Racialized Notions in U.S Immigration Policies

The arrival of immigrants to the United States is often associated with fear. Immigrants are vulnerable to attacks if they are cast as threats to the way of American life. A deeper look into immigration policies reveals that immigrant restrictions are seated in racialized notions. Immigrants before the founding of the nation came for the opportunities of a better life. The immigrants who would continue to come thereafter came for much the same reasons. But government policies demonstrate repeated attempts to block the immigration of undesirable immigrant communities.
As a result of heightened Communist hysteria in the 1950’s, Chinese Americans and immigrants found the legitimacy of their legal status disputed. Under no means were government

inspections civil, demonstrating the social level Chinese occupied in American society. The creation of the bracero program served to control Mexican labor and prevent Mexican migration into the United States. However, poor government oversight led to the abuse of Mexicans on all spectrums of society. Moreover, Central American refugees seeking asylum in the United States were disregarded. Many were apprehended and returned to their nations where they faced severe retributions.
The period of Chinese exclusion from 1882 to 1943 limited legal Chinese migration to the United States.

Chinese immigrants had to find other ways of entering, developing a system called paper immigration. Chinese immigrants would pose as the relatives of Chinese Americans in order to gain entry. The US government further facilitated this practice by creating documents proving the legal status of Chinese immigrants who had no relatives in the United States. This form of immigration became ingrained in the lives of many Chinese Americans who “had no choice but to perpetuate the false lineage…” Paper immigration became a point of attack in disputing Chinese legal status.
Following the Chinese Revolution of 1949, Chinese Americans and immigrants became the focus of Communist fears. Beliefs of Chinese as inferior began to incite anti-Chinese feelings. Everett F. Drumright, an American official, submitted a report warning of Chinese Communists where “he alleged that Chinese were culturally inclined to fraud and perjury since they ‘lacked a concept equivalent to the Western concept of an oath.’” Government action would soon exact actions to quell these

fears.
The campaign against paper immigration culminated in a dramatic raid where government officials including the INS and US Marshals stormed the Chinatown in San Francisco.

They served subpoenas for documents that would prove the illegitimacy of Chinese citizenship. The Six Companies, which represented the interests of the community, fought back claiming “the subpoena was being used for the ‘obvious purpose of oppressing and intimidating the entire Chinese American community…” Delivering mass subpoenas proved jurisdictionally unsuccessful. Yet, the INS Chinese Confession Program in 1956 birthed a second opportunity to dispute Chinese legal

status.
The Chinese Confession Program provided “a means of renegotiating the terms of Chinese Americans’ citizenship.” If Chinese confessed their illegal status using paper immigration, they would be granted permanent resident status if they met a certain criteria. Chinese Americans and immigrants had good reason to confess “[g]iven the atmosphere of anti-Communism, grand jury investigations, and rumors of mass deportations” INS coercion did not take into account emotional duress in that “[m]any families divided over whether or not to confess, sometimes quite bitterly.” They had no other choice but to confess personal information and incriminate their family members, an obvious difficult thing for anyone to do. The Chinese Confession program may have provided an avenue towards naturalization, but it generated further distrust and criminal associations in a public that already scrutinized Chinese Americans and immigrants. Mexicans were another group of immigrants who had a lengthy history of exclusion in the United States.
During the early 1940’s, the government decided to take actions against Mexican migrations born as a result of labor shortages during WWII. The Truman administration believed “government-sponsored contract labor would eliminate illegal migration, bring order to the farm labor market, and protect foreign nationals from abuse.” Regardless, the bracero program further generated illegal immigration, displaced native workers while driving labor wages down, and resulted in the ill treatment of bracero workers. The program would satisfy the reverse of Truman’s predictions.
The Migrant Labor Agreement outlined the terms of bracero workers. They were to be provided among various things food, housing, and a pre-determined wage. Bracero workers found that these stipulations were not met when they were “assigned to employers who paid them wages and subsistence less than the amount stipulated in the contract.” Abuse of bracero workers also took shape in the form of violence. The Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee initiated labor strikes against the bracero program. A few of these strikes turned into violence against the workers, further illustrating bracero abuse. Moreover, powerful commercial agricultural interests wished to have a surplus of hands to quickly move their crops during harvest. This resulted in irresponsible use of bracero workers who began to overcrowd the farm labor market. The government woefully assisted this need and continued contracting Mexican laborers. Consequence of this neglect resulted in displacement of native workers and lowering of farm wages. It also generated stereotypes of all Mexicans where “No careful distinctions were made between illegal aliens and local citizens of Mexican descent.” Importantly, a faulty bracero program assisted the further illegal immigration, where farmers preferred undocumented migrants.
Undocumented migrants were not entitled to the stipulations of the Migrant Labor Agreement. This made them attractive to the farmers who could pay them a cheaper wage. Use of undocumented workers was commonplace whereby the INS “pursued a policy of moderation with regard to undocumented workers on the farms.” The INS selectively deported certain undocumented immigrants as to not disrupt the harvest.
Consistent INS policies could have prevented the eventual attempt to eradicate undocumented migrants. INS’ Operation Wetback was a massive operation for the removal of undocumented migrants. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants were gathered and transported across the border. The INS did not consider the fates of families who would be divided as a result of the operation, which spanned the mid-1950s. Inhumane treatment of undocumented immigrants was revealed in a congressional investigation where transportation conditions coincided with “an ‘eighteenth century slave ship’ and a ‘penal hell ship.’” Poor government oversight created the problem of illegal immigration. Subsequent efforts to correct these missteps did not take government responsibility into account. Undocumented immigrants and the bracero workers, where advertised opportunities were aimed, ended up taking responsibility for government ineptitude. This pattern of neglecting responsibilities found itself repeated in the 1980s as the crisis in Central America unfolded.
Central Americans found themselves in the midst of conflicts. Many attempted to escape to the United States but found that US policies favored refugees from Communist states. The Refugee Act of 1980 was passed to correct this by “[declaring] that it is the historic policy of the United States to respond to urgent needs of persons subject to persecution in their homelands” Continued sympathy for refugees from Communist states persisted. Its passage was ineffective in granting Central American refugees safe haven in the United States.
Central American nations such as El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala produced hundreds of thousands of refugees seeking protection. At the time, the US government was dedicating millions of dollars to contain these refugees abroad. Aid to US backed military and relief organizations supporting refugees led the government to the conclusion that US bound refugees were economically motivated. But the government failed to realize that “[s]ome countries granted safe haven to one specific national group, but not others.”
An effort to block refugees involved morally questionable tactics. Treatment of refugees and migrants at INS detention facilities functioned to systematically violate the basic rights of detainees. Detainees found that their vital rights were amiss such that they “were denied access to translated legal forms and documents; and many were denied access to legal counsel.” Relief organizations discovered that many El Salvadorian refugees who had been deported were killed. In further attempting to bring light to the situation, workers of organizations such as Amnesty International found themselves “under the surveillance of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, [where] its members [were] harassed and libeled.” Society had changed; such actions by the government would not be stood for.
The stagnant nature of government policy revealed itself in the action of those who defied the government in support of fair treatment of refugees regardless of the region of the world they originated. The Sanctuary Movement was such an instance. It involved citizens, many of them church members, who housed and transported Central American refugees throughout the United States. The sanctuary workers knowingly violated laws and some were even arrested. An arrested sanctuary worker would go on to say “I felt we had a special obligation to these people…[w]e were caught between the laws of man and the laws of God. I chose the laws of God.” Society as a collective whole understood their roles of protecting those seeking protection. But government policies were consistently reminiscent of immigration policies of the past, which regarded immigrants as threats to the way of American life.
Throughout the history of the United States, immigrant communities deemed a threat found themselves rejected by the government. These threats have repeatedly been proven unfounded. Yet, government action to protect the community at large concentrated on discriminating against immigrant communities, repeating actions that violated basic rights. The government had a hand in creating paper immigration. The bracero program was poorly executed and resulted in undocumented migration that continues to this day. Refugees seeking asylum in the United States, found that the government would reject its own principles and statutes of equality to keep them beyond the border. Fortunately, we can see a shift in the attitudes of society in general from Chinese efforts to gain legal status in the 1940’s to the refugees of Central America in the 1980’s. As evident by individuals such as the sanctuary workers, members of our society are willing to defy the government if it means sacrificing for those in need of protection. Immigration history in the United States shows us in the examples of the Chinese, Mexicans, and Central Americans amongst many other groups that immigrants are not a threat. Immigrants making the journey to the United States are coming for opportunities of improved life that all American’s at one point once and continue to strive for.