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The Ties Allowed to Bind: Kinship Legalities and Migration Restriction in the Interwar Americas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2013

Lara Putnam
Lara Putnam*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
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Abstract

New immigration restrictions in the United States and elsewhere in the 1920s and 1930s made legal entry dependent on specific kinship formalities. This article explores the impact of the new system through a study of British Caribbean migrants. Because family patterns and the place of church and state sanction within them varied greatly by class—here, as in many parts of the world—the result was a curtailment of mobility that affected elites very little, and working-class would-be migrants enormously. In order to elucidate de facto patterns of exclusion, the author concludes, historians of transnational labor must begin paying more attention to the work “family” does.

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Articles
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 83: Strikes and Social Conflicts , Spring 2013 , pp. 191 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2013 

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References

NOTES

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9. Olcott, Jocelyn, “Introduction: Researching and Rethinking the Labors of Love,” Hispanic American Historical Review 91 (2011): 1–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As the rich bibliography Olcott cites makes clear, there has been important work done on these issues by self-described labor historians as well as by sociologists, anthropologists, feminist theorists, and others.

10. Foerster, Robert F., “The Racial Problems Involved in Immigration from Latin America and the West Indies to the United States,” in Hearings of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, House of Representatives, March 3, 1925 (Washington, DC, 1925)Google Scholar, 334. See Putnam, Lara, “Undone by Desire: Migration, Sex across Boundaries, and Collective Destinies in the Greater Caribbean, 1840–1940,” in Hoerder, Dirk and Gabaccia, Donna, eds., Connecting Seas and Connected Ocean Rims: Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans and China Seas Migrations from the 1830s to the 1930s (Leiden, 2011)Google Scholar.

11. Harry Laughlin, “The Codification and Analysis of the Immigration-Control Law of Each of the Several Countries of Pan America, as Expressed by their National Constitutions, Statute Laws, International Treaties, and Administrative Regulations, as of January 1, 1936,” mimeo, Eugenics Record Office, Carnegie Institution of Washington, October 1936, 120.

12. Jamaica National Archive, 1B/5/77/24: Emigration to USA (Individual Enquiries), 1928–1948: letter, July 24, 1928. Here and for all individuals encountered in consular correspondence, including those whose trajectories I then reconstructed through census sheets and passenger lists on Ancestry.com, I use a pseudonym.

13. Examples of the insights made possible by careful examination of how border control worked in practice include Ngai, Mae, “Braceros, ‘Wetbacks,’ and the National Boundaries of Class,” in Repositioning North American Migration History: New Directions in Modern Continental Migration, Citizenship, and Community, ed. Rodriguez, Marc S. (Rochester, N.Y., 2004), 206–64Google Scholar; Lee, Erika, At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943 (Chapel Hill, 2003)Google Scholar.

14. US Census 1920, New York, Manhattan Assembly District 21, District 1433, Sheet 14A. This and all other census sheets and passenger manifests cited below were consulted via Ancestry.com.

15. Petras, Elizabeth Maclean, Jamaican Labor Migration: White Capital and Black Labor, 1850–1930 (Boulder, 1988)Google Scholar; Richardson, Bonham, Panama Money in Barbados, 1900–1920 (Knoxville, 1985)Google Scholar; Putnam, Lara, Radical Moves: Caribbean Migrants and the Politics of Race in the Jazz Age (Chapel Hill, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Ch. 1.

16. Roberts, G.W., The Population of Jamaica (Cambridge, U.K., 1957), 135–36Google Scholar; Lobdell, Richard, “Women in the Jamaican labour force, 1881–1921,” Social and Economic Studies 37, nos. 1 and 2 (1988): 203–40Google Scholar.

17. Roberts, Population of Jamaica; Besson, Jean, Martha Brae's Two Histories: European Expansion and Caribbean Culture Building in Jamaica (Chapel Hill, 2002)Google Scholar; Putnam, Lara, The Company They Kept: Migrants and the Politics of Gender in Caribbean Costa Rica, 1870–1960 (Chapel Hill, 2002)Google Scholar. For an introduction to the vast literature on Caribbean kinship see Barrow, Christine, Family in the Caribbean: Themes and Perspectives (Kingston, 1996)Google Scholar.

18. U.S. Census 1920, New York, Manhattan Assembly District 21, District 1433, Sheet 14A.

19. The 1930 census found 87,748 persons born in the West Indies (not including Cuba, Puerto Rico, or the U.S. Virgin Islands, but including the other Spanish- and French-speaking islands) resident in the United States; 72,138 of them were classified as “Negro.” The same census found 61,295 West Indians (and 54,754 foreign-born “Negroes”) living in New York City. United States, Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930, vol. 2, Population (Washington, D.C., 1933), 231, 250, 70.

20. Domingo, W. A., “Tropics in New York,” The Survey Graphic Harlem Number vol. VI, no. 6 (March, 1925)Google Scholar.

21. Immigration entry forms from this era include a box for “whether in possession is $50, and if less, how much?” Circa 1918, Barbadians were routinely entering with fifteen dollars or twenty dollars and the promise of a waiting relative. See, e.g., List of Manifest of Alien Passengers for Immigration Officer at Port of Arrival, S.S. Curvello, Sept 16, 1918, List 5.

22. On the role of family networks in supporting migration from the British Caribbean in a slightly later era, see María Soto, Isa, “West Indian Child Fostering: Its Role in Migrant Exchanges,” Center for Migration Studies Special Issue: Caribbean Life in New York City: Sociocultural Dimensions, vol. 7, no. 1 (January 1989): 121–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chamberlain, Mary, Family Love in the Diaspora: Migration and the Anglo-Caribbean Experience (New Brunswick, N.J., 2006)Google Scholar; Olwig, Karen Fog, Caribbean Journeys: An Ethnography of Migration and Home in Three Family Networks (Durham, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23. U.S. Census 1920, New York, Manhattan Assembly District 21, District 1433, Sheet 14A. All of the migratory trajectories detailed here were reconstructed on the basis of birthplaces, entry years, and parentage listed on this sheet.

24. U.S. National Archive, RG 84, Consular Posts [henceforth, RG84] vol. 321: Correspondence, American Consulate, Kingston, Jamaica [henceforth, vol. 321]: Letter to consul, Kingston, Apr. 16, 1923.

25. RG84, vol. 321: Letter to consul, Kingston, Apr. 27, 1923

26. RG84, vol. 321: Letter to consul, Kingston, 1923. Note that the different surnames suggest Samuels and Waisome shared a mother but not father.

27. RG84, vol. 322: Correspondence, American Consulate, Kingston, Jamaica, 1923 Part 6 [henceforth, vol. 322]: Letter to consul, Kingston, Oct. 12 1923.

28. RG84, vol. 321: Letter from consul, Kingston to Commissioner of Immigration, New York, Apr. 1923.

29. RG84, vol. 321: Letter to consul, Kingston, n.d. [1923].

30. RG84, vol. 201: Correspondence, American Consulate, Barbados, 1923 [henceforth, vol. 201]: Letter to consul, Bridgetown, Feb. 19, 1923.

31. U.S. Census of 1930, New York, Brooklyn 10th Ward, Enumeration District 24–72, Sheet 2B; Passenger List, S.S. “Sylvia,” November 8, 1933, List B. Elton Griffith lived two blocks over and two blocks up: U.S. Census of 1930, New York, Brooklyn 10th Ward, Enumeration District 24–108, Sheet 15 A.

32. RG84, vol. 201: Letter to consul, Bridgetown, Mar. 6, 1923. It seems likely that Elton Griffith, of St. Vincent, to whom this response was directed in 1923, was the uncle with whom Fred Jr. was originally intended to travel.

33. See RG84, vol. 208: Correspondence, American Consulate, Barbados, 1925, Part 3 [henceforth, vol. 208]; RG84, vol. 209: Correspondence, American Consulate, Barbados, 1925, Part 5. In his 1923 letter Fred Griffith identified himself as a US citizen. But the 1930 census return labels him as having filed papers requesting naturalization but not yet finalized his citizenship. Until he did so, Fred Jr. would have been formally entitled to “preference status” on a wait list in practice so long as to be near irrelevant. Additionally, Fred and Edna seem by the 1930 census to have been married in 1922, two years after their son's birth in St. Vincent. Under the 1924 regulations U.S. citizen fathers could petition for non-quota status for ilegitimate children only if they had been retroactively legitimated. If Fred Sr.'s name was not listed on Fred Jr.'s birth certificate, as it should not have been if Edna was not married at the time, generating the documentation necessary to claim non-quota status for the boy would have been difficult in and of itself.

34. Ngai, Mae, “The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Re-Examination of the Immigration Act of 1924,” Journal of American History 89 (1999): 67–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. Putnam, Lara, “Unspoken Exclusions: Race, Nation, and Empire in the Immigration Restrictions of the 1920s in North America and the Greater Caribbean,” in Fink, ed., Workers Across the Americas; RG84, vol. 329Google Scholar: Correspondence, American Consulate, Kingston, Jamaica, 1924 Part 8; RG84, vol. 331: Correspondence, American Consulate, Kingston, Jamaica, 1924 Part 14; RG84, vol. 205: Correspondence, American Consulate, Barbados, 1924, Part 4 [henceforth, vol. 205].

36. “Today's News: Foreign,” in Kingston Daily Gleaner, Aug. 11, 1924, p. 10.

37. The proclamation was circulated to all U.S. diplomatic and consular officers: e.g., Circular from Department of State, July 1, 1924, in RG84, vol. 205.

38. Putnam, Radical Moves, 88–90.

39. W.A. Domingo, “Immigration Restriction in U.S.,” Kingston Daily Gleaner, November 24, 1924, 12; James, Winston, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America (New York, 1998), 355Google Scholar.

40. United States, Bureau of Immigration, Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration to the Secretary of Labor for the Fiscal Year ended June 30, 1925 (Washington, DC, 1925), 62, 151.

41. United States, Department of State, Admission of Aliens into the United States: Notes to Section 361 Consular Regulations (Washington, DC, 1932), 57, 58.

42. De Augustine Reid, Ira, The Negro Immigrant: His Background, Characteristics, and Social Adjustment, 1899–1937, orig. pub. 1939 (New York, 1969), 249Google Scholar.

43. Mothers or fathers of US citizens and “skilled agriculturalists” had first preference status and priority entitlement to fifty percent of the annual allocation of quota numbers to any given consulate. Spouses and children of resident aliens had secondary preference status, entitled in order of application to the remaining fifty percent and any of the first fifty percent left over after all first-preference applicants had been accommodated. See United States, Admission of Aliens, 96–100; RG84, vol. 205: Circular from Department of State, December 15, 1924.

44. RG84, vol. 352: Consular Post Kingston, Jamaica, 1926, Correspondence 811.11 Visas for Foreign Passports: Letter from Consul José Olivares to R. Black, New York, November 1926.

45. RG84, vol. 205: Correspondence by John Watson, US Consul, August–December 1924.

46. Jamaica National Archive, 1B/5/77/24: Emigration to USA (Individual Enquiries). See also Putnam, “Unspoken Exclusions.”

47. Immigration Act?

48. RG84, vol. 208: Letter to consul, Bridgetown, March 26, 1925.

49. See account of a similar trajectory in Marshall, Paule, Triangular Road: A Memoir (New York: 2009), 52–66Google Scholar.

50. Passenger List, S.S. Vasari, November 15, 1917, List 23.

51. US Census of 1920, New York, Borough of Manhattan, 19th Assembly Ward, Enumberation District 1345, Sheet 6B.

52. Passenger List, S.S. Denis, July 29, 1922, List 1.

53. Passenger List, S.S. Vestris, August 1, 1923, List 18. It is unclear whether this Fitz was the same person as Clarence Gittens, or whether Clarence was a different brother, or cousin. I have not been able to locate any separate arrival record for Clarence, but that gives little evidence either way.

54. Passenger List, S.S. Vauban, October 19, 1927 (her name is given here as Constance L. Hoyte, but her husband is Ernest Hoyte at 40 135th St.); Passenger List, S.S. Nerissa, August 13, 1934, List 10.

55. U.S. Census of 1930, New York, Borough of Manhattan, Enumeration District 31–932, Sheet 5B.

56. RG84, vol. 208: Letter from Vice Consul Perkins, Bridgetown, March 30, 1925.

57. RG84, vol. 208: Letter to consul, Bridgetown, May 4, 1925.

58. RG84, vol. 208: Letter to consul, Bridgetown, April 9, 1925.

59. See Putnam, Radical Moves, chapter 3.

60. Shah, Stranger Intimacy, 264.