Anti-Nation

As I write, the United States is once again debating immigration reform. The often vitriolic rhetoric circulating around the nation about 'illegal aliens', from radio and TV talk shows to the halls of Congress, leaves one with a feeling of dejá vu. This historical vertigo is real and not imagined, as evidenced by Mae M. Ngai's wonderful new book. Impossible Subjects is the best kind of history writing. It covers known territory while still managing to uncover novelty and provides insights that are full of relevance for current events. Many of the issues Ngai examines not only foreshadow today's debate over undocumented immigration, but show the incipient formations of contemporary problems. Impossible Subjects richly deserves all the praise it has received.

The book examines the period 1924 to 1965, a relatively neglected phase of immigration history, at least in terms of unauthorized immigration. It covers the lifespan of national-origins quotas and explores the social and legal construction of race and the identity of 'illegal alien' as imposed on Filipinos, Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican immigrants and their offspring. But the book is also about the defining of the American people as a whole. Who we Americans are, Ngai shows, is defined as much by whom we exclude as whom we include as members of society with the full benefits of citizenship.

Impossible Subjects is divided into four parts. Part one examines the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 and how race is reconstructed in immigration law, then goes on to detail the construction of 'illegal aliens' through deportation policy. Part two examines Filipino migration in the context of colonialism and labour supply for the American empire, and compares it to Mexican immigration. In Part three the internment of Japanese Americans serves as a lens into the problems of citizenship. Japanese and other Asians were excluded because they were ineligible for citizenship. They and their United States-born children were stigmatized as unassimilable and thus permanently foreign, what Ngai calls 'alien citizens'. This is followed by an exploration of Chinese immigration during the Cold War, building on the themes of race, exclusion and identity, as well as citizenship based on fraudulent documents ('paper son'). Part four covers the period after the Second World War and the politics leading up to the 1965 immigration law, that moved away from national-origins quotas. Ngai argues that despite its being cast as a liberal reform, the 1965 law 'both changed and sustained the regime of immigration restriction'. Undocumented immigration was also sustained in the post 1965 reforms. A final Epilogue draws out important parallels with contemporary immigration issues, especially continued illegal immigration.

This brief overview cannot begin to detail the richness of Impossible Subjects, nor can I pretend to do so in the space allotted here. Rather I will focus on some key points that resonate with today's debate over immigration. Although Ngai's book concentrates on the early twentieth century, it illuminates much that is being debated in the early twenty-first century.

The immigration reforms of the 1920s created major restrictions in the flow of immigrants, in the process producing hierarchies of people and nationalities. Western and Northern Europeans were the desired immigrants, and their movement hither was the goal of the national-origins quotas. Southern and Eastern Europeans, Asians, Africans, Mexicans and other Latin Americans were less desirable, even when demand for their labour made their immigration necessary. The 1920s also witnessed a profound new importance placed on the territorial imperative of national borders. It was a time of new techniques of surveillance, the creation of the Border Patrol, and health examinations. Out of this new order of border control emerged the 'illegal aliens', those who found ways to enter the country bypassing border controls. As Ngai argues, the large-scale restrictions of 1924 law 'generated illegal immigration and introduced that problem into the internal spaces of the nation. Immigration restriction produced the illegal alien as a...