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National Origins Quota
AKA The Immigration Act of 1924 or the Johnson-Reed Act Definition: Enacted in 1924, it limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country already in the U.S. as of the 1890 census. This system set restrictions on immigrants on the basis of proportions of population, and aimed to reduce the number of unskilled immigrants and prevent immigration from changing the ethnic distribution of American population. Through the combo of the National Origins Quota and the Chinese Exclusion Act, the U.S. shut the door to Asian immigration. This system allowed for a higher amount of European Westerner to immigrate in the U.S. as compared to the Asians. Significance: The national origins quota system severely restricted the immigration of Africans and outright banned the immigration of Arabs and Asians. It set no limits on immigration from Latin American countries. It was the nation's first comprehensive restriction law, and established for the first time numerical limits on immigration and a global racial and national hierarchy that favored some immigrants (European and Canadian) over others. In turn, this: 1) Drew a new ethnic and racial map based on new categories and hierarchies of difference, and 2) articulated a new sense of territoriality, which was marked by unprecedented awareness and state surveillance of the nation's contiguous land borders
McCarran-Walter Act
AKA the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 Definition: Replaced the Immigration Act of 1917 and remained the US's foundation immigration law to this day. The law retained the numerical ceiling quota of 155,000 immigrants per year based on the national origins formula of 1924. It removed any specific provisions for admitting refugees, eliminating the racial bar to citizenship, ending the Japanese and Korean exclusion and made the policies consistent with the recent repeals of Chinese, Indian, and Filipino exclusion. It also stiffened deportation policies making it easier to deport aliens. Most importantly, the act introduced into the quotas a new concept of occupational 'preferences' designed to further narrow and refine the immigrant stream to persons with specialized skills deemed in short supply in the U.S.. Significance: The act established for the first time in U.S. history the general principle of color-blind citizenship. The law created an 'Asia Pacific Triangle' which was a global race quota aimed at restricting Asian immigrants into the U.S. (100 per country). The policy established a new set of norms of desirability based on educational level, skill, and familial ties to a U.S. citizen
Hart-Celler Act of 1965
AKA the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 Definition: Abolished the quota system based on national origins that had been the American immigration policy since the 1920s. The new law maintained the per-country limits, but it also created preference visa categories that focused on immigrant's skills and family relationships with citizens or U.S. residents. The bill set numerical restrictions on visas at 170,000 per year, with a per-country-of-origin quota. However, family reunification and immigrants with special, required, skills ("special immigrants") were not counted in the new quota. Significance: This act was considered the last reform to the immigration policy. It both changed and sustained the regime of immigration restriction. It limited migration from the Western hemisphere (Mexico and Canada), which lead to an increase in illegal immigration in the U.S. and made it the central problem that has preoccupied American Immigration policy throughout the late 20th century to the present day. Changed the racial composition of the U.S..
According to Mae Ngai, how are 'illegal aliens' created?
According to Ngai, "broad based immigration exclusion created a heightened sense of national borders as well as the state surveillance of those borders, which helped produce what we now know as the 'illegal alien'". In other words, through creating new laws and restricting citizenship the U.S. leaves these immigrants they originally recruited for labor on U.S. land without citizenship of their own.
How can assimilationist thinking be racist?
Assimilationist are those who advocate racial and cultural integration. Assimilationist thinking can be considered racist because it enforces a sense of superior versus inferior. When you try to assimilate a certain group into your culture, in this case American culture, you strip them of their culture and beliefs. Assimilationist disregards other cultures, believing their culture to be the best and that others should seek to assimilate into their culture, instead of accepting other cultures.
Benevolent Assimilation
Definition: A policy of the U.S. directed towards the Philippines (issued in 1898) involving the assimilation of a group of people, by absorbing foreign people into a new culture, with the primary stated reason being that it is an act of benevolence. The U.S. granted the Filipinos individual freedom, but no national freedom. Significance: Denationalizing the Philippines justified the annexation of their land by the U.S. and cast the American mission as benevolence- the U.S. had not denied national self-determination because no nation existed (loophole). Denationalizing the Philippines was a military operation and thus benevolent assimilation had to be imposed by armed forces, the U.S. deployed 2/3 of the American Army to the islands under American sovereignty. Mainstream American politics rationalized the colonial possession of the Philippines as a benevolent project that would civilize the backwards Filipinos, but that mythology turned into a social crisis when real Filipinos started to show up in California in the late 1920s. Filipinos weren't considered to be citizens, but as nationals they could not legally be prohibited from traveling to the mainland, the U.S.. America saw the Philippines as their "little brown brother" and because of the belief of American Exceptionalism, they saw colonizing and forcing assimilation on the Filipino people to be their duty.
War Brides Act
Definition: An act active between December 1945 to December 1948 that allowed foreign women to become U.S. citizens if they were married to a citizen. These citizens were most likely soldiers abroad. Significance: This act allowed Asian women who were married to American soldiers to migrate over into America, these women were not counted in the quota. It allowed for a very significant number of Asian women to migrate into the U.S., which was unheard of in earlier history. It lead to an increase in Filipino women coming into America, it also allowed for Asian American men to bring their wives over.
Nativism
Definition: An anti-immigration sentiment/movement that favored those descended from the inhabitants of the original 13 colonies. Political belief in preserving the nation's "native" people and the opposition towards immigrants because they will distort existing cultural values. Quite hypocritical because America is a nation of immigrants and the "Americans" weren't even natives of this land, the Native Americans were. Significance: Nativists objected primarily to Irish immigrants because of their loyalty to the Pope but also included animosity toward German and Chinese immigrants. Nativists sentiment spurred for the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 and 'articulated a new kind of thinking, in which the cultural nationalism of the late 19th century had transformed into a nationalism based on race'. To nativists, cultural homogeneity was far more principal than race superiority
Model Minority Myth
Definition: Belief that one minority is the "ideal minority". The people of this minority were seen to successfully assimilate on their own into American culture without needing resources. "Bad immigrants" were those who failed to assimilate themselves into American culture. Significance: This belief applied primarily to Asian Americans. People believed that one minority (ex. Asian Americans) is more successful than other minorities (ex. African-Americans during the Civil Rights Movement) because of their culture. This, therefore, reinforces a structure that blames other minorities for not being able to work as hard as Asian Americans. It also acted as a way for the government to dismiss its responsibilities of addressing racial inequality and allowed the government to pit minorities against each other.
Impossible Subjects
Definition: Ngai's coining for an illegal alien. Formed after immigration restriction reproduced the illegal alien as a new legal and political subject, whose inclusion was both a social reality and legal impossibility (No Citizenship/No Rights). The illegal alien is therefore an "Impossible Subject" because they are a "person who cannot be" and a "problem that cannot be solved". Impossible Subjects are barred from citizenship and do not get any rights. They are deemed "illegal" yet they exist which makes them impossible subjects that the law and government have no way to handling. Significance: The need of state authorities to identify and distinguish between citizens, lawfully resident immigrants and illegal aliens posed enforcement, political, and constitutional problems for the modern state for years and years to come. Was a paradox that couldn't really be solved with the current discrimination and eugenics ideas in place in during this time.
Alien Citizen
Definition: Persons who are American citizens by virtue of their birth in the U.S., but who are presumed to be foreign by the mainstream of American culture and, at times, by the state. People who were born in the U.S. but their origins are from another country. They are considered citizens, but they are alien because they're considered foreign and of the "other". Never seen as part of the national body. Significance: -For Chinese and other Asians, alien citizenship was the invariable consequence of racial exclusion from immigration and naturalized citizenship -For Mexicans, the concept of alien citizenship captured the condition of being a foreigner in one's former land -Alien citizenship spoke to a condition of racial "otherness"
Internal Colonialism
Definition: The way in which a country's dominant group exploits minority groups for its economic advantage. The dominant group manipulates the social institutions to suppress minorities and deny them full access to their society's benefits. It is often accompanied by segregation, which allows the dominant group to maintain social distance from the minority and yet exploit their labor.
How was benevolent assimilation enforced differently upon Filipinos and Japanese?
Filipinos: -Brought into the U.S. under "Benevolent Assimilation" -Denationalizing the Philippines justified annexation and cast the American mission as an act of benevolence -There was no agreement like with the Japanese, U.S. just came and took Filipinos, OR Filipino US nationals just had the freedom to cross boundaries into US -Unlike Japan, Filipino leaders discouraged the idea emigration laborers -Filipino laborers were recruited to work sugar plantations in Hawaii after the Japanese laborers went on strike (and after their numbers were limited by the Gentleman's Agreement) -By the 1920s, US citizens were trying to stop Filipinos from migrating into US -Racial violence would take place in the future as Filipinos continued to migrate into US Japanese: -Since the 1890s, both the Japanese government and Japanese immigrants worked to distinguish Japanese in America from Chinese and the latter's fate as a despised and excluded race (racially unassimilable) -Japanese immigrant associates advocated for adopting 'respectable domesticity' (Chinese were different, stubborn) -By becoming yeoman farmers in California/other places, Japanese immigrants embraced the American virtues of liberty and civic duty -Japan had established itself as an imperials power with colonial possessions, a powerful navy, economic privileges and treaty alliances with Western nations (far superior to Philippines) -When Japanese started becoming segregated in America, the incidents quickly evolved into diplomatic crises between Japan and the US, which President Theodore Roosevelt and co. had to dissolve, opposing statutory exclusion and coming to the 'gentleman's agreement' -They were respected because Japan was a world power but they wanted them kept at a distance
According to Matthew Frye Jacobson, what is the difference between ethnicity and race?
Jacobson argues that race is not a biological fact but socially constructed and shifting device used to both include and exclude people from white privilege. He follows race and views its three uses in US history and culture: "Race as an organizer of power whose vicissitudes (unwelcomed change) track power relationships through time; Race as a mode of perception contingent upon the circumstances of the moment; and race as the product of specific struggles for power at specific cultural sites." Eugenicists of the 1920s decide upon three major divisions of race, Caucasian, Mongoloid or Negroid, subsuming the smaller racial divisions but replacing them with ethnicity through to the 1960s.
How did the Japanese American internment produce a crisis of citizenship?
Japanese American Internment produced a grey zone in regards to citizenship in the US and the rights that come along with it. Regardless if they were US citizens or not, any Japanese person on US land was treated in the same cruel way and was forced into internment camps by the US government. This made the Japanese continual outsiders, they believed there was no point in obtaining citizenship when everyone in the US was opposing them anyways. There was always an opportunity for your citizenship to get revoked. The US government had full control over who got citizenship and what rights came along with it. 2/3 of the Japanese Americans put into the interment camps were actually legal citizens. Even people with just a drop of Japanese blood would be placed into these internment camps. This raises questions about what comprises citizenship and whom, what does citizenship mean now? What conditions make citizenship stable and what makes it unstable? Does this mean people would never be acknowledged as full citizens? Upon release from the internment camps, some Japanese-Americans didn't want to be citizens anymore.
How did the Immigration Act of 1965 promote both greater inclusions and greater exclusions?
The Immigration Act of 1965 (AKA the Hart-Celler Act of 1965) ended the earlier quota system that was based on national origin and it promoted greater inclusion by promoting a policy based on reuniting immigrant families and attracting skilled laborers to the U.S.. It created greater exclusion because this new system placed restrictions on the total immigrants allowed per country, it also made immigration into the U.S. a lot more selective. This act severly limited migration in the Western Hemisphere (Mexico and Canada), therefore, increasing illegal immigration.
How do Asian immigrant women enter the US during the postwar years? What are some current implications of this?
The War Bride Act of 1945 allowed Asian immigrant women to enter the US during the postwar years. Women at the time were seen as accessories to men- they were only allowed access to the US through their connection to a man or family already in the US. This would further lead to an exoticization of the image of Asian Women, believing they were using their bodies to lure US citizens, mostly soldiers, so that they may migrate.
When in US History does a middle class emerge for Asian Americans? Why?
The middle class started emerge for Asian Americans after the introduction of the Immigration Act of 1965. Through this Act, Asian immigration increased and diversified through family reunification—chiefly of wives, military spouses, adoptees, parents and children, refugees, and growing ranks of students and cultural, professional, and economic exchange participants. The face of Asian American communities transformed due to better gender balance, more families, and better educated and skilled people immigrating from Asia into the US.
Under what historical conditions was the myth of the model minority formed?
The model minority thesis gained currency throughout the decade as an argument to discredit the civil rights movement. From WWII through the 1970s, some Japanese and Chinese American leaders tried to secure citizenship for members of their communities by engaging in P.R. campaigns and sponsoring research designed to convince the public that they, and by extension Asians in general, were less prone to delinquency and promiscuity, and more committed to family, education, and country than others by dint of culture. By the 1970s, the model minority thesis had rooted itself so firmly into mainstream perceptions of the Asian American community that it had become a racial stereotype. The myth of the model minority painted Asians as decidedly not black in the American mind, inadvertently promoting the idea that blacks were Asian Americans' opposites; a "problem minority," spoiling the American dream by refusing to simply ignore racism and quietly pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
What does 'Suzy Wong' tell us about perceptions of Asian Americans in the 1950s?
The novel "The World of Suzie Wong" tells us a lot about how Americans perceived Asian Americans in the 1950s. Asian women were objectified and shown to be entirely dependent on men to gain financial security; the novel depicted the women resorting to prostitution or marriage to gain financial security. The novel also pointed out how Americans viewed Asian culture as exotic. evidenced by Robert's ideas and efforts to paint the Asian lifestyle through his stay in Hong Kong.
In analyzing racial formation in midcentury, Jacobson argues that those whose difference is marked by race were understood as unassimilable. How does this logic work?
The physical differences in appearance as well as past historical events led people to believe that a person's race reflects their intellect and social capacity. Nativists and racist non-minority groups come to view these differences as threats to their own native populations, an example of these threats is when minority races begin taking jobs that were primarily worked by white people. These suspicions caused these people to lobby for legislation that restricts a minority race's access and privileges within the nation. Through these acts of legislation, people come to see foreign races as unassimilable because there are laws in place in effort to stop a minority race from assimilating/taking the white peoples' jobs.
What does it take for Asian Americans to be deemed 'assimilable'? And, how is this problematic?
They must be able to adapt to the American way of life without needing resources Problematic because cultures that are different take longer to assimilate and thus are deemed "bad" and even though some cultures may assimilate, they will never be American, just more respected.
Using Estelle Ishigo's experience, as portrayed in Days of Waiting, how are categories of race and ethnicity enforced formally and informally? And, how is resistance to these categories punished?
-FORMALLY: 'Categories of race/ethnic differences are made real by being associated with privileges, rewards, punishments, etc. and use of government institutions recognizing and treating them as certain race' -Arthur and Estelle sent to Japanese Concentration Camps for 'being Japanese' -Arthur and Estelle eligible to receive reimbursement by government after camps -Arthur and Estelle both rendered Japanese even though Estelle is white because she married a Japanese INFORMALLY: 'social means of inclusion' -Estelle fits in with the Japanese people inside the concentration camps -Estelle joins the Hark Mountain Mandolin Band (feels truely accepted for the first time) -They were punished by being denied the privileges they should have received for being citizens, being treated like criminals, and being moved great distances around the nation in order to 'contain' these subjects
