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Opinions Throughout History – Immigration

14 The Immigration Race

Introduction

This chapter explores how World War I impacted the nation’s immigration policies. In the lead-up to the war, as military tension spread across Europe, millions of Eastern European immigrants fled to Western Europe and to the United States. Coinciding with this, the Russian Revolution led to a mass exodus of Jews fleeing persecution from Russia’s anti-Jewish movement. Americans were reluctant to get involved in the war, and President Woodrow Wilson actively promoted the idea that America should stay neutral. However, as the war began to affect the American economy and threaten the safety of American ships, Wilson changed tactics, starting a massive publicity campaign to promote the idea that the United States should intervene in the conflict.

In 1917 the legislature adopted the most restrictive immigration policy in the nation’s history. Eugenicists and more general anti-immigration activists were the main force behind this new immigration reform movement and campaigned for support of the bill by agitating public fears promoting the idea that the influx of Eastern European immigrants would bring disease, crime, and dangerous ideologies. The source for this chapter is a 1906 article in the Puget Sound American, “Have We A Dusky Peril?,” which describes the public sentiment that led to another major provision of the 1917 bill—an expansion of the Chinese Exclusion act to prohibit the immigration of all Asians and persons from much of the Middle East.

Topics covered in this chapter include:

Racial prejudice
Anti-Asian prejudice
World War I
Woodrow Wilson Administration
Eugenics Movement
Propaganda
Anti-Semitism

“Have We a Dusky Peril?” Puget Sound American. 16 Sept. 1906.

The Immigration Race World War I and the Immigration Act of 1917

World War I was a time of major changes in the United States. Long-standing tensions over the vast numbers of immigrants coming to the nation each year piqued as the Americans were drawn reluctantly into the first mass European war. From this, a new shared identity began to emerge, though ancient prejudices coupled with new emerging fears also led to the beginning of the most restrictive period in immigration policy in the nation’s history.

The Great War

Between 1900 and 1914, an average of 1 million immigrants came to the nation each year. Legislators were caught between opposing forces. On one hand, nativists and anti-immigrant activists objected to the constant influx of immigrants, arguing that the speed with which immigrants were coming was complicating the assimilation process and putting too much of a strain on the economy at the expense of native-born workers. On the other hand, immigrants drove the industrial revolution and the push west that led to the United States becoming the leading global power.

In the lead-up to World War I, there was a surge of immigrants from Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia, and Turkey, fleeing the Balkan Wars, while Russian immigration also spiked due to the Russian Revolution, and Jewish people persecuted in the anti-Jewish pogroms of Eastern Europe likewise sought sanctuary in the United States. The years just before the war, therefore, brought tensions between nativists and immigrants to a fevered pitch. The war began in 1914, the result of a complex web of factors including the rise of German imperialism and the breakdown of military and trade alliances formed over the previous century. The war developed into a struggle for ownership of Europe between the Central Powers of Germany, Austro-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire, opposed by Russia, France, and Britain.

Across the Atlantic, American newspapers referred to the conflict as the “European War,” reflecting the prevailing attitude that Americans should remain neutral. There were a variety of factors influencing America’s hesitancy to get involved in the war, including that as one-third of Americans were immigrants, many still felt ties to one or more of the foreign powers involved. Immigrants who had come from Germany, Austria, or Ireland were generally anti-British and so didn’t much want to join the British side in the conflict. Similarly, the many Jewish immigrants who came to America seeking to escape oppression in Russia were not sanguine about joining the Russian cause as part of the allied powers.¹²¹ Furthermore, American business leaders and manufacturers realized early on that neutrality would allow them to profit most by selling products to both sides.¹²² Finally, President Woodrow Wilson was against what at the time was called “American intervention,” and, instead, tried to broker peace talks. The administration’s anti-interventionist stance also helped to shape attitudes about the war among the people.

Until 1917, the predominant attitude among the American people was that the war was a horrible event, but one in which blame could not easily be ascertained, and Americans, therefore, had sympathy for both sides. To give one example of American ambivalence, in 1916 the New York Times featured an article interviewing the captain and crew of a German U-Boat, in which the journalist discussed the captain’s fondness for Shakespeare and the minutiae of daily life aboard the ship.¹²³ Less than a year later, such an article would have been unthinkable as the news media had committed to the interventionist cause that depicted Germany as a ruthless, sub-human empire of savages that needed to be stopped before they took over the world.

The sinking of the British freighter Lusitania in May of 2015, which resulted in the death of 128 Americans, was the beginning of the end for American neutrality. Wilson initiated a massive, nationwide propaganda campaign to drum up support for the war and it worked, with thousands of posters, flyers, and radio advertisements helping to build support for intervention.

More than this, the propaganda effort created a new idea of what it meant to be American, encouraging Americans to leave behind their former nationalistic-identities, and to see themselves as a unified American people independent from, but still indebted to Western and Northern Europe. The message was essentially that Western and Northern Europe were the seed countries for the “real” Americans and that, though Americans were now united and unique, they were members of a global western culture that needed to be defended from the forces of imperialism. By the time America declared war, in April of 1917, most of the public had embraced the need for intervention and many millions were, in fact, enthusiastically patriotic about America’s role.

From Chinese Exclusion to Asian Exclusion

Loosely related to the war, in 1917 Congress adopted a new and highly restrictive immigration policy that was largely the product of the American eugenics movement, which built support for its drive to preserve racial purity by highlighting the problems faced by the American working class and claiming that non-white immigrants and immigrants from the “bad” parts of Europe were to blame. The 1917 Immigration Act expanded on Chinese exclusion by barring immigration from what was called the “Asiatic Barred Zone,” which included, as stated in the text of the law, “Any country not owned by the U.S. adjacent to the continent of Asia.”

Between 1882 and 1917, American anti-Asian racism had deepened. Though Chinese migrants had already been excluded for nearly a quarter century, Americans were increasingly concerned about migrants from other parts of Asia. In fact, the fear had expanded to cover a vast swath of the non-white world and, had it not been for America’s history with slavery, African immigration would likewise also have been banned. A lesser known factor in the establishment of the Asiatic Barred Zone came from the shifting demographics of the American Pacific Northwest, which saw an influx of South Asian migrants coming into the United States from Canada, including from India and Malaysia.

Map of the “Asiatic Barred Zone” as defined in the Immigration Act of 1917, via Wikimedia Commons

The new panic over South Asian invasion reached a peak in the city of Bellingham, Washington, between 1906 and 1908, when an influx of several hundred Indian Sikhs from the Punjab region came to work in Washington’s logging industry. According to reports from the local Bellingham Herald, some of the lumber mill owners had been having trouble finding a large enough number of laborers from among the local white population. One owner told the newspaper that too many of the white workers were transients interested only in “whiskey money,” whereas the Sikhs, who do not consume alcohol, were reliable workers. In very little time, the alarmist presses and nativists in the region depicted the situation as the latest “invasion” of Asians stealing jobs from white workers.¹²⁴

The Sikh men were called “Hindus” by the white residents of Washington and the press and were accused of many different transgressions and personal/professional/racial detriments, a list of reasons for what many of the white residents already wanted to happen for the aliens to be driven out. This happened in September of 1907 when a mob of white workers violently attacked hundreds of Sikhs in the streets, then ran them out of town. According to the New York Times coverage:

“Racial feeling has played no small part in the affair. Every day whites are being replaced in the mills by the Asiatics. Many instances of women being pushed into the gutters or insulted on street cars by the foreigners were also reported. General uneasiness of the whites is given as a reason for the outbreak.”¹²⁵

It is unlikely that any of the Sikh men attacked or even insulted white women in Bellingham. Students who learn about racial tension may note that this kind of claim is indicative of a population about to engage in “racial cleansing.” By claiming that men of the target group are preying on women, race-baiting instigators play on the primal fears and sexual jealousies of men in the dominant racial group, while also developing an excuse by way of justification for the violence they are contemplating, and insinuating the members of the target race lack the honor and morality to refrain from attacking defenseless or helpless individuals.

Image of “Have We a Dusky Peril” article from the Puget Sound American, digitized by Paul Englesberg, reprinted with permission from South Asia American Digital Archive (SAADA)

This article from the September 16, 1906, issue of the Puget Sound American demonstrates how the issue was covered in the local press at the time:

Have We a Dusky Peril? Hindu Hordes Invading the State Puget Sound American, September 16, 1906 Source Document

BELLINGHAM workmen are becoming excited over the arrival of East Indians in numbers across the Canadian border, and fear that the dusky Asiatics with their turbans will prove a worse menace to the working classes than the “Yellow Peril” that has so long threatened the Pacific Coast.

Hordes of Hindus have fastened their eyes on Bellingham and the northwestern part of the United States in general, and the vanguard of an invasion which, in the minds of many discerning people, threatens to overshadow the “yellow peril” has reached this city. Encamped in a weather beaten and patched building, just east of the E.K. Wood Lumber Company’s mill, within sight of passing hundreds every day, are more than a dozen swarthy sons of Hindustan. Thousands of worshippers of Brahma, Buddha, and other strange deities of India may soon press the soil of Washington.

It is on a peaceful mission these Asian tribes are bound, but they are counted as the enemies in the industrial warfare of the white man, and their coming is regarded with distrust by the average laboring man, who is carefully studying the cause and effect of the new immigration. It was only a few years ago that these men of Asia began leaving their primeval homes for North America, landing in British Columbia. Now, there are more than 5,000 Hindus in the Canadian province; and they are regarded with such aversion by the industrial classes that the Ottawa government has been petitioned to take drastic measures to turn back this stream of humanity, which is becoming irresistible.

Floods of Hindus Coming

Investigation of Hindu immigration reveals the startling fact that more than 2,000 citizens of India have entered British Columbia in the last two months. This is enough to frighten any community where it is essential that white labor should prevail to insure continuous industrial and commercial advancement, and none realize this more than the British Columbia workman, who has asked his national government to exercise extraordinary power to repress the industrious Oriental.

Principally at the behest of the laboring classes, the federal superintendent of immigration in Canada has been sent to the province to investigate the situation thoroughly. As a result of these protests it is considered likely that the federal authorities will take advantage of the authority vested in the governor in council, which can, if it chooses, prohibit the entrance of any class of immigrants. Perhaps the chief reason why the Canadian government has proceeded slowly in championing the popular clamor is found in the fact that the Hindus are British citizens.

If the government does use its extraordinary powers, and Hindu immigration is effectually stopped, the United States will have to bear the brunt of the Indian immigration. Prevented from landing in Canada, the East Indians will come direct to America.

At the present time the majority of Hindus reach the Northwest on the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company lines and its pauper passengers have two chances to find a home. If they find nothing in British Columbia they can come to the United States, provided they pass the physical, mental, and contract labor prohibitions. If Canada shuts the Hindus out, Seattle, Portland, and Tacoma will become the chief ports of entry for the easterners in the Northwest.

Steamship Lines Busy

The steamship companies calling at Puget Sound ports can be depended upon to work up a big business in the transportation of Hindus. They are not likely to be outdone by the steamship concerns of the Atlantic, which annually contract with various agents to transport tens of thousands of undesirable Europeans to the United tSates [sic]. Hindus are accorded the same privileges by the immigration laws of the United States as the people of the most favored nations; therefore, in view of Canada’s contemplated action, and even without that perspective, nothing, apparently, will prevent or seriously discourage Hindus from coming to this country by thousands.

Hindu immigration to the United States began early in January, 1906. On January 7 Linah Singh and Pola Singh walked over the boundary line at Blaine without previously passing the required examination for admission. Arriving in Bellingham afoot on the Great Northern Railway they were arrested and confined in the city jail. They were found to be unlawfully in the country and were deported via Sumas

While in the local prison the Singhs exhibited several peculiarities of their far off home. They, of course, wore turbans, and threatened to die of starvation rather than eat food cooked by other people. They were finally induced to eat rice, but they devoured it sparingly.

No Unclean Rice

When they were given the opportunity to cook their own rice at the Sumas detention shed they ate big quantities of it. Rice is the principal food of their more fortunate countrymen in Bellingham, and it is said that seventeen men from the land of the cobra and the Bengal tiger surround the pot of rice cooked in the humble Oriental home near the E.K. Wood mill.

Two months after Linah and Pola came to Bellingham five other turbaned beings rode into the city on the Bellingham Bay & British Columbia Railway. They found employment digging ditches, but they did not like the work, and they quit to labor in the E.K. Wood lumber mill. The same liking for timber plants is shown by the majority of Hindus who have settled in the Northwest.

These were soon followed by others who, perhaps, were led to come here through the glowing accounts written by the pioneers. All have been examined by A.J. Ferrandini, the immigration inspector in charge at this port, and he is constantly looking for Hindus who have been rejected at the ports of entry or at the United States immigration headquarters at Vancouver…

NEW MOVEMENT…

Since the Singhs first ate rice in one of Uncle Sam’s prisons, more than 100 of their countrymen have entered the United States to the knowledge of the local immigration office and about an equal number has been denied admission. Admissions were refused to all who failed to pass the physical or mental examinations and to such as could not prove that they were not likely to become public charges or contract laborers.

The immigration offices are given the power to reject immigrants even though they find only an implication of contract labor. As an example, of the officers find that a relative or friend has informed the applicant that he can get work at a certain place that can be construed to mean contract labor and the application can be denied. If the applicant has been merely told that there is plenty of work in this country a construction of prohibition cannot be placed on the information. Frequently disease bars the Hindus. Some suffer from trachoma, and fifteen were rejected a week ago on this account. At Vancouver this year several rejected Indians were bound for Bellingham. Discretionary powers delegated to the officials are often used.

The Hindus who are in Bellingham are, on the whole, remarkably fine-looking men. This is due to the fact that many are ex-soldiers of the Indian army. Their acknowledge handsome appearance does not appeal to the employes [sic] of the mills where they find work and an effort is being made to oust them and this discourage future immigration to Bellingham. Unless the mill owners support the movement against the Orientals and decline to give them work, it will be hard to keep the undesirables out, for the reason that here they receive 50 cents more per day than they do in British Columbia, according to the local mill hands.

Whites Oppose Hindus

Work is plentiful in the mills, in fact, too plentiful, and this is responsible for the ease with which the foreigners have found employment. The scarcity of white men has led mills to accept the service of those whom American workers regard as a common enemy. They feel that wages will be reduced if suppressive measures are not taken in the beginning. They argue, also, that the presence of several scores or hundreds of Hindus in Bellingham will act as a brake on the city’s progress. A strong point against them, they say, is that they live cheaply and save their earnings to return to India to spend them.

The Bellingham Hindus are tall and well-formed and they stand erect. They seem to be intelligent and are polite, neat and clean. This is the opinion held by immigration officers, but it must be admitted that the Hindus here are of the lowest class. Of the seventeen said to be in Bellingham eleven have served as soldiers, according to Sanda, whose likeness appears on this page. Inspector Ferrandini says he found them honest and willing to reply to questions of examination. Many Japanese and Chinese who apply for admission are far from being so ready of tongue or so courteous.

The land of the Hindus harbors 300,000,000 souls, and it has been called “an epitome of the whole earth,” so varied is its physical characteristics. There the bull, the cow and the monkey are held sacred. In all there are about fifty tribes, which can be traced back to two or three original races. The Hindus form the largest part of the population, and their religion, Brahmanism, is therefore, chief. Of the other principal religions, Mohammedanism has 60,000,000 followers and Buddhism 8,000,000 believers.

Brahmanism dates back to 1200 B.C., and its sacred books, the Vodas, [sic] are the oldest literary documents known. They consist principally of hymns. Brahmanism was originally a philosophical religion, mingled with the worship of the powers of nature. Brahma was represented by four heads to indicate the four quarters of the globe. In practice, in the course of years, the religion became a system of idolatry, with cruel rites and hideous images.

The caste system, a part of the religion, became a grievous burden, and still is. In the first class are the priests. Warriors are next, followed by traders, and they by the common types.

KEEP THE HINDUS OUT, SAYS WRITER

Bellingham, Sept. 15, 1906

G. Perinet

Editor, American

Having resided in India nine years and closely observed the habits of the Hindus, I consider their advent in this country very undesirable. They are strictly non-progressive and adhere to their old established customs with far more tenacity than either the Japanese or Chinese. Their code of morals is bad (from our point of view), and if allowed the freedom, which they naturally expect in America, they will eventually become troublesome. The most of them have been soldiers under the British government and are well-versed in the use of fire-arms. In conclusion, they have the habit of running amuck, when annoyed, in which case a number of innocent people get butchered. By all means keep them out. ¹²⁶

Cartoon by N.H. Hawkins in the Saturday Sunset, 1907, via Wikimedia Commons

OP2IM_p0239_1.jpg

The little-remembered “Dusky Peril” of the early 1900s was the primary reason why Congress, when it came time to decide which races needed to be excluded in 1917, used an odd geographic designation to block out an entire region, which became the “Asiatic Barred Zone.” Oddly, Japanese and Philippine people were not included on the list, though the ban included all of China, Myanmar (then Burma), Malaysia, and Central Asia, as well as India. Interestingly, the ban also extended to individuals from the Polynesian Islands and the Arabian Peninsula, thus barring the immigration of people from seven Muslim-majority countries¹²⁷, which may sound oddly familiar to Americans in 2018.

Pre-War Fears in the Immigration Debate

Passage of the Immigration Act of 1917, preceded America’s official declaration of war by about two months, and wartime concerns were very much on display in the language and overall tone of the law. World War I ended the golden era of mass migration into the United States and the Immigration Act of 1917 signified this change, with harsher, more restrictive immigration policies than ever before. Never in history had America so embodied the immigrant saying popular in the 1800s, “America beckons, but Americans repel.”¹²⁸

Also following in the tradition of the 1882 Immigration Act, the 1917 act continued and expanded the list of “undesirable” persons who would not be allowed to immigrate. This list now included a variety of individuals portrayed as posing an economic burden, such as beggars, vagrants, paupers, and persons too poor to pay for their own passage, as well as persons seen as having low moral fiber, including polygamists, prostitutes, and leftist anarchists. The impact of the American eugenicists can be seen in the effort to eliminate defective, deleterious, or undesirable biological characteristics. Persons who fit this bill included individuals of low intelligence, classified officially at the time as “morons, idiots, and imbeciles,” as well as persons suffering from a variety of afflictions, such as heart disease, asthma, and arthritis. Also banned were persons with physical defects, including blind, deaf, mute, crippled, or otherwise infirm individuals. To make sure they touched all the bases, the law specifically allowed immigration authorities to deny entrance to persons,

“…not comprehended within any of the foregoing excluded classes who are found to be and are certified by the examining surgeon as being mentally or physically defective…”

The 1917 Immigration Act also contained some new provisions that represented the victory of a long-term nativist campaign to mandate literacy. The 1917 Act thus required all immigrants over the age of 16 (excepting some religious refugees) to pass a reading test in their native language. Only those who could read 30 to 40 words were thus allowed entrance. Congress had tried to impose a literacy test for years, but to no avail. Legislation for an immigrant literacy test passed the House of Representatives on five occasions prior to 1917, but failed in the senate, while four different bills made it all the way through the legislature before being vetoed by President Grover Cleveland and President Taft, respectively.¹²⁸ Fears about the impending war became a rallying cry for anti-immigration lobbyists who called for a stronger nation through immigration by merit and so the literacy requirements was finally pushed through.

President Wilson was critical of the 1917 law and especially the addition of the literacy test, which he viewed as a major and negative change to the nation’s overall approach to immigration. He attempted to veto the bill, but Congress voted to override the veto, thus allowing the bill to become law. Wilson made few comments on immigration as president, though; shortly after his election on November 5, Wilson said, at a speech to the Wilson Cottage, a corrections institution for women in New Jersey:

“The men who founded this country had a vision. They said ‘Men are brethren’…We have had a vision of brotherhood, of mutual helpfulness, of equal rights; we are going to spread a great polity over this continent which will embody these things and make them real. We are going to keep our doors wide open so that those who seek this thing from the ends of the earth may come and enjoy it.”

From his collective commentary on immigration, it seemed that Wilson envisioned a nation in which the barriers between nationalistic groups would fade away and in which individuals would no longer be Russian-Americans, or Irish-Americans, or Anglo-Americans, but simply Americans. This vision did come about largely because Wilson’s administration fostered this view in preparation for the war. In the tradition of the era, however, Wilson could not envision how members of other foreign races might fit into his vision of a unified American people. Speaking about the Chinese Exclusion law in a letter written in 1912, Wilson wrote:

“In the matter of Chinese and Japanese coolie immigration I stand for the national policy of exclusion (or restricted immigration). The whole question is one of assimilation of diverse races. We cannot make a homogenous population out of people who do not blend with the Caucasian race…Oriental coolieism will give us another race problem to solve, and surely we have had our lesson.”¹²⁹

President Woodrow Wilson, by Harris & Ewing, via Wikimedia Commons

OP2IM_p0247_1.jpg

Conclusion

The 1917 Immigration Act was a major victory for anti-immigration activists and American eugenicists. Capitalizing on the fears that World War I would lead to a massive influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe, anti-immigration activists seized the chance to expand the prohibited classes targeted for exclusion. The congressional record demonstrates that few Americans objected to continuing to prohibit nonwhite immigration, but the prohibition of war refugees and, specifically, Jewish refugees was a major controversy at the time. President Wilson campaigned for a less-restrictive approach to immigration, believing that the United States should welcome eastern and southern European refugees from the war, but a majority of legislators did not support this view and favored isolationism. Ultimately, the fear of refugee migrants, and the restrictive immigration policies that resulted from this fear, brought an end to the period of mass migration from Europe.

Discussion Questions

Would the United States ever pass an immigration law like the 1917 Immigration Act again? Why or why not?
Can you defend the position that only white Europeans can become Americans? Why or why not?
Why was World War I called the “European War” in the American media?
Are there current policies or proposals that are similar to the Asiatic Barred Zone? If so, are the modern laws motivated by the same factors that led to the 1917 law?

Works Used

Alvarez, Priscilla. “A Brief History of America’s ‘Love-Hate Relationship’ With Immigration.” Atlantic. Atlantic Monthly Group. 19 Feb. 2017.

Axelrod, Alan. Selling the War: The Making of American Propaganda. New York: Macmillan, 2009 pp. 56–58.

Boissoneault, Lorraine. “Literacy Tests and Asian Exclusion Were the Hallmarks of the 1917 Immigration Act.” Smithsonian. Smithsonian Institution. 6 Feb. 2017.

“German U-Boat Reaches Baltimore, Having Crossed Atlantic in 16 Days; Has Letter from Kaiser to Wilson.” New York Times. New York Times, Co. 10 July 1916.

“Have We a Dusky Peril?” Puget Sound American. 16 Sept. 1906.

“Immigration Act of 1917.” University of Washington-Bothell Library. Sixty-Fourth Congress. Sess. II. Chapters 27–29. 1917.

Manseau, Peter. “A forgotten History of Anti-Sikh Violence in the Early-20th-Century Pacific Northwest.” Slate. Slate Group.

“Mob Drives out Hindus.” New York Times. New York Times, Co. 6 Sept. 1907.

Sondhaus, Lawrence. World War I: The Global Revolution. New York: Cambridge UP, 2011.

Wolfensberger, Don. “Woodrow Wilson, Congress and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in America: An Introductory Essay.” Wilson Center. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 12 Mar. 2007.

Citation Types

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MLA 9th

, . "14 The Immigration Race." Opinions Throughout History – Immigration, edited by Micah L. Issitt, Salem Press, 2018. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=OP2IM_0018.

APA 7th

, . (2018). 14 The Immigration Race. In M. L. Issitt (Ed.), Opinions Throughout History – Immigration. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.

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,. "14 The Immigration Race." Edited by Micah L. Issitt. Opinions Throughout History – Immigration. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2018. Accessed May 17, 2024. online.salempress.com.

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