Immigration and American Identity

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• Immigration and American Identity

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America as a Nation of Immigrants

• Give me your tired, your poor Your huddled masses
  yearning to breathe free,
• The wretched refuse of your teaming shore
• Send these, the homeless, the tempest tossed to
  me
• I lift my lamp beside the golden door
• Emma Lazarus

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Welcoming the Uprooted

• Land of Freedom politics
• Melting Pot culture
• Upward Mobility economics
• Immigration as modernization process
  tradition-bound peasants changed to modern
  capitalistic individuals

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Reevaluating Immigration

• Economic Opportunity vs. Stratification
• Political Freedom vs. Discrimination
• Cultural Assimilation vs. Diversity
• Individual vs. strong family, kinship, community
  networks

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Who are the immigrants?

• 24 million from 1860 1920
• Old Immigrants
• Pre 1880s, 85 from Western and Northern Europe
• New Immigrants
• Post- 1880 80 from Eastern Southern Europe
• More New Immigrants
• Approximately 1 million immigrants from Asia
  1850-1934
• Approximately 1 million from Latin America mostly
  after 1910
• Vietnamese post 1973
• Mexican and Latin America today

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Why did they immigrate?PUSH factors

• Economic motivation
• Global expansion of capitalism
• The capitalist form of production, under which
  goods are produced for sale in order to make the
  largest profit possible and workers receive wages
  for selling their labor Sucheng Chan
• Disruption of agricultural economy
• After 1850, the spread of industrialization and
  commercialized agriculture led to further
  declines in the number of landholdings that could
  support families quoted from The Transplanted by
  John Bodnar

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Political Unrest and Persecution

• Pogroms organized killing eg. (Russia Eastern
  Europe)
• Jewish family migration settlement
• Only 3 ever returned to Europe
• 1.4 million in NYCs Lower East Side by 1915
• Mexican Revolution 1910-11
• 1900 1930 Mexican American population in the
  Southwest grew from 375,000 to 1,160,000

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Family Decision

• Male migratory wage-earners i.e. go to America
  work and send money home
• Only 50 return to home country
• Wild Geese Irish
• Chain Migration
• Extended kinship network one comes to American
  and earns the money necessary to send for the
  remaining family members
• Family reunification
• Esp. women

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Pull FactorsLooking for Streets of Gold

• America was in everybodys mouth. Businessmen
  talked of it over their accounts the market
  women made up their quarrels that they might
  discuss it from stall to stall people who had
  relatives in the famous land went around reading
  their letters for the enlightenment of less
  fortunate folks all talked of it, but scarcely
  anybody knew one true fact about this magic
  land.
• Mary Antin Russian Immigrant
• Heroes were sitting right there in the room and
  telling what creatures they met on the road, what
  customs the non-Chinese followNuggets cobbled
  the streets in California, the loose stones to be
  had for the stopping over and picking them up In
  their hunger the men forgot that the gold streets
  had not been there when they'd gone to look for
  themselves.
• From Chinamen by Maxine Hong Kingston

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Two Theories Melting Pot Theory

• Learn to speak English
• Adopt American way of dress
• Practice American customs when out in public
  places
• Native customs are left for home and neighborhood
  events.

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Salad Bowl - Theory

• Retain Native language
• Continue to dress according to your culture
• No particular regard for American culture,
  holidays, social practices
• Very public displays of native culture

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Economic Opportunities?

• Labor Market Segmentation will lead to the rise
  of Labor Unions
• Primary vs. Secondary Labor Market
• Differences in jobs, working conditions,
  benefits, security wages etc.
• Dual wage economy
• cheap labor same work, for less pay
• Transnational industrial reserve army
• to weigh down white workers during periods of
  economic expansion and to hold white labor in
  check during periods of overproduction i.e. keep
  labor cost down
• Old immigrants and native born vs. New Immigrants
• Men vs. Women
• Whites vs. non-whites

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Race and Citizenship

• Right of naturalization and citizenship
• Naturalization law of 1790 specified that
  naturalized citizenship was reserved for whites
• Revisions instituted for African-Americans
• Mexican- Americans and Native- Americans
• Political Parties and Labor unions both opposed
  easy immigration policies

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Chinese Immigrants as Case Study

• 322,000 immigrated to America between 1852-1882
• Played a key role in developing the economic and
  transportation infrastructure of the American West

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Mining

• 2/3 of Chinese American population were involved
  in mining in the 1860s
• The Gold Rush California of 1849 and again in
  1870 in the Black Hills
• Foreign Miners Tax (1852)
• 3 monthly tax for every foreign miner who did
  not desire to become a citizen.
• Collected 5 million from Chinese, which was 25
  50 of California state revenue by 1870
• (Implications for California TODAY?)

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Railroad Construction

• 12,000 Chinese employed by Central Pacific
  Railroad (90 of their work force in mid-1860s
• Paid 31/month without board or lodgings
• 5,000 Chinese workers strike in 1870 for higher
  wages and an 8-hour day

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Typical Railroad Bridge constructed in California
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Manufacturing

• 46 of labor force in San Francisco employed in 4
  key industries
• Boots and shoes
• Woolens
• Cigars and tobacco
• Sewing
• Often faced consumer boycott and union label
  opposition

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Domestic Service and womens work

• 72 of all laundry workers in California were
  Chinese.

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Class hostility channeled into racial antagonism
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Class hostility channeled into racial antagonism
(b)
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The Anti-Chinese Movement The Chinese Must Go!

• Political Disfranchisement and Physical Violence
• People v. Hall (1854 Ca.)
• Chinese ineligible to testify in court against
  whites.
• Racial Segregation and Social Harassment are
  common.

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People vs. Hall

• The People of the State of California v. George
  W. Hall or People v. Hall was an appealed murder
  case in the 1850s in which the California Supreme
  Court established that Chinese Americans and
  Chinese immigrants had no rights to testify
  against white citizens. The opinion was delivered
  in 1854 by Justice with the concurrence of
  Justice J. Heydenfeldt.
• The ruling effectively freed Hall, a white man,
  who had been convicted and sentenced to death for
  the murder of Ling Sing, a Chinese miner in
  Nevada County. Three Chinese witnesses had
  testified to the killing.
• The ruling was an odd extension of California
  Criminal Procedure's existing (1850) exclusion,
  "No black or mulatto person, or Indian, shall be
  allowed to give evidence in favor of, or against
  a white man." It was held that either "Indian"
  denoted anyone of the Mongoloid race or that
  "black" applied to anyone not white.
• The ruling effectively made white violence
  against Chinese Americans unprosecutable,
  arguably leading to more intense white on Chinese
  race riots, such as the .

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Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

• 1st group to be designated for exclusion based on
  nationality and class
• Chinese laborers targeted for immigration and
  exclusion
• All Chinese immigrants denied right to become
  naturalized citizens

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Why support from the upper and middle classes?

• Social Darwinism Scientific basis for justifying
  racial hierarchy and Eugenics. the proposed
  improvement of the human species by encouraging
  or permitting reproduction of only those people
  with genetic characteristics judged desirable
• Cultural vs. social vs. economic motivations
• Easier to racially scapegoat than to reform
  economic system

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Implications for future immigrants Who else is
not white? Who will be discriminated against?

• Definitely races from Asia and Africa
• African Americans and the Jim Crow laws
• Anyone who visually appears to be non white or
  even less white
• Aliens become ineligible for citizenship
• Immigration is limited
• Gentlemens Agreement of 1906-1907
• Land Ownership
• Mostly limited to whites
• Alien Land Laws are passed.

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Ambiguously RacedSocial Construction of Race

• Mexican-Americans
• Spanish or Indigenous peoples?
• South Asian Indians
• Bhaget Singh Thind case (1923)
• Caucasian but NOT WHITE
• Irish, Eastern and Southern Europeans
• Ethnic and religious differences viewed the same
  as racial differences
• Anglo-Saxon race is superior
• I.Q. Testing and Progressive education needed

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Gradation of non-white identity leads to
increased discrimination

• Ellis Island (1900) vs Angel Island (1910)
• 2 rejection rate vs. 25 rejection rate
• 29 questions asked vs. 200 1000 questions

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1924 Immigration Act

• Nationality Quota System (in place until 1965)
• 2 of 1890 census figures limits
• 164,000 for the total year
• Targeted toward reducing Southern and Eastern
  European Immigration
• Cut of all immigration of aliens ineligible for
  citizenship i.e. Asian immigration the only
  exception Filipinos American Nationals
• Immigration within the Western Hemisphere
  exempted (e.g. Mexico, Canada,)
• American factories need labor

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Individual strategies for achieving acceptance

• Assimilation
• Get Education
• Embrace Popular culture
• Work and save money for upward mobility
• Biculturalism doing and acting a little of each
  culture.
• These options were not available to all!!
• Note 1922 Ozawa case

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Takao Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178

• (1922), was a case in which the United States
  Supreme Court found Takao Ozawa, a Japanese man,
  ineligible for naturalization. In 1922, Takao
  Ozawa filed for United States citizenship under
  the Naturalization Act of June 29, 1906 which
  allowed white persons and persons of African
  descent or African nativity to naturalize. He did
  not challenge the constitutionality of the racial
  restrictions. Instead, he attempted to have the
  Japanese classified as "white."

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Opinion of the Court in Ozawa Case

• In 1922, Takao Ozawa, a Japanese immigrant who
  had attended the University of California, also
  appealed the rejection of his citizenship
  application. He argued that his skin was
  physically white and that race shouldn't matter
  for citizenship. The Supreme Court, however,
  decided that the Japanese were not legally white
  based on science, which classified them as
  Mongoloid rather than Caucasian. Less than a year
  later, in the case of United States v. Bhagat
  Singh Thind, the court contradicted itself by
  concluding that Asian Indians were not legally
  white, even though science classified them as
  Caucasian. Refuting its own reasoning in Ozawa,
  the justices declared that whiteness should be
  based not on science, but on "the common
  understanding of the white man."

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Bhagat Singh Thind

• (A British national from India )In US since 1913
  for Education
• July 1918 recruited to serve in the US army
  promoted to sergeant
• He received his citizenship certificate on
  December 9, 1918 wearing military uniform as he
  was still serving in the US army. However, the
  Immigration and Naturalization Service did not
  agree with the district court granting the
  citizenship. Thinds citizenship was revoked in
  four days, on December 13, 1918, on the grounds
  that he was not a free white man. Thind was
  trusted by the US to be a soldier in the army and
  had all the rights and privileges like any white
  man. He was worthy of trust to defend the US but
  his color stood in his way for the US to trust
  him for citizenship.
• Thind received US citizenship for the second time
  on November 18, 1920.