Review | Book review: Chinese exclusion and mistreatment in 19th and 20th century America explored
Michael Luo’s Strangers in the Land tells heart-wrenching stories of exclusion, racism and violence directed at Chinese immigrants to the US
The history of Chinese immigrants in America has always been about much more than one ethnic group.
As Michael Luo’s Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America shows, understanding America’s efforts to keep Chinese labourers out, and the violence enacted against those who got in, is essential to understanding the evolution of America’s immigration system as we know it today.
That is because restrictions against Chinese immigrants represented the first major flex in the modern era of the US federal government’s power to control its borders.
Chinese labourers were the first group to be barred from the entire country based on national origin, and lawsuits involving this group were often major tests of constitutional liberties – most notably the Supreme Court case of Wong Kim Ark in 1898, which established the right to birthright citizenship.
Time and time again, the treatment of this minority group served as a test of America’s ability to live up to its own ideals of equality.