The 1875 Page Law: The Influence Of Immigration In The United States

Immigration policy had changed very little since the naturalization act of 1798 until 1875, when two major events occur. Earlier that year in March the United States Congress passed the 1875 Page Law in response to the influx of Asian immigrants into California. The 1875 Page Law established some of the first Federal restrictions on immigrants into the United States, which specifically applied to immigrants from Asian countries such a requiring their immigration be “free and voluntary”, in addition to requiring that they were not criminals, not being transported for prostitution, and allowed for immigrants that had been denied entry to contest immigration decisions in court. (Vong 2007) The second change came in October of 1875 when the Supreme

The issue seemingly had little to do with immigration itself, and more to do with whether or not the state had the authority to impose these taxes, which was seen by congress as an attempt to undermine their authority. The court therefore found that "The laws which govern the right to land passengers in the United States from other countries ought to be the same in New York, Boston, New Orleans, and San Francisco," (Henderson v. Mayor of City of New York 1875) Cannato notes that “ On its face, the case seemed to revolve around the government 's taxing power, not the authority to regulate immigration, but the Court used the occasion to pronounce its disapproval of the lack of uniformity in immigration rules...A rapidly industrializing nation experiencing a huge wave of immigration could no longer leave the question of who was eligible to enter its territory up to individual states; evaluating people entering the ports of New York or Boston was no longer a matter of merely local concern.” (Cannato 2012) Thus, Federal control was born not out of constitutional design, but the need for a uniform

Ewing writes “Immigration laws during World War II and the first years of the Cold War were marked by contradictory tendencies: expanded political grounds for exclusion and surging anti-Japanese sentiments on the one hand, but the loosening of restrictions against other Asian immigrants and the rise of humanitarian refugee policies on the other hand.” (Ewing 2012) In 1942 the U.S. Government created the Bracero program, designed to essentially import laborers from Mexico. This was in order to shore up the lack of American labour available due to our involvement in WWII. The Bracero History Archive, a project by the Smithsonian and several academic institution, details that “From 1942 to 1964, 4.6 million contracts were signed, with many individuals returning several times on different contracts, making it the largest U.S. contract labor program.” (Bracero History Archive 2016) However, at the same time, there was a large increase in undocumented immigration from Mexico, as the legal process was relatively complicated and expensive. (Ewing