Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
U.S. immigration and naturalization laws tracked shifting power dynamics in the Pacific as the United States emerged as a preeminent world power during World War II and the Cold War. Much is known about America's long history of barring Asians from immigrating and from U.S. citizenship, but how did Asian exclusion in the United States end? Jane H. Hong argues that the mid-twentieth century movement to repeal Asian exclusion was part of U.S. empire-building and the rise of an informal U.S. empire in postwar Asia. Drawing on archives in the United States, India, and the Philippines, Hong explores how a transpacific movement of Asian, Asian American, and white American advocates lobbied U.S. Congress for repeal. For many Asians in the U.S., repeal offered a means to survival, while for Asian colonial leaders, repeal laws also served state- and nation-building projects in Asia.
The dismantling of formal empire underpinned postwar Asian immigration to the Unites States, even as advocates on both sides of the Pacific worked to redraw the ethnic and racial boundaries of the American nation. Positioning repeal at the intersection of U.S. civil rights struggles and Asian decolonization, Hong raises thorny questions about the meanings of nation, independence, and citizenship on the global stage.
Synopsis
Over the course of less than a century, the U.S. transformed from a nation that excluded Asians from immigration and citizenship to one that receives more immigrants from Asia than from anywhere else in the world. Yet questions of how that dramatic shift took place have long gone unanswered. In this first comprehensive history of Asian exclusion repeal, Jane H. Hong unearths the transpacific movement that successfully ended restrictions on Asian immigration.
The mid-twentieth century repeal of Asian exclusion, Hong shows, was part of the price of America's postwar empire in Asia. The demands of U.S. empire-building during an era of decolonization created new opportunities for advocates from both the U.S. and Asia to lobby U.S. Congress for repeal. Drawing from sources in the United States, India, and the Philippines,
Opening the Gates to Asia charts a movement more than twenty years in the making. Positioning repeal at the intersection of U.S. civil rights struggles and Asian decolonization, Hong raises thorny questions about the meanings of nation, independence, and citizenship on the global stage.