Thesis advisor: Kevin Kenny / This dissertation examines the origins of American immigration policy. Without denying the importance of anti-Asian racism, it locates the roots of federal immigration policy in nativism and economics in nineteenth-century Massachusetts. The influx of poor Irish immigrants over the first half of the nineteenth century provoked anti-Irish nativism, or intense hostility toward foreigners, in Massachusetts. Building upon colonial laws for banishing paupers, nativists in Massachusetts developed policies for prohibiting the entry of destitute alien passengers by ship and railroad and for deporting immigrant paupers in the state to Ireland, Liverpool, British North America, or other American states where they resided before coming to Massachusetts. Prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, citizenship and its attendant rights remained inchoate, allowing anti-Irish nativism to override certain rights and liberties that were later taken for granted. Nativist officials seized and banished paupers of Irish descent, including some who were born or naturalized in America. Historians have long seen anti-Irish nativism as a set of prejudiced ideas that generated few consequences at the level of law and policy, and have identified late-nineteenth-century federal Chinese exclusion laws as the beginnings of American immigration control. This dissertation argues that anti-Irish nativism in Massachusetts had a significant practical impact on Irish immigrants in the form of state deportation policies, and demonstrates that Massachusetts' policies, which were driven by a poisonous combination of prejudice against the Irish and economic concerns, helped lay the foundations for later federal restriction policies that applied to all immigrants. The argument unfolds in a transnational context, examining the migration of paupers from Ireland, their expulsion from America, and their post-deportation experiences in Britain and Ireland. In this way, deportation from the United States can be seen as part of a wider system of pauper restriction and forcible removal operating in the Atlantic world. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_101448 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Hirota, Hidetaka |
| Publisher | Boston College |
| Source Sets | Boston College |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, thesis |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. |
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