Immigration in the USA
Introduction
The document gives a brief history of immigration rules in the country and how it affected women migration to the United States. These rules of immigration specifically affected women of Asian origin and were disappointed by the law and thus was opposed to the regulations put by the federal government in ensuring that sexual immoral from Asian does not enter in the country. Eithne tells us that the role of immigration control was initially done by individual states, but later the federal government took over from different states. He thus discussed rules that were put in place by the federal government to ensure prostitution did not occur in the U.S.A. to ensure these policies were valid; the federal government set up an immigration unit. The unit came up with some regulations that Eithne termed as ruthless to women of Asian origin.
The first law that Eithne saw as discriminative was the “selective immigration law.” This policy exclusively illegalized the entry of Asian women to the country claiming that their entry will promote prostitution and immorality. Due to this policy, most Chinese women did not enter the USA. Also, the law highlighted some individuals who were banned from travelling to the USA. This law was to some point effective as the country was able to control immorality in the country.
The second law that was passed and discussed by Eithne is the “family reunification policy.” This policy was developed regarding selective immigration laws. This law ensured that only individuals especially women who had family members in the USA entered the country. In consideration of this law, women were seen as a property of men and thus were seen as inferior as compared to men. To Eithne, women are more powerful than men. This policy instead of bringing harmony, it brought about misery in terms of races tribes and gender.
He also looks at the prostitute regulation policy. This policy banned Chinese women from the USA. Chinese labourers thus opted to send for their family members, but they were denied entry by law. The men took the matter to court by they were looked down upon by the court and ruled in favour of the wealthy merchants. The ruling by the court was that “wives and families of the Chinese merchants had the right to the right admission and not those of the Chinese labourers.” This showed that people of law class had no right.
Eithne goes on to look at the impacts that were caused by the laws. To him, though the rules regulated prostitution and immorality in the country, it created more suffering to many people. First, he highlights that women who had no family members from Asian countries were not allowed to enter the USA even if they had a genuine reason. To prove his point of view, he gave an example of a pregnant woman whose admission was revoked by the commissioner just because she was pregnant and she had no relatives and thus according to the commissioner she could not take care of herself.
In his writing, Eithne thus tries to look at the history of immigration in the USA and how policies that were put in place affected people and created disharmony among people of Asian origin. To him, policies like the prostitution policy were not supposed to be put in place to target specific people or people of certain origin but advocates for other measures to control prostitution in the country. However, the author does not adequately discuss the effects of these policies on women sexuality, and instead moves from that aspect and discussed the impact on general terms. This showed that though the author was hypocritical in addressing issues affecting women. As such, his argument can be termed as writing that was done to please him and other individuals with whom he worked.
References
Luibhéid, E. (2002). Entry denied: Controlling sexuality at the border. U of Minnesota Press.