Immigration, Deportation and Citizenship, 1908-2018: Selected Resources from the IGS and Ethnic Studies Libraries: Display

Higham's work stands as the seminal work in the history of American nativism. The work is a careful, well-documented study of nationalism and ethnic prejudice, and chronicles the power and violence of these two ideas in American society from 1860 to 1925. He significantly moves beyond previous treatments of nativism, both in chronology and in interpretive sophistication. Higham defines nativism as a defensive type of nationalism or an intense opposition to an internal minority on the grounds of the group's foreign connections. By defining nativism as a set of attitudes or a state of mind, he sets the course for his book as tracing "trace an emotionally charged impulse" rather than "an actual social process or condition." As he argues that the ideological content of nativism remained consistent, he uses emotional intensity as a measure to trace in detail public opinion from the relative calm following the Civil War to the Johnson-Reed act of 1924 that severely limited European immigration. Strangers in the Land is, then, a history of public opinion, whose purpose is to show how nativism evolved in society and in action. Higham seeks to explain what could inflame xenophobia and who resisted it. He saw his work as part of a renewed interest in the study of nationalism following the national upheavals in the wake of the McCarthy hearings. Surely Higham's mentor at the University of Wisconsin, intellectual historian Merle Curti, influenced Higham's approach in seeking to examine the power of nationalism as an idea. Also influential was the intellectual climate of the 1950s with its of distrust of ideology and distain of prejudice. Higham admits being repelled by the nationalist delusions of the Cold War, again helping to explain why his study concentrates on seeking some explanation for the irrational and violent outbreaks. The book thus focuses on points of conflict, "antagonisms that belong within ideologies of passionate national consciousness." For example, Higham's explains the 100 percent American movement in terms of progressive ideals and the desire of Americans to shape immigrants into a particular ideal of "Americanness" through education and assimilation. This intellectual construct eventually gave way to the racial thinking to which Higham assigns much influence in the efforts to restrict immigration. Ideology is also central to his chapter on the history of the idea of racism in which he argues that Anglo-Saxon nationalism, literary naturalism and a nascent understanding of genetics combined to bring forth arguments for immigration restriction to preserve the racial purity of the American people. Thus, key for Higham's argument is the power of ideas in shaping individual behavior and thereby shaping history. This text is an absolute must-read for anyone seeking to understand American nativism and the darker side of nationalism.

Congressman Tom Tancredo explains in cogent, rational detail how America is heading down the road to ruin. He believes that the incredible economic success and military prowess of the United States has transformed a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles of right and wrong into an overindulgent, self-deprecating, immoral cesspool of depravity. Without strong, moral leadership, without a renewed sense of purpose, without a rededication to family and community, without shunning the race hustlers and pop-culture sham artists, without protecting our borders, language, and culture, the nation that once was the land of the free and home of the brave"" and the ""one last hope of mankind"" will repeat the catastrophic mistakes of the past. ""In Mortal Danger"" is his prescription for repairing the damage. ""

The controversial, bestselling book (37,500 hardcover copies sold) that helps define the debate about one of the most important and hotly contested issues facing America: immigration.

Nativism--an intense opposition to immigrants and other non- native members of society--has been deeply imbedded in the American character from the earliest days of the nation. Correspondingly, nativism, overtly or covertly, has always permeated our national discourse. Dating from the Alien and Sedition controversy of 1798 to California's recent Proposition 187, nativism has long been a driving force in policy making, a particular irony in a country founded and populated by immigrants. This anthology of original essays is informed at its core by George Santayana's famous edict that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Examining the current surge in nativism in light of past waves of anti- immigrant sentiment, the volume takes an unflinchingly critical look at the realities and rhetoric of the new nativism. How can the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War II illuminate our understanding of the English Only movement today? How has the symbolism of the Statue of Liberty evolved since its dedication and what can it tell us about the American disposition to immigration? What is the new nativism? What are the semantic and rhetorical similarities, if any, between the most shrill nativist voices of the present, such as Pat Buchanan's or Peter Brimelow's in his widely publicized book Alien Nation, and National Socialist propaganda in 1930s Germany? Juan Perea has here assembled a truly interdisciplinary group of contributors to emphasize the changing relationship between citizens and immigrants, and the effects of economics, history, and demographics on that relationship. Immigrants Out!provides a needed antidote to the often poisonous attacks on America's most vulnerable.

During the Great Depression, a sense of total despair plagued the United States. Americans sought a convenient scapegoat and found it in the Mexican community. Laws forbidding employment of Mexicans were accompanied by the hue and cry to "get rid of the Mexicans!" The hysteria led pandemic repatriation drives and one million Mexicans and their children were illegally shipped to Mexico. Despite their horrific treatment and traumatic experiences, the American born children never gave up hope of returning to the United States. Upon attaining legal age, they badgered their parents to let them return home. Repatriation survivors who came back worked diligently to get their lives back together. Due to their sense of shame, few of them ever told their children about their tragic ordeal. Decade of Betrayal recounts the injustice and suffering endured by the Mexican community during the 1930s. It focuses on the experiences of individuals forced to undergo the tragic ordeal of betrayal, deprivation, and adjustment. This revised edition also addresses the inclusion of the event in the educational curriculum, the issuance of a formal apology, and the question of fiscal remuneration. "Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez, the authors of Decade of Betrayal, the first expansive study of Mexican repatriation with perspectives from both sides of the border, claim that 1 million people of Mexican descent were driven from the United States during the 1930s due to raids, scare tactics, deportation, repatriation and public pressure. Of that conservative estimate, approximately 60 percent of those leaving were legal American citizens. Mexicans comprised nearly half of all those deported during the decade, although they made up less than 1 percent of the country's population. 'Americans, reeling from the economic disorientation of the depression, sought a convenient scapegoat,' Balderrama and Rodríguez wrote. 'They found it in the Mexican community.'"--American History

Winner, American Sociological Association Latino/a Section Distinguished Contribution to Research Book Award The United States currently is deporting more people than ever before: 4 million people have been deported since 1997 -twice as many as all people deported prior to 1996. There is a disturbing pattern in the population deported: 97% of deportees are sent to Latin America or the Caribbean, and 88% are men, many of whom were originally detained through the U.S. criminal justice system. Weaving together hard-hitting critique and moving first-person testimonials, Deported tells the intimate stories of people caught in an immigration law enforcement dragnet that serves the aims of global capitalism.   Tanya Golash-Boza uses the stories of 147 of these deportees to explore the racialized and gendered dimensions of mass deportation in the United States, showing how this crisis is embedded in economic restructuring, neoliberal reforms, and the disproportionate criminalization of black and Latino men. In the United States, outsourcing creates service sector jobs and more of a need for the unskilled jobs that attract immigrants looking for new opportunities, but it also leads to deindustrialization, decline in urban communities, and, consequently, heavy policing. Many immigrants are exposed to the same racial profiling and policing as native-born blacks and Latinos. Unlike the native-born, though, when immigrants enter the criminal justice system, deportation is often their only way out. Ultimately, Golash-Boza argues that deportation has become a state strategy of social control, both in the United States and in the many countries that receive deportees.    

Before 1882, the U.S. federal government had never formally deported anyone, but that year an act of Congress made Chinese workers the first group of immigrants eligible for deportation. Over the next forty years, lawmakers and judges expanded deportable categories to include prostitutes, anarchists, the sick, and various kinds of criminals. The history of that lengthening list shaped the policy options U.S. citizens continue to live with into the present. Deportation covers the uncertain beginnings of American deportation policy and recounts the halting and uncoordinated steps that were taken as it emerged from piecemeal actions in Congress and courtrooms across the country to become an established national policy by the 1920s. Usually viewed from within the nation, deportation policy also plays a part in geopolitics; deportees, after all, have to be sent somewhere. Studying deportations out of the United States as well as the deportation of U.S. citizens back to the United States from abroad, Torrie Hester illustrates that U.S. policy makers were part of a global trend that saw officials from nations around the world either revise older immigrant removal policies or create new ones. A history of immigration policy in the United States and the world, Deportation chronicles the unsystematic emergence of what has become an internationally recognized legal doctrine, the far-reaching impact of which has forever altered what it means to be an immigrant and a citizen.

Despite being characterized as a "nation of immigrants," the United States has seen a long history of immigrant rights struggles. In her timely book Against the Deportation Terror, Rachel Ida Buff uncovers this multiracial history. She traces the story of the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born (ACPFB) from its origins in the 1930s through repression during the early Cold War, to engagement with "new" Latinx and Caribbean immigrants in the 1970s and early 1980s.Functioning as a hub connecting diverse foreign-born communities and racial justice advocates, the ACPFB responded to various, ongoing crises of what they called "the deportation terror." Advocates worked against repression, discrimination, detention, and expulsion in migrant communities across the nation at the same time as they supported reform of federal immigration policy. Prevailing in some cases and suffering defeats in others, the story of the ACPFB is characterized by persistence in multiracial organizing even during periods of protracted repression.By tracing the work of the ACPFB and its allies over half a century, Against the Deportation Terror provides important historical precedent for contemporary immigrant rights organizing. Its lessons continue to resonate today.

From a deadly border to America's kidnapping capital--the secret lives at the heart of the immigration controversy Arizona's violent border is the busiest gateway for illegal immigration in America, making Arizona Ground Zero for the immigration debate. No state is as hostile to the undocumented, and no city is as unwelcoming as Phoenix. Yet Phoenix is home to thousands who live in the shadows, where civil rights are neglected and lives are lost. Illegal sheds light on the invisible immigrants who persevere despite kidnappings and drug wars, an ongoing recession, and laws barring them from working, learning, and driving. By profiling these undocumented people, and those--like notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio--who persecute them, author Terry Greene Sterling courageously reveals the changing face of immigration in America and gives new insight into a divisive national crisis.