 1965 Immigration Act was a watershed movement in U.S. history. A dramatic centerpiece of the civil rights initiatives of the Johnson administration, and a homage to John F. Kennedy, it finally ended the national origins quota system that had stamped immigration law since the 1920’s.” This act allowed people who were fleeing from communism to seek shelter in the United States. They were refugees that were not yet accepted as refugees. They were seeking refuge in the United States in hope to get citizenship.

Due to the 1965 Immigration Act the government had to be weary of lots of things. One of those things was marriages, and whether or not they were falsified for citizenship or if they were honest marriages. “The Immigration Marriage Fraud Amendments of 1986 (IMFA) created a ‘conditional permanent resident status’ for those married less than two years.” This was revoked if it were found that the marriage was false to gain citizenship. If caught in a false marriage, the “alien” that used the American citizen to get citizenship is deported and put on a list of no return unless they have permission from the Attorney General.

If the non-citizen, alien, is convicted of a felony while in the United States they were deported. “The new deportation law regime began to emerge in 1988 with the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which created the ‘aggravated felony’ category.” After being listed as a non-citizen felon you are seen as not having “good moral character” and are no longer eligible to reenter the United States for twenty years.

One counter argument towards Kanstroom is that cleansing the United States from all other non-European descendants could be seen as a good thing. This is from when we first came to America, and we took the land from the Native Americans. This “New Land” was filled with people who were different and now they must go to purify the land. Purging all people who are not from Europe is a good thing because it allows the newest members of America to call this land theirs. They do not need to share it with any other bordering country or other skin color.

This long battle for this land and new power has been a struggle but the struggle in the end will be beneficial. It can be argued that having a land where there are only people who are alike is not a good thing but some might believe that it is the best situation.

Now, before we jump on the racist train and think that what I just said was in poor judgement think about this. If, the Colonists succeeded in keeping America “pure” of just European descendants and no slaves, Native Americans, Mexicans, etc., in the mix there would be no such thing as racism. There would not be another skin color for us to make fun of or be rude to. It would just be a bunch of different shaded white people who live in different parts of the United States. This is something that has been thought about over many years but was not an easy task to fulfill. This task caused more harm to the people who live here today than what was intended.

“As a 100-plus year 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…” This is proven throughout the history of the United States, from slave trades to the gold rush, all the way through to voting rights. What this semester has gone over is just a brief mention of how the United States has become the immigrant based country that it is today. It would not be the country that it is today without the rich history that it has aged through.

References:

Kanstroom, D. (2010). Deportation nation: outsiders in American history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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