Published: October 13, 2008
In a country populated by immigrants, why are Americans so wary of newcomers? What’s the difference between the nativism of the early Republic and and the anti-immigrant sentiment on talk radio today? How do we draw the line between “us” and “them?” Historian Mae Ngai explains that the door slammed shut in the the 1920s. Frank Morris of the Center for Immigration Studies discusses historic tensions between immigrant laborers and African-Americans. And immigration lawyer Stan Braverman says that inscrutable legislation passed in the 1990s has taken the fun out of the job.
artcalight
I came to this country as a result of the 1968 political and economic upheavals in Jamaica, WI. Much of those upheavals were as a result of U.S. political and economic interference, which continues to this day. Therefore, how can there be no line when it comes to political and economic interference, but a bright – and racist – line when it comes to the movement of people? How can there be no line when it comes to the movement of goods but a thick line when it comes to the movement of goods? I also don’t subscribe to the illusion of race and therefore do not and will not carry a racial identity, much as others in the U.S. try to force me into a box. I’ve published on this topic. As Alfred Alford argues in his book “Rethinking Freedom: why freedom has lost its meaning and what can be done to save it” U.S. culture carries many of the attributes of borderline personality disorder. We could simultaneously play on the meaning of borderline politically and psychoanalytically, as an intellectual game, but the personal effects can be devastating physically and psychologically.
roses_supposes
Immigration has come in waves to our country from different sending nations depending upon the conditions within those nations and also depending upon US policy. Could you flesh out a few things that I know about only roughly?
Why did so many people of color come from the Caribbean to New York City beginning in the 1920s? What had they heard about the US to believe that their treatment in New York would be better than their treatment in Jamaica or the Dominican Republic?
I know there was a policy shift in the 1960s-1970s that led to the great increase in immigration to the US from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, but again I wonder why. It seems like our record of race relations was often much more broadly publicized in foreign countries than Americans themselves were aware of (there is a new mini-literature around the use of racial propaganda during the Cold War with books by Penny Von Eschen, Mary Dudziak, Tim Borstelmann, Brenda Gayle Plummer, Gerald Horne, and others).
Thanks! I’m loving your podcast.
john_okeefe
Free immigrants have been grappling the issue of citizenship, race, and migration restriction since the early republic, as thousands of refugees from the haitian revolution found themselves confronting how or whether to integrate themselves in a society with a very different understanding of race and citizenship.
In response to the possible discussion of Andrew Jackson’s alien status, I hope we can explore just how the ideas of American-ness, citizenship and nationality differed over time. Some points of interest to both academics and the wider public:
“American” identity, as defined by many white Americans during this time, was closely identified with native English proficiency, whiteness, belief in republican institutions, and Protestantism. The less a migrant possessed these qualities, the more difficult it would be to be considered culturally an American (and often legally as well). Thus, under the Alien and Sedition Acts, someone such as Joseph Priestley was aided by the legal protections that his naturalized citizenship accorded him. Migration for European radicals was more feasible than for people of color fleeing the Haitian revolution, where state laws often barred their entry, and federal law their naturalization.
In addition to people in Jackson’s situation, it was initially unclear how non-Indian populations in newly acquired territories would acquire legal citizenship. Federal courts, in a series of legal decisions, set the precedents for legal citizenship, and in the process increasingly moved citizenship away from the state level and to the federal. During the early republic, it was possible to be a citizen of a state but not the United States – especially true in Pennsylvania, where citizenship could be obtained after a year’s residence. Likewise, Jews in Maryland were barred from state citizenship until 1826, but could be citizens of the United States.
Also, because citizenship was something associated with heads of household and not dependents, U.S. women who married noncitizens fell into the category of aliens, because under common law, their identities were legally subsumed under that of their husbands.
I hope we can discuss how the changing legal category of citizenship interacted with cultural social change throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
jjones
Questions of citizenship are almost always about more than rights and legal issues. Our most recent debates about “illegal immigrants” (or, as the discourse has shifted, simply “immigrants”) are about far more than jobs, economics, language, and poverty. While this may sound obvious, it’s important to pay attention to the myriad ways that these debates are about defining what it means to be an American. We form our identities by exclusion – we define ourselves more by what we are not, than by what we are. Historically, dominant groups have espoused identity and solidarity against an Other; today’s questions of immigration are not anomalous. Rather, they are the continuation of a long line of determining who “we” are. Are we Native American? Are we black? Are we Asian? Are we Mexican? Are we Spanish speaking? Are we Muslim? Are we queer? This question of “we” is always lurking under the surface, but is quite often right up on top of the discussion when “we” discuss what to do with “them,” whether “they” be legal citizens or not. Always stop to ask: who is the “we” in question?
Brian
Who is the band playing This Land Is Your Land?
Tom Cain
Are you familiar with the splendid history, “Plagues and Peoples?” It is a history of how powerfully disease shaped history. It’s been years since I read it, but I remember that the native of Bengal became “untouchables” because the later arriving people of the Indian sub-continent has no immunity to the diseases that incubated near the Bay of Bengal.
When I look at most “Mexican-Americans” I see the faces and physiognomies of Meso-Americans. They are right out of the temple carvings of the Yucatan. I think of them less as recent immigrants to these climes than as the mound builders returning to ancestral lands.
Re: the die off of Indigenous Americans, it is my (recent) understanding that 90+ percent of African-Americans carry Indian blood (because slaves were able to escape into the forest and were welcome among the dwindling populations of Indigenous peoples). I look forward to a time in the near future when genetic testing will be so cheap and common that most people are able to know who they are – perhaps including information for those of us who are “white” about when our ancestors came out of Africa. [In reality, there are only two races, the human race and the rat race. Most of us are members of both. We may as well love our neighbors because they ARE ourselves.]
Tony
Hey Brian -
That rendition of This Land is by Sones de Mexico. Check them out here: http://www.sonesdemexico.com/index2.html
Thanks for listening…
-Tony
Producer, BackStory
devin
hello american history guys,
i’m writing from the neighborhood in los angeles that many new immigrants come to start– to buy a fake ID, a MICA, a tamale cart. it is a chaotic, baffling place to begin to assimilate, or not, the kind of place where teenage girls take each other down in the middle of the crosswalk on high-traffic streets in broad daylight, the kind of place where the $1 mas o menos store routinely prices and sells goods for $30.99. it is also distinctly central american– there are no chocolate chips or tampons sold anywhere around here, the markets are open-air and outside, everything is in spanish or spanglish (“mucho bargain” “regalos para baby shower”).
i think all the time about how this is the only america so many of these newcomers know and how it shapes their view of what america is. for example, i know that when my however-many-great grandparents arrived at ellis island from sweden and germany and ireland that the culture of that entry point was one where their cultural identity was somewhat quickly and easily erased– their long & difficult names were cut in half, people who said they spoke deutsch (german) were labeled dutch. this impacted my ancestors definitely– absolutely none of them spoke their native language to their children and they never, ever went back to their home country. ties were cut right away. when i look around at this neighborhood, also an entry point since they mainly crossed the border hidden in the back of a truck, it seems very much the opposite. the neighborhood isn’t about erasing wherever the newcomers have come from, but about re-creating it here. there are free english classes offered at night that are sparsely attended; people that have been here for 25 years don’t speak any english, because they don’t need to– they can be fully functional in spanish here. the children are almost too eager to assimilate of course, all of them wear little hannah montana t-shirts & i beg them to practice their spanish so they don’t lose it (i used to teach first grade here), but the adults largely do not, even the ones who are not planning on making enough money to move back home immediately. am i wrong in assuming my ancestors were different? i know there were swedish pockets in chicago, little italy in new york, that some europeans wanted to hold on to the culture of their homeland. i also know that american culture wasn’t so totally in everyone’s face back then, there weren’t pizza huts and mtv music videos all over the world which i think rightly encourages people to hang on to what makes their way of doing things unique.
my question is this: assuming that the culture of ellis island impacted the way in which europeans assimilated, or didn’t, in pre- 1920′s america, how will entry points like my neighborhood–chaotic, confusing & in many ways an attempt to be just like where they came from–affect the culture of the latino immigrant population, the largest immigrant group in the US?
thanks in advance for the insight.
twentieth-century guy
Devin,
What a thoughtful comment. I am more inclined to think about the influence of the kinds of places that recent arrivals go to after the point of entry. For all of its mythology, the emphasis on Ellis Island tends to obscure the varied settings that immigrants ended up in. I am less familiar with the broad range of options today (I keep telling them that we need a twenty-first century guy!) but from anecdotal evidence, recent arrivals end up in a broad variety of settings. I am also struck by how much more accepting our culturally pluralist society is today, than our Americanizing tendencies were one hundred years ago (not that there is not some residue.) Thanks for listening and commenting.
Twentieth-Century Guy
Tom Cain
I’m glad to be reminded of this discussion. Since I posted my comment I have read 1491 by Charles C. Mann. How little we yet know about the great civilizations that developed in the Americas. It’s fascinating to speculate about how in the north Indians helped create a distinct “American” character and about how those “new men” and their ideas have in turn impacted the “Old World.” The most obvious example is in the realm of food. It is hard for me to imagine “cuisine” without tomatoes, peppers and all the botanic bounty of the Americas which redefined the very potential of global culture (and agriculture).
We have so much to learn. We should regard our immigrant/neighbors from Mezo-America (far more Indian than Hispanic, as anyone who looks can see) with more respect. They have legitimacy as an ancient birth-right that we lack. Humility and gratitude are in order. The most memorable exhibit from the celebration of the US Bicentennial was at the Smithsonian, “A Nation of Nations.” I love both the the idea and the reality of that conceptualization.
Be of good cheer, Tom Cain, Roanoke
Brian Parkinson
I enjoyed the show, but wish they had mentioned the Fourteenth Amendment’s role in the immigration story, since that Amendment extended citizenship to anyone who was physically born in the country.
Brian Parkinson
I especially liked the interview about the history of the border patrol and how the immigration law was so complicated that it allowed the poor white border guards to wield enormous and arbitrary political power over immigration. This situation reminds me of C. Vann Woodward’s critique of Jim Crow in the Book “The Strange Career of Jim Crow,” where he describes that Jim Crow rested chiefly on the arbitrary power given to white bus drivers, conductors, and other poor white citizens of the South. Both the border guards and the bus drivers received de facto delegations of violent power. These delegations were a way for elites to get dirty word done from a safe distance.
Most importantly, this delegation created a constituency who depended on this repression for status and wealth–which kind of reminds me of the prison guards lobby of today.