Roger Daniels - Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants since 1882

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Table of Contents

I have been engaged in the crafting of this book for almost two decades. The first published artifact was an essay in a journal issue dedicated to John Higham in 1986. When I first wrote about immigration law at the beginning of the 60s, I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams that within four decades some 25 million legal immigrants would come to America. It is obviously impossible to acknowledge all the intellectual debts that I have piled up during those years.

Many of those debts are recognized in the notes, but a number of the most pressing are recorded here. This books dedication to Harry Kitano is not just an act of friendship. In a collaboration of almost four decades, resulting in four books and three academic conferences without a single harsh word, I learned about another discipline and another America.

My home base, the University of Cincinnati, provided much free time and other support, and a succession of department chairsmost recently Barbara Ramusackhave been responsive to many of my needs.

A number of my fellow immigration historians have answered queries and made comments. Dave Reimers, in particular, was always willing to share his unparalleled knowledge of recent immigration. Marian L. Smith, the historian at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, was more thanforthcoming, and is a model public historian. She not only answered myriad questions, but sometimes posed important questions, with answers, that I did not have the wit to ask.

My students, undergraduate and graduate, heard early versions of much of what is presented here and their reactions and questions have significantly helped to shape the final result.

At Hill and Wang, Elisabeth Sifton quickly welcomed and sharpened my proposal, and Thomas LeBien was a meticulous and probing editor who consistently provided wise counsel. Every chapter carries his fingerprints and is better for them. Production editor JoAnna Kremer, copyeditor Cari Luna, proofreader Teddy Rosenbaum, and editorial assistant Kristina McGowan led a team that produced edited copy and advance proofs at a speed that dazzled someone who works mostly with university presses.

Last, but in no way least, I proclaim my eternal debt to Judith Mandel Daniels, who has vetted and improved everything that I have published during our marriage, which is, not coincidentally, coeval with my scholarly publishing career. Unfortunately the blame for the errors that must exist cannot be pinned on any of these accomplices, so as the saying goes, I claim responsibility.

The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement in California
and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion

American Racism: Exploration of the Nature of Prejudice
(with Harry H. L. Kitano)

The Bonus March: An Episode of the Great Depression

Concentration Camps, USA: Japanese Americans and World War II

The Decision to Relocate the Japanese Americans

Concentration Camps, North America: Japanese in the United States
and Canada during World War II

Asian Americans: Emerging Minorities
(with Harry H. L. Kitano)

Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in
the United States since 1850

Coming to America: A History of Immigration
and Ethnicity in American Life

Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II

Not Like Us: Immigrants and Minorities in America, 18901924

Debating American Immigration
(with Otis Graham)

American Immigration: A Student Companion

Immigration After 9/11

T he business as usual described in the previous chapter was a far cry from the situation that prevailed at the beginning of the century, although, superficially, the numbers of immigrants were not that different. In the first decade of the century, 1901-10, 8,795,386 immigrants entered the United States: in the final decade, 1991-2000, the number supplied by the INS was 9,095,417. That similarity, of course, is an illusion, a chimera deliberately fostered by the Aesopian language of the immigration statutes crafted by legislators and bureaucrats.

As late as the first years of the twentieth century, immigration to the United States was a relatively simple affair, unless you were Chinese or had an immediately apparent disqualifying physical or mental defect. The vast majority of the nearly 9 million immigrants came to work or to join working family members already present in the United States, and probably a third of them returned to Europe, whence almost all of them came. Those who came as visitors, as opposed to casual border crossers, mostly traveled in first class and were not even enumerated, much less classified: their presumed class and social standing were all the identification they needed. There was no such thing as an American visa.

One apparent relative constant is the amount of emigration from the United States; that is immigrants, both citizen and noncitizen, who have left. The government has never been enthusiastic about counting them. Emigration is perhaps the most un-American act, according to the standardmythos. There was no tabulation at all of persons emigrating from the United States until 1908 and the government discontinued counting emigrants in 1957. However, the most sophisticated estimates suggest that over the course of the century, about three emigrants left for every ten immigrants who arrived. For the first nine decades of the century the notion is that a total of 37.9 million immigrants arrived and 11.9 million departed, giving a net immigration of 26 million, an annual net average of about 290,000.

Apart from the actual difference in numbers, perhaps nothing so clearly and simply demonstrates the increased complexity of coming to America in our own time, as opposed to a century ago, than the ports of entry. In 1901, and for many years after that, immigration meant New York City and Ellis Island: in the centurys first year 80 percent of all immigrants landed either on Ellis Island or on one of the piers of New York proper.

The number and variety of these end-of-century locations indicate both where immigrants are coming fromAsia and Latin Americaand where in the United States they are settling. In 1900 the predominantly European immigration settled chiefly in the northeastern and north central states in the area bounded by Boston and Baltimore on the Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi River. In 2000 two-thirds of all immigrants resided in one of six states: California, New York, Florida, Texas, Illinois, and New Jersey, and one-fifth of them settled in either New York City or Los Angeles.

Despite these contrastswhich, it seems to me, overwhelm the continuitiesas the twenty-first century began it was reasonable to assume, as most of us usually do, that the future would, in most respects, resemble the past. Yet there were also good reasons to believe that the new president might bring a more realistic approach to immigration with him from Texas, particularly with regard to policies affecting Mexico and Mexican immigration.

The stated immigration policies of the first seven and a half months of the administration of George W. Bush represented a very different approach from those of his immediate predecessors regardless of party. Bush made it clear that the administration saw Mexico as a partner rather than a threat. He held a summit with the new president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, who later addressed the U.S. Congress. Although much of Bushs initial notions about immigration as articulated in his first budget message were typical immigration-reform rhetoricstrengthen border control and enforcement, detain and remove illegal aliens, restructure the INShis remarks about immigration were prefaced by an extremely sympathetic passage:

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