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Trump’s proposed anti-immigration EO is as xenophobic & cruel as it is stupid & counterproductive. It embodies the worst of US exclusion w/out even tangentially addressing the pandemic, & given the role of immigrants in fighting this crisis will only exacerbate our challenges.
We thus don’t need history to oppose this bigoted & moronic measure. But if we look at 2 anti-immigration policies created during the Depression, we can see even more clearly the xenophobia, the recklessness, the stupidity, & even the illegality of such actions. #twitterstorians
In late 1929, at the outset of the Depression, President Hoover launched the Mexican Repatriation Program, an attempt to forcibly relocate millions of Mexican Americans (many of them born in the United States). https://www.uscis.gov/history-and-genealogy/featured-stories-uscis-history-office-and-library/ins-records-1930s-mexican-repatriations
While Hoover framed the program through the lens of the Depression, it was really grounded in the era’s strident anti-Mexican xenophobia. That included Congressman John Box’s 1928 speech on the House floor:
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=594
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=594
& the 1920s and early 30s @SatEvePost columns of anti-immigrant activist Roy L. Garis, including “We Must Be on Our Guard” & “The Mexican Invasion.”
http://www.philsp.com/homeville/fmi/s/s3283.htm#A75127
http://www.philsp.com/homeville/fmi/s/s3283.htm#A75127
Since Mexican immigrants (like all W Hem arrivals) were exempt from the 1924 Quota Act, these deportations were likely illegal even when they did not affect US citizens (for whom they were thus doubly illegal). But millions were “repatriated” nonetheless. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/americas-brutal-forgotten-history-of-illegal-deportations/517971/
Yet immediately after the program’s 1940 conclusion, the US govt realized how much it relied upon Mexican American labor. In 1942, the US signed the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement w/Mexico, creating the Bracero Program.
https://www.unco.edu/colorado-oral-history-migratory-labor-project/pdf/Bracero_Program_PowerPoint.pdf
https://www.unco.edu/colorado-oral-history-migratory-labor-project/pdf/Bracero_Program_PowerPoint.pdf
That back & forth bt exclusion & inclusion consistently defined 20C US immigration policy toward Mexican Americans, but it also reflects the specific short-sightedness & stupidity of the 1930s policies. https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2019/01/considering-history-mexican-americans-as-political-prop-in-the-20th-and-21st-centuries/
Even more illegal & ill-advised were the 1930s anti-Filipino policies enacted by the 1934 Tydings-McDuffie Act & 1935 Filipino Repatriation Act. https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2019/09/considering-history-post-9-11-lessons-from-americas-forgotten-war-in-the-philippines/
These laws likewise gave in to the era’s anti-Filipino xenophobia & prejudice, developed across decades of US occupation of & war in the Philippines & cemented by Depression-era fears of the imagined threats posed by Filipino arrivals.
SF Judge Sylvain Lazarus, in ruling against a Filipino American man in a 1936 miscegenation trial, argued, “It is a dreadful thing when these Filipinos, scarcely more than savages, come to SF, work for practically nothing, and obtain the society of these girls.”
Such xenophobia was, as with Mexican Americans, historically inaccurate: the Filipino Amer community is the oldest Asian Amer one, w/roots in 18C Spanish Louisiana that predate the US itself. Filipino soldiers from LA fought for the US in both the War of 1812 & the Civil War.
Moreover, many of the early 20C Filipino arrivals to this longstanding community were invited to the US, as part of the pensionado education program that brought tens of thousands of students.
http://www.wiu.edu/cas/history/wihr/pdfs/Education%20Means%20Liberty%20Jeremy%20KnakeVOLVI.pdf
http://www.wiu.edu/cas/history/wihr/pdfs/Education%20Means%20Liberty%20Jeremy%20KnakeVOLVI.pdf
But beyond all those contexts, the 1930s anti-Filipino laws were illegal for a more overt reason: the US was occupying the Philippines at the time. New arrivals were part of a US territory, & explicitly exempt from immigration laws affecting “foreign” or “alien” communities.
In order to circumvent that fundamental fact & define Filipino arrivals as “alien” & thus able to be limited & excluded, the 30s laws created a loophole: promising the islands future (1945) independence in order to create these policies in the present. https://www.law.cornell.edu/topn/tydings-mcduffie_act_of_1934
Despite this legal & cultural xenophobia, the 1930s laws largely failed to force Filipino Americans out of the US. Only about 2000 were repatriated under the Repatriation Act, for example. https://immigrationtounitedstates.org/498-filipino-repatriation-act-of-1935.html
Once again, just a few years later unfolding events proved the laws' stupidity & short-sightedness. Filipino Americans & Filipino nationals alike proved vital soldiers & allies as the US fought Japan in WWII, incl extended campaigns in the Philippines.
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-C-Philippines/
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-C-Philippines/
Leading the US war effort in the islands was Vicente Lim, the 1st Filipino West Point graduate & a WWI veteran. His heroic service culminated w/his capture by the Japanese & tragic death in a prison camp. https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/106/1/232/5491976?redirectedFrom=fulltext
If work & war offered practical counterpoints to 1930s xenophobic policies, literature offered a potent symbolic counterargument, in Carlos Bulosan’s autobiographical novel America is in the Heart (1946). https://americanwritersmuseum.org/america-is-in-the-heart-carlos-bulosan/
Bulosan came to the US as a teenager in 1930, one of the Depression-era arrivals targeted by that xenophobia. He worked as a migrant laborer throughout the period, experiencing many of the era’s worst racial as well as economic discriminations.
He depicts those horrors throughout his book. But in its stunning conclusion, he lays out his titular vision of American identity, & in so doing offers one of our most vital definitions of an immigrant, inclusive America:
“It was something that grew out of the sacrifices & loneliness of my friends, of my brothers in America & my family in the Philippines—something that grew out of our desire to know America, & to become a part of her great tradition.”
“and to contribute something toward her final fulfillment. I knew that no man could destroy my faith in America that had sprung from all our hopes and aspirations, ever.”
The 1930s xenophobic laws & policies didn’t destroy that America, & Trump can’t either. But that will depend on our opposing these bigoted, stupid, & illegal actions—which requires better remembering our histories. Fin (for now!).
PS. For more on such xenophobic histories & policies, see @prof_erikalee's magisterial America for Americans. https://www.google.com/books/edition/America_for_Americans/rI2LDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
PPS. & I write about both the Mexican & Filipino American communities (historically & in the 20C) in chapters in my book We the People. https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538128541/We-the-People-The-500-Year-Battle-Over-Who-Is-American
For more on the current ramifications of this proposed EO, see @UnlawfulEntries's great thread: https://twitter.com/UnlawfulEntries/status/1252576892554747905?s=20
