New from the University of Pennsylvania Press:
Deportation: The Origins of U.S. Policy, by Torrie Hester (Saint Louis University). A description from the Press:
Before 1882, the U.S. federal government had
never formally deported anyone, but that year an act of Congress made
Chinese workers the first group of immigrants eligible for deportation.
Over the next forty years, lawmakers and judges expanded deportable
categories to include prostitutes, anarchists, the sick, and various
kinds of criminals. The history of that lengthening list shaped the
policy options U.S. citizens continue to live with into the present.
Deportation
covers the uncertain beginnings of American deportation policy and
recounts the halting and uncoordinated steps that were taken as it
emerged from piecemeal actions in Congress and courtrooms across the
country to become an established national policy by the 1920s. Usually
viewed from within the nation, deportation policy also plays a part in
geopolitics; deportees, after all, have to be sent somewhere. Studying
deportations out of the United States as well as the deportation of U.S.
citizens back to the United States from abroad, Torrie Hester
illustrates that U.S. policy makers were part of a global trend that saw
officials from nations around the world either revise older immigrant
removal policies or create new ones.
A history of immigration policy in the United States and the world, Deportation
chronicles the unsystematic emergence of what has become an
internationally recognized legal doctrine, the far-reaching impact of
which has forever altered what it means to be an immigrant and a
citizen.
A few blurbs:
"Through impressive research and detailed analysis, Torrie Hester
shows how the early history of deportation law and policy contributed to
the world in which we now live. The author successfully shows how the
incremental creation of acceptable grounds for deportation reflected an
agenda of racialized nation building—an issue that is often raised in
critique of the mass deportations of our own times."—Donna Gabaccia
"Deportation: The Origins of U.S. Policy
is a tour-de-force of U.S. policy history, detailing how deportation
was born as a lawful practice in the late nineteenth century and
tracking its steady expansion into the twentieth century. Moreover, it
follows the story beyond U.S. borders to examine the world in which U.S.
immigration was made. It is a timely and urgent work."—Kelly Lytle
Hernandez
More information is available
here.
