At America’s Gates Reading Analysis

At America’s Gates Reading Analysis

        In her book “At America’s Gates: Chinese immigration during the exclusion era, 1882-1943” Erika Lee outlines a period from 1882 to 1943 known as the Chinese Exclusion Era. Lee uses newly found government records to shine a rare light on this era and its cultural stipulations through the perspectives of both Chinese immigrants and immigration officials under the umbrella of the developing immigration structure of the United States. She argues that Chinese exclusion served as the immigration policy model from which the United States transformed its national identity from being an unbounded nation into a gatekeeping nation, subsequently paving the way towards the notion of illegal immigration. By analyzing this era, she hopes to reveal a greater understanding of the relationship between Chinese exclusion, race, sovereignty, and the essence of nation-state.

        Lee notes that the origins of gatekeeping start before the passage of the Page Law of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Once power structures began forming by those with a dislike for Chinese immigrants, it was not long before laws began to initiate. After the two major laws were passed, there was a legal architecture and a federal bureaucracy to the economic and fears of those with anti-Chinese racism. Subsequently, once officials began to see that Chinese immigration was at a fraction of what it used to be, they wanted to ramp up efforts in the face of “lax” laws. The transition from negative portrayals of Chinese in media to state governments passing discriminatory laws to national policy being enacted shows the significance of Chinese exclusion on immigration policy. Lee is highlighting that for the first time in U.S. history, actions barring peoples from the country are happening, and it is changing the dynamics of policy and race.        

        Despite the policy efforts of government and state, Chinese immigrants did not stop coming to the United States. Instead, they persevered and organized resistance to the laws. They first sought help through legality by protesting and hiring immigration attorneys in an attempt to overturn the legislation. Lee details that in 1910 however, the focus of the Chinese immigrants shifted to circumvention of the rules. The extensive tightening of interrogation and the corruption of immigration officials was met with a counter-intensification on the part of the immigrants by way of crossing into the U.S. through the Canadian and Mexico borders (Lee 152-157). This marked the archetype of the illegal immigrant and expanded the bounds of gatekeeping on the part of the nation. Lee is aiming to show the juxtaposition between the Chinese immigration in the nineteenth and early-twentieth century and the Mexican immigration we see presently. Veering ahead a couple decades later, The Labor Appropriation Act of 1924 is passed, which established a national border system. Policy evidence shows that Chinese immigration in the face of strict tightening by officials was setting geographical and legal limitations on immigration as a whole.