The U.S. Story of Immigrants and Un-Immigrants
- The U.S. Story of Immigrants and Un-Immigrants
We are pleased to present our Fall 2015 issue featuring a theme conceived and articles selected by a team of Guest Thematic Editors, experts in race/ethnicity, education, communities and migrations, Central American social movements, transgender and sexuality studies: Gilda Ochoa, Sociology and Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies professor at Pomona College; Enrique Ochoa, History and Latin American Studies professor at CSU-Los Angeles; and Suyapa Portillo Villeda, professor in Chicana/o-Latina/o Transnational Studies at Pitzer College. Their careful ongoing research and contact with minority groups (within minorities) has led to their significant expertise and sensitive awareness which greatly influenced the collection of articles presented here.
The contributors represent a variety of regions and scholars at the Universities of Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin-Madison, Kentucky, Nevada, the State University of New Jersey and SUNY-Albany, Emory University in Atlanta, Miami University in Ohio, Seattle Children’s Hospital, DePaul, the Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas and the Universidad de Guadalajara in Mexico. There are several California affiliations: UCSB, UCLA, UCI, CSU-Northridge and Long Beach, Claremont Graduate University, Pitzer and Scripps College, and lawyers, activists and poets. We are grateful to each contributor for the long process of careful work and revisions undertaken, and especially to the guest thematic editors for their thoughtful selection.
We have looked to “immigration reform” in the U.S. for several years, to little success. Even the President’s recent executive actions for deferred and temporary protected status presently teeter in non-confirmed limbo, while families and other units are torn apart, and deportations exceed those of the post-World War II era.
Providing a process for immigrants should seem logical for a nation built on that concept, and yet that history is one of preferences and delayed inclusion. The first Naturalization Act of 1790 stipulated that foreign-born persons could become citizens of the U.S. only if they were free and white (and of “good” character, letting public officials determine the same). Steady arrivals from northern European nations during the 17th century blossomed into continuous full ships over the next century, culminating in ongoing invitation to European immigrants to settle “open lands” in a push south and west. Droves of these populations marched out to plant their homesteads, with little regard for various nations of “Indians” or the Spanish colonists already residing there.
These immigrants were invited, welcomed, received citizenship without paying fees, and were often given large chunks of acreage for very basic or no costs. None were ever locked in detention centers (even when the occasional quarantine—ships, not people—occurred).
In 1868, enactment of the 14th Amendment declared that all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. are citizens. But that did not include (1) those native to the continent—it was only in 1924 that Native American Indians were legally declared “citizens” by the U.S. Congress—or (2) the generations born to those brought in imposed slavery, or (3) former Spanish-Mexican colonists residing in what had become part of the U.S. (despite promises signed in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo). Instead, each of these groups continued to experience acts of violence, lynching, and having their properties taken from them, well into the 20th century.
The first Exclusion Act was ratified in 1882, to prevent further arrival of Chinese immigrants, the same year the first-ever tax began to be imposed on each entering immigrant. The turn of century saw the most extensive increase yet of immigrants (primarily from European nations, Eastern Russia and Persia/Iran): the 1910 U.S. Census indicated nearly 15 percent of the population was foreign-born—an interesting comparison to 11 percent foreign-born recorded by the 2000 U.S. Census.
The first piece of legislation instituting general restrictions on immigration was enacted in 1917, limiting entry from Asiatic zones and later Russians (due to the “Red Scare” of the Bolshevik Revolution), and launching “emergency quota” systems, secured by the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 (greatly reducing Southern and Eastern European immigrants, and excluding Asians, Africans, and most Latin Americans). During the Great Depression [End...
