Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T17:05:42.978Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

America First, Immigrants Last: American Xenophobia Then and Now

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2019

Erika Lee
Erika Lee*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Global mass migration was one of the most defining features of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. But so was intense xenophobia. This article offers a new definition of xenophobia and examines how xenophobia helped to drive some of the most defining features of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, including progressive reform, white supremacy, the expanded capacity and power of the nation-state, and the growth of U.S. global power and influence. It draws a connection to contemporary America, where, under the Trump administration, xenophobia is transforming a wide range of public policies, legitimizing racism and white supremacy, and impacting U.S. foreign relations.

Keywords

migrationGilded AgeProgressive EraxenophobiaracenativismTrumpwhite supremacy
Type
SHGAPE Address
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 3 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “2016 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics” (https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2016/table1, accessed Sept. 19, 2019); “Number of Immigrants and Their Share of the Total U.S. Population, 1850–2017” (chart), Migration Policy Institute (https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/immigrant-population-over-time?width=1000&height=850&iframe=true, accessed Sept. 19, 2019).

2 Cannato, Vincent J., American Passage: The History of Ellis Island (New York: Harper, 2009), 13Google Scholar.

3 Higham's full definition of “nativism” was an “intense opposition to an internal minority on the ground of its foreign (i.e., “un-American”) connections.” Higham, John, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925, 2nd ed., (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1963), 4Google Scholar.

4 Higham, , Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925, rev. ed., (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 337Google Scholar.

5 Daniels, Roger, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (New York: Harper Collins, 1990), 338Google Scholar.

6 Chin, Gabriel J., “The Civil Rights Revolution Comes to Immigration Law: A New Look at the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965,” North Carolina Law Review (University of North Carolina School of Law) 75:1 (November 1, 1996): 274Google Scholar.

7 Glazer, Nathan, “The Emergence of an American Ethnic Pattern,” in From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America, ed. Takaki, Ronald (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 13Google Scholar; Luibheid, Eithne, “The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act: An ‘End’ to Exclusion?,” positions 5:2 (1997): 502CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Higham, John, “Instead of a Sequel, or How I Lost My Subject,” Reviews in American History 28:2 (2000): 327–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Higham, Strangers in the Land, 340–41, 344.

10 Some recent and helpful scholarly definitions of xenophobia include Fernandez, Lilia, “Nativism and Xenophobia,” in The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, ed. Ness, Immanuel (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013)Google Scholar; Hervik, Peter, “Xenophobia and Nativism,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd ed., ed. Wright, James D. (Oxford: Elsevier, 2015), 796–801CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, Paul R., “Xenophobia,” in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, ed. Ritzer, George (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), 5, 299–300Google Scholar; Yakushko, Oksana, “Xenophobia: Understanding the Roots and Consequences of Negative Attitudes Toward Immigrants,” The Counseling Psychologist 37:1 (2009): 36–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Achiume, Tendayi, “Beyond Prejudice: Structural Xenophobic Discrimination Against Refugees,” Georgetown Journal of International Law 45: 3 (2014): 325Google Scholar.

11 Achiume, “Beyond Prejudice,” 331.

12 The work of scholars of settler colonialism has been most helpful in my reconceptualization of nativism. See, for example, Wolfe, Patrick, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8:4 (2006): 387–409CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kauanui, J. Kēhaulani, “‘A Structure, Not an Event’: Settler Colonialism and Enduring Indigeneity,” Lateral 5:1 (2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Volpp, Leti, “The Indigenous as Alien,” UC Irvine Law Review 5:289 (2015): 324Google Scholar; Veracini, Lorenzo, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010): 16–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 I draw from the United Nations definition of xenophobia and its impact. See Jean Pierre Misago, Iriann Freemantle, and Loren B. Landau, “Protection from Xenophobia: An Evaluation of UNHCR's Regional Office for Southern Africa's Xenophobia Related Programmes,” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 2015, 10 (http://www.unhcr.org/research/evalreports/55cb153f9/protection-xenophobia-evaluation-unhcrs-regional-office-southern-africas.html, accessed Sept. 19, 2019).

14 Grant, Madison, The Passing of the Great Race or The Racial Basis of European History, 4th revised ed., (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921), xxixGoogle Scholar.

15 Henry Fairchild Osborne, “Introduction to the Fourth Revised Edition,” The Passing of the Great Race, xxviii–ix.

16 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, 20, 298.

17 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, 229, 20–21.

18 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, xxviii, 32.

19 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, 91; Osborne, Preface to Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, ix, 92.

20 Strong, Josiah, Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (New York: The Baker & Taylor Co., 1885)Google Scholar.

21 Immigration Restriction League, “The Present Aspect of the Immigration Problem,” Boston, 1894, Immigration Restriction League Records, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

22 U.S. Immigration Commission, 61st Cong., Sess. III, “Dictionary of Races or Peoples,” no. 602, Congressional Record, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1911; Gjelten, Tom, A Nation of Nations: A Great Immigration Story (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 85Google Scholar; Benton-Cohen, Katherine, Inventing the Immigration Problem: The Dillingham Commission and Its Legacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 1, 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; U.S. Immigration Commission, 61st Cong., Sess. III, “Reports of the Immigration Commission,” vol. 1, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1911, 45–48; Spickard, Paul, Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity (New York: Routledge, 2007), 278Google Scholar.

23 Spiro, Jonathan, Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant (Burlington: University of Vermont Press, 2008), 163–67Google Scholar.

24 Immigration Act of 1917, 64th Cong., Sess. II, Pub. L., No. 301, 39 Stat. 874 (Feb. 5, 1917).

25 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, xxviii.

26 Ibid.

27 Immigration Act of 1924, 68th Cong., Sess. I, Pub. L., No. 68–139, 43 Stat. 153 (May 26, 1924); Hernández, Kelly Lytle, Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 33–35Google Scholar.

28 Zolberg, Aristide, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Hirota, Hidetaka, Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, 47th Cong., Sess. I, Chap. 126, 22 Stat. 58 (May 6, 1882); Chae Chan Ping v. United States, 130 U.S. 581 (May 13, 1889).

30 An Act to Regulate Immigration, 47th Cong., Sess. I, Chap. 376, 22 Stat. 214 (August 3, 1882); 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, 47th Cong., Sess. I, Chap. 126, 22 Stat. 58 (May 6, 1882).

31 Prior to the passage of the 1875 Page Law (43rd Cong., Sess. II, Chap. 141, 18 Stat. 477, Mar. 3, 1875) and the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, there was neither a trained force of government officials and interpreters nor the bureaucratic machinery with which to enforce U.S. immigration policy. The Immigration Act of 1891 (51st Cong., Sess. II, Chap. 551, 26 Stat. 1084, Mar. 3, 1891) established the Superintendent of Immigration. As George Anthony Peffer has illustrated, enforcement of the Page Law first established the role of the U.S. collector of customs as examiner of Chinese female passengers and their documents, an important prototype for immigration legislation and inspection. The Page Law was also enforced by U.S. consuls in Hong Kong. Peffer, George Anthony, If They Don't Bring Their Women Here: Chinese Female Immigration Before Exclusion (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 58–59Google Scholar; Wen-hsien Chen, “Chinese Immigration Under Both Exclusion and Immigration Laws” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1940), 91. Sections 4 and 8 of the Chinese Exclusion Act extended the duties of these officials to include the examination of all arriving Chinese. Inspectors were also required to examine and clear Chinese laborers departing the United States. The Bureau of Immigration was established in an 1894 amendment of the Chinese Exclusion Act (53rd Cong., Sess. II, Chap. 301, 28 Stat. 390, Aug. 18, 1894).

32 The Immigration Act of 1924, 68th Cong., Sess. I, Pub. L., No. 68–139, 43 Stat. 153 (May 26, 1924).

33 1892 Geary Act, 52nd Cong., Sess. I, Chap. 60, Sec. 7, 27 Stat. 25 (May 5, 1892); McCreary Amendment, 53rd Cong., Sess. I, Sec. 2, 28 Stat. 7 (Nov. 3, 1893).

34 The use of “immigrant identification cards” was first initiated under U.S. consular regulations on July 1, 1928. “Alien registration receipt cards,” commonly known as “green cards,” were the product of the Alien Registration Act of 1940, commonly known as the Smith Act (76th Cong., Sess. III., Chap. 439, 54 Stat. 670, June 29, 1940) and the corresponding INS Alien Registration Program.

35 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, 47th Cong., Sess. I, Chap. 126, Sec. 12, 22 Stat. 58 (May 6, 1882).

36 Hirota, Expelling the Poor, 180–83, 191–92.

37 Hirota, Expelling the Poor, 201.

38 Lee, Erika, “Hemispheric Orientalism and the 1907 Race Riots on the Pacific Coast,” Amerasia Journal 33:2 (2007): 19–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lee, Erika, “The ‘Yellow Peril’ in the United States and Peru: A Transnational History of Japanese Exclusion, 1920s–World War Two,” in Transnational Crossroads: Remapping the Americas and the Pacific, eds. Fojas, Camilla and Guevera, Rudy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 315–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 FitzGerald, David Scott and Cook-Martín, David, Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Zolberg, Aristide, “The Great Wall Against China: Responses to the First Immigration Crisis, 1885–1925,” in Migration, Migration History, History: Old Paradigms and New Perspectives, eds. Lucassen, Jan and Lucassen, Leo (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), 291–316Google Scholar; Lee, Erika, The Making of Asian America: A History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 103–8Google Scholar.

41 Hahamovitch, Cindy, No Man's Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 13–14Google Scholar.

42 McKeown, Adam, Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 13Google Scholar; FitzGerald and Cook-Martín, Culling the Masses, 25; Atkinson, David C., “The International Consequences of American National Origins Quotas: The Australian Case,” Journal of American Studies 50:2 (May 2016): 377–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Whitman, James Q., Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 14Google Scholar.

43 Whitman, Hitler's American Model, 8.

44 Whitman, Hitler's American Model, 12.

45 Whitman, Hitler's American Model, 46–47.

46 Lee, Erika, America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia, (New York: Basic Books, 2019), 13, 225, 233–43Google Scholar.

47 Clay Boggs, “Mexico's Southern Border Plan: More Deportations and Widespread Human Rights Violations,” WOLA (Advocacy for Human Rights in the Americas), Mar. 19, 2015 (www.wola.org/analysis/mexicos-southern-border-plan-more-deportations-and-widespread-human-rights-violations, accessed Sept. 19, 2019); Feldmann, Andreas E. and Olea, Helena, “New Formulas, Old Sins: Human Rights Abuses Against Migrant Workers, Asylum Seekers, and Refugees in the Americas,” in Human Rights from the Margins: Critical Interventions, ed. Gordon, N. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 129–49Google Scholar.

48 Seung Min Kim, “Trump Floats Idea of Sending Military to Guard U.S.-Mexico Border but Offers No Details,” Washington Post, Apr. 4, 2018 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-threatens-foreign-aid-to-honduras-as-he-continues-focus-on-caravan-of-migrants/2018/04/03/bdd9ac92-3735-11e8-b57c-9445cc4dfa5e_story.html?utm_term=.61a32241d75a, accessed Sept. 19, 2019); Phil Levy, “Five Negative Implications of President Trump's Mexican Trade War,” Forbes.com, May 31, 2019 (https://www.forbes.com/sites/phillevy/2019/05/31/five-implications-of-president-trumps-mexican-trade-war/#756f351e2fa3, accessed Sept. 19, 2019); Muzaffar Chishti and Jessica Bolter, “Remain in Mexico Plan Echoes Earlier U.S. Policy to Deter Haitian Migration,” Migration Policy Institute Policy Beat, Mar. 28, 2019 (www.migrationpolicy.org/article/remain-mexico-plan-echoes-earlier-us-policy-deter-haitian-migration, accessed Sept. 19, 2019).

49 “Fact Check: Trump's State of the Union Address,” NPR, Jan. 30, 2018 (www.npr.org/2018/01/30/580378279/trumps-state-of-the-union-address-annotated, accessed Sept. 19, 2019).

50 Josh Dawsey, “Trump Derides Protections for Immigrants from ‘Shithole’ Countries,” Washington Post, Jan. 12, 2018 (www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-attacks-protections-for-immigrants-from-shithole-countries-in-oval-office-meeting/2018/01/11/bfc0725c-f711-11e7-91af-31ac729add94_story.html, accessed Sept. 19, 2019); “Fact Check: Trump's State of the Union Address.”

51 George Frisbie Hoar, speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Feb. 28, 1882, reprinted in Whitman, C.M., American Orators and Oratory: Comprising Biographical Sketches of the Representative Men of America, Together with Gems of Eloquence Upon Leading Questions that Have Occupied Public Attention, from the Foundation of the Republic to the Present Time (Chicago: Fairbanks, Palmer & Co., 1883), 988–89Google Scholar.

52 Goodwin, Doris Kearns, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 102Google Scholar.