Not "A Nation of Immigrants": Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion

by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

However, except for Chinese exclusion, prior to World War 1, as historian Mae Ngai points out, the United States had virtually open borders; immigration was encouraged and unfettered.39 In the wake of the US entering the European war, xenophobia surged, and the US Congress in 1917 enacted an extremely restrictive immigration law that became the basis of the comprehensive Immigration Act of 1924 (the Johnson-Reed Act, Asian Exclusion Act, and National Origins Act), the primary determinant of eligibility for citizenship being whiteness, under the guise of “the nationality of the immigrant.”40 The 1917 law for the first time imposed a literacy test and increased the fee paid by arriving immigrants; it also gave more leeway to immigration officials to make decisions over whom to exclude. And, most restrictive of all, it excluded anyone from what was defined as the Asiatic Barred Zone, except Filipinos, who could travel freely to and within the US because of colonial status. There were no quotas or restrictions on Western Hemisphere populations.