Immigration and Race

Abstract

This chapter assesses how the regulation of immigration and citizenship in the United States is inextricably intertwined with the history of race and racism in the United States. It surveys US history in four periods: the founding era through the Civil War, the post-Civil War era through the death of Reconstruction, the Progressive era through the passage of the federal civil rights laws of the 1960s, and the 1960s through the present. Though the legal line separating desirable from undesirable—and therefore admissible from inadmissible—immigrants has shifted over time, anti-Black racism has structured the drawing of that line across different historical periods. As a result, immigration law has not just reflected racial bias. Rather, these laws, in conjunction with citizenship laws, have also defined racial categories in the United States and delimited the racial boundaries of the nation. Understood in that way, immigration has not simply reflected prevailing forms of racial bias; rather, it has effectively legalized US racism in ways that both produced and sustained racial hierarchies. This legalized racism has not disappeared. It persists today—in color-blind form—impervious to the civil rights revolution of the mid-1960s.