Defectives in the Land: Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics by Douglas C. Baynton (review)

While race and gender are well-known categories in exploring immigration history, Douglas Baynton's Defectives in the Land: Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics presents detailed evidence that perceptions of disability played an equally important role in American immigration history in the years between the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the National Origins Acts of the 1920s. Baynton demonstrates that late nineteenth-century American society was increasingly concerned with defect and disability, and that these perceptions became embedded into immigration policy.

Using key sites such as Ellis Island, Baynton shows how immigration restriction laws were intended to slow the massive tide of immigrants coming to the United States by finding a way to admit only those individuals deemed likely to add to the nation's productivity. As eugenic ideas and fears of race suicide became more prevalent in American society, immigration restrictions became more stringent; immigrants were thus redefined, from individuals "unable to take care of himself or herself in 1882… to persons whose defect 'may affect' the ability to earn a living in 1907" (37). Baynton highlights how perceptions of defect and disability influenced the decision-making process of immigration officials who often equated specific disabilities, such as blindness, deafness or scoliosis, and difference, such as poor physique or short stature, with the likelihood the person would become a public charge and, thus, a burden to the state.

Baynton successfully argues that the preconceived ideas regarding disability held by immigration officials had little basis in fact. Many immigrants with disabilities were gainfully employed in their home country, had viable job offers awaiting them in the United States, family members willing to provide employment, and/or enough cash to preclude their becoming a public charge. Many such individuals, however, were deported despite such exculpatory information. Gender further complicated the decision-making process for immigration officials. In chapter three, for example, Baynton shows how unaccompanied women were frequently viewed by immigration officials as disabled and a burden to the state as they would be unable to care for themselves without male supervision. Any additional disability, such as deafness, virtually guaranteed their deportation. Here, Baynton advances existing scholarship on the intersection of race, gender, disability, and immigration history.

While employability seldom caused officials to change a deportation order, social class, wealth and having friends in high places were able to affect a change. In chapter three, for instance, Baynton demonstrates the way in which having an attorney or a member of the legislature advocating for admittance to the country was usually effective, while lack of these supports usually resulted in deportation. Furthermore, immigrants traveling in first or second class accommodations received much less scrutiny than those traveling in steerage, resulting in marked differences in admission determinations.

Also in chapter three, Baynton addresses the complexity involved for immigration officials in the admission of immigrant children with disabilities. Officials were reluctant to admit children with disabilities because they were viewed as a burden on the state, but were constrained from deporting them if it would break up the family unit. As many families immigrated to the United States in stages, a child with a disability was likely to be admitted if he came with the last contingent of his family, but deported if family members were still in Europe. American immigration law stated that any immigrant admitted to an institution of any kind during the three to five years following admission to the United States would face automatic deportation. Since schools for children who were blind or deaf were classified as institutions, they could not, theoretically, be accessed by these children without threat of deportation, highlighting one of the heretofore unexamined effects of immigration law on people with disabilities.

While the fresh attention to disability is significant, Baynton's examples are primarily limited to people who were blind...