"Our gratitude to our soldiers": Military spouses, family re-unification, and postwar immigration reform

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 41, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 27-60

  Wolgin, Philip E ^a   Bloemraad, Irene ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77957746757     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/jinh.2010.41.1.27     Document Type: Article

References (184)

1. Department of State Press Release, April 1, 1964, Abba P. Schwartz, "Foreign and Domestic Implications of U.S. Immigration Laws," speech delivered at St. Olaf College. Box 495, Immigration General, 1964-1966, 9, Emanuel Celler Papers (hereinafter ecp), Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The national-origins quotas system limited immigration proportionately to 2% of the population of each nationality living in the United States in 1920. Through this system, Congress privileged Northern and Western European nations over those in Southern and Eastern Europe. The system exempted the nations of the Western Hemisphere from quota limitations and excluded Asians outright.
2. See Edward P. Hutchinson, Legislative History of American Immigration Policy, 1798-1965 (Philadelphia, 1981).
3. Aristide R. Zolberg, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America (Cambridge, Mass., 2006).
4. Daniel Tichenor, Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America (Princeton, 2002)
5. More formally, the Hart-Celler Act is the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, P.L. 236 (79 Stat. 911). A prime example of attempts to re-integrate military personnel is "The GI Bill," which provided educational and vocational training funding for veterans, as well as access to home and business loans (Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944-58 Stat. 284m).
6. For recent work on the GI Bill, see Kathleen Frydl, The GI Bill (New York, 2009)
7. Edward Humes, Over Here: How the GI Bill Transformed the American Dream (Orlando, 2006)
8. Suzanne Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens: The GI Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (New York, 2005)
9. The classic study of the end of Chinese exclusion is Fred W. Riggs, Pressures on Congress: A Study of the Repeal of Chinese Exclusion (New York, 1950).
10. For general works on Asian exclusion, see Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants since 1882 (New York, 2004)
11. Bill Ong Hing, Making and Remaking Asian America through Immigration Policy, 1850-1990 (Stanford, 1993)
12. Lucy E. Salyer, Laws as Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law (Chapel Hill, 1995).
13. On American relations with East Asian democracies during the Cold War, see Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961 (Berkeley, 2003)
14. Several scholars argue that the Cold War opened a space for criticism of America's race relations, as the Soviet Union capitalized on all forms of domestic racial discrimination in their propaganda
15. See, for example, Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, 2000).
16. Penny M. Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Ithaca, 1997).
17. The historical materials consulted provide few insights into the groups within civil society that might have affected legislators' deliberations. Whether such groups were inactive or just absent from the historical record is unclear. Future research is warranted. Yet, although the analysis herein is primarily political, the story to be told has significant social elements-for example, the paradoxical nature of partial American Legion support for war brides (see n. 17) even as the group officially opposed wholesale immigration reform. One possible approach to understanding the bifurcations within groups like the American Legion is provided by Salyer, who, in her study of Japanese veterans of World War I, argues that the Legion supported citizenship for particular Asian veterans while opposing expanded rights for Asians as a whole.
18. See Salyer, "Baptism by Fire: Race, Military Service, and U.S. Citizenship Policy, 1918-1935," Journal of American History, XCI (2004) at http://www.historycooperative.org/cgi-bin/justtop.cgi?act_justtop&url_http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/91.3/salyer.html_ (24 Nov. 2009).
19. More formally, the McCarran-Walter Act is the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (66 Stat. 163).
20. Total legal admissions in 1946, 1947, and 1948 were 108,721, 147,292, and 170,570, respectively. INS Statistical Yearbook, 2000, 18. Data for entry of military dependents derive from the Annual Reports of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1946 through 1951. See also 81st Cong., 1st sess., House Report No. 150, "Authorizing Completion of the Processing of the Visa Cases, and Admission into the United States, of Certain Alien Fiancés and Fiancées of Members, or of Former Members, of the Armed Forces of the United States, as was Provided in the So-Called GI Fiancées Act, as amended," February 21, 1949; 82d Cong., 1st sess., House Report No. 117, "Extending the Period for the Admission of Alien Spouses and Minor Children of Citizen Members of the United States Armed Forces," February 12, 1951; 82d Cong., 1st sess., Senate Report No. 56, "Admission of Alien Spouses and Minor Children of Citizen Members of the United States Armed Forces," January 29, 1951.
21. Ji-Yeon Yuh, Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America (New York, 2002)
22. Daniel Boo Duk Lee, "Korean Women Married to Servicemen," in Young In Song and Ailee Moon (eds.), Korean American Women Living in Two Cultures (Los Angeles, 1997), 94-121.
23. Giora Goodman, "'Only the Best British Brides': Regulating the Relationship between US Servicemen and British Women in the Early Cold War," Contemporary European History, XVII (2008), 483-503 (an exception, Goodman's article focuses more on attempts to regulate contact between the groups)
24. Maria Höhn, GIs and Fraüleins: The German-American Encounter in 1950s West Germany (Chapel Hill, 2002)
25. Petra Goedde, GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender, and Foreign Relations, 1945-1949 (New Haven, 2003)
26. Suzanne M. Sinke, "Gender and Immigration," in Reed Ueda (ed.), A Companion to American Immigration (Malden, 2006).
27. Paul R. Spickard, Mixed Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in Twentieth-Century America (Madison, 1989), 123-157.
28. For examples of how immigration scholars treat war brides, see Tichenor, Dividing Lines
29. Zolberg, Nation By Design
30. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door
31. David M. Reimers, Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America (New York, 1992; orig. pub 1985), 21-29.
32. Michael C. Thornton, "The Quiet Immigration: Foreign Spouses of U.S. Citizens, 1945-1985," in Maria P. P. Root (ed.), Racially Mixed People in America (Newbury Park, 1992).
33. Yuh, "Moved by War: Migration, Diaspora, and the Korean War," Journal of Asian American Studies, VIII (2005), 277-291
34. Sinke, "Gender and Immigration."
35. The Immigration Act of 1924 calculated annual quotas of 2 percent of the foreign-born population, based on the census of 1890, for a total of 186,437 permanent visas. The nationalorigins quota system, which came into effect in 1929, apportioned visas by percentage of each nationality, using the census of 1920, for a total of 153,714 permanent visas (one-sixth of the white population living in the United States in 1920).
36. Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, 2004), 28-29.
37. For the history of Asian exclusion, see n. 2.
38. Congress later extended quota-exempt status for all children under twenty-one. The Act of May 29, 1928, gave preference to husbands of U.S. citizens so long as their marriages occurred before May 31, 1928. A second amendment extended the period of marriage through July 1, 1932 (Act of July 11, 1932). Other amendments gave preference in remaining quota visas for unmarried children and wives of legal permanent residents.
39. See Hutchinson, Legislative History, 505-520
40. 79th Cong., 2d sess., Senate Report No. 1927, "Placing Chinese Wives of American Citizens on a Nonquota Basis," August 1, 1946, 2.
41. For women's citizenship, see Candice Lewis Bredbenner, A Nationality of Her Own: Women, Marriage, and the Law of Citizenship (Berkeley, 1998)
42. Asian-born women remained legally barred from citizenship despite the 1855 Act, and non-Asian women who married foreign-born Asian men who were unable to naturalize lost their U.S. citizenship upon marriage between 1907 and 1931.
43. On the court appeals to circumvent Asian exclusion laws, see Martha Gardner, The Qualities of a Citizen: Women, Immigration, and Citizenship, 1870-1965 (Princeton, 2005)
44. Salyer, Laws as Harsh as Tigers
45. Nancy K. Ota, "Flying Buttresses," DePaul Law Review, XLIX (2000),11-12.
46. Goodman, "'Only the Best British Brides.'"
47. In 1946, Congress passed one other piece of legislation targeted at military families-P.L. 471, the "Alien Fiancées and Fiancés Act" (60 Stat. 339), which provided for a temporary three-month admission. Like the War Brides Act, it garnered little attention in Congress. If a couple married within three months, a permanent visa would be issued; if not, the fiancé(e) would be deported. Congress authorized the law for only one year, but subsequent Acts extended its provisions through 1948. All told, 5,146 fiancées and fiancés entered under the Act, more than half of them from France, Italy, Austria, Greece, Australia, and New Zealand. Only 198 arrived from Asia. See 81st Cong., 1st sess., House Report No. 150. The 1945 bill waived the provision of the 1924 Immigration Act (43 Stat. 153) that excluded immigrants with certain medical conditions, such as tuberculosis.
48. For the provisions of the quota system, see Hutchinson, Legislative History
49. Congressional Record, 79th Cong.,1st sess., 11738 and 12342.
50. 79th Cong., 1st sess., House Report No. 1320, "Expediting the Admission to the United States of Alien Spouses and Alien Minor Children of Citizen Members of the United States Armed Forces," November 30, 1945, 2. The report estimated that 40,000 to 55,000 of the approximately 75,000 to 100,000 spouses would come from Great Britain. It slightly underestimated the total number of wives (114,691), and overestimated the number from Great Britain (only 34,944). The error suggests that the diversity of spousal origins likely surprised representatives. Russell was reacting to Congressional Record, 79th Cong.,1st sess., 12342. As for gender neutrality, Table 2 shows that 333 out of 119,693 total admissions (0.3 %) were husbands. Sinke-"Gender and Immigration," 300-argues that the War Brides Act perpetuated the long-standing penchant to classify married women as dependents of their husbands, regardless of their work status or eligibility. Yet the official inclusion of both wives and husbands signaled an important departure from pre-war policy, and the gender neutrality of the U.S. law stands in contrast to Canada's explicit focus on wives and children, or "dependents" in the government's language.
51. 60 Stat. 975, August 9, 1946. Prior to 1943, only those naturalized before 1924 or born U.S. citizens could petition for spousal entry. 79th Cong., 2d sess., Senate Report No. 1927, 2.
52. For the Magnuson Act, see Zolberg, Nation by Design, 290
53. Hing, Making and Remaking Asian America, 110
54. Desmond King, Making Americans: Immigration, Race, and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy (Cambridge, Mass., 2000), 232.
55. Congressional Record, 79th Cong., 2d sess., 10279. Knowland also pointed out that the bill had the support of the Departments of Justice and State.
56. 80th Cong., 1st sess., House Report No. 478, "Amending the Act to Expedite the Admission to the US of Alien Spouses and Alien Minor Children of Citizen Members of the US Armed Forces," May 28, 1947, 2.
57. Reimers, Still the Golden Door, 11-12
58. Judd argued, "We cannot insult them just because of their race and still expect them to be favorably disposed toward us." "Complete Text on the Debate on H.R. 199 in the House of Representatives," Congressional Record, 81st Cong., 1st sess., A1259. In the same speech, Judd linked immigration and the Cold War more explicitly, arguing that exclusion led to the militarization of Japanese society and ultimately their entrance into World War II. See also "Report: Providing the Privilege of Becoming a Naturalized Citizen of the United States to All Immigrants Having a Legal Right to Permanent Residence, to Make Immigration Quotas Available to Asian and Pacific Peoples," 81st Cong., House of Representatives, 1st sess., Mr. Gossett to accompany H.R. 199, 5.
59. The Triangle provided for 2,000 base slots, plus 100 for the Triangle as a whole (for those with parents from two different Triangle countries or a colony), 105 for China, and 185 for Japan-amounting to a maximum of 2,390 Asians per year. On the provisions of the Triangle, see Charles Chan, "Racial Discrimination Features of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, with Specific Emphasis on the Asia-Pacific Triangle Provisions for Quota Chargeability," International Institute of Los Angeles, February 1956; Congressional Record, 81st Cong., 1st sess., 1715.
60. See, for example, Letter from the Japanese American Citizens League to Pat McCarran, April 14, 1949. Even while urging support for the bill, Mike Masaoka, the head of the jacl, argued for an amendment to extend non-quota status to all immediate family members. See Box 86, H.R. 199, ecp. Letter from Seam H. Wong, Boston Chinatown Post No. 328, The American Legion, March 23, 1949, to Sen. Leveret Saltonstall (R-Mass.), RG 46, Sen.81AE11, Box 86, H.R. 199, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Other protest records in the Congressional Archives for House Report 199 include letters from the Chinese ambassador and various senators, especially those from the West Coast. Walter introduced one other piece of legislation designed to give naturalization rights to Asians, HJ Res. 238. The bill passed Congress toward the end of 1950 but was vetoed by President Truman because of a late, restrictive amendment. After HJ Res. 238's rejection, Walter introduced a second attempt at equal naturalization rights, H.R. 9760, in November 1950; it passed the House but not the Senate. See Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 81st Cong., 2d sess., 1950, vol. 61, 240-242.
61. 81st Cong., 1st sess., House Report No. 150.
62. Most Japanese American soldiers served in the European theater. From 1943, when the first ones shipped overseas, through the occupation of Japan, about 6,000 Japanese Americans served in the Pacific. If Congressional figures are accurate, roughly one out of eight Japanese American soldiers would have had to marry overseas to account for all spousal entries. A letter from Bartel O. Hoglund, 1st Lt., United States Air Force, to Pat McCarran, January 25, 1950, Box 86, H.R. 199, ecp, suggests at least one case of interracial marriage.
63. On Japanese American military service during and after World War II, see Michael L. Cooper, Fighting for Honor: Japanese Americans and World War II (New York, 2000).
64. Bill Yenne, Rising Sons: The Japanese American GIs Who Fought for the US in World War II (New York, 2007)
65. Military Intelligence Service Association of Northern California and the National Japanese American Historical Society, The Pacific War and Peace: Americans of Japanese Ancestry in Military Intelligence Service 1941 to 1952 (San Francisco,1991)
66. On anti-miscegenation laws, see Ota, "Flying Buttresses," 12
67. Spickard, Mixed Blood, 131-135
68. Observes that American military officials tried to keep American soldiers and Japanese women from marrying or, at best, to prevent the bride's entry to the United States. They were successful at neither. One consequence of U.S. policy, according to Spickard, was to encourage more informal relationships than marriage. Illustrative of Congressional resistance to marriage, in an exchange about the Alien Fiancées Act, Rep. J. Leroy Johnson (R-Cal.) wondered, "In my State, for instance, white and Japanese cannot marry. Does this bill recognize such laws of the states?" Rep. Arthur G. Klein (DN. Y.) reassured him, "This bill does not change existing law with reference to racial eligibility" (Congressional Record, 79th Cong., 2d sess., 7318).
69. 82nd Cong., 1st sess., House Report No. 117; Senate Report No. 56, 2.
70. 81st Cong., 2d sess., Senate Report No. 1878, "Permitting the Admission of Alien Spouses and Minor Children of Citizen Members of the US Armed Forces," June 26, 1950, 2.
71. United States Department of Justice, "In the Matter of N-K-D-In VISA PETITION Proceedings," VP-442306, Decided by Board May 14, 1951, Decided by Acting Attorney General, July 26, 1951, Administrative Decisions Under Immigration & Nationality Laws, IV, February 1950-January 1953, 394
72. Scholars are divided about the McCarran-Walter Act. Daniels, Gary Gerstle, and Michael Davis, who believe that the Act contained both liberal and conservative features, view it optimistically as a first step toward liberalization. But King, Zolberg, Robert Divine, and Ong Hing portray the Act as intrinsically conservative and discriminatory, mainly because of its racial components.
73. See Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door
74. Davis, "Impetus for Immigration Reform: Asian Refugees and the Cold War," Journal of American-East Asian Relations, VII (1998), 127-156
75. Divine, American Immigration Policy, 1924-1952 (New Haven, 1957)
76. Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 2001)
77. King, Making Americans
78. Hing, Making and Remaking
79. Zolberg, Nation By Design
80. Klein, Cold War Orientalism
81. Reimers, Still the Golden Door, 22
82. See, for example, Hoglund's letter to McCarran
83. See, for example, Celler's speech, Congressional Record, 82d Cong., 2d sess., 4305.
84. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 192
85. Congressional report quoted in Bennett, American Immigration Policies, 123
86. In a speech to Congress, McCarran discounted any underlying racism in the quota system: "The simple theory underlying the national origins quota system is that if we permit new immigrants to enter in uniform proportions to those of each foreign national origin already here, they are more likely to assimilate readily than if they arrived in numbers disproportionate to the origins of our people. This is not any super-racial theory".
87. Congressional Record, 82d Cong., 2d sess., 4304. Many of the other discussions about family re-unification dealt with the enhanced deportation provisions of the Act.
88. For the president's speech, see President's Commission on Immigration and Naturalization, Whom We Shall Welcome (Washington, D.C., 1953), 277.
89. The vote to override the president's veto was 278 to 113 in the House, and 57 to 26 in the Senate
90. See Zolberg, Nation By Design, 315
91. For the quotations of Walter and McCarran, see Congressional Record, 82d Cong., 2d sess., 8215 and 8254.
92. Celler to Secretary of the Army Frank Pace, Jr., July 11, 1952; Acting Secretary of the Army Fred Korth to Celler, August 16, 1952, RG233, HR.82A-D11, Box 314, H.R. 5678 2 of 2, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
93. These figures report all of the wives of U.S. citizens who were accorded entry, both military wives and other women married to Americans. Data derive from Annual Report of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, fiscal years ending June 30, 1945-1964, Table 6.
94. Reimers, Still the Golden Door, 22-26
95. Presents similar numbers, drawn from a Department of Education report, but the data are mislabeled as pertaining only to military wives. For "anchor brides," see n. 6.
96. Reimers, Still the Golden Door, 22-29
97. Most bills failed, but at least seven bills from 1952 to 1962 enlarged the visa-preference categories
98. Hutchinson, Legislative History, 314-357
99. One of Celler's first speeches to Congress after his election was a rebuke of the quota system (1924). He spent much of his Congressional career fighting for the liberalization of immigration policy.
100. See Bernard Lemelin, "Emanuel Celler of Brooklyn: Leading Advocate of Liberal Immigration Policy, 1945-52," Canadian Review of American Studies, XXIV (1994), 81-111
101. Moral turpitude clause: 66 Stat. 163, section 212(a)(9). According to the U.S. Department of State, crimes of moral turpitude include such offenses as fraud, larceny, and intent to harm persons or things-often crimes against property, against governmental authority, and against a person and most types of conspiracy.
102. See U.S. Department of State, "Foreign Affairs Manual Vol. 9-Visas," 6-29-2005, at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/86942.pdf (2/26/09).
103. Section 9 FAM 40.21(A) N2, "Extension of Remarks of Congressman Emanuel Celler," c. May, 1954; Box 478, H.R. 439A, 87th Cong., Folder 2, Case No. 9, Anneliese Else Hermine Neumann, ecp.
104. "Examples of how nat. origins theory prove unworkable aside from violation of equality of opportunity," undated handwritten memo, Box 492, Immigration-General 1961-1962, folder 1, ecp.
105. See Tichenor, Dividing Lines
106. Zolberg, Nation By Design
107. John D. Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 2002).
108. Otis L. Graham, Jr., Unguarded Gates: A History of America's Immigration Crisis (Lanham, 2004).
109. Reimers, Still the Golden Door
110. The bill kept the Western Hemisphere on a non-quota basis and proposed a sevenmember presidential advisory board that could allocate up to 20% of all visas to refugees
111. Zolberg, Nation by Design, 328-329
112. Tichenor, Dividing Lines
113. Introducing the bill, Feighan proclaimed that now "family unity [was] made the first and foremost objective of the new system," Congressional Record, 89th Cong., 1st sess., 21585. Rodino quotation on 21594; Celler's on 21758.
114. "President Lyndon B. Johnson's Remarks at the Signing of the Immigration Bill, Liberty Island, New York, October 3, 1965," Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum, Austin, Texas, at http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/Johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/651003.asp (2/27/09).
115. See also Zolberg, Nation by Design, 329-333
116. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 176-218
117. Gabriel J. Chin-"The Civil Rights Revolution Comes to Immigration Law: A New Look at the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965," North Carolina Law Review, CCLXXIII (1996), 75-argues that legislators knew from the beginning that these changes would increase immigration but focused instead on the fight to pass the bill.
118. Indeed, legislators had the pertinent information. However, given that they attempted to curb immigration from Latin America (by keeping the Western Hemisphere out of the preference system, thereby limiting their ability to take advantage of family re-unification) but not from Asia, they hardly expected drastic changes. All immigrants from the Western Hemisphere (except for immediate relatives) had to endure rigorous labor certification to gain entrance to the United States after 1965. Legislators also knew that economic circumstances had improved in Europe, limiting this area as a source of increased immigration. See, for example, United States, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee No. 1, House of Representatives Study of Population and Immigration Problems (Statement of Dr. Dudley Kirk, Demographic Directory, Population Council, New York, "The Population of Western Europe") (Washington D.C., 1963), 3-27.
119. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 137
120. Argues that Congress ignored evidence (such as Kirk's) that family re-unification would alter the flow of immigration, "expecting the future to resemble the past."
121. Reimers, Still the Golden Door, 73-80
122. Points out that the emphasis of family unification over skilled labor was a clear victory for organized labor, which worried about foreign competition
123. Reimers, Still the Golden Door, 94-96
124. Explains how a migrant could bring over an entire kin group after 1965, up to nineteen people, by taking advantage of family preferences
125. Guillermina Jasso and Mark R. Rosenzweig-"Family Reunification and the Immigration Multiplier: U.S. Immigration Law, Origin-Country Conditions, and the Reproduction of Immigrants," Demography, XXIII (1986), 291-311-found the actual effect of this immigration multiplier to be substantially more modest.
126. Examining the sponsorship patterns of a cohort of 1971 immigrants, they discovered that each labor-certified migrant brought 1.2 other migrants (adults and children) into the country, and that fewer than 0.2 adults were admitted for every sibling or adult child who arrived as a migrant.
127. In a more recent study, Bin Yu-"Immigration Multiplier: A New Method of Measuring the Immigration Process," Population Association of America, 2006 Annual Meeting at http://paa2006.princeton.edu/download.aspx?submissionId_61643 (12/17/09)-using a slightly different methodology that combined reunification with reproduction, estimated the multiplier at 4.3.
128. Ngai, Impossible Subjects
129. Notes that although legislators used the rhetoric of equality to push immigration reform, by retaining numerical limitations and imposing the 20,000-person cap per country, they adopted the notion that all countries are equal in size and circumstance, thereby perpetuating inequality
130. King's speech quoted in Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy (Toronto, 1998), 312
131. Canada, like the United States, effectively excluded Chinese between 1923 and 1950
132. Whereas older studies, such as Alan Green's Immigration and the Postwar Canadian Economy (Toronto, 1976)
133. And Kelley and Trebilcock's Making of the Mosaic
134. Pointed primarily to changing economic circumstances in the push for immigration reform, more recent scholarship, such as Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos, Becoming Multicultural: Immigration and the Transformation of Citizenship in Canada and Germany (forthcoming), highlights the role of changing international norms in policy reform
135. In the postwar period, because Canada attempted to become an international powerbroker, its legislators increasingly found their exclusionary policies under the scrutiny of a multiracial Commonwealth and the United Nations
136. Reimers and Harold Troper, "Canadian and American Immigration Policy since 1945," in Barry R. Chiswick (ed.), Immigration, Language, and Ethnicity: Canada and the United States (Washington D.C., 1992), 15-54.
137. Freda Hawkins, Canada and Immigration: Public Policy and Public Concern (Kingston, 1988; orig. pub.1972).
138. For Canadian manpower needs, see, for example, Canada, Department of Labour, Economics and Research Branch, Professional Manpower Bulletin No. 11, The Migration of Professional Workers into and out of Canada, 1946-1960 (Ottawa, 1961).
139. Kelley and Trebilcock, Making of the Mosaic
140. Hawkins, Canada and Immigration
141. Reimers and Troper, "Canadian and American Immigration Policy."
142. Valerie Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540-1990 (Toronto, 1992), mentions military dependents only in the context of a government tactic to stall immigration reform
143. For Canadian scholarship about the social history and lived experience of Canadian war brides, see Joyce Hibbert (ed.), The War Brides (Toronto, 1978).
144. Franca Iacovetta, Gatekeepers: Reshaping Immigrant Lives in Cold War Canada (Toronto, 2006)
145. Canada, Report of the Department of Mines and Resources, Fiscal Year Ended March 31, 1942 (Ottawa, 1942), 159; ibid., Fiscal Year Ended March 31, 1943 (Ottawa, 1943), 173. Canada, Debates, House of Commons, June 6, 1944, 3572.
146. P.C. 7318 (September 21, 1944), 2; P.C. 858 (February 9, 1945).
147. P.C. 4044 (September 26, 1946); P.C. 4216 (October 11, 1946); P.C. 5103 (December 12, 1946).
148. Canada, Report of the Department of Mines and Resources, Fiscal Year Ended March 31, 1948 (Ottawa, 1948), 240, enumerated only 225 outstanding applications beyond those already admitted
149. Population data derive from F. H. Leacy (ed.), Historical Statistics of Canada (Ottawa, 1983).
150. Gibson J. Campbell and Emily Lennon, "Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-born Population of the United States: 1850-1990," U.S. Census Bureau working paper 29 (Washington, D.C., 1999).
151. Canada, Debates, House of Commons, October 12, 1945, 976; December 12, 1946, 3416-17
152. Two other differences between Canada and the United States are (1) the number of underage children that each admitted-20,997 for Canada and 4,669 for the United States-likely a re(ection of Canada's longer participation in World War II; and (2) the gendered nature of Canadian policy. The Canadian government defined dependents as the "wife, the widow, or child under eighteen years of age," excluding husbands. Considering that more than 45,000 women served in the Canadian Armed Forces during the war (and about 1 million men), the lack of attention to husbands is striking, probably linked to citizenship regulations (Canada, Debates, House of Commons, 1945, I: 1129). Prior to January 1, 1947, when Canadian citizenship was instituted, a woman who was a citizen by virtue of being a British subject lost that status upon marriage to a non-citizen (Canada, Annual Report of Citizenship and Immigration, Fiscal Year Ended March 31, 1951, 13). If she married another British subject-as was likely in the United Kingdom-her husband's status as a British subject would permit migration to Canada without problem.
153. On the national origins of war brides, see Hibbert, War Brides, 156-157
154. For statistics about Chinese military dependents from Canada, see Report of the Department of Mines and Resources, Fiscal Year Ended March 31, 1947 (Ottawa, 1947), 266-267
155. For immigrants and Canadian citizenship, see Bloemraad, Becoming a Citizen: Incorporating Immigrants and Refugees in the United States and Canada (Berkeley, 2006)
156. For Canada's role in World War II, see David Jay Bercuson, Maple Leaf Against the Axis: Canada's Second World War (Toronto, 1995)
157. Patricia Giesler, Valour Remembered: Canada and the Second World War, 1939-1945 (Ottawa, 1981)
158. Ian R. Munro, Canada and the World Wars (Toronto, 1979).
159. "Canadian Army Routine Order 788, Permission to Marry-North West Europe"
160. Cited in Hibbert, War Brides, 17
161. For Canada's role in Korea, see Veterans Affairs Canada, Valour Remembered: Canadians in Korea (Ottawa, 1982)
162. Hawkins, Canada and Immigration, 121-125
163. See also Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates
164. See Kelley and Trebilcock, Making of the Mosaic, 332-345
165. Chapter 4 of Triadafilopoulos' forthcoming Becoming Multicultural also argues that in 1962, government officials feared that large-scale immigration from nontraditional sources would upset white Canadians
166. Reimers and Troper, "Canadian and American Immigration Policy," 32
167. Agree that the changes in 1962 had more to do with deflecting criticism than economics (a matter of "federal and provincial human rights initiatives"), as well as Canada's work on the international stage
168. Hawkins, Canada and Immigration, 145-162
169. Kelley and Trebilcock, Making of the Mosaic, 348-356
170. The white paper stated that "there is little dissent from the proposition that Canada still needs immigrants" and proposed extending family-sponsorship rights only to citizens, to forestall explosive growth. Interestingly, the white paper foreshadowed Reimers' work by almost twenty years, describing in great detail the possible perils of chain migration through family sponsorship. The differences between Canada's cautious approach to family reunification and the United States more aggressive one is telling.
171. See Canada, Department of Manpower and Immigration, White Paper on Immigration (Ottawa, 1966), 5-7
172. Reimers, Still the Golden Door, 94-96
173. Whereas John J. Deutsch of the Economic Council of Canada and others testified that Canada's need for unskilled labor was declining, certain ethnic groups, such as the Canadian-Italian Business Association, and national groups, such as Caribbean migrants, argued otherwise. As the brief of the Negro Citizenship Association, Inc., the Jamaica Association of Montreal, and the Trinidad and Tobago Association of Montreal opined, "The government is in effect substituting a policy of discrimination based on ethnic and geographic origin, for one based on skill."
174. See Canada, Special Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Commons on Immigration, Minutes of the Proceedings and Evidence, 2d sess., 27th Parliament, 1967-1968 (quotation in Appendix O, 610-611).
175. See, for example, the speech by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Congressional Record, 89th Cong., 1st sess., 1965, 24228.
176. Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 1966-1967, 8651
177. The government presented the new system as a color-blind policy, with entry determined by merit, as reflected through an individual's total points. However, officials retained the power to decide which skills were relevant, and individual immigration officers could award up to fifteen points for subjective criteria.
178. See Kelley and Trebilcock, Making of the Mosaic, 359
179. Feminist scholars have criticized the points system for a bias against single and nondependent women
180. See Yasmeen Abu-Laban, "Keeping 'em Out: Gender, Race, and Class Bias in Canadian Immigration Policy," in Veronica Strong-Boag et al.(eds.), Painting the Maple: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Construction of Canada (Vancouver, 1998), 69-84.
181. Department of State, Press Release, address by Frank L. Auerbach, May 27, 1955, "Immigration Today," RG46, Sen.86A-F12.1, Committee on the Judiciary, Immigration Subcommittee, Box 5, Press Releases (2 of 2), 1-3, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
182. Quotations from Michael Abramowitz, "Immigration Bill's Point System Worries Some Groups," Washington Post, 27 May 2007, A11
183. See also Carolyn Lochhead, "Point System Is Key to Immigration Overhaul," San Francisco Chronicle, 15 May 2007
184. Robert Pear, "A Point System for Immigrants Incites Passions," New York Times, 5 June 2007