“Who Is a Citizen? Who Belongs?”
The immigration legislation passed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries altered the overall number and source countries of immigrants admitted to the United States and rendered immigrants from certain parts of the world ineligible for citizenship, preventing their full integration into American life. During this period the United States also grappled with the consequences of its military, commercial, and territorial expansion overseas, particularly in the Philippines and Puerto Rico, forcing Americans to define what rights and privileges—if any—the residents of the so-called “unincorporated” territories, migrating in ever-growing numbers to the United States, would have. The chapters in this third section of the anthology address American and immigrant understandings of citizenship and national belonging during the 1924–1965 period.
Those who secured admission to the United States—or entered the country without authorization—during the 1924–1965 period encountered a suspicious American population that needed their labor but viewed them as economic, cultural, and political threats to the nation, even if, as in the case of Puerto Rican workers, they were US citizens. The pressure to “Americanize”—to adapt one’s language, dress, affect, and cultural and political values to a proverbial American norm—became especially intense after the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act. Policymakers viewed Americanization as essential to national cohesion. Across the nation, schools, churches, civic groups, and other institutions assisted in the cultural integration of those who migrated to the continental United States. “Americanization” was difficult to resist, and most immigrants understood it as a survival strategy that might facilitate their acceptance, adaptation, and upward mobility in US society. Americanization did not guarantee rights and protections, however, especially if immigrants were racial minorities or lacked permanent immigrant status.
The chapters in this section examine the experiences of those who struggled to understand, define, and assert their citizenship or human rights in US society. The section begins with “The Undertow of Reforming Immigration,” by Ruth Ellen Wasem, which examines the political engagement of immigrants and their children, as revealed in public opinion surveys, naturalization rates, and organizational life. During the 1940s and 1950s the agents of immigration reform were kept in check, Wasem writes, by a strong political “undertow” that kept reformers just short of achieving their goals. The citizenry was changing, however. In the years leading up to the Immigration Act of 1965, naturalization among immigrant groups increased dramatically, reflecting a more expansive understanding of citizenship and creating possibilities for political engagement. This new generation of Americans successfully challenged the reactionary segments of US society who had advocated for exclusion and racial purity, and helped facilitate the passage of a new, more welcoming immigration policy.
Lorrin Thomas’s chapter, “Foreign, Dark, Young, Citizen,” examines the adaptive strategies of Puerto Ricans who began migrating to the continental United States in large numbers after the 1920s. Puerto Rico, a territory acquired as spoils of the Spanish-Cuban-American War of 1898, was a mystery to many Americans. Because their US citizenship exempted them from visas, passports, quotas, and other migratory controls imposed on immigrants, American businesses recruited Puerto Ricans in large numbers to make up for the loss of immigrant labor caused by the Johnson-Reed Act. By 1930, thirty thousand Puerto Ricans lived in New York City alone, but thousands more worked in factories and fields across the continental United States, and as far away as Hawai‘i.
Despite their US citizenship, Puerto Ricans were vulnerable to the racist anxieties of the period and scapegoated like many immigrant groups and racial/ethnic minorities. By midcentury, Thomas writes, many Americans perceived and characterized Puerto Ricans as mentally deficient, prone to juvenile delinquency and criminal behavior, and a threat to postwar American safety and prosperity. Puerto Ricans bore the consequences of these characterizations: in racist educational policies, segregated neighborhoods, diminished opportunities for upward mobility, and as victims of police brutality. In the 1950s and 1960s, young Puerto Rican leaders became their own advocates, writes Thomas. Through their organizational life and institution building, and their emphasis on education, civic engagement, and community development, these young leaders countered the negative stereotypes and demonstrated their countrymen’s ambition, work ethic, and pro-democratic values. Working with youth of all races, they also became important political actors in the era’s mass movement for social change.
The challenges posed by family-focused immigration policies are the subject of Arissa Oh’s chapter, “Japanese War Brides and the Normalization of Family Unification after World War II.” During the early Cold War period, Congress eased the draconian anti-Asian immigration laws to facilitate what Oh calls the “conditional inclusion” of select populations. The Japanese war brides of white and African American servicemen were among the principal beneficiaries of these new policies. The War Brides Act and the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act allowed Asian immigration specifically for the purposes of family unification: to reward American GIs who had served their country and now wished to sponsor their wives and children. But these policies also served to counter the criticism directed at the United States for its racist and discriminatory policies.
Oh examines American popular reactions to these mixed-race families during an era when segregation was legally and socially sanctioned, and anti-miscegenation laws were common. According to Oh, American politicians, journalists, and filmmakers challenged the perceived sexual and racial threat of these interracial families by portraying Japanese women—the single largest group of war brides—as demure, submissive, hyperfeminine suburban housewives, and characterizing their children as safe and acceptable models of racial mixing. Since Japanese women entered the United States as members of American families and did not concentrate in ethnic enclaves, their advocates argued that they were well positioned to assimilate and become model citizens. These tailored accommodations for American GIs contributed to making family unification a central tenet of post-1965 immigration policy.
Ana Elizabeth Rosas examines the impact of migration on the families of the Mexican agricultural laborers of 1940s and 1950s. The prolific scholarship on the Emergency Mexican Farm Labor Program (Bracero Program) generally focuses on three principal topics: its effects on regional economic development, on diplomatic relations, and on day-to-day lives of the workers themselves. Rosas’s essay offers a novel examination of the emotional lives of workers and the loved ones they left behind in México. Drawing on oral histories, films, and songs of love, Rosas narrates a fascinating account of how the journeys of Mexican workers—both Braceros and undocumented workers—shaped understandings of gender roles, family, community, and belonging back home. These workers, whom Americans regarded as both vital and threatening, left family and loved ones with the hopes of securing a better financial future and improving the life chances of those left behind. They contributed to productivity and economic growth in the United States, but they also contributed to the upward mobility of those who loved them. It is easy to villainize them as the usurpers of American jobs, writes Rosas, and it is easy to lose sight of their humanity in the statistics of policy reports. Rosas reveals their fears, disappointments, and frustrations, as well as their hopes, joys, and aspirations.
Together, these four case studies remind readers that democracy and citizenship are works in progress. As Gary Okihiro has noted, the core values of the United States emanate from peoples on the margins of US society. It is in their struggles for inclusion that the ideals of the founders are continually reaffirmed and the United States becomes a more democratic nation.