On America for Americans

I want to start off by saying that I love Erika Lee’s writing. It’s always fresh, clear, and fascinating. This book is no different.

For those already familiar with American immigration history and the history of xenophobia in the US, you probably won’t find a whole lot that’s new here. Lee has two primary interventions here: the first is to make this history accessible to the general public, and the second is to argue that xenophobia does not come in waves—as has been suggested in Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925—but is instead a central part of American history. Although immigration has been, for the most part, the norm in American history, xenophobia has been as well.

Lee approaches her argument through a series of episodes that cut across American history, starting with the role of German immigrants in the early republic, to anti-Catholic sentiment towards the Irish, Chinese exclusion, the construction of quotas, mass deportation of Mexicans during the Great Depression, internment of Japanese, and so on. One problem is that each chapter, while looking at a different “target” of xenophobia, also looks at a specific epoch. Mexicans faced xenophobia well before the start of the 20th century when the “border crossed them” after the Mexican-American War, but Lee effectively starts that conversation with the turn of the century.

Yet, there was also much here, especially towards the end, that was new to me. I was especially interested in her discussion of the 1965 Immigration Act, which put an end to quotas based on national origin. In the same epoch, the United States increased immigrant surveillance for the sake of “national security.” In doing so, “illegal alien” became a more prominent term, and it was almost always levied at Mexicans. In doing so, the American security state conflated “Mexican” with “illegal” and this has taken on a life of its own in public discourse. Moreover, the preference for family reunification was originally written in the hopes that European immigrants who arrived before 1924 would bring their family members to the United States. Of course, post-war Europe was far more wealthy and stabilized, so the family reunification clause was instead increasingly used by Asian and Latin American immigrants. Really, really interesting stuff here.

This is a great addition to the literature on xenophobia in American history, and its writing style is a breath of fresh air.