"In a race all their own": The quest to make mexicans ineligible for U.S. citizenship

Pacific Historical Review

Volumn 79, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 167-201

  Molina, Natalia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BUREAUCRACY; CITIZENSHIP; ETHNIC GROUP; HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; IMMIGRATION POLICY; RACE; SOCIAL HISTORY; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

UNITED STATES;

EID: 77951797239     PISSN: 00308684     EISSN: 15338584     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/phr.2010.79.2.167     Document Type: Article

References (137)

1. Editorial, The Nation, March 26, 1924, p. 330.
2. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited citizenship to whites. With the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) and revision of the Naturalization Act in 1870, blacks also became eligible; thus, whiteness was not the only route to citizenship. For the links between whiteness and citizenship in early U.S. history, see Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Mass., 1998).
3. For more on common knowledge understandings of race in Supreme Court decisions, see Ian Haney-Ĺpez, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York, 1996).
4. In re Rodríguez, 81 Fed. 337, W.D. Texas, 1897.
5. The ruling was handed down in a lower district court and was therefore not binding in other courts. Nonetheless, it has been hailed as a landmark civil rights case. On In re Rodríguez, see Arnoldo De Lén, In re Ricardo Rodríguez: An Attempt at Chicano Disenfranchisement in San Antonio, 1896-1897 (San Antonio, Tex., 1979);
6. Haney-Ĺpez, White by Law.
7. On Mexican communities and changing demographics in the Southwest, see David Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley, 1995),
8. George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York, 1993).
9. See "Economic Development and Immigration, 1890-1920," in Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors, 39-68.
10. In 1891 Congress authorized the creation of the Office of the Superintendent of Immigration (renamed as the Bureau of Immigration in 1895) within the Treasury Department. In 1903 this bureau was transferred to the newly formed Department of Commerce and Labor. On June 27, 1906, Congress expanded and renamed the existing Immigration Bureau to the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization (34 Stat. 596). In 1913, when the departments of Commerce and Labor divided, the bureaus were separated into the Bureau of Immigration and the Bureau of Naturalization; both remained within the Department of Labor. The two merged to become the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in 1933. In 1940 Congress moved the INS to the Department of Justice (today, under the name of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, it is part of the Department of Homeland Security). For an overview of the early history of immigration and naturalization services, see "U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a Division of Homeland Security," available online at www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/ toolbox/about/history/ins-history.xml.
11. Thomas A. Guglielmo, White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945 (New York, 2003).
12. Chief Examiner in St. Louis, Mo., to Commissioner of Immigration, June 26, 1916, file #19783/155, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Record Group 85, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter RG 85). See also file #55639-617-A, in ibid.
13. Chief Examiner in St. Louis, Mo., to Commissioner of Immigration, June 26, 1916, file #19783/155, RG 85.
14. Mexican immigration was mainly comprised of men during this period. Thus, it stands to reason that most of the naturalization petitions concerned male Mexican applicants. Nonetheless, the situation raises the question of how whiteness, masculinity, and citizenship were linked and if denying the petitions of these Mexican men operated to preserve not only whiteness itself, but dominant understandings of whiteness as well. On race, citizenship, and masculinity, see Kevin J. Mumford, Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century (New York, 1997)
15. Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago, 1995).
16. While Mexicans generally view themselves, and are viewed by others, as being descendants of Spaniards and Indians, many also have kinship ties with Africans. The Spanish colonialists brought Africans to Mexico as slaves.
17. Martha Menchaca, Recovering History, Constructing Race: The Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans (Austin, Tex., 2001);
18. Laura E. Ǵmez, Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race (New York, 2007).
19. Haney-Ĺpez, White by Law, 49.
20. George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (Philadelphia, 1998), vii.
21. Cheryl I. Harris, "Whiteness as Property," Harvard Law Review, 106 (1993), 1713.
22. See also Peggy Pascoe on the property value of whiteness; Peggy Pascoe, "Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of 'Race' in Twentieth-Century America," Journal of American History, 83 (1996), 44.
23. Chief Examiner in St. Louis, Mo., to Commissioner of Immigration, June 26, 1916, file #19783/155, RG 85.
24. Alternatively, these individuals may simply have wanted to avoid entanglement in more bureaucratic red tape. They may also have felt that it was better to go without U.S. citizenship than risk the possibility of deportation if their application were denied.
25. Naturalization Act of July 14, 1870 (amending Section 2169, U.S. Revised Statutes), 16 Stat. 254 (1870).
26. James R. Gray, Clerk, U.S. District Court, St. Louis, Mo., to the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Jan. 1, 1907, file #19783/1-24, box 1572, entry 26, RG 85;
27. Marian L. Smith, "Race, Nationality, and Reality: INS Administration of Racial Provisions in U.S. Immigration and Nationality Law since 1898," Prologue, 34 (Summer 2002), 90-105.
28. Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178 (1922).
29. See also Haney-Ĺpez, White by Law, 8-86.
30. Ozawa v. United States; emphasis added in first quote.
31. U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923). The Court's decision addressed the questions of race and of naturalization separately.
32. See also Haney-Ĺpez, White by Law.
33. The commission issued its recommendations, which included a call for restrictive immigration standards to guard against any further influx of undesirable foreigners, in a forty-one-volume report. See The Dictionary of Races or Peoples, vol.5, available online at library.stanford.edu/depts/dlp/ ebrary/dillingham/body.shtml.
34. V. S. McClatchy to Hon. Robe Carl White, Acting Secretary of Labor, Sept. 4, 1929, file #19783/155, RG 85.
35. Commissioner of Naturalization to the District Director of Birmingham, Ala., Jan. 14, 1930, in ibid.
36. Junior naturalization examiner to the District Director of New Orleans, Jan. 12, 1929, in ibid.
37. For more on the cases, see United States v. Balsara, 180 F. 694 (2nd Cir. 1910),
38. In re Burton, 1 Ala. 111 (1900),
39. and In re Camille, 6 F. 256 (C.C.D.Or. 1880).
40. Junior naturalization examiner to the District Director of New Orleans, Jan. 12, 1929, p. 3, file #19783/155, RG 85; emphasis added.
41. Marian L. Smith, "The INS and the Singular Status of North American Indians," American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 21: 1 (1997), 134-135.
42. Japanese had also received citizenship because of their military service; Lucy E. Salyer, "Baptism by Fire: Race, Military Service, and U.S. Citizenship Policy, 1918-1935," Journal of American History, 91 (2004), 847-876.
43. Commissioner of Naturalization to Veselle Schaeffer, Feb. 26, 1928, file #19783/ 155, RG 85.
44. The issue of Mexicans' continued right to immigrate comes up various times in internal Bureau discussions. See file #55639-731-A, RG 85.
45. The Native Sons of the Golden West had a long tradition of targeting foreign residents of California. They had led state and local campaigns to restrict Chinese and Japanese and were instrumental in passing the state's Alien Land Law acts in 1913 and 1920.
46. Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, N.J., 2004), 47.
47. Press release, California Joint Immigration Committee, Oct. 7, 1929, box 518, HR 71 A-F 16.4, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, Record Group 233, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter RG 233).
48. Mark Reisler, By the Sweat of Their Brow: Mexican Immigrant Labor in the United States, 1900-1940 (Westport, Conn., 1976), 206;
49. Robert F. Foerster, The Racial Problems Involved in Immigration from Latin America and the West Indies to the United States: A Report Submitted to the Secretary of Labor (Washington, D.C., 1925)
50. James Davis, "One Hundred Years of Immigration," New York Times, Feb. 17, 1924.
51. See also Martha Mabie Gardner, The Qualities of a Citizen: Women, Immigration, and Citizenship, 1870-1965 (Princeton, N.J., 2005).
52. Department of Labor to Albert Johnson, Feb. 14, 1929, box 515, HR 71 A-F 16.1, RG 233.
53. California Joint Immigration Committee to William Doak, Dec. 11, 1931, file #55639-617-A, RG 85.
54. Ibid. It is interesting to note that, because of their Spanish heritage, mestizo Mexicans were considered part white. Yet, at the time, Spain received a quota of only 100 immigrants per year, which implies that they too were considered undesirable immigrants.
55. On the quotas, see Congressional Record, 1929, 2 sess., vol.70, p. 3535.
56. "Memorandum Relative to Communication Dated February 5, 1929, addressed by Secretary of Labor, Honorable James J. Davis, to Senator Hiram W. Johnson, Chairman of the Committee on Immigration, United States Senate," prepared by U. S. Webb, file #19783/155, RG 85.
57. Paul Armstrong to Commissioner of Naturalization, Sept. 20, 1929, file #19783/155, RG 85. Armstrong did not cite the Toyota case, but he was likely referring to Hidemitsu Toyota v. United States (268 U.S. 402 1925) in which the United States canceled Toyota's naturalization certificate on the grounds that it was "illegally procured" because he was Japanese.
58. Commissioner of Naturalization to District Director of San Francisco, Oct. 3, 1929, file #19783/155, RG 85.
59. The act had the practical effect of preventing the state's Japanese residents from owning or leasing land for more than three years. For general information about Johnson, see "Johnson, Hiram Warren, (1866-1945)," Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, available online at bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay. pl?index=J000140, accessed Feb. 16, 2008.
60. Doak to Native Sons of the Golden West, Oct. 27, 1931, file #55639-617-A, RG 85.
61. John T. Reagan, Grand Secretary of the Native Sons of the Golden West, to Doak, Secretary of Labor, Oct. 10, 1931, in ibid.
62. Reisler, By the Sweat of Their Brow, 230. Doak was replaced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's newly appointed Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, in March 1933.
63. Doak to Native Sons of the Golden West, Oct. 27, 1931, file #55639-617-A, RG 85;
64. Native Sons of the Golden West to Doak, Nov. 12, 1931, in ibid.
65. Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, 83-90.
66. American Eugenics Society Committee on Selective Immigration, "Immigration Program," Fifth Annual Report, 1930, file #55639-617-A, RG 85. A group of prominent eugenicists established the first eugenics organization, the American Eugenics Society (AES), in 1921. The AES received the support of leading eugenicists throughout the United States and spread eugenic ideas to the wider public, thus becoming the foremost organization for eugenics education and advocacy in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s.
67. For more on the AES, see Barry Alan Mehler, "A History of the American Eugenics Society, 1921-1940" (Ph.D dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1989).
68. "Mexican Immigration," Eugenical News, 15 (1930), 13.
69. "Mexican Immigration," Eugenical News, 15 (1930), 13, Ibid.
70. Some black leaders criticized the Literacy Act because they saw the parallels between similar measures that had been imposed to restrict their rights after they had been granted citizenship. David J. Hellwig, "Black Leaders and United States Immigration Policy, 1917-1929," Journal of Negro History, 66 (1981), 110-127.
71. On changes in immigration policy, see Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American.
72. On increased negative medicalized representations of Mexicans, see Natalia Molina, "Illustrating Cultural Authority: Medicalized Representations of Mexican Communities in Early-Twentieth-Century Los Angeles," Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, 28 (2003), 127-143;
73. Molina, Fit to Be Citizens? Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939 (Berkeley, 2006);
74. and Alexandra Minna Stern, Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America (Berkeley, 2005).
75. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, 58-59;
76. Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (Berkeley, 2010).
77. Camille Guerin-Gonzales, Mexican Workers and American Dreams: Immigration, Repatriation, and California Farm Labor, 1900-1939 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1994);
78. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors; Molina, Fit to Be Citizens?;
79. Reisler, By the Sweat of Their Brow.
80. On the reasons that the legislation sponsored by J. C. Box and others failed in 1926 and 1928, see "The Politics of Restriction," in Reisler, By the Sweat of Their Brow, 198-226.
81. House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, U.S. Congress, Hearings before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, House of Representatives, Seventieth Congress, First Session, February 21 to April 5, 1928 (Washington, D.C., 1928).
82. "Copy of White House Press Release" regarding Mexican immigration, Sept. 8, 1930, file #387-150.062 Public Charge/799, Visa Division Correspondence Regarding Immigration, 1910-1939, box 38, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter RG 59).
83. John Farr Simmons's Speech, Chief of Visas Officer, State Department at Willmington, Mass., conference on immigration (12 pages, handwritten), folder 6, Sen 71 A-F 11, Committee Papers Including Hearings, 71st Congress, box 93, Records of the U.S. Senate, Record Group 46, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter RG 46). The number of Mexicans deported-mainly for entry without a visa-skyrocketed from 1,751 in 1925 to over 15,000 in 1929.
84. See Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 67.
85. Reisler, By the Sweat of Their Brow, 215.
86. Ibid., 214-215. The full text of Public Law No.1018 can be found in file #55639-731-A, RG 85.
87. Lytle Hernandez, Migra!
88. Political scientist Kitty Calavita has made this same point with regard to a later period. In Inside the State, a study of the INS, Department of Labor, and agricultural growers involved in the Bracero Program, Calavita examined the conflicting agendas of labor and immigration policy. The Bracero Program (1942-1964) was a form of contract labor that U.S. and Mexican officials designed to bring Mexican workers into the United States temporarily. At the program's end, the workers would be required to return to Mexico. Calavita has noted the following blatant example of the competing agendas of immigration policy and labor demand: At the beginning of the Bracero Program, the INS legalized undocumented farmworkers already working in the United States. This move violated bilateral agreements, but it helped provide a readily available labor pool for growers. Calavita's example reveals how capitalism's need for labor could disrupt hegemony, in this case, a plainly visible racial order.
89. See Kitty Calavita, Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the I.N.S. (New York, 1992).
90. On the effects of the Depression on Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the United States, see Douglas Monroy, Rebirth: Mexican Los Angeles from the Great Migration to the Great Depression (Berkeley, 1999);
91. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors;
92. Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez, Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s (Albuquerque, 1995);
93. Guerin-Gonzales, Mexican Workers and American Dreams;
94. Molina, Fit to Be Citizens?; Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American;
95. Vicki Ruiz, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950 (Albuquerque, 1987);
96. and Abraham Hoffman, Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression: Repatriation Pressures, 1929-1939 (Tucson, Ariz., 1974).
97. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, 170.
98. See ibid., Part IV, "Ambivalent Americanism."
99. Neil Foley, "Becoming Hispanic: Mexican Americans and the Faustian Pact with Whiteness," in Foley, ed., Reflexiones: New Directions in Mexican American Studies (Austin, Tex., 1997);
100. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors.
101. Mario T. García, "Mexican Americans and the Politics of Citizenship: The Case of El Paso, 1936," New Mexico Historical Review, 59 (1984), 187-204.
102. Roberto Alvarez, "The Lemon Grove Incident: The Nation's First Successful Desegregation Court Case," Journal of San Diego History, 32 (1986), 116-135.
103. Gabriela F. Arredondo, Mexican Chicago: Race, Identity, and Nation, 1916-1939 (Urbana, Ill., 2008).
104. "Indian Blood Bars Mexicans as Citizens," New York Times, Dec. 12, 1935.
105. Judge John Knight also cited Morrison et al. v. People of State of California, 291 U.S. 82 (1934), 54, S. Ct. 281, which raised the question of Mexicans' eligibility for citizenship, even though it was a case regarding the Alien Land Law of California, not a naturalization case.
106. On the ruling, see "Indian Blood Bars Mexicans as Citizens." The ruling is also discussed in Francisco A. Rosales, !Pobre Raza! Violence, Justice, and Mobilization among México Lindo Immigrants, 1900-1936 (Austin, Tex., 1999), 127-128,
107. Dara Orenstein, "Void for Vagueness: Mexicans and the Collapse of Miscegenation Law in California," Pacific Historical Review, 74 (2005), 367-408. Patrick Lukens Espinosa has examined the case within the context of the Roosevelt Administration's Good Neighbor Policy and the State Department's approaches to policymaking. Patrick Lukens Espinosa, "Mexico, Mexican Americans and the FDR Administration's Racial Classification Policy: Public Policy in Place of Diplomacy" (Ph.D. dissertation, Arizona State University, 1999).
108. Matthew Frye-Jacobson got at this instability of race beautifully in the opening of his book when he replayed and analyzed a passage from Phillip Roth's Counterlife (1987) about the contestations over whether Jews constitute a race and who gets to decide that (anthropologists, census makers, or religious leaders, for example). Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color.
109. "In the Matter of the Petition for Citizenship," Petition 2272-P-24049, National Archives and Records Administration-Northeast Region (New York City; hereafter Petition 2272-P-24049).
110. In the Matter of the Petition for Citizenship, Ibid.
111. An ardent supporter of the Mexican Revolution, José Vasconcelos was also an educator, philosopher, and writer. In one of most his famous works, La raza ćsmica (1925), he developed the idea that, as a hybrid people, Mexico's mestizos were, by virtue of their mixed ancestry, uniquely gifted, creative, and civilized.
112. Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, Mexico at the World's Fairs: Crafting a Modern Nation (Berkeley, 1996);
113. Alan Knight, "Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910- 1940," in Richard Graham, ed., The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940 (Austin, Tex., 1990);
114. Helen Delpar, The Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican: Cultural Relations between the United States and Mexico, 1920-1935 (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1992).
115. Petition 2272-P-24049.
116. Ibid.; emphasis added.
117. "Mexico Protests Ruling: Embassy to Appeal Citizenship Ban at Buffalo for Indian Blood," New York Times, Dec. 14, 1935.
118. Espinosa, "Mexico, Mexican Americans and the FDR Administration's Racial Classification Policy," 128;
119. Rosales, !Pobre Raza!.
120. Clara E. Rodriguez, Changing Race: Latinos, the Census, and the History of Ethnicity in the United States (New York, 2000), 83-84.
121. The Bureau was reconfigured, as of 1933, as the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
122. Circular No. 111, May 15, 1937, file #19783/155, RG 85.
123. Circular No. 140, July 20, 1937, in ibid.
124. Charles P. Muller to Immigration and Naturalization Service, Aug. 27, 1937, in ibid.
125. See file #19783/155, RG 85, for correspondence directed to the INS in July and August 1937, asking for clarification.
126. Immigration officers found that Circular No.140 contradicted instructions on INS ship manifest forms and statistical punch cards, where "Mexican" was listed as a separate race. See radiogram, July 30, 1937, file #19783/155, RG 85. Follow-up circulars (numbers 145 and 154) and memos were issued with instructions on how to alter the punch cards to permit identifying Mexicans as white. See Sept. 28, 1938, letter, in ibid.
127. LULAC in El Paso, Texas, to Department of Labor Director, March 24, 1937, in ibid.
128. El Paso District Director G. C. Wilmoth to Modesto Gomez, LULAC Treasurer, July 16, 1937, in ibid.
129. Letters of this type that were addressed to other agencies or individual officials usually were forwarded to the INS.
130. Aurora Davalos to Eleanor Roosevelt, Oct. 14, 1941, file #19783/155, RG 85.
131. Davalos's concern was prescient, bringing to mind the "Double V Campaign" of the 1940s, which called for "victory at home, victory abroad," in reference to civil rights for American blacks who fought in World War II but continued to be denied their civil rights at home.
132. Davalos to Eleanor Roosevelt, Oct. 14, 1941.
133. Nationality Act of 1940 (54 Stat. 1137). Not until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 were all racial qualifications for naturalization removed. Chinese became eligible to naturalize with the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943. Persons from the Philippines and India were not eligible for naturalization until 1946.
134. On how ethnic European groups became white, see Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York, 1995);
135. Guglielmo, White on Arrival;
136. Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color;
137. David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London, 1991).