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At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943
With the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Chinese laborers became the first group in American history to be excluded from the United States on the basis of their race and class. This landmark law changed the course of U.S. immigration history, but we know little about its consequences for the Chinese in America or for the United States as a nation of immigrants.
At America's Gates is the first book devoted entirely to both Chinese immigrants and the American immigration officials who sought to keep them out. Erika Lee explores how Chinese exclusion laws not only transformed Chinese American lives, immigration patterns, identities, and families but also recast the United States into a "gatekeeping nation." Immigrant identification, border enforcement, surveillance, and deportation policies were extended far beyond any controls that had existed in the United States before.
Drawing on a rich trove of historical sources--including recently released immigration records, oral histories, interviews, and letters--Lee brings alive the forgotten journeys, secrets, hardships, and triumphs of Chinese immigrants. Her timely book exposes the legacy of Chinese exclusion in current American immigration control and race relations.
At America's Gates is the first book devoted entirely to both Chinese immigrants and the American immigration officials who sought to keep them out. Erika Lee explores how Chinese exclusion laws not only transformed Chinese American lives, immigration patterns, identities, and families but also recast the United States into a "gatekeeping nation." Immigrant identification, border enforcement, surveillance, and deportation policies were extended far beyond any controls that had existed in the United States before.
Drawing on a rich trove of historical sources--including recently released immigration records, oral histories, interviews, and letters--Lee brings alive the forgotten journeys, secrets, hardships, and triumphs of Chinese immigrants. Her timely book exposes the legacy of Chinese exclusion in current American immigration control and race relations.
348 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
22 people are currently reading
719 people want to read
About the author
Erika Lee
7 books235 followersI’m a writer and professor who loves reading and writing. I finished my fourth book: America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the U.S., which will be published by Basic Books/Hachette on November 26, 2019.
I’m a historian who still does history the old-fashioned way by doing research in the archives. I get excited finding dusty documents, but I’m also fully immersed in the 21st century as a #twitterstorian who is helping to build a digital archive of immigrant digital stories and provide historical commentary to the news.
I write about immigrants, Asian Americans, and race as a way to understand America in the past and present. I write history “from the bottom up,” focusing on everyday people and their role in American life. I fervently believe that there has never been a more important time for strong, fact-based, and accessible history and journalism. In a society that seemingly accepts the erasure and misinterpretation of history as well as the manipulation and denial of facts, we need to understand how we got to where we are today, what is at stake, and what we can do to create change.
I wrote America for Americans in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential elections. My students, many of whom are first-generation immigrants and refugees, kept asking "How could we have elected a president who called Mexicans 'rapists' and 'criminals' and called for a 'complete and total shutdown of Muslims to the US'?" And "how could this have happened today, after two terms of our first African American president?"
I didn't have the answers. And none of the books on my shelves did either. So I decided to write my own. America for Americans is a sobering history. It was hard to write (and it literally made me sick to do so!) But I think it is a necessary wake up call for all of us who seek to live in a humane and welcoming world. I hope that you will enjoy it!
I’m a historian who still does history the old-fashioned way by doing research in the archives. I get excited finding dusty documents, but I’m also fully immersed in the 21st century as a #twitterstorian who is helping to build a digital archive of immigrant digital stories and provide historical commentary to the news.
I write about immigrants, Asian Americans, and race as a way to understand America in the past and present. I write history “from the bottom up,” focusing on everyday people and their role in American life. I fervently believe that there has never been a more important time for strong, fact-based, and accessible history and journalism. In a society that seemingly accepts the erasure and misinterpretation of history as well as the manipulation and denial of facts, we need to understand how we got to where we are today, what is at stake, and what we can do to create change.
I wrote America for Americans in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential elections. My students, many of whom are first-generation immigrants and refugees, kept asking "How could we have elected a president who called Mexicans 'rapists' and 'criminals' and called for a 'complete and total shutdown of Muslims to the US'?" And "how could this have happened today, after two terms of our first African American president?"
I didn't have the answers. And none of the books on my shelves did either. So I decided to write my own. America for Americans is a sobering history. It was hard to write (and it literally made me sick to do so!) But I think it is a necessary wake up call for all of us who seek to live in a humane and welcoming world. I hope that you will enjoy it!
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September 4, 2015
In Erika Lee’s At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era,1882-1943, the author articulates how the image of the United States of America transitioned from an egalitarian “nation of immigrants” to an exclusionary “gate-keeping nation” evidenced by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. She further demonstrates this transformation with accounts from her personal family history relating how several of her ancestors from China entered the United States to work in pre-exclusionary and exclusionary eras. Her maternal great-great-great-grandfather May Dong Kee arrived in California without any circumstance as a farmer in 1854 along with many other Chinese immigrants seeking their fortunes in the Gum Saan, or “Gold Mountain”—their term for the USA. By comparison, during the era of exclusion over a half century later in 1918, Lee’s grandfather, Lee Chi Yet, submitted to a strip search and a 2-week investigation at Angel Island in San Francisco in order to enter America as a Chinese-born immigrant. He did so as a “paper son” meaning that he had to assume a new falsified name and pose as the son of a merchant in order to enter the nation that would have refused his entry had they known his true identity as a farmer or imprisoned and deported him had they discovered his deception. This juxtaposition begins Lee’s investigation of how the Chinese exclusion laws affected the Chinese population in America and how the laws transformed America’s national identity, demographic makeup, and image as nation of [certain] immigrants.
Following her concise introduction, Lee organizes her book into four parts with two chapters to each part and an afterword that addresses the legacy of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 in relation to the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. In “Part I. Closing the Gates,” Lee chronicles the California origins of federal immigration regulation as well as the history of the law officials and agencies tasked with the enforcement of excluding and admitting Chinese immigrants and travelers into and out of America. Using government records as primary sources that were only made available to the public in the early 1990s, Lee moves on to “Part II. At America’s Gates,” which traces the relationship between defining Chinese identity and American identity at the immigration offices on Angel Island—the so-called “Ellis Island of the West”—in San Francisco. “Part III. Cracks in the Gate,” chronicles the growth of illegal immigration and reveals the government’s futile task of policing its extensive borders. “Part IV. The Consequences and Legacies of Exclusion,” includes a discussion of the shift from border patrol to harassing Chinese American citizens and immigrants alike in the interior cities of America as well as an Epilogue devoted to the post-exclusionary era’s legacy in late twentieth century immigration policies. Whereas other scholarly studies of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 tend to focus on the legal and transnational aspects it precipitated, Lee identifies her study’s novel combination of local, national, and transnational frameworks as well as perspectives from both Chinese immigrants and U.S. immigration officials. Overall, although Lee’s thesis statements tend to be repeated a bit excessively—in the main introduction, in the section introductions, in the chapter introductions, throughout the chapters, and in the chapter conclusions—Lee articulates, supports, and proves these points in a persuasive and impressive fashion.
Chapter 1 “The Chinese Are Coming. How Can We Stop Them? Chinese Exclusion and the Origins of American Gatekeeping” re-calibrates the common origins story of immigration reform during the 1920s—when the federal government introduced quota systems—back to the 1870s when California politicians and labor unions lobbied for the exclusion of Chinese immigrants from America. American politics, race, class, and gender relations, national identity, and the role of the federal government in controlling immigration." Beginning with “a western American desire to sustain white supremacy in a multiracial West, gatekeeping became a national reality and was extended to other immigrant groups” such as other Asians, Mexicans, and certain Europeans who were continually portrayed by Nativists to be “just like” the Chinese. During the Chinese exclusionary era, the federal government developed a thorough system of “immigration inspections, passport and other documentary requirements, . . . surveillance and criminalization of immigration, and the deportation of immigrants” that it used to regulate immigration from a variety of nations by the 1930s.
In Chapter 2 “The Keepers of the Gate: U.S. Immigration Officials and Chinese Exclusion,” Lee introduces the federal immigration agents along with their diverse perspectives and policies for excluding Chinese immigrants. On one extreme end, John H. Wise, U.S. collector of customs at the port of San Francisco from 1892 to 1898, strove for the exclusion and deportation of all Chinese but only succeeded in making “it much more difficult for all exempt-class Chinese, including native-born American citizens, from gaining admission or readmission into the country.” By comparison, Oscar S. Straus, the Secretary of Labor appointed in 1907 by President Roosevelt sympathized with Chinese immigrants and inverted the original philosophy of the immigration regulation by making admission the rule and exclusion the exception. These examples along with others in between construct a more nuanced, complex picture of how exclusionary immigration policies developed. Overall, Washington D.C. followed the San Francisco model as its role in enforcement of immigration law developed from ad hoc beginnings to a more defined bureaucracy. From 1882-1910, “the immigration service locally and nationally had been transformed from a corps of untrained Chinese inspectors under the Customs Service’s jurisdiction to a centralized and highly bureaucratic agency under the Department of Commerce and Labor.” Starting off with a strong commitment to exclude as many Chinese immigrants as possible, there was an attempt at federal reform for a more fair treatment during the early twentieth century but Nativist rhetoric and political pressure re-invigorated the federal government’s commitment to severely limiting Chinese immigration.
Chapter 3 “Exclusion Acts: Race, Class, Gender, and Citizenship in the Enforcement of the Exclusion Laws” transitions to a consideration of how exclusion enforcement shaped Chinese American as well as American identity. As the government developed a system of personal scrutiny of legal definitions of what it meant to be “Chinese,” a “merchant,” a “prostitute,” and a “citizen,” their actions had the dual effect of shaping the identities of Chinese Americans and the nation’s ideals of race, class, gender, and citizenship.While immigration officers institutionalized popular beliefs and stereotypes of Chinese men as cunning deceivers and women as loathsome prostitutes, the judicial branch of the federal government restored some rights to Chinese Americans through hard-fought court rulings. In one instance, it took a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1898 that guaranteed birthright citizenship as promised in the Fourteenth Amendment to re-admit an American-born son of two non-citizen Chinese parents. As revealed in this example, the exclusion laws affected and interfered in the lives of Chinese Americans in addition to Chinese immigrants. In this chapter, Lee begins to include thorough tables totaling the statistics for how many Chinese men, women, and citizens were admitted to America in certain years according to government records.
In Chapter 4 “One Hundred Kinds of Oppressive Laws: The Chinese Response to American Exclusion,” Lee identifies changing patterns and strategies of resistance “to explain why Chinese continued to come to the United States and how they managed to get in while the exclusion laws were in effect.” Between 1882 and 1943, “by constantly adapting their migration patterns to fit the shifting terrain of the exclusion laws” an estimated 300,955 Chinese “successfully gained admission into the United States for the first time or as returning residents and native-born citizens.” In addition to the transnational migrants moving between the two countries, many men continued to leave the depressed economy of China for the promise of work and pay in America. Operating within transnational migration patterns and relying upon well-organized networks of family, white allies, and lawyers, the Chinese populations on both sides of the Pacific “remained consistent and vocal critics of the exclusion policy during the sixty-one years that it was in effect” and demonstrated “an adept understanding of the American judicial system” to resourcefully work within the system to gain national entrance. However, as the means to completely dismantle the system were limited and working within the system took an unacceptable amount of time, many Chinese Americans and immigrants learned how to negotiate their way around the exclusion laws as the next two chapters explore in greater detail.
Chapter 5 “Enforcing the Borders: Chinese Exclusion along the U.S.-Canadian and the U.S.-Mexican Borders” reveals the similarities and differences between the experiments in American border diplomacy and border enforcement along the northern and southern border regions between 1882-1920. During this time period, an estimated 17,300 Chinese immigrants entered the United States “illegally” from the nations of Canada and Mexico. Whereas the U.S. efforts to prevent these movements centered on border diplomacy with Canada due to a shared white European heritage, a system of surveillance and deportation developed along the Mexican border where racial bonds were absent. In both the north and the south, however, border crossing associated with illegal immigration
became a lucrative “international and interracial business” as Chinese, Canadian, Mexican, and American guides cooperated with each other for mutual gain. Lee includes a photograph of “Chinese Posing as Mexicans,” from 1907 to demonstrate a common strategy used by Chinese immigrants to enter the U.S. from the southern border. In response to these acts of defiance, “a new imperialist assertion of American sovereignty in the form of border controls” effectively closed both the northern and southern borders by the 1920s.
In Chapter 6 “The Crooked Path: Chinese Illegal Immigration and Its Consequences,” Lee examines how the legislative attempt to exclude Chinese “did not end Chinese immigration; it merely forced it underground and supported a transnational business of illegal immigration that corrupted both the Chinese community in America and the American government itself.” Shifting from the border crossings to the nation’s ports, this system of illegal immigration involved “false immigration papers, . . . corrupt immigration officials, and . . . lies, evasion, and bribes” to aid Chinese entry to America. In response to the embarrassment of illegal immigration, the federal government justified further intensification of the screening process which resulted in a perpetual cycle of injustice yielding arbitrary results in which some legal immigrants were “unfairly excluded from the United States, while others gained admission through fraud and evasion.” Throughout the various iterations of this illogical cycle of making legal immigration more difficult and illegal immigration more appealing, both certain members of the American customs officials and the Chinese American community were corrupted as bribes appeared to be more efficient and logical alternatives to the inherently flawed system.
Chapter 7 “In the Shadow of Exclusion: The Impact of Exclusion on the Chinese in America” examines how American gatekeeping in the early twentieth century extended beyond the nation’s borders and into the interiors, “leading to an increase in the state’s role in “disciplining” Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans through the establishment of a system of arrest and deportation.” These racist and anti-immigrant policies came to be enforced in Chinese homes,places of business, and communities such that even Chinese Americans lived in a shadow of fear that resulted in their segregation, marginalization, and return migration during the exclusion era and even decades beyond its end in 1943.
In the Epilogue: “Echoes of Exclusion in the Late Twentieth Century,” Lee briefly chronicles the post-exclusion era’s immigration reform emphasizing the exclusion era’s legacy of perpetual tension between America’s ideal as “a nation of immigrants” and its reality as “a gatekeeping nation” particularly with respect to “the government’s recent efforts to control both the U.S.-Mexican border and Mexican immigrants.” As a final thought in the Afterword: “Following September 11, 2001,” Lee identifies the familiar catchphrases of “containment and protection” to justify “blanket racialized associations of Arabs and Muslims” with terrorists implying that the shadow of the Chinese Exclusion Act has reached into the twenty-first century.
Following her concise introduction, Lee organizes her book into four parts with two chapters to each part and an afterword that addresses the legacy of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 in relation to the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. In “Part I. Closing the Gates,” Lee chronicles the California origins of federal immigration regulation as well as the history of the law officials and agencies tasked with the enforcement of excluding and admitting Chinese immigrants and travelers into and out of America. Using government records as primary sources that were only made available to the public in the early 1990s, Lee moves on to “Part II. At America’s Gates,” which traces the relationship between defining Chinese identity and American identity at the immigration offices on Angel Island—the so-called “Ellis Island of the West”—in San Francisco. “Part III. Cracks in the Gate,” chronicles the growth of illegal immigration and reveals the government’s futile task of policing its extensive borders. “Part IV. The Consequences and Legacies of Exclusion,” includes a discussion of the shift from border patrol to harassing Chinese American citizens and immigrants alike in the interior cities of America as well as an Epilogue devoted to the post-exclusionary era’s legacy in late twentieth century immigration policies. Whereas other scholarly studies of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 tend to focus on the legal and transnational aspects it precipitated, Lee identifies her study’s novel combination of local, national, and transnational frameworks as well as perspectives from both Chinese immigrants and U.S. immigration officials. Overall, although Lee’s thesis statements tend to be repeated a bit excessively—in the main introduction, in the section introductions, in the chapter introductions, throughout the chapters, and in the chapter conclusions—Lee articulates, supports, and proves these points in a persuasive and impressive fashion.
Chapter 1 “The Chinese Are Coming. How Can We Stop Them? Chinese Exclusion and the Origins of American Gatekeeping” re-calibrates the common origins story of immigration reform during the 1920s—when the federal government introduced quota systems—back to the 1870s when California politicians and labor unions lobbied for the exclusion of Chinese immigrants from America. American politics, race, class, and gender relations, national identity, and the role of the federal government in controlling immigration." Beginning with “a western American desire to sustain white supremacy in a multiracial West, gatekeeping became a national reality and was extended to other immigrant groups” such as other Asians, Mexicans, and certain Europeans who were continually portrayed by Nativists to be “just like” the Chinese. During the Chinese exclusionary era, the federal government developed a thorough system of “immigration inspections, passport and other documentary requirements, . . . surveillance and criminalization of immigration, and the deportation of immigrants” that it used to regulate immigration from a variety of nations by the 1930s.
In Chapter 2 “The Keepers of the Gate: U.S. Immigration Officials and Chinese Exclusion,” Lee introduces the federal immigration agents along with their diverse perspectives and policies for excluding Chinese immigrants. On one extreme end, John H. Wise, U.S. collector of customs at the port of San Francisco from 1892 to 1898, strove for the exclusion and deportation of all Chinese but only succeeded in making “it much more difficult for all exempt-class Chinese, including native-born American citizens, from gaining admission or readmission into the country.” By comparison, Oscar S. Straus, the Secretary of Labor appointed in 1907 by President Roosevelt sympathized with Chinese immigrants and inverted the original philosophy of the immigration regulation by making admission the rule and exclusion the exception. These examples along with others in between construct a more nuanced, complex picture of how exclusionary immigration policies developed. Overall, Washington D.C. followed the San Francisco model as its role in enforcement of immigration law developed from ad hoc beginnings to a more defined bureaucracy. From 1882-1910, “the immigration service locally and nationally had been transformed from a corps of untrained Chinese inspectors under the Customs Service’s jurisdiction to a centralized and highly bureaucratic agency under the Department of Commerce and Labor.” Starting off with a strong commitment to exclude as many Chinese immigrants as possible, there was an attempt at federal reform for a more fair treatment during the early twentieth century but Nativist rhetoric and political pressure re-invigorated the federal government’s commitment to severely limiting Chinese immigration.
Chapter 3 “Exclusion Acts: Race, Class, Gender, and Citizenship in the Enforcement of the Exclusion Laws” transitions to a consideration of how exclusion enforcement shaped Chinese American as well as American identity. As the government developed a system of personal scrutiny of legal definitions of what it meant to be “Chinese,” a “merchant,” a “prostitute,” and a “citizen,” their actions had the dual effect of shaping the identities of Chinese Americans and the nation’s ideals of race, class, gender, and citizenship.While immigration officers institutionalized popular beliefs and stereotypes of Chinese men as cunning deceivers and women as loathsome prostitutes, the judicial branch of the federal government restored some rights to Chinese Americans through hard-fought court rulings. In one instance, it took a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1898 that guaranteed birthright citizenship as promised in the Fourteenth Amendment to re-admit an American-born son of two non-citizen Chinese parents. As revealed in this example, the exclusion laws affected and interfered in the lives of Chinese Americans in addition to Chinese immigrants. In this chapter, Lee begins to include thorough tables totaling the statistics for how many Chinese men, women, and citizens were admitted to America in certain years according to government records.
In Chapter 4 “One Hundred Kinds of Oppressive Laws: The Chinese Response to American Exclusion,” Lee identifies changing patterns and strategies of resistance “to explain why Chinese continued to come to the United States and how they managed to get in while the exclusion laws were in effect.” Between 1882 and 1943, “by constantly adapting their migration patterns to fit the shifting terrain of the exclusion laws” an estimated 300,955 Chinese “successfully gained admission into the United States for the first time or as returning residents and native-born citizens.” In addition to the transnational migrants moving between the two countries, many men continued to leave the depressed economy of China for the promise of work and pay in America. Operating within transnational migration patterns and relying upon well-organized networks of family, white allies, and lawyers, the Chinese populations on both sides of the Pacific “remained consistent and vocal critics of the exclusion policy during the sixty-one years that it was in effect” and demonstrated “an adept understanding of the American judicial system” to resourcefully work within the system to gain national entrance. However, as the means to completely dismantle the system were limited and working within the system took an unacceptable amount of time, many Chinese Americans and immigrants learned how to negotiate their way around the exclusion laws as the next two chapters explore in greater detail.
Chapter 5 “Enforcing the Borders: Chinese Exclusion along the U.S.-Canadian and the U.S.-Mexican Borders” reveals the similarities and differences between the experiments in American border diplomacy and border enforcement along the northern and southern border regions between 1882-1920. During this time period, an estimated 17,300 Chinese immigrants entered the United States “illegally” from the nations of Canada and Mexico. Whereas the U.S. efforts to prevent these movements centered on border diplomacy with Canada due to a shared white European heritage, a system of surveillance and deportation developed along the Mexican border where racial bonds were absent. In both the north and the south, however, border crossing associated with illegal immigration
became a lucrative “international and interracial business” as Chinese, Canadian, Mexican, and American guides cooperated with each other for mutual gain. Lee includes a photograph of “Chinese Posing as Mexicans,” from 1907 to demonstrate a common strategy used by Chinese immigrants to enter the U.S. from the southern border. In response to these acts of defiance, “a new imperialist assertion of American sovereignty in the form of border controls” effectively closed both the northern and southern borders by the 1920s.
In Chapter 6 “The Crooked Path: Chinese Illegal Immigration and Its Consequences,” Lee examines how the legislative attempt to exclude Chinese “did not end Chinese immigration; it merely forced it underground and supported a transnational business of illegal immigration that corrupted both the Chinese community in America and the American government itself.” Shifting from the border crossings to the nation’s ports, this system of illegal immigration involved “false immigration papers, . . . corrupt immigration officials, and . . . lies, evasion, and bribes” to aid Chinese entry to America. In response to the embarrassment of illegal immigration, the federal government justified further intensification of the screening process which resulted in a perpetual cycle of injustice yielding arbitrary results in which some legal immigrants were “unfairly excluded from the United States, while others gained admission through fraud and evasion.” Throughout the various iterations of this illogical cycle of making legal immigration more difficult and illegal immigration more appealing, both certain members of the American customs officials and the Chinese American community were corrupted as bribes appeared to be more efficient and logical alternatives to the inherently flawed system.
Chapter 7 “In the Shadow of Exclusion: The Impact of Exclusion on the Chinese in America” examines how American gatekeeping in the early twentieth century extended beyond the nation’s borders and into the interiors, “leading to an increase in the state’s role in “disciplining” Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans through the establishment of a system of arrest and deportation.” These racist and anti-immigrant policies came to be enforced in Chinese homes,places of business, and communities such that even Chinese Americans lived in a shadow of fear that resulted in their segregation, marginalization, and return migration during the exclusion era and even decades beyond its end in 1943.
In the Epilogue: “Echoes of Exclusion in the Late Twentieth Century,” Lee briefly chronicles the post-exclusion era’s immigration reform emphasizing the exclusion era’s legacy of perpetual tension between America’s ideal as “a nation of immigrants” and its reality as “a gatekeeping nation” particularly with respect to “the government’s recent efforts to control both the U.S.-Mexican border and Mexican immigrants.” As a final thought in the Afterword: “Following September 11, 2001,” Lee identifies the familiar catchphrases of “containment and protection” to justify “blanket racialized associations of Arabs and Muslims” with terrorists implying that the shadow of the Chinese Exclusion Act has reached into the twenty-first century.
June 2, 2021
Everyone should read this book - it should be required. This book helped me to understand the extent of the Chinese Exclusion Act period having just heard about it. This book also gives historical context to the immigration policies in this country. Rated a 4 because it got a little repetitive at times and the ending is abrupt. Still, this is one to buy, read, share, and discuss.
May 31, 2021
This book is deeply academic - and at times that makes it a very dense read - but I found it incredibly illuminating on a period of history that I was completely ignorant of. It also gave an excellent context for how the issues that emerged during the Chinese Exclusion Era were deeply impactful on the immigration policies that the US still employs today.
The main reason this took me so long to read was because I was reading it on loan from the library, ran out of time on my loan and had to wait 20 days for it to become available again.
The main reason this took me so long to read was because I was reading it on loan from the library, ran out of time on my loan and had to wait 20 days for it to become available again.
July 20, 2017
A very through look into Chinese immigration during the Exclusion period and how anti-Chinese legislation set the blueprints for future immigration law. This is an academic book, though, with copious citations and reads dry for a layperson (I suggest Dr. Lee's more recent The Making of Asian America: A History for similar history but across a wider span of time and broader populations).
This was published in 2003, though, so parallels to anti-brown people sentiment post- 9/11 are only addressed in the epilogue. The cyclical nature of history is very apparent throughout the rest of the book, though, so if anyone's been following the 2017 travel ban attempts I do wonder what the 21st century equivalent of a paper son will be (as of July 2017, the SC added having a 'bonafide relationship' to a family member as a requirement to avoid the ban which is eerily similar to the family tie loophole during exclusion).
Might post more comprehensive review later.
This was published in 2003, though, so parallels to anti-brown people sentiment post- 9/11 are only addressed in the epilogue. The cyclical nature of history is very apparent throughout the rest of the book, though, so if anyone's been following the 2017 travel ban attempts I do wonder what the 21st century equivalent of a paper son will be (as of July 2017, the SC added having a 'bonafide relationship' to a family member as a requirement to avoid the ban which is eerily similar to the family tie loophole during exclusion).
Might post more comprehensive review later.
May 7, 2020
A decent history of the Chinese Exclusion Act, this book has the feel of a dissertation that needed a little bit more work. Lee argues that the Chinese Exclusion Act, though rescended decades before, was the origin of the racialized understanding of the concept of "Americanness," particularly with respect to today's immigration system.
Her argument here is mostly convincing, if not a smoking gun. She seems to be right in arguing that the American experience of Chinese immigration was when the US government began trying to think through how race, immigration and citizenship were connected. She traces the history of the Chinese exclusion laws, focusing on the period after the first Act was enacted in 1882. In this way, Lee demonstrates the role race played in the earliest developments America's system of immigrant controls.
This was a very interesting book with some very small handicaps, but, these handicaps were significant enough that I felt like the book could have been better. First, this book had the feel of a dissertation, where each chapter is walled off from the topics in other chapters, even if they might have something to say to each other. The discussion of US officials attempts to restrict immigrants was separate from Chinese immigrants attempts to evade US officials, though the two topics are obviously related. This is how you write a dissertation, but, as a book, it felt like Lee was forcing things.
Second, her ideological committments got in the way of this book. I get it, her grandfather suffered through this racist immigration system, and she has a personal stake in it. That said, her ideological committments seem to distract more from her argument than they extend it. She repeatedly makes the claim that Asian's had it worse than white immigrants, a weird claim to make, and one that seeks to quantify victimhood (as those on the far left often do), as if she wants the Chinese to win the prize of victimhood.
She also occassionally overemphasizes the fact that Chinese Americans resisted this racism. Sure, that is true, as she demonstrates, but it also blinds her to the fact that many immigrants gave into the racist system. As she says, lots of Chinese sojourners returned home, to China, rather than stay in the US, and she admits that this is a product of the racism imposed on them at the border. Because she wants to celebrate resistance, very chic amongst the Left, she ignores the many Chinese sojourners who gave in, never telling their stories, never giving them a voice. In this way, her project seems to be blinded by her ideological commitments.
Despite these flaws, this was a good book and an interesting starting point for anyone who wants to think about Chinese exclusion in the US, and the role that that played in our immigration system.
Her argument here is mostly convincing, if not a smoking gun. She seems to be right in arguing that the American experience of Chinese immigration was when the US government began trying to think through how race, immigration and citizenship were connected. She traces the history of the Chinese exclusion laws, focusing on the period after the first Act was enacted in 1882. In this way, Lee demonstrates the role race played in the earliest developments America's system of immigrant controls.
This was a very interesting book with some very small handicaps, but, these handicaps were significant enough that I felt like the book could have been better. First, this book had the feel of a dissertation, where each chapter is walled off from the topics in other chapters, even if they might have something to say to each other. The discussion of US officials attempts to restrict immigrants was separate from Chinese immigrants attempts to evade US officials, though the two topics are obviously related. This is how you write a dissertation, but, as a book, it felt like Lee was forcing things.
Second, her ideological committments got in the way of this book. I get it, her grandfather suffered through this racist immigration system, and she has a personal stake in it. That said, her ideological committments seem to distract more from her argument than they extend it. She repeatedly makes the claim that Asian's had it worse than white immigrants, a weird claim to make, and one that seeks to quantify victimhood (as those on the far left often do), as if she wants the Chinese to win the prize of victimhood.
She also occassionally overemphasizes the fact that Chinese Americans resisted this racism. Sure, that is true, as she demonstrates, but it also blinds her to the fact that many immigrants gave into the racist system. As she says, lots of Chinese sojourners returned home, to China, rather than stay in the US, and she admits that this is a product of the racism imposed on them at the border. Because she wants to celebrate resistance, very chic amongst the Left, she ignores the many Chinese sojourners who gave in, never telling their stories, never giving them a voice. In this way, her project seems to be blinded by her ideological commitments.
Despite these flaws, this was a good book and an interesting starting point for anyone who wants to think about Chinese exclusion in the US, and the role that that played in our immigration system.
March 29, 2019
There can be no question that this is a comprehensive, deeply researched, and engrossing read about the history of the Chinese Exclusion Act and its implications on national policy and the lives of Chinese and Chinese-Americans over the first half of the twentieth century. Lee’s dive into the records of the US Immigration & Naturalization Service, the historical records at Angel Island have yielded immensely valuable details about the logics of exclusion and immigration policy as they emerged to combat the perceived “problem” of Chinese migrants entering the US on the West Coast in the late 19th century. This is not just a case of legal history, but also looking at the systems by which policies responded to prevailing social and political attitudes of the era, and then subsequently remade attitudes about immigration and its various modes of detections and policing for racialized populations. It is to Lee’s credit that she includes not just comprehensive overviews of how these systems were put in place (Chapters 1 and 2), but also how they displayed anxieties over class, race, and gender at the gates (and thereby defining the bounds of class, race, and gender within the US.) Moreover, her two chapters on the modes of resistance and subversion to the policing techniques of immigration policy demonstrate the creativity of Chinese migrants working within the flawed systems of early US immigration policy, subverting the entry interview, the health inspection, and the paperwork required to facilitate the arrival of their family and friends. This is the story of emergent policy that shaped the future of immigration policy and the nation-state’s framing of the immigration problem—a highly valuable read even beyond the bounds of Asian-Am history.
November 13, 2018
Erika Lee surveys a largely ignored period of Chinese-American history, the "exclusion era". Much like the nadir period of African-American history (ca. 1890-1945), many histories treat the exclusion era as a silent period, passed over between the more high-profile times of the Gold Rush and subsequent railroad construction and the latter period of more open immigration, particularly after 1965. While she uses her own family's immigration history to open the introduction, Lee delivers an academic history, examining the effects of exclusion and restriction on the Chinese already living in the United States, and on those who still found ways to enter, despite the legal barriers. Read in the light of the anti-immigrant hysteria that is such a feature of our current politics, Lee's argument that the Chinese Exclusion Act fundamentally reshaped America's history with immigrants and immigration rings particularly true.
February 5, 2024
Lee does well in documenting and telling the history of the Exclusion Act and the ways Chinese immigrants found ways around the arbitrary barriers placed in front of them. When Lee attempts to link Chinese exclusion in the late 18th and early 19th century to modern immigration enforcement, the book begins to show cracks. She is correct that the era of Chinese exclusion was primarily rooted in prejudice, but Lee tries to use that to make a blanket assumption about all immigration enforcement past and present. Some of the characterizations Lee makes of early American attitudes toward immigration are shaky as well.
As a history book, this is a great source to learn from. As a commentary on America broadly, it fails.
As a history book, this is a great source to learn from. As a commentary on America broadly, it fails.
April 20, 2021
An intensely fascinating and insightful volume on a topic which is all-too-often glossed over in other texts, Dr. Lee here presents a hyper-detailed and data-filled examination of Chinese immigration to the United States, ostensibly in the period from 1882 to 1943. In practice, however, it might do to change the years in the title to 1882 to 1929 - for there is a distinct dearth of information within its pages dealing with Chinese immigration in the last full decade of exclusion, the 1930s. Regardless of this oversight, however, Dr. Lee has written a phenomenal book that casts a highly necessary light into some of the darkest shadows of Federal immigration policy.
November 10, 2020
This is one of the best research books that I want to keep on my shelf for the next generation to read and understand more about US immigration system and policies! Being an Asian, I was often told about the Chinese Exclusion act and the “paper-son” method to exploit the loophole! What i didn’t know is that this act became the foundation of all American immigration policies that formed later. Very interesting and informative read! Highly recommend!
February 27, 2021
A fabulously interesting read! Taught me incredible things about the Chinese Exclusion Act I had never known.
My only comment is I wish there could have been a bit more analysis about how white Americans came to accept/embrace it and to allow for gatekeeping legislation to become the norm rather than just its effects on future pieces of legislative bans on the basis of race, gender, working group, etc.
My only comment is I wish there could have been a bit more analysis about how white Americans came to accept/embrace it and to allow for gatekeeping legislation to become the norm rather than just its effects on future pieces of legislative bans on the basis of race, gender, working group, etc.
June 29, 2023
Essential book for anyone interested in U.S. immigration history or Asian American history. There's tons of great content in this book, but the consistently strongest strains are how Chinese exclusion set in motion a broader shift towards border control in the U.S., as well as the limits of enforcement and state capacity to actually implement immigration restriction policies in this era.
June 2, 2019
A great look into how the Chinese were viewed and treated in the 19th & 20th Centuries. Well worth the read.
September 21, 2021
Sometimes I feel like someone has strapped me in front of my parents' old assemblage of eMachines desktops to watch a seemingly endless gif of bad memories. It's the kind that would take ages to load; I'm talking gigabytes on terabytes in size, crawling even on a fiberoptic connection, but once it does load, I'm doomed to a sempiternal stream of racist insults flung by acrid transient men and snot-nosed preteens mockingly teaching a snot-glazed me how 'we' do it in America. And just when I feel like I've reached the end of this very specific brand of torture, I'm at the mercy of a Disneyland-esque seatbelt that just won't unlatch. "Needs more jpeg," a would-be ride operator would confoundingly drone before loading up the gif for another ride on Soarin' Over Anthony's Struggles With His Ethnic Identity. "That's the wrong formaaattt!!" I'd scream as I'm lifted into that time a bank manager in Yountville literally asked me a single question before dismissing me from being a part of her notably all-white staff.
At America's Gates offers many of these kinds of short vignettes to fill out the history of the Chinese Exclusion Act to a similarly dizzying effect. Erika Lee is an incredibly thorough historian, addressing individual aspects of the policy in chapters that focus on its impact on the Chinese community at large and their ability to exist in the U.S., be it as sojourners or citizens. I learned a great deal about California's long recorded hatefulness towards the Chinese, and I was stunned to learn that the Golden Gate Bridge that has long symbolized home for me once stood as a symbol of a closed door to Chinese. Lee's approach to her arguments are capital-A Academic, like writing a dissertation she knows she will have to defend before the winners of U.S. history. She even has a damn summary at the end of each chapter.
As dense as this approach can be to read, it makes sense for Lee to go about it in this way since her whole point is how the Chinese Exclusion Act provided the foundation for U.S. immigration policy to come. Convincing though she is at the start, it's clear by the end that she is more interested in the equivalent of commenting "FIRST!" on a popular YouTuber's video than analyzing the ways past intolerance inform modern policy. And I've gotta admit, I'm getting real tired of Chinese people feeling like being first is the be-all, end-all of anything. Lee's final chapters are a particularly sickening expression of this mentality, where she discusses today's U.S. immigration policy as directed towards Arabs and Mexicans, but only insofar as to say Chinese people got it first and worst. I feel like I learned a lot but I can't say I vibe with why she put this together.
At America's Gates offers many of these kinds of short vignettes to fill out the history of the Chinese Exclusion Act to a similarly dizzying effect. Erika Lee is an incredibly thorough historian, addressing individual aspects of the policy in chapters that focus on its impact on the Chinese community at large and their ability to exist in the U.S., be it as sojourners or citizens. I learned a great deal about California's long recorded hatefulness towards the Chinese, and I was stunned to learn that the Golden Gate Bridge that has long symbolized home for me once stood as a symbol of a closed door to Chinese. Lee's approach to her arguments are capital-A Academic, like writing a dissertation she knows she will have to defend before the winners of U.S. history. She even has a damn summary at the end of each chapter.
As dense as this approach can be to read, it makes sense for Lee to go about it in this way since her whole point is how the Chinese Exclusion Act provided the foundation for U.S. immigration policy to come. Convincing though she is at the start, it's clear by the end that she is more interested in the equivalent of commenting "FIRST!" on a popular YouTuber's video than analyzing the ways past intolerance inform modern policy. And I've gotta admit, I'm getting real tired of Chinese people feeling like being first is the be-all, end-all of anything. Lee's final chapters are a particularly sickening expression of this mentality, where she discusses today's U.S. immigration policy as directed towards Arabs and Mexicans, but only insofar as to say Chinese people got it first and worst. I feel like I learned a lot but I can't say I vibe with why she put this together.
August 28, 2022
I appreciated Lee’s exploration of the intersections of race, class, and gender when it comes to the history of Chinese exclusion, a topic I realized after reading this book I still knew very little about. While my parents were part of the immigration wave of the 1980s and thus I have no personal connections to the early Chinese Americans, I still felt a sort of kinship with these uncles and aunties who suffered for decades due to institutionalized exclusion. Lee’s argument that the years of Chinese exclusion was the blueprint and testing grounds for future US immigration policy for other nonwhite groups is a compelling one.
I like that Lee’s telling of Chinese exclusion isn’t told in a vacuum, and she compares it to how other contemporaneous immigrant groups were treated throughout the decades, and how this focus would teeter back and forth depending on the social and political climates of the time. While I wished there were more personal accounts of the Chinese folks who lived during this era, I also understand this isn’t narrative nonfiction and is solidly an academic work that nonetheless helped fill many gaps in my knowledge on the topic.
I like that Lee’s telling of Chinese exclusion isn’t told in a vacuum, and she compares it to how other contemporaneous immigrant groups were treated throughout the decades, and how this focus would teeter back and forth depending on the social and political climates of the time. While I wished there were more personal accounts of the Chinese folks who lived during this era, I also understand this isn’t narrative nonfiction and is solidly an academic work that nonetheless helped fill many gaps in my knowledge on the topic.
February 15, 2008
Looking exclusively at Chinese immigration and Chinese exclusion, Lee explores the history of American immigration, linking the gradual rise in nativist exclusion and the attempts to restrict immigration to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Beautifully written and supported by an amazing amount of primary sources, Lee's book offers a compelling and informative look into Chinese immigration, detailing the effect that exclusion had on migrants, citizens, and exploring the various attempts to enter the country illegally throughout the late 19th and early 20th century. In addition to recounting the history of Chinese Americans, Lee ties the immigrant restriction of the 1800s to modern attempts to deal with illegals from Mexico. The same tactics and agencies patrolling the Mexican borders today are the direct legacy of Chinese exclusion. Fantastically written Lee's book is a must read for anyone interested in immigration history.
September 17, 2012
Very informative, nice writing style!!!!
April 6, 2017
Lee carries her argument a bit far, as the Chinese were one of a number of causes of the growth of immigration growth in the United States. Overall, she does a very good job of laying out the genesis, growth, and consequences of exclusion. I hoped for a bit more discussion of how the Chinese communities evolved under exclusion, though I take her argument that that has been studied. The history of Chinese exclusion and the taint it cast upon the community bears consideration in our present climate.
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