Impossible subjects : illegal aliens and the making of modern America /

This study examines how our "nation of immigrants" constructed the entity of the "illegal alien" out of a mixture of racism, nationalism, and corporate greed. Expertly blending documentary sources, interviews, the press, and published analyses, Ngai (Univ. of Chicago) exposes the problems created by the sixty-year (1924-65) longevity of the immigration policies of the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924. She also shows how post-9/11 attitudes toward Muslims carry on this tendency. From the 1885 policies to prevent Chinese (and later Japanese) immigration, to the addition of quotas based on national origins in Johnson-Reed, US immigration policy increasingly moved toward exclusion and even expulsion. In 1952, Communists and other political radicals were added to the list until 1965, when the Hart-Celler Act liberalized racial and national restrictions, retaining numerical limits. The large numbers of immigrants who either remained in the country or entered it without authorization were thus illegal. Ngai pulls no punches, arguing that in most cases these illegal people were stigmatized by negative racial stereotypes and branded as dangerous. This work complements and expands Roger Daniels's Guarding the Golden Door (CH, Oct'04). ^BSumming Up: Essential. Best suited for upper-division students and above, it belongs in every library and should be referenced in every ethnic studies course. E. L. Turk emerita, Indiana University East