Awakening to Immigrant Injustice How We Got to Where we Are Today: Historical Perspective Dr. Sarah Griffith, Department of History, Queens University of Charlotte

The Great American Melting Pot? Immigration and the melting pot. J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, 1782 ”What then is the American, this new man?.....” “Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men…” “The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles...”

The first immigrants “Thus was God pleased to smite our enemies and to give us their land for an inheritance,” John Mason, 1636 Native Americans Europeans African slaves

race, inclusion, and exclusion in the colonial era “This government of ours is founded on the white basis. It was made by the white man, for the benefit of the white man, to be administered by white men.” Stephen Douglas, 1858 US Constitution (1788) –”Three-fifths a person” and the ”one-drop” rule 1790 Naturalization Act -- “free white men”

Inclusion and exclusion in the imperial era “by right of our manifest destiny to overspread and possess the whole continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federative self-government.” John O’Sullivan (1845) US-Mexico War/Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) US-Philippine War/commonwealth (1898)

The new “native” American: inclusion, exclusion in the post-Civil War era “Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, And through them presses a wild motley throng…” Thomas Bailey Aldrich, The Atlantic Monthly, 1882 13th-15th Amendments Nativism Know-Nothing Party, 1855-1858 Workingman’s Party, 1870s

Defining Whiteness at century’s turn “What we now hold is that the words ‘free white persons’ are words of common speech, to be interpreted in accordance with the understanding of the common man, synonymous with the word ‘Caucasian’ only as that word is popularly understood.” US Supreme Court ruling in Bhagat Singh Thind, 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882 In re Ah Yup (1878) Wong Kim Ark v. US (1895) Takao Ozawa vs. US (1922) Dow v. US (1915) Bhagat Singh Thind (1923) Takao Ozawa Bhagat Singh Thind

The science of race: legislating exclusion “Those who are most akin to us come nearest to beauty; such are the degenerate Aryan stocks of India and Persia, and the Semitic people who are least infected by contact with the black race,” Joseph Arthur comte de Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races, 1855 Eugenics 1924 Immigration Act (National Origins Act) 1890 census, immigrant quotas, “aliens ineligible for citizenship”

Immigration, citizenship, and rights in times of war Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) Espionage and Sedition Acts, (1917/18) Executive Order 9066 – Japanese American internment

Winning Hearts and Minds “For it does repair a very deep and painful flaw in the fabric of American justice. It corrects a cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American Nation.” President Lyndon B. Johnson to Congress on the eve of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act Immigration and the Cold War 1948 Displaced Persons Act (400K visas) 1952 McCarren Walter Act 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act

Immigration Today: Where do we go from here? Immigration Reform and Control Act, 1988 Bracero program (1942-1964)—wartime labor program 1964 - 1980s undocumented immigration soars as demand for cheap labor continues Solution: place enforcement in hands of employers/little federal regulation Comprehensive Immigration Reform? DACA and DAPA