Migration, Mobility & Borders. Week #3 Reading Notes

Expelling the Poor -- Hirota (2017) KEY Role of Catholicism/Religion in discrimination/laws -- Nativism Role of Poverty in discrimination/laws -- Economics Power of the states in determining state/federal immigration policies Role of individuals/nativism in carrying out policy/doctrine INTRODUCTION Thesis: “This book tells the story of people like Green and Boyle, Irish immigrants deported from the US due to their poverty under state law. It provides the first sustained study of immigration control conducted by states prior to the introduction of federal immigration law in the late nineteenth century … it examines the origins of immigration restriction in the US, especially deportation policy. By locating those origins in cultural prejudice against the Irish and, more essentially, economic concerns about their poverty in nineteenth century New York and Massachusetts, this book fundamentally revises the history of American immigration policy, which has largely focused on racism in the West. It also places the implementation of American deportation law in a broad context that extended from the US to Ireland, Britain, and Canada … In short, Expelling the Poor presents a transnational social and legal history of American immigration control.” (2) “The newcomer’s religion triggered an outburst of anti-Irish nativism in these states, but so too did the immigrants’ poverty.” (2) “In MA, an exceptionally strong anti-Catholic and anti-Irish tradition inspired the state legislature to go beyond merely setting entry regulations, or excluding the unacceptable. Rather, MA developed laws for deporting foreign paupers already resident in the state back to Ireland, 1830s-1880s.” (2) “Yet it was Irish poverty that generated the principal momentum for the growth of state immigration policy.” (3) Thesis 2.0: “Expelling the Poor thus provides a national history of state-level immigration control and reveals the centrality of New York and Massachusetts in this history. Ultimately , it argues, regulatory measures in the two state laid the foundations for American immigration policy.” (3) “... state law restricting the landing of aliens ‘likely to become a public charge’, state passenger policy allowed official to use their discretion in determining the admissibility of the immigrants in question.” (3) “Other categories of excludable people under state passenger laws were people with mental and physical defects, such as ‘lunatics’, ‘idiots’, and ‘infirm persons’. Insanity and infirmity in the nineteenth century 1 were never well-defined or self-evident by conditions, but always subject to fluid and arbitrary interpretations by those who diagnosed them.” (3) “State officials ruthlessly applied deportation law to foreign paupers without considering the circumstances of their lives, expelling them regardless of how long they had lived in the US or what form of attachment to the community they had established.” (3) “Officials in both NY and MA fundamentally influenced the development of national immigration policy in the late nineteenth century by playing a central role in the making of the federal Immigration Act of 1882 … the Immigration Act was the first general legislation that applied to all foreigner at a national level and set the groundwork for subsequent federal immigration laws.” (4-5) “Not until 1891 did the federal government introduce a more general deportation policy that applied to all excludable people. By making the deportation of people other than criminals a practical reality in the operation of national immigration law, state officials in NY and MA established the environment for the federal government to start general deportation in 1891. Immigration control in these Atlantic seaboard states thus molded the legal and administrative frameworks of national policy for excluding and deporting foreigners from the United States.” (5) “The doctrine assumed that Congress possessed absolute power over the admission and removal of aliens and that its immigration policy was not subject to judicial scrutiny for constitutionality. It thereby allowed US officers to determine aliens’ excludability and deportability in ways which minimized their constitutional protections such as due process.” (5) “Principles of immigration policy were fashioned not only by laws and court opinions but also through the actions of people who carried out border control. Nativist state officials’ earlier coercive and illegal practices set precedents for American officers’ assertion of unrestricted power against foreigners, laying the social groundwork of the plenary power doctrine.” (6) ● Plenary power doctrine: The plenary power doctrine protects the federal government from claims that it is violating an individual's constitutional right to equal protection when it imposes discriminatory burdens on non-US citizens. Definition of Nativism: “... refers to a set of hostile ideas, attitudes, and actions against foreigners, which were founded upon the fear of their impact on American society, which were founded upon the fear of their impact on American society.” (6) “One of the major tenets of anti-Irish nativism in the ninteenth-century America was that Irish immigrants’ belief in hierarchical and seemingly despotic Catholicism would corrupt American republican democracy and predominant cultural values rooted in Protestantism. Irish immigrants’ drinking habits andsupposed predisposition to criminality and violence reinforced Protestant Americans’ convocation that the Irish were unsuited for American society.” (6) 2 “Irish immigrants’ dependency on charity violated predominant economic ideals in nineteenth-century America that expected every white person to support himself though independent productive labor. Originating from the poor law, state immigration policy developed in tandem with other public policies Deportation was therefore a policy intended to for poverty regulation that made pauper social outcasts. ensure that the US was a nation of self-sufficient workers by eliminating foreigners who deviated from this vision.” (6-7) “This book, then, traces the institutionalization into regulatory immigration policy of an economic logic that considered paupers the antithesis of American citizens and alienated them as such—a process driven by intense bias against people of Irish ancestry.” (7) “Regional political culture lay at the heart of this difference. The Puritan and English origins of Massachusetts led to a particularly strong sense of anti-Catholicism and superiority to Irish people among Anglo-Americans in the state.” (7) Page Act of 1875: “... prohibited the entry of convicted criminals, Asian laborers brought involuntarily, and women imported for prostitution.” (9) Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882: “... can be regarded as class legislation for its focus on laborers, but anti-Asian racism indisputably stood at the core of federal Chinese exclusion.” (9) Thesis/Argument: “Expelling the Poor places the Irish squarely in the discussion of the origins of American immigration control in a novel way. While anti-Asian racism is critical in the nation’s immigration history, the origins of immigration control lay in economic and cultural nativism against the Irish in the Atlantic seaboard states. Further, integrating state-level dimensions into the historical narrative of American immigration policy exposes aspects of this history that cannot be seen solely at the federal level … Atlantic seaboard states’ policies and federal Chinese exclusion were therefore not separate developments but constituted a single story of immigration control in the US.” (10) “Yet many of these studies [histories that don’t look at the impact of state policy on federal policies] limit their analysis to some representative state laws without explaining the evolution of policy over time. Consequently, the development of state control before the 1880s and, more critically, the relationships between state policies and later deferral regulations remain unclear.” (11) “Most importantly, the evolution of state immigration policy derived its ideological justification from the sanctity of freedom based on economic self-sufficiency and the fear of dependency—beliefs that shaped Americans’ conception of their nation as a republic of independent, industrious workers and had a farreaching impact on major debates of the time, including the debate over slavery.” (12) 3 CHAPTER 1: Ireland and the Emigration of the Poor “This chapter analyzes the people who emigrated from Ireland to North America in the first half of the nineteenth century, with a focus on their material conditions. Until the early nineteenth century Irish emigrants chiefly consisted of Protestants, especially Presbyterians. By the 1830s Catholics, who were markedly poorer than their Protestant predecessors, had become the dominant group among Irish emigrants.” (17) “The poverty of the Catholic Irish, along with their religious faith, stimulated anti-Irish nativism and played a critical role in the development of immigration control policy. This marked the initial phase in the circular migration of those who would eventually be deported from the US to Ireland under American immigration policy.” (17) Concluding: “If Americans regarded Irish poverty as more extensive and alarming than it actually was, how in practice did they react to Irish migration and how were the migrants treated in the new land?” (39) “These assisted emigration schemes from Europe exasperated Americans, but their harshest criticism was reserved for Irish paupers. When destitute Irish migrants arrived, nativists in New York and MA quickly called for strict immigration restriction against them, including their deportation to Ireland … Yet it was the growth of Irish pauperism in the 1830s and 1840s that prompted the institutionalization of immigrant exclusion and deportation as state policies.” (40) CHAPTER 2: The Rise of State Control on the Atlantic Seaboard “This chapter examines the early development of immigration control in the Atlantic seaboard states. It first examines how the British poor law, especially its principles of legal settlement and belonging, was introduced to colonial America, serving as a model for colonial laws to regulate the admission of outsiders and expel the transient poor. The colonial law developed into state laws for controlling the landing of foreign passengers and deporting indigent immigrants after the American Revolution, but the small scale of immigration at the turn of the nineteenth century had made the implementation of the laws loose. Thesestate laws, however, drew renewed attention in the 1830s, when nativists realized their utility as a vehicle for restructuring pauper immigration from Ireland.” (42) Concluding: “Laws for the removal of transient paupers and the restriction of destitute passengers’ landing had existed in these states, but this Irish immigration changed their primary objective from the regulation of indigent people’s domestic movement to control of immigration.” (68) “Anti-Irish nativism thus triggered the emergence of immigration law in the US, and as parts of the same process, both cultural prejudices and economic concerns contributed to this development.” (68) 4 “Early poor laws left one critical legacy in state-level immigration control. Most of the colonial and early state poor laws had a provision that prohibited the land of ‘persons likely to become a public charge’ without bonds … The absence of concrete definitions of the term ‘likely to become’ allowed inspecting officers to use their discretion in deciding who needed bonds for landing.” (69) “Together, state exclusion and deportation laws equipped enforcing officials with tremendous power over the fates of alliances. When this legal power was combined with officials’ own nativist sentiment, the implementation of immigration policy became exceedingly coercive.” (69) CHAPTER 3: The Development of Immigration Policy in Antebellum Costal States “... development of state immigration policy between 1849 and 1854 … in both states, the modification of policy included the enactment of new laws to minimize the pauperism of immigrants, especially the Irish … the two states adopted distinct policies, yet in a national context … it is clear that they developed by far the most advanced systems of state-level immigration control.” (71) “Economic concerns about the Irish immigrants’ poverty, inflated by cultural prejudice against them, continued to lead this development.” (71) Concluding: “NY and MA followed different paths, but the period between the late 1840s and the early 1850s as a whole marked a foundation moment in the history of American immigration control. Both states had had some measures for immigrant exclusion or deportation since colonial times, but immigration regulation in these states became firmly institutionalized under the command of state immigration agencies during this period.” (99) “The expansion in the authority of state official meant more than the establishment of legal and institutional backbones for subsequent immigration policy. The new duties and powers assigned to state officials increased their control over immigrants, resulting in the coercive and abusive treatment of undesirable foreigners and the practices of unlawful removal. The rise of the Know-Nothings fueled antiIrish sentiment. The Know-Nothing ascendancy opened up a period of militant nativism when all paupers of Irish descent, regardless of citizenship status, became subject to overseas banishment.” (99) Know-Nothing Party: ● The Know Nothing Party was a nativist political party and movement in the United States in the mid-1850s. The party was officially known as the "Native American Party" prior to 1855 and thereafter, it was simply known as the "American Party" CHAPTER 4: The Know-Nothing Movement and the Citizenship of Paupers 5 “This chapter examines state-level immigration control during the period of radical nativism in the second half of the 1850s … under the influence of the Know-Nothing movement, immigration control in NY and MA became extremely coercive … pressure from nativist citizens for stricter immigration restriction, and the prevailing view of Irish paupers as undeserving of relief and sympathy, NY and MA officials disregarded legal constraints on deportation … the anti-immigrant atmosphere set by the Know-Nothings induced local authorities to expel destitute immigrants abroad, despite the absence of deportation law in the state.” (101) Concluding: “The most significant consequence of the Know-Nothing movement for the history of American immigration control is that it established precedents for immigration officials’ assertion of unlimited power over objectionable aliens.” (128) “As seen in NY authorities’ apparent dismissal of the under portability of foreigners under state law and the MA commissioners’ expulsion of Irish American citizens, state official developed and acted on the conviction that they could practically do anything with aliens, or people whom the officials deemed aliens,if their action was the exercise of police power to protect Americans from economic, moral, and public health threats.” (128) CHAPTER 5: Pauper Policy in the Age of the Civil War and Reconstruction “This chapter explores immigration control in NY and MA in the ear of the Civil War and Reconstruction.” (130) CHAPTER 6: Postdeportation Lives in Britain and Ireland “This chapter examines their postdeportation experiences in Britain and Ireland … this chapter also uncovers transnational dimensions of American deportation policy.” (157) CHAPTER 7: State Officials, the Federal Government, and the Formation of American Immigration Policies “The period between the 1870s and 1880s has been acknowledged as pivotal in the history of American immigration policy. By the 1870s, white workers’ animosity toward inexpensive Chinese labor led to the anti-Chinese movement. That rising sentiment resulted int eh passage of the Page Act in 1875 … The movement them culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 … These two acts marked the federal government’s first direct involvement in immigration restriction since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.” (181) 6 “This chapter explores the state-federal joint administration of immigration control in the US during the 1880s.” (181) “The significance of stat control in NY and MA extends beyond the determination of who was deplorable under regulatory provisions in federal legislation. The manner of exclusion and deportation established by state officials profoundly affected the nature of federal immigration control.” (181) ● Federal Immigration Act of 1882: ○ “The first section established a federal capitation tax of fifty cents on each immigrant to be paid to the US treasury as the ‘Immigrant Fund’” ○ “Section 2 prohibited the entry into the US of ‘any convict, lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge’” ○ “This policy returned those passengers denied landing to their places of embarkation at the expense of the owners of the vessels that brought them” ○ “Section 4 of the act required particular attention to explain the overall intentions of the legislation. The section stipulated that foreign criminals ‘shall be sent back to the nations to which they belong and from whence they came’” (191) Concluding: “The approach to undesirable aliens developed in these states, where immigration restriction had been pursued most systematically and rigorously prior to the 1880s, was integrated into national policy through the 1882 Immigration Act’s state-federal joint administration and state officials’ continuous presence after the passage of the 1891 Immigration Act.” (204) plenary power, but that power built upon “Chinese exclusion undoubtedly facilitated the consolidation of practices and mindsets that had emerged from the Atlantic seaboard states’ treatment of destitute European, especially Irish, immigrants through the antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction periods.” (204) CONCLUSION “ Expelling the Poor has narrated a story of American state development by demonstrating how governmental policy for regulating membership in American society on an economic basis evolved from the local, to the state, and eventually to the national levels under the influence of anti-Irish nativism.” (206) 7 “... the expansion of their authority [state officials] over immigration fostered coercive and illegal expulsion … state-level immigration control operated in ways that allowed officials to exert tremendous power over objectionable foreigners and disregard their basic rights and protection in the execution of laws … as well as state officials’ ruthless approaches to destitute foreigners, was inherited by federal immigration policy with the officials’ involvement in the Immigration Act of 1882, setting the stage for the rise of the plenary power doctrine in the late nineteenth century.” (206-207) “The development of restrictive state legislation underscores the centrality of economics in American immigration control … But if anti-Irish prejudice served as a catalyst for state-level immigration control, the policies that emerged from it functioned largely on the basis of economics … But the core principle of head money, which was usually included in the passenger fare, was to make immigrants bear the expense of those institutions and to refuse admission to those who could not do so. The essential objective of MA deportation policy was to physically eliminate Irish paupers, the source of financial drain, from the state.” (208) “The economic impetus of state immigration policy had significant ideological dimensions. What lay behind aversion to Irish paupers and the aggressive enforcement of restrictive laws was the question of who deserved to be American in the nineteenth century.” (209) “... dependent on public charity and living outside the world of contract wage labor, Irish paupers appeared to destabilize the integrity of American free labor ideology … Deeply entangled with the economic ideas of nineteenth-century America, state immigration policy functioned as a vanguard of these visions and determined who deserved to belong to America in the most literal sense by physically removing from the nation those deemed undeserving.” (209) “As much as the US has remained the world’s major receiver of migrants, American immigration history can be characterized by persistent efforts to assert national sovereignty against undesirable foreigners. Nineteenth-century NY and MA shaped the way this effort could be pursed in their response to Irish immigration. Landing stations established after the 1880s and run under federal supervision, such as Ellis Island and Angel Island, have now come to symbolize the tradition of immigration control in the US. Yet Atlantic seaboard states’ earlier efforts to reduce foreign pauperism reveal that restriction was an integral part of the American immigration experience long before the building of these gateways to America.” (211) 8