Nativism Ugly Then, Ugly Now
Introduction: This pair of documents, one from the past and one contemporary, illustrate one of the uglier sides of America - nativism - the belief that people born in America are somehow better than those who come from other places, and all the discrimination that goes along with prejudice.
Chinese Exclusion Act
May 6, 1882 - United States Congress
Introduction:
In the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Chester A. Arthur. This act provided an absolute 10-year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. For the first time, Federal law proscribed entry of an ethnic working group on the premise that it endangered the good order of certain localities.
The Chinese Exclusion Act required the few nonlaborers who sought entry to obtain certification from the Chinese government that they were qualified to immigrate. But this group found it increasingly difficult to prove that they were not laborers because the 1882 act defined excludables as “skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining.” Thus very few Chinese could enter the country under the 1882 law.
The 1882 exclusion act also placed new requirements on Chinese who had already entered the country. If they left the United States, they had to obtain certifications to re-enter. Congress, moreover, refused State and Federal courts the right to grant citizenship to Chinese resident aliens, although these courts could still deport them.
When the exclusion act expired in 1892, Congress extended it for 10 years in the form of the Geary Act. This extension, made permanent in 1902, added restrictions by requiring each Chinese resident to register and obtain a certificate of residence. Without a certificate, she or he faced deportation.
In Your Notes: What specific restrictions did the Chinese Exclusion Act place on Chinese immigrants?
The Geary Act regulated Chinese immigration until the 1920s. With increased postwar immigration, Congress adopted new means for regulation: quotas and requirements pertaining to national origin. By this time, anti-Chinese agitation had quieted. In 1943 Congress repealed all the exclusion acts, leaving a yearly limit of 105 Chinese and gave foreign-born Chinese the right to seek naturalization. The so-called national origin system, with various modifications, lasted until Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1965. Effective July 1, 1968, a limit of 170,000 immigrants from outside the Western Hemisphere could enter the United States, with a maximum of 20,000 from any one country. Skill and the need for political asylum determined admission. The Immigration Act of 1990 provided the most comprehensive change in legal immigration since 1965. The act established a “flexible” worldwide cap on family-based, employment-based, and diversity immigrant visas. The act further provides that visas for any single foreign state in these categories may not exceed 7 percent of the total available.
In Your Notes: What real concerns (not just racism) do politicians have that would cause them to limit immigration?
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The Text:
An Act to execute certain treaty stipulations relating to Chinese.
Whereas in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof: Therefore, Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That from and after the expiration of ninety days next after the passage of this act, and until the expiration of ten years next after the passage of this act, the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States be, and the same is hereby, suspended; and during such suspension it shall not be lawful for any Chinese laborer to come, or having so come after the expiration of said ninety days to remain within the United States.
SEC. 2. That the master of any vessel who shall knowingly bring within the United States on such vessel, and land or permit to be landed, any Chinese laborer, from any foreign port or place, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine of not more than five hundred dollars for each and every such Chinese laborer so brought, and maybe also imprisoned for a term not exceeding one year.
… SEC. 6. That in order to the faithful execution of articles one and two of the treaty in this act before mentioned, every Chinese person other than a laborer who may be entitled by said treaty and this act to come within the United States, and who shall be about to come to the United States, shall be identified as so entitled by the Chinese Government in each case, such identity to be evidenced by a certificate issued under the authority of said government, which certificate shall be in the English language or (if not in the English language) accompanied by a translation into English, stating such right to come, and which certificate shall state the name, title or official rank, if any, the age, height, and all physical peculiarities, former and present occupation or profession, and place of residence in China of the person to whom the certificate is issued and that such person is entitled, conformably to the treaty in this act mentioned to come within the United States. Such certifi- cate shall be prima-facie evidence of the fact set forth therein, and shall be produced to the collector of customs, or his deputy, of the port in the district in the United States at which the person named therein shall arrive.
SEC.7. That any person who shall knowingly and falsely alter or substitute any name for the name written in such certificate or forge any such certificate, or knowingly utter any forged or fraudulent certificate, or falsely personate any person named in any such certificate, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor; and upon conviction thereof shall be fined in a sum not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisoned in a penitentiary for a term of not more than five years.
SEC.8. That the master of any vessel arriving in the United States from any foreign port or place shall, at the same time he delivers a manifest of the cargo, and if there be no cargo, then at the time of making a report of the entry of the vessel pursuant to law, in addition to the other matter required to be reported, and before landing, or permitting to land, any Chinese passengers, deliver and report to the collector of customs of the district in which such vessels shall have arrived a separate list of all Chinese passengers taken on board his vessel at any foreign port or place, and all such passengers on board the vessel at that time. Such list shall show the names of such passengers (and if accredited officers of the Chinese Government traveling on the business of that government, or their servants, with a note of such facts), and the names and other particulars, as shown by their respective certificates; and such list shall be sworn to by the master in the manner required by law in relation to the manifest of the cargo. Any willful refusal or neglect of any such master to comply with the provisions of this section shall incur the same penalties and forfeiture as are provided for a refusal or neglect to report and deliver a manifest of the cargo.
SEC. 9. That before any Chinese passengers are landed from any such line vessel, the collector, or his deputy, shall proceed to examine such passenger, comparing the certificate with the list and with the passengers; and no passenger shall be allowed to land in the United States from such vessel in violation of law.
SEC.10. That every vessel whose master shall knowingly violate any of the provisions of this act shall be deemed forfeited to the United States, and shall be liable to seizure and condemnation in any district of the United States into which such vessel may enter or in which she may be found.
In Your Notes: Finding illegal Chinese immigrants would be challenging (then as it is now). What is one way the government sought to enforce their ban?
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SEC. 11. That any person who shall knowingly bring into or cause to be brought into the United States by land, or who shall knowingly aid or abet the same, or aid or abet the landing in the United States from any vessel of any Chinese person not lawfully entitled to enter the United States, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall, on conviction thereof, be fined in a sum not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisoned for a term not exceeding one year.
SEC. 12. That no Chinese person shall be permitted to enter the United States by land without producing to the proper officer of customs the certificate in this act required of Chinese persons seeking to land from a vessel. And any Chinese person found unlawfully within the United States shall be caused to be removed therefrom to the country from whence he came, by direction of the President of the United States, and at the cost of the United States, after being brought before some justice, judge, or commissioner of a court of the United States and found to be one not lawfully entitled to be or remain in the United States.
SEC.13. That this act shall not apply to diplomatic and other officers of the Chinese Government traveling upon the business of that government, whose credentials shall be taken as equivalent to the certificate in this act mentioned, and shall exempt them and their body and household servants from the provisions of this act as to other Chinese persons.
SEC. 14. That hereafter no State court or court of the United States shall admit Chinese to citizenship; and all laws in conflict with this act are hereby repealed.
In Your Notes: This was a huge blow to Chinese immigrants already in the United States. What are some benefits of being a US citizen that were denied as a result of this act?
SEC.15. That the words "Chinese laborers", wherever used in this act shall be construed to mean both skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining.
Donald Trump’s nativist bandwagon
August 23, 2015 - Fred Hiatt, The Washington Post
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When we lived in Moscow, people used to ask my wife and me, “Who are you by nationality?”
“Americans,” we’d say.
Invariably the response would come: “Yes, but who are you really?”
Russia, you see, is a kind of melting pot, like the United States, but ethnicities don’t melt in quite the same way. People consider each other first as Armenians, or Tatars, or Jews (yes, “Jewish” is deemed a nationality), and only second as Russian citizens.
That is the kind of thinking that Donald Trump, and the Republican presidential candidates who are pathetically jumping on his nativist bandwagon, would bring to this country.
Trump would abolish birthright citizenship: the principle, embedded in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, that anyone born in the United States is an American, no matter the legal status of his or her parents. Sen. Ted Cruz promptly claimed he’d always opposed birthright citizenship, too, a claim the Houston Chronicle quickly disproved. Bobby Jindal and Ben Carson joined in, as did Scott Walker, though he didn’t seem entirely sure. Jeb Bush stayed admirably aloof from the mob.
In Your Notes: What concerns do people have who would support an end to birthright citizenship?
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Other conservatives pushed back, but often half-heartedly, arguing that the law would be too hard to change, or that it shouldn’t be the focus of anti-immigration sentiment because it isn’t the biggest problem.
But that’s wrong, too. Birthright citizenship isn’t a problem at all. It’s one of the things that makes America great.
For many countries, what is in your blood, or your DNA, defines whether you can belong. I was shocked that people who had been born in Japan, and in some cases whose parents had been born in Japan, were not Japanese citizens, though they knew no other country. The fact that their ancestors had come (or been brought) from Korea disqualified them from automatic citizenship at birth.
Americans, by contrast, are bound together by a civic ideal.
“Birthright citizenship is much more about us, a nation formed and held together by civic values, than it is about immigrants themselves and an incentive or disincentive to come here legally or illegally,” says Doris Meissner, who ran the U.S. immigration agency under President Clinton and is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.
“What’s the belief system, the social cohesion that binds us?” she continues. “A commitment to democracy, participation, equal rights, opportunity, due process, government by the people — people have to be full members of the society for that to be real and flourish.”
In Your Notes: What does the author believe is the real difference between the United States and many other nations?
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Of course most Americans take pride in their ethnic heritage, whether Irish, Ghanaian, Korean or, often, some distinct blend. And often they have paid a price for that heritage. Throughout history, Americans have been discriminated against for their Irish, Ghanaian or Korean ancestry; many earlier incarnations of Donald Trump have whipped up and sought to benefit from such hatefulness.
But eventually each prejudice has been worn down, if not erased, by this shared notion of American-ness, the conviction that citizenship trumps tribe, that any infant born here is as entitled — and as likely — to grow up to be president as any other infant.
Abolishing birthright citizenship would vastly expand and extend what Trump claims is the underlying problem: the presence of so many residents without legal right to be here. His proposal to deport the 11 million is, as he himself said a couple of years ago, an unworkable fantasy. That’s why most Americans support providing some path to citizenship.
But even without such a path, the problem would fix itself eventually. The children of the undocumented will be citizens, and they will grow up — as children of immigrants, legal and illegal, generally have — to better their lot, sometimes to prosper, almost always to contribute.
In Your Notes: A large group of young people, who were brought to America when they were very young by there parents and are illegal immigrants are known at the “Dreamers.” Do a quick internet search. What do they want?
If, on the other hand, American-born children were denied citizenship, the number of people illegally here would swell. By 2050, according to a study a few years ago by the Migration Policy Institute, nearly 5 million people who had been born here would have no legal claim to remain — or, if having even one undocumented parent was deemed disqualifying, as many as 13 million.
“With all the problems illegal immigration presents, at least it’s a one-generation phenomenon. It self-corrects with the next generation born here,” Meissner told me. “A permanent underclass where disadvantage is transferred generationally is a terrible counter-force.”
After all, why do people around the world want to come to the United States ? In large part it’s because this has always been a place that welcomed risk-takers, profited from their gumption and allowed them — and their children — to answer, when asked their nationality: “American. Really.”
I don’t think Americans will allow a demagogue or his mini-me’s to take that away.
In Your Notes: You can tell by the title I chose for this reading that I believe both the Chinese Exclusion Act and Trump’s proposals to be reprehensible and counter to the American spirit. Do you think this sort of anti-immigrant sentiment is inevitable in American society? (Please explain)
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