“The Alien: Immigration from 1924-1965” Historiography Essay

Since the beginning of the establishment of the United States, migration has been a central matter of discussion in the country. In 1886, the United States government accepted the nation of France’s gift of the Statue of Liberty, placing the figure in New York Harbor alongside a poem of acceptance and hospitality. However, over the past one hundred and twenty eight years, the country’s stance on immigration has drastically shifted from one of open arms to one of walls. This significant transformation in attitude has made United States immigration into a widely studied academic field, but with this, the question of whether this shift has changed the way the topic is studied arises. Mae Ngai, Kelly Lyte Hernandez, and Natalia Molina, three prominent academics of immigration have thoroughly studied and theorized on the issue of immigration, specifically on the turbulent period from 1924 to 1965. Written over a ten-year period, all three books focus on different angles of the topic of immigration, however, the works still present core commonalities about the study of immigration.

Whilst looking at the topic of immigration, Impossible Subjects, a renowned book written by Mae Ngai, a professor of Asian American Studies and History at Columbia University, specifically focuses on the creation and identity of the illegal alien and its relation to the 20^th century immigration. Published in 2004, the book traces the origins of the illegal alien in both legal writings and social ideas, correspondingly mapping out the emergence of illegal immigration as an issue in the United States. Through her investigation, the author asserts that the formation of the illegal alien has prominently influenced the development of the ideas and practices of race and citizenship in America. Ngai begins her exploration of immigration in 1924, at the ratification of the Johnson-Reed Act. The law, placing restrictions on immigrant quantities and giving quotas for immigrants based on nationality, blatantly favored certain people over others based on their nationality and resulted in new emphasis on the country’s borders. These new restrictions, “…produced the illegal alien as a new legal and political subject, whose inclusion within the nation was simultaneously a social reality and a legal impossibility–a subject barred from citizenship and without rights.” (Ngai, 4) Through the newly enacted restrictions, a different identity emerged, one in which a person is fully part of society in their daily lives; however, they cannot formally become part of the nation. Ngai writes on how this contradiction resulted in undocumented immigrants becoming impossible subjects, individuals who are contradictory in their very being.

The move from society viewing a person as an immigrant to an alien intensified the American idea of race. While most immigrants were categorized by their nation for quotas, Europeans were grouped as white. This distinction converted, “…the cultural nationalism of the late nineteenth century…into a nationalism based on race.” (24) The idea of America shifted from a cultural image to being grounded in race. With the shift in immigration approach, through both the law and the practice of border patrol, race was even further seen as an identifier and a reason for exclusion. Furthermore, immigration moved from being a government administrative issue, to a criminal one. By entering the country illegally, the immigrants were automatically viewed as all around criminals. A Immigration and Naturalization Service officer states, that due to an illegal immigrant’s method of entering the United States, “‘it is easier and sometimes appears even more necessary for him to break other laws since he considers himself to be an outcast, even an outlaw.’” (149) The restrictive immigration laws, criminal prosecution, border patrol practices and force of deportations all, “raised the border,” assisting in creating the illegal alien and new ideas of race. (68) Ngai uses examples of Filipino, Mexican, and Japanese immigrant histories from a variety of sources such as legal documents, oral histories, and newspapers, to illustrate both the contradiction of the illegal alien and the exclusion placed on them.

Six years after the publication of Impossible Subjects, Kelly Lytle Hernandez published Migra! A History of U.S. Border Patrol, concentrating on the role of border patrol in United States immigration. Lytle Hernandez, an associate professor in the Department of History at University of Los Angeles, focuses on immigration; however, she attacks it from a different angle, one of the law enforcer in the borderlands. Additionally, she argues that the development of the United States border patrol has shaped the contemporary ideas of race in the country. Social and legal forces, such as, “…dynamics of Anglo-American nativism, the power of national security, the problems of sovereignty, and the labor-control interests of capitalist economic development in the American southwest,” all have influenced Mexican immigration into the United States as well as the expansion of the border patrol. (Lytle Hernandez, 2) Compared to Mae Ngai’s work, Lytle Hernandez concretizes her arguments, looking solely at the realistic, on-the-ground aspects of immigration. The author actually makes point to reference preceding scholars in the subject, such as Peter Andreas, Daniel Tichenor, Kity Calavita, and Mae Ngai herself. While those scholars focused on internal forces like nativism and national agribusiness in relation to immigration law, Lytle Hernandez complicates those relations by arguing the borderlands, and the border patrol’s behavior in that area as influential to immigration.

Looking at the occurrences in the borderlands, the author naturally examined the Mexican government’s role in migration towards the United States. The government played a large role in the harsh immigration conduct on the border, actually working with the United States government as well as the border patrol officers. With the rise of Mexican nationalism, the government desired to keep their labor force in Mexico. This wish pushed the Mexican government into collaborating with the United States to continue its restrictive immigration policies. Through examining the border patrol’s history, it is clear that instead of focusing equally on all illegal immigrants, the authorities enforced their duties predominantly on Mexican immigrants. By the early 1940s, “…Border Patrol work in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands was almost entirely dedicated to the project of policing unsanctioned Mexican immigration.” (101) This extremely biased behavior aided in creating an extremely disparate view of race in the United States. The exclusivity of policing Mexican immigrants resulted in the population associating criminality with people of Mexican decent. The bracero program and Operation Wetback of the 1950s further associated immigrants with criminal behavior. The two programs shifted the focus of the border patrol from merely immigration to border crimes, such as drug smuggling, human trafficking and prostitution. Border patrol, which had been linked with immigrants, now were connected to catching criminals. The fact of immigrants crossing the border and the increased amount of crime in the borderlands led to the association.

The issue, “…began as a local interpretation of federal immigration laws, but it evolved upon the cross-border foundation of U.S. and Mexican collaboration during the 1940s. By the late 1960s, it had taken root in national initiatives for crime control and drug interdiction along the U.S.-Mexican border.” (222) A single organization, the United States border patrol, both with their behavior in the borderlands and their partnership with the American and Mexican government, played a major role in shaping the 20^th century story of race throughout the entire nation. Lytle Hernandez echoes past scholarly work on the subject of immigration and the border patrol in her work, however, she moves past those works, looking at the issue from an on-the-ground perspective of immigration implementation instead of focusing solely on immigration at the legal level. The border patrol enforce the laws of the immigration system, a system which is, “…a deeply consequential system that manages, shapes, and participates in the inequitable distribution of rights, protections and benefits between citizens and immigrations and among the various immigrant-status groups within the United States.” (9) Working on behalf of an already corrupt system, the border patrol augments their influence on the nation’s ideas of race by allocating local understandings about race to the country as a whole.

How Race Is Made in America, written by associate professor of History and Urban Studies at University of California San Diego, Natalia Molina in 2013, directly looks at how the process of Mexican immigration into the United States affects race and citizenship. Though her central focus is the topic of race, Molina uses immigration as an explanation of how race came to be understood. The immigration system between 1924 and 1965 reshaped racial categories, thus influencing how the citizens of the United States view race. Molina argues the need to change the approach to discussing immigration and race, from a comparative approach to a relative approach. While a comparative treatment of races, “…compares and contrasts groups, treating them as independent of one another; a relational treatment recognizes that race is a mutually constitutive process and thus attends to how, when, where, and to what extent groups intersect.” (Molina, 4) The author looks to build on scholars such as Tomas Almaguer and Neil Foley who both present race as needing contextualization to be fully understood.

Molina’s central theory is the idea of racial scripts, a term emphasizing the linkage between races, and it’s application in the example of Mexican immigration. Racial scripts illustrate how, “Despite the passage of time and changes in social and cultural norms, what once served to marginalize and disenfranchise one group can be revived and recycled to marginalize other groups.” (7) She employs Asian and African American experiences to illustrate how those of Mexican descent were affected in relation to them. By, “…looking at how ethnic and national groups entered the racial lexicon of the United States during that same period, one begins to see the relationships in racial thinking and the interconnectedness of specific racial categories.” (6) Through the examples of interconnectedness of racial scripts, Molina brings to light obstacles of Mexicans in entering and integrating into the United States. Immigration laws are another force that have an affect on the ideas of race; “…laws [shape] daily practices, such as how people [think] about and [act] toward immigrants, and still effectively [impact] how and where immigrants fit into the nation.” (12) Like Lytle Hernandez’s Migra!: A History of U.S. Border Patrol, Molina also examines the impact of the immigration laws, processes, and actors on the general population’s impressions of race in the United States. Ultimately, Molina employs both examples of racial scripts as well as the immigration process to understand society’s predisposition to “…utilize historical experience and stereotypes of past groups to define and circumscribe the place and role of future members of U.S. society.” (16) These experiences and procedures have direct effect on how entire nations view race.

All three of the books aforementioned focus on a distinctly different angle of the topic of immigration. Impossible Subjects examines the identity produced through immigration laws and practices, while Migra!: A History of U.S. Border Patrol studies the development and patterns of the border patrol institution and the effects of them on a nationwide scale. Finally, How Race Is Made in America inspects racial experiences, specifically immigration experiences, to see the effect on how the citizens of the United States understand race. Though all are on different subjects, each speaks on common broader themes such as exclusion, and the development of racial ideas. There is a movement from studying broader context of immigration to an on-the-ground experience of immigration between Ngai’s Impossible Subjects and Lytle Hernandez’s Migra!: A History of Border Patrol. The significant role of the border patrol in immigration and ideas of race are mentioned in both of the first two books. There can be seen a new trend of contextualizing immigration and the immigrant experience. Migra!: A History of Border Patrol and How Race Is Made in America, written in 2010 and 2014 respectively, place significant emphasis on contextualizing Mexican immigrant histories with other races histories. Seen by the authors mentioning previous scholars and their works, it can be understood that the study of immigration has seen a continuous building of information and theory about it over the past half a century. Scholars are attacking the topic from diverse approaches, resulting in new considerations and comprehensions of the ideas central to United States immigration.

Immigration has vastly transformed over the past century in the United States, and as the history of immigration grows, the study of the topic matures as well. Scholars on immigration, citizenship, and race continue to find new methods and approaches to study the immigration field. There remains a core commonality in the study: immigration’s relation to race; however, scholars are compounding onto this central idea, bringing knowledge from other areas to develop the understanding of immigration as a whole.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

 

Hernandez, Kelly Lytle, Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Print.

 

Molina, Natalia, How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts. Berkeley: University of Calforina Press, 2014. Print.

 

Ngai, Mae M., Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2004. Print

“‘Under Western Eyes’ Revisited” Discussion Post

I found this reading to be an appropriate piece to end the our course on. Mohanty focuses much of the essay on the feminist solidarity or comparative feminist studies model which we saw roots of in This Bridge Called My Back last week. It also was pleasant to see the idea of intersectionality return from our very first class discussions and readings we had this semester. I liked how Mohanty expressed that merely looking at intersectionality still is not correct. Instead, a person had to look at both intersectionality and mutuality found in women across the globe. On another note, I was interested in the author’s discussion of the three different models of international feminist studies, however, as I was reading those sections I actually began to feel uncomfortable. While reading I realized I knew of courses described as “feminist-as-explorer” and “feminist-as-tourist” that are available at the Claremont Colleges. Even a place that we renown as enlightened and advanced has significant issues which need adjustment.

“The Need for Female Solidarity and the Deterring Oppression” Critical Essay

Throughout the anthology, This Bridge Called My Back, several of the female writers mention the need for solidarity between women in the struggle for justice. Popular culture pushes women to focus on differences between one another instead of unite as a powerful, cohesive front in society. Cherríe Moraga, along with other writers, calls for this practice to be changed. Rather than concentrating on how women are divided through experiences, females should use the differences to connect to each other and employ them, as a unified force, against the dominant culture. However, the oppression which women have been subjected to hinders this solidarity. The extensive oppression of women has resulted in women themselves internalizing their subjugation. In turn, the oppressed become the oppressors of their own kind. In order to overcome the internalization hindering women’s solidarity one must confront the issues and begin a dialogue with others, one that will bridge together women.

Unity can be seen as a major motif throughout the entirety of This Bridge Called My Back, however internalized oppression complicates the issue. Genny Lim in her poem, “Wonder Woman,” questions whether if there is a commonality between women, and if so, why women are not recognizing it. Lim ponders, “I look at them and wonder if/They are a part of me/I look in their eyes and wonder if/They share my dreams…Why must woman stand divided?/Building the walls that tear them down?” (Lim, 25-26) Instead of accepting one another, women harm each other like the rest of society does. Cherríe Moraga also discusses the need for the collectivity of all women. Moraga states, “The real power, as you and I well know, is collective. I can’t afford to be afraid of you, nor you of me…this polite timidity is killing us.” (Moraga, 34) Women have been trying to fight against oppression individually, when they should be assembling together to compound their power. However, the internalized oppression of women actually results in women contributing to the oppression of their own gender. With women taking the dual role of both the oppressed and the oppressor, they become afraid of discourse. Moraga discusses, “…each of us in some way has been both oppressed and the oppressor. We are afraid to look at how we have failed each other. We are afraid to see how we have taken the values of our oppressor into our hearts and turned them against ourselves and one another. We are afraid to admit how deeply ‘the man’s’ words have been ingrained in us.” (Moraga, 32) In addition to this fear of self-recognition, popular culture has taught women to observe differences and tolerate them, but not engage with them. This pressure, along with women’s fear, completely impedes beneficial discourse. Moraga argues, “…one voice is not enough, nor two, although this is where dialogue begins. It is essential that radical feminists confront their fear of and resistance to each other, because without this…we will not survive.” (Moraga, 34) A discussion needs to be started, which means women must face their discomfort. With a dialogue, differences between females can change from forces of separation to forces of strength. Audre Lorde expounds, “Only within that interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways to actively ‘be’ in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters…Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.” (Lorde, 99) Only through engagement of differences will women gain a common understanding. With a new understanding of differences, women would be able to work together as a cohesive unit to accomplish their goals.

The need for solidarity between women is extremely necessary in the fight against the dominant culture. However, internalized oppression along with institutional pressure against engaging with experiential differences impedes the solidarity effort. The writers of This Bridge Called My Back argue that women should confront their fear of self-awareness and fully engage with the differences, beginning dialogues with other women. These discourses between females would result in a new understanding of differences, giving women tools to employ when acting as a unified group in the struggle for justice.

“This Bridge Called My Back” Part 1 Discussion Post

A theme of internalization of oppression could be found throughout the excerpts of This Bridge Called My Back that we read for Tuesday’s class discussion. I most resonated with the example on page 32 looking at women as both the oppressed but also the oppressor.

“We women have a similar nightmare,for each of us in some way has been both oppressed and the oppressor. We are afraid to look at how we have failed each other. We are afraid to see how we have take the values of our oppressor into our hearts and turned them against ourselves and one another. We are afraid to admit how deeply ‘the man’s’ words have been ingrained in us.”

This passage reminds me of another idea I saw in the beginning of the reading, the idea of division between women. In Genny Lim’s “Wonder Woman,” I see there being an underlying question of if there is a basic unity between all women. Lim questions why women are divided, why they build “…walls that tear them [women] down?”

“Queer Aztlan” Discussion Post

I found this reading a wonderful continuation of the discussion started by Gloria Anzaldua in Borderlands which we finished on Tuesday. Moraga focuses on the intersection of the Chicano movement and gay and lesbian movements in the past half a century, then moving to speaking on indigenous groups and the idea of sovereignty. I enjoyed the entire reading, I thought it was an extremely captivating piece of literature. However, I think I liked the last half a bit more. I really enjoyed seeing her discuss lesbian women and gay men in the Chicano community and how there needs to be a edited movement or push for inclusion of those individuals. She then connects those ideas, placing them in a greater idea and desire for Chicanos/Chicanas as a whole. Fear and exclusion should end. The Chicano community needs to collectively come together to work towards sovereignty, both internal and territorial sovereignty.

“Borderlands” Chapter 5-7 Discussion Post

These last chapters might be my favorite in the entire book. It was fascinating to read about how Anzaldua views language as the same as her ethnic identity, without respect for her language there is no respect for her ethnicity. The culture of the United States is eradicating the Spanish language through the pressure to get rid of accents. I saw a continuation of the theme of duality in the discussion of language. English versus Spanish is a major issue which borderland citizens have to face. This duality is solved for those people through the introduction of Chicano Spanish. Throughout this last section of the book I noticed the idea that the borderland and its people are a created third space. A space made through the relationship of being both Anglo and Mexican (through the inclusion of certain aspects of both cultures), but also neither Anglo or Mexican (because the Chicano culture is not completely the same as either of those cultures). The Chicanos found in the borderlands have a malleability due to their unique identity and relationship to the two nations surrounding them.

“Borderlands” Chapter 4 Discussion Post

I found it hard to fully understand the major idea in this chapter: the state of Coatlicue. From what I can extract from chapter 4, Coatlicue is a state of consciousness which helps draw a person out of a monotonous condition where they hide from harsh reality. People do this by turning to habitual routines, Anzaldua terms them addictions. The author introduced more serpent imagery and I could not completely follow how it related to the core theme. I feel that the idea of Coatilcue is much more complex, however, I cannot grasp the full meaning.

“Borderlands” Chapter 1-3 Discussion Post

Reading chapters one through three of Borderlands, I was amazed at how captivating Anzaldua’s writing style was and how engaged I was throughout the entire first section of the book. Anzaldua has a way of writing that kept me interested because it used descriptive language as well as focused on personal experiences, but it also continued to interweave major points of theory into the writing. I found the idea of the complexity of the United States/Mexico relationship to be particularly fascinating. A sentence on page 32 resonated with me, “The infusion of the values of the white culture, coupled with the exploitation by that culture, is changing the Mexican way of life.” There are dueling forces at work. White culture has a direct effect on borderlands however the United States clearly oppresses and mistreats the Mexican people. How does that/will that effect current and future generations of Mexican decedents who inhabit the borderlands?

“Vendida Logic in the Chicana Movement” Critical Essay

In Maylei Blackwell’s work, ¡Chicana Power!, vendida logic is given as a major setback for the Chicana feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Used by males with the desire to suppress the feminist cause, vendida logic was established by Blackwell as an issue in the history of the Chicana feminist. Effects of vendida logic could be found even at the level of personal histories of former feminist activists. However, vendida logic also played a much more distinct role in damaging the Chicana feminist cause: Chicanas themselves using the logic on each other. With the prevalence of vendida logic, it slipped into the feminist activists mindset, resulting in them using it against each other and disintegrating the 1971 Conferencia de Mujeres por la Raza, and the activists’ hope for national organization.

Blackwell described the idea of vendida logic into four major types of reasoning against the feminist cause. When considering la Conferencia de Mujeres por la Raza, the majority of the variations of the logic can be found in the behavior of actual members of the conference. Individuals who employed vendida logic either focused on, “…(1) race (feminists were agringadas, or race traitors); (2) ideological purity (feminists were sellouts dividing the movement from the primary struggle that they, as members of the movement, did not have the right to shape and articulate); (3) sexual (feminists were sexual deviants or lesbians); [or] (4) culturalist (feminists were inauthentic/outside of/antagonistic to Chicano culture.” (Blackwell, 31) These ways of rejecting feminism, used in such an insidious and frequent manner, became engrained in feminist activist thoughts. Their constant need to dispute against the vendida logic placed on them actually resulted in suggesting that there were some women in the Chicano movement who did conform to the vendida logic arguments. Both the rooting of vendida logic in Chicana activists and the unintended result of growing suspicion of activists pushed Chicana women into using vendida logic themselves inside the feminist activist group, “…shap[ing] the political terrain for years to come…[by] disrupt[ing] the sense of a collective identity and political agenda.” (162) Vendida logic played a significant role in dismantling la Conferencia de Mujeres por la Raza in 1971, which in turn shifted the Chicana political community nationwide. In complaints about the conference leading up to the walkout, roots of vendida logic can be seen. Individuals wanting to protest the convention stated, “‘that Chicanas had no business holding the conference at the YWCA because it was run by gavachas.’” (176) This statement suggests the racial tension found in the vendida arguments. By Chicana activists cooperating with the YWCA and thus white women, some Chicanas saw them as collaborating with the movement’s enemy. Further reiterating this point, the discontented activists explain how the movement’s, “‘…enemy is not with the macho but with the gavacho.’” By stating this, the critics are invalidating the feminist movement. While the statement continues to demonstrate the racial junction of vendida logic, it also shows parts of the ideological facet of vendida logic. The assertion that the true enemy of the Chicano movement rests in the white race, not the Chicano men, stresses that the feminist activists are influencing female movement members into focusing on the wrong issues and the wrong adversary. Many women also criticized other female activists during the conference because they saw them as inauthentic to the Chicano culture, directly relating to the culturalist portion of vendida logic. When needing food for the conference goers, the community contributed hot dogs, however activists criticized this choice of food as not Chicano enough. While unhappy Chicana women voiced their complaints at the conference, there was a general theme of a lack of authentic culture at the conference. One woman, looking back on the events before the walkout states, “‘We had hot dogs; they wanted rice and beans. Bertha [the activist from Magnolia neighborhood who was speaking on stage when the walkout organizers took the mic] wasn’t Chicana enough; we weren’t Chicana enough. They were barrio people, they wanted barrio issues. They wanted you to know they were gung-ho on Chicano things and we weren’t Chicano enough.’” (181) The walkout supporters understood the conference and individuals at the conference to be lacking true Chicana culture. The criticisms stated and subsequent walkout categorized some activists as not Chicana enough, while also seemingly elevating the supporters of walkout for being the true Chicana women.

Men employed vendida logic to restrain the Chicana feminist movement and causes; and due to pervasiveness of the vendida arguments the feminist activists actually internalized vendida logic though time. Actions made at la Conferencia de Mujeres por la Raza demonstrated how Chicana feminists actually took a criticism on themselves and used it against one another. Racial, cultural and ideological vendida logic roots can be seen throughout the criticisms of the conference and its patrons. Vendida logic, first used as a tool to oppose the feminist cause, slowly moved into Chicana feminist activists mentalities, transforming into a mechanism in which the Chicana feminists could actually bring their own movement down by using it. Roots of vendida logic seen in the 1971 conference significantly altered the Chicana feminist movement, obstructing the crusade from reaching a greater level of understanding and constructing a national organization of Chicana feminists.

“Chicana Power!” Chapter 4-6 Discussion Post

In the final portion of Chicana Power!, I was caught by the lack of consensus and unity between the regional groups of the Chicana movement. The groups’ attempt for a national network to support the movement actually resulted in the reveal of core divisions between groups. The conference in Houston uncovered regional discord as well as differences in ideas central to the cause. On top of these conflicts, a portion of women attending the conference executed a walk-out which permanently hurt the Chicana movement. I wonder whether the damage toward the national movement would have been as great if the walk-out had not occurred? Also, in the previous chapter, Blackwell spoke about how print culture gave organizations the ability to learn other groups’ views. Did the widespread literature not illustrate the different views of groups on key issues?