Here's Where It Gets Interesting - In the Shadow of Liberty with Ana Raquel Minian

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

You hear on the news about immigration chaos in the United States, but what can be done to address the systemic issues, and the very real concerns of Americans? What was the driving force of the exclusion of some immigrant groups? And how has immigration changed over the years? Sharon McMahon is joined by author and expert, Ana Raquel Minian, to discuss her new book, In the Shadow of Liberty. Together, they dive into the history of immigration so we can better understand how to move forward.  Special thanks to our guest, Ana Raquel Minian, for joining us today. Host: Sharon McMahon Audio Producer: Mike Voulgaris Production Assistant: Andrea Champoux Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Here's where it gets interesting is now available ad-free. Head to SharonMcMahon.com slash ad-free to subscribe today. Hello, friends. Welcome. Delighted to have you with me today. My guest is Ana Raquel Minyan, who has written a book called In the Shadow of Liberty, which is about the history of immigration in the United States. Listen, I know immigration is top of mind for many Americans for a variety of reasons.

And in order to address very real concerns that Americans have, we need to better understand how we got where we are. And so that's what I hope this conversation will help us do, understand better how we got to the system that we currently have. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. I am very excited to be speaking with you today. I'm really grateful for your time. And I found your book so helpful in better understanding the history of immigration in the United States, because in order to understand the present, we need to understand the past. We need to understand how we got here. And that's why I really appreciate your work and your time.

So thank you for being here. Thank you so much for inviting me. So thank you for being here. Thank you so much for inviting me. I would love to start with just some really foundational questions because people tend to think that immigration has two time phases in the United States. Number one, Ellis Island. Number two, people entering the United States illegally from Mexico. Of course, that's not actually true.

I would love to hear more about what was immigration like during my favorite historic time period back in the day. What was it like back in the day of, let's say, mid-19th century? So what's interesting about back in the day and the cases that you brought up is that nowadays we consider unauthorized migration, like you said, to be very much linked to the entrance of Mexicans, Central Americans, and others across the U.S.-Mexico border. But the real concern around immigration and immigrants who were coming to the United States centered in the 19th century originally around Chinese migrants. There were a lot of laws that tried to ban Chinese migrants from coming. The best known and most influential being one of the acts, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, that said

that basically most Chinese people couldn't come to the United States. There were a few categories of people who could come, students, merchants, and others. But for the most part, Chinese people were excluded. On the other hand, immigration from Europe was also happening at very, very high rates. And we have this belief that European immigrants were all welcome. And while they were much more welcome indeed than Chinese migrants, as soon as American legislators realized, hey, we don't want Chinese people here, then they were like, well, what about other groups of people? We also don't want convicts. We also don't want, and these were their words, lunatics. And so they started to

bar some Europeans from coming. Chinese migrants continued to come. They found ways to do so. Europeans continued to come. But immigration starting in the 19th century was no longer as easy. People could no longer come as easily as they had previously. What was the driving force behind the exclusion of Chinese immigrants? And it later, of course, expanded to many types of Asian immigrants. We later passed laws saying, you know, essentially drawing a big circle on a map and being like, if your people come from here, you can't come over here. And we can get to that in a quick second. But what was the stated rationale? I mean, we know that a lot of it was racism,

but it's not like they were going to the newspaper and being like, well, because I'm a racist, I'm going to pass this law that makes it so that people of Asian descent can't come here. What reason were they actually giving to the American public? That's absolutely right. And I think actually, when we talk about racism and say like, oh, that's racist, it's such an easy way to dismiss someone and not to understand what's happening. And so to not actually be able to change that logic, because you don't fully understand it. So the logic behind Chinese exclusion at the time was that there was a big recession in California in the 1870s. Chinese people were migrating to California in huge numbers. So there was already concern that Chinese people looked differently. They had different costumes. They had different, you know, that they perhaps smoked opium, that they were lazy, but primarily it became an economic argument if Chinese workers are taking our jobs.

So that was what really promoted the case, the anti-Chinese sentiment that existed in the United States in the late 19th century that eventually led first to the passage of the Page Act, but most importantly to the passage of the Page Act, but most importantly, to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. You mentioned that starting in the mid-19th century, it began to become more difficult to come to the United States, even for some European groups. Tell us more about that, because I think there's this idea that if you could get the money for a ticket, Because I think there's this idea that like, if you could get the money for a ticket, you just make your way on down to the dock and you can get on the boat and then you can come here. And I mean, that was probably true for a lot of people.

But what was it actually like in practice? For the vast majority of people, it was true. If you came from Europe, if you came from China, it became increasingly hard, as I said. Europe. If you came from China, it became increasingly hard, as I said. But once legislators realized that, look, we don't have to only stop Chinese people. We can stop other folks from coming into the country. We don't want people who could engage in prostitution. We don't want people who will become a public charge, meaning that they would not be able to pay their way as legislators believed should be happening for immigrants. All these people were no longer wanted, and they decided that they could be barred, they could be excluded from entrance. So what started to happen was this idea that, okay, we need to prevent them from entering.

How do we do this? When they arrive, do we stop them and not let them ever land? Do we detain them on the ships on which they arrive? So there were a lot of these sort of debates. And some people were, in fact, not allowed to enter America because they were classified as one of these unwanted group of people. And so what would happen to them? Would they just get turned away when they landed and be like, sorry, you're on the next boat out of here? Would they get put in a jail waiting for the next ship to arrive? Would they just be told it's illegal for you to be here, come back in a week and a half when the next ship is leaving? What exactly was the process for people who arrived but were not going to be admitted? Until 1891, federal immigrant detention on land was not legal. So people who arrived and did not have the clearance to enter the country could not be held on land by federal statutes. They had to be held on the vessels on which they arrived. So, for example, you came on a vessel, immigration officials would enter the vessels, would check if you were allowed to enter. Yes, this person is clearly a man who's able to work. He's not going to engage in criminal activities. He doesn't have a criminal past. He's able to, allowed to enter. Other folks were kept on the vessels on which they had arrived until immigration officials

determined, oh, actually, yes, they do. No, they don't. And if they didn't, they were supposed to be deported. There were problems with the system. The ships often had to depart. Right. The ship is not like, sure, we'll wait here indefinitely. Exactly.

So in 1891, to solve this problem, Congress passed a law that said, OK, yes, we can hold immigrants while we determine whether they can stay or not on land. And the following year, Ellis Island opened up. We know of Ellis Island as this gateway to America. Right. But in fact, it also served as a detention center, as a place where immigrants were to be held while immigration officials determined their right to enter or not.

Yeah, you have a whole chapter in your book called Ellis Island Was a Prison. That's right. We associate Ellis Island with the Statue of Liberty. That's the American viewpoint of it, of the people would sail into New York Harbor and they see the Statue of Liberty and the orchestra would swell in the background, you know, like with the violins playing of like, we've made it. It's been an arduous journey. The promised land is finally here. The streets are paved with gold.

It's the land of opportunity. I finally made it to the United States. And for some people, that is probably what happened. But for others, Ellis Island was a prison. So explain. So like you said, for the vast majority of people, they came, they spend a day in Ellis Island. It was an arduous day full of medical checkups, legal checkups and others.

And then they entered and were in New York. That was not the case for at times times, up to 15% of people where they arrived. And government officials, like I said, were not fully sure whether those people had the right to enter the country under the existing exclusion laws. So by this time, it wasn't just Chinese people. There were a lot of categories of people who were not allowed into the United States. So for example, women. If women came by themselves, officials immediately suspected that they might either engage in prostitution or that they would not be able to pay their own way, that they would become a public charge. So they would detain them in Ellis Island until the women could prove that

someone, that a man that was already in the United States, or a family that was already in the United States, would take care of them. While this investigation happened, the women would be kept in Ellis Island. Conditions in Ellis Island for those detained there, for those held there, very much resembled a prison. This is something that I'm curious about. How would United States immigration officials actually even make a determination on, are you a criminal? Do you

have the right to be in the United States? We don't have computerized databases to check anything against. Are we just kind of taking people's word for it? Like, okay, you said you're not a criminal, so he's probably not. How do we actually ascertain if somebody is telling the truth and is allowed to enter? Yeah. A lot of it was looks. Oh, okay. The most, the most accurate way to judge. Absolutely. And a lot of it was, you know, if you're a woman, so that already determined it, people would show money to show that they were able to sustain themselves for a while. If you had an able body, it was a way to show that

you'd be able to work. There were medical examiners when you arrived to Ellis Island who would also check that you did not have contagious diseases. So that was a big part of it. If you were believed to be sick, you would be quarantined in the Ellis Island Hospital. It happened very, very quickly. These were not deep medical examinations. It was all like, okay, let me look at you. Do you look like someone who we would want or not? Just based on appearance, just based on judging a book by its cover. You look shifty, bites cover. You look shifty, so out you go. Not at all subjective. People often had to have documentation that they had family who would support them here. So if you came with that, it was also easier to come in. So there were some other factors that contributed to being allowed to

enter quickly, but much of it was based on appearance. Can you talk a little bit more about the Asiatic barred zone? Yeah. So because of ideas around who Americans were and who we wanted and who we didn't, this idea of Chinese exclusion began to spread, like you said, to other Asian groups. And in 1924, Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1924, which basically barred people from Asia from coming into the United States. You know, it also prevented people from Africa from coming or others, but it was primarily around Asians who were not allowed into the United States. That was the target. Was there anything preventing people from getting on a ship and sailing for the United States. That was the target. Was there anything preventing people from getting on a ship and sailing for the United States? No. So a lot of people did it. They tried to

arrive to Mexico and cross the border through Mexico. Sometimes there were excluded categories, like I said, who were exempt from Chinese exclusion and others. So for example, you could try to say, I am a citizen. My father was a citizen of the United States. I have the right to enter the country. So people were still trying to enter, but it became much, much harder to do so. Was there much immigration to the United States from Central America during this time period? This was not a period when migration from Central America was a big issue, not at all. Immigration from Mexico had already began and had increased dramatically since the late 19th century. Can you tell us a little bit more about how

the history of immigration from Mexico and Central America has evolved over time. Yeah. So Mexican migration to the United States began in the late 19th century. There was a dictator in Mexico, Porfirio Diaz, and people were trying to escape. He was implementing economic policies that took land away from people, made it harder for them to find jobs. So many fled to the United States just because of for economic opportunities. At the time, there were no laws that barred Mexicans from coming into the United States. Then we see the development of the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1921. Again, migration from Mexico increases dramatically, people actually in violence. What's interesting is that in 1924, like you said, there were, you know, the Immigration and Nationality Act passed.

People from Asia, broadly defined, were no longer allowed to come in. This was not true for people from, quote unquote, the Western Hemisphere. The Western Hemisphere was defined as the Americas. Migration increased until the 1930s with the Great Depression. There was actually a net outflow of Mexican migrants. Mexicans were deported in massive numbers during the Great Depression. Why? There was massive unemployment and the government blamed migrants, as it has done in more recent years, for that unemployment. They also were blamed for using the existing welfare resources of America. So when a Mexican immigrant came, no matter how long they had lived in the country and asked for money, the welfare organization would call

immigration officials to deport them. At the same time, many Mexicans left simply because they couldn't find jobs and because it was so, you know, the treatment that they received became much worse as a result of the depression. Mexicans only returned to America in 1942 when they were actually recruited by the U.S. government. When the Second World War breaks out, America realizes, oh no, now we need workers. Let's bring Mexicans. So they create this bilateral agreement with the United States called the Bracero Program.

It comes from the word brazo, brazo in Spanish, arm, by which Mexicans could come for short periods of time, work in the United States, and then return to Mexico, a guest worker program. And with that, Mexican migration increased dramatically until 1964 when the Bracero program ends. What was the United States' response to that? When the program ends, first of all, can you tell us why the program ended? Yes. So it was a bilateral program between Mexico and the United States, but actually it was

ended unilaterally by the U.S. government after organizations such as the NAACP, but also Mexican-American organizations, significantly groups such as the United Farm Workers, which is Cesar Chavez's group, protested that braceros were taking jobs away from citizens. They were acting as strike breakers. So it ended in 1964, and the vast majority of braceros ended coming up until 1965. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together, we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve!

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Tell me more about what happened then when people who were accustomed to coming via this program, they were accustomed to being guest workers, come and work on a farm or wherever they were going to work, and then they would return home when the season was over. They were accustomed to this as how they fed their families. And then that program ends and we began seeing an increase in unauthorized border crossings. What was the United States' response, you know, beginning in the 1960s and sort of moving change. When Reagan was, for example, governor of California, he was very much in favor of unauthorized migrants and turned a blind eye and didn't do much. But once he became president, you know, he came with this slogan of law and order. And suddenly, he couldn't just have undocumented migrants come in such large numbers and still claim to be the government of law and order. At the same time, since 1972,

in Congress, there had been debates about how to stop unauthorized migrants with groups, interestingly, groups that we traditionally associate with being from the left, such as the AFL-CIO. It was these groups that were anti-immigrant. And they were pressuring Congress to say, hey, we need to stop undocumented migration. We need to stop undocumented migration. We're groups that we traditionally associate more with the right employers. They were saying like, no, no, let's keep an open border and let them come in. What happens as a result? So the position changes. We have a very popular president. Americans tended to favor his types of policies. What was the federal response then beginning

towards the, you know, very tail end of the 20th century, what is the federal response to, you know, this desire to sort of clamp down on the U.S.-Mexican border? What does the United States do? Congress had been debating what to do since 1972. And finally, by 1986, they pass a major bill that continues to be the most important law concerning unauthorized migration today. And it was called the Immigration Reform and Control Act. And it basically did a couple of things. First, it said that the border should be much more fortified. So it increased resources. It mandated Congress to direct more resources to border control. Second, it said that unauthorized migrants who already lived in the United States and who had been living in the United States for

more than five years, as in since 1982, or farm workers who had been working in farms for over 90 days could legalize their status. This, of course, was to satisfy Mexican-American organizations while at the same time keeping employers content. Because the part that didn't keep employers content is the third part of the bill, which was, oh, we're also going to impose employer sanctions, meaning employer penalties, on employers who knowingly hire unauthorized migrants. And finally, the law introduced a new type of Bracero program, which is much smaller, a new guest worker program that's called the H-2A and H-2B program.

What was happening to people who were found to have crossed the border in an undocumented fashion. Most Mexicans who were apprehended without papers in the United States were not what we call deported. Because deportation, the true act of deportation, means that migrants can go to court, can appear before a judge. And the U.S. simply doesn't have the resources for that to happen. So instead, they offered Mexican migrants removals, which was to say, look, you can head back to Mexico. We'll send you there. You will not have a criminal record. You will not be detained. You will only be held until we can send you back to Mexico, but you will not be detained while a trial goes on. When did the United States really began mass detention of undocumented migrants?

What is the history surrounding that? Because it doesn't sound like that has been a U.S. policy for all that long. It depends really what you consider as mass detentions. The federal immigrant detention system begins in 1892 with the opening of Ellis Island. At the same time, in the West Coast, Chinese immigrants who continue to come were being held in very, very large numbers. When we can say we see a dramatic increase, however, in detention is after 1980. So was this just a, did Congress have to then appropriate a lot of money to build new detention facilities? What were the logistics of how that was actually even implemented? Because, you know, presidents can't just spend bazillions of dollars

because they feel like it, you know, like there has to be some kind of allocation process. Was Reagan going to Congress and being like, listen, I need $300 million to build new undocumented immigrant detention facilities? What was the actual process for implementing that as a policy like? So in 1980, more than 124,000 Cubans came to the United States all at once in that summer. And Castro from Cuba announced, you know what? We sent criminals in all of those people who are coming. So Americans became very, very scared. And anti-immigrant sentiments increased dramatically. So the government came to believe, you know what, we need to ensure that this does not happen again. That movement of people from Cuba to the United States is called the Mariel Boat Lift. So American policymakers

said, we don't want another Mariel Boat Lift. And one of the ways that they were going to ensure that this did not happen again was through detention. It was this idea, you know what? If we imprison the people who are coming, we will deter future migrants from wanting to set sail, just like these migrants did. So when Congress allowed detention to occur on land, part of what they said also was, sure, we can now hold those people who are arriving in America proper, but let's imagine legally that they're not here. So basically this means people can be held in America, in detention centers anywhere in the United States, in Illinois, for example. But at the same time, the detention centers are on the U.S. map, but the entrants held within them are considered to be outside of America, to never have entered.

How do they make that work in their minds if you're in Illinois? How does that work that you aren't in America? It's what's called the entry fiction. It's just a figment of our imagination. We imagine that the people are not here. Uh-huh. That seems like a great public policy. It's interesting.

It's a law that passed in 1891, but that continues to have a hold on how we treat those who are apprehended at the border to this day. Is this the law that we use to govern Guantanamo Bay? The people who are there who have never been charged with a crime and have been there since whatever, like right after 9-11? It's interesting that you ask that because Guantanamo Bay, the entry fiction was indeed used. When the government was trying to determine what rights, quote unquote, enemy combatants had in Guantanamo, they did use the entry fiction to legitimize why these people, we could imagine as if they were not in the country, they did not have a right. But what's also interesting is that Guantanamo itself was originally not used to hold enemy combatants after 2001. The first time Guantanamo was used to hold people

was in 1991 by George H.W. Bush, who decided to detain Haitian refugees who were trying to come into the United States. Rather than holding them in America, his administration detained them in Guantanamo. And part of the reason that it did so was, A, it wouldn't have the bad publicity of holding people in America, but B, in Guantanamo, Haitians didn't have rights, in part because we could say Guantanamo was not really in America, but also because of the entry fiction. And so in 2001, when the war on terror begins, George H.W. Bush's son finds it very easy to find a place where he can hold people without rights. How do we know who is subject to this entry fiction doctrine versus people who are in the United States who do have constitutional rights, to whom the Constitution does apply? What is the logic that the United States government uses to separate people into those categories?

Where they are stopped. So to not have rights to be considered, quote unquote, an entrant, you have to have been stopped at the border. Then you are imagined to never have entered the United States. So it really, it's all about proximity to the border, correct? Does this apply to the northern border of the United States as well, or just the southern border? No, the northern border as well. But of course, there are much fewer cases. Yes. Is there like an actual geographical definition of like you're within 20 miles of the border? Like what constitutes the border? It has shifted over time.

Like what constitutes the border? It has shifted over time. And part of the problem with that is that it takes away constitutional rights from people in vast areas of the United States. You can live in a city in America, south of the border, and not have full constitutional rights, in part because you're so close to the border. Over the last 10 or so years, there's been a lot of discussion about things like separating families at the border, the conditions of immigrant detention facilities, the conditions that people are held in, remain in Mexico policies. I'm interested in the history of

how we arrived at some of the policies and procedures that we began using in the 21st century, like some of the things that I mentioned, the separating of families, incarcerating children for periods of time, you know, all of these things that have become very big headlines in the news. How did we get to that place? In many ways, these policies are not new. Let's think about family separation. When Trump implemented the zero tolerance policy, which led to family separation, the idea was like, okay, we want to deter other Central Americans from coming to the United States by making detention so horrible that they won't come. And we will make it horrible by separating children from their parents. But family separation had indeed happened every time that detention had existed. In 1890s, we already see children who are being detained

without their parents. Their parents are allowed in, the child isn't. And so the children are sent to foster care. So in some ways, it's also family separation, just in a very different way. Now, until President Trump, there was no active policy of family separation, but there was an active policy of deterrence since the 1980s of this idea. Look, let's make it hard so that they don't come. Let's make detention awful so that they don't come. Trump applied this notion of deterrence that comes from the 1980s to the practice of family separation that had already existed through detention, and that is very, very prominent in Americans' incarceration system, prison system.

He expanded it to the family separation policy to make it active, to make it an active policy of family separation, not just something that happened as a result of detention. I would love to hear more as we sort of wrap this up. By the way, if this topic interests everybody that's listening, I can't encourage you to read In the Shadow of Liberty enough. There's so many more details that we just don't have time for in today's interview. And this book is so instructive in terms of learning more about the history of immigration in the United States. But I would love to hear you compare where the United States is right now, in terms of anti-immigrant sentiment, in terms of the way our laws are currently structured.

Can you compare where we are to where we were in the past? So in terms of immigration sentiment, it's hard to say which period was worse and which one is better. But we do know that there are periods where it's been particularly hard to be an immigrant. The 1930s, like I said, massive expulsions, massive deportations. So it really has varied. But President Trump, the rhetoric has used increased anti-immigrant sentiment to levels that we had not seen before his presidency in decades. dwindled a little with Biden, but we're seeing it return in force these days as the election approaches. We have seen better times as well. If we think about detention, there have been periods from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s, for instance, where the government actively spoke against immigrant detention and tried to move away from it, where the Supreme Court said, look, this is what enlightenment looks like. These are the qualities of an enlightened

civilization. You know, you mentioned that the 1930s were a particularly bad time period for immigrants in the United States. And you can see, you know, if you look into the 19-teens and the 1920s, as the KKK rose again from the dead, essentially post-Civil War, when they add immigrants and Jews and Catholics, which were just proxies for the word immigrant, really, to their roster of groups that we hate. You can see how that also helped fan these flames of anti-immigrant sentiment. And I'm curious, can we point to a time in history, hundreds of years of US history, when anti-immigrant sentiment has led us to a better place? Can you point to a time when something, you know, really positive has occurred as a result of these inflammation of anti-immigrant sentiment? Because it seems to me, and I'm ready to be corrected, it seems to me that that has always led us to a place of more political violence.

It's always led us to a place of increased hate groups. violence. It's always led us to a place of increased hate groups. It's always led us to a place of, you know, a civil and economic unrest. Because the United States economy, like it or not, whatever the words coming out of somebody's mouth is, the United States economy is dependent on immigrants. It was built on immigrant labor, and it remains dependent on immigrant labor. immigrants. It was built on immigrant labor, and it remains dependent on immigrant labor. And I'm just curious, if I'm missing something, is there a time where we're like, you know what, it was really good that we did that thing? You know, as you were talking, I was trying to think because I don't want to appear biased, but I also cannot think of, I've studied immigration now for 20 years. I also can't think of a single instance of that happening. Yes,

anti-immigrant sentiment has, like you said, increased violence, you know, made us much more angry as a country separated us. But what's surprising is that it has never given the people who demand them the solutions that they want. You know, so not only does it make America worse because of this violence that it creates, but also because it doesn't allow us to come up with proper solutions to our problems. Scapegoating doesn't allow for that. And we could probably keep talking for like two more hours. I really enjoyed reading In the Shadow of Liberty. And I'm just thankful that you're able to be here today and appreciate your time and your work. Thank you so much. Thanks for inviting me. This was great.

You can buy Anna Raquel Minion's book In the Shadow of Liberty wherever you buy your books. And if you want to support independent bookstores, you can head down the street to your local shop or you can order from bookshop.org. This show is hosted and executive produced by me, Sharon McMahon. Our supervising producer is Melanie Buck-Parks. Our audio producer is Mike Valgaris. And our production assistant is Andrea Shampo. If you enjoyed this show, would you leave us a rating or review that helps podcasters out so much. And be sure to click subscribe so the next episode lands in your podcast feed without you even having to think about it. Thanks so much for being here and we'll see you again soon.