Explore histories of migration, citizenship and belonging in Germany and the U.S. over the centuries.
Reflecting the growing popularity of the eugenics movement (,[object Object],) in the early twentieth century, the Immigration Act of 1917 expanded the criteria for inadmissibility to the United States to include illiteracy, epilepsy, and mental illness. The 1917 Act also established the Asiatic Barred Zone, which extended exclusionary measures aimed at would-be Chinese immigrants (,[object Object],) to include all of Asia and the Pacific Rim.
This law came on the heels of several other pieces of legislation that curtailed immigration, including the 1903 Anarchist Exclusion Act, the first law barring entry based on political opinion, and the Immigration Act of 1907, which barred entry to individuals whose physical or mental capacities might “affect the ability to earn a living.” Additionally, the Expatriation Act of 1907 revoked the citizenship of any U.S. American woman who chose to marry a foreign national. In this same period, immigration officials also grew concerned with immigrants whom they perceived to be gender and sexual dissidents. Though the term “homosexuality” would not appear in immigration law until the 1950s, officials increasingly used the 1917 Act to deny entry to such persons on the grounds that they were “likely to become a public charges.”
History BeyondMae Ngai. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. New Jersey and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Margot Canaday. The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century America. Princeton University Press.
