Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America

by Mae M. Ngai

Book Overview

This book traces the origins of the "illegal alien" in American law and society, explaining why and how illegal migration became the central problem in U.S. immigration policy--a process that profoundly shaped ideas and practices about citizenship, race, and state authority in the twentieth century. Mae Ngai offers a close reading of the legal regime of restriction that commenced in the 1920s--its statutory architecture, judicial genealogies, administrative...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691124299
• ISBN13: 9780691124292
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Politics of Multiculturalism

In Impossible Subjects, Mae Ngai traces the history of the "illegal alien" in American law and society. She articulates why and how illegal migration became the central issue in U.S. immigration policy. Ngai revisits inquiries into the fundamental legal status created by the new challenges outlined above vis-à-vis the notion of a liberal democratic society. These challenges, Ngai posits have directly affected the politics of multiculturalism and national belonging up to the present (Ngai, Impossible Subjects 227-264). Ngai argues that the process was very much created by ideas and practices about citizenship, race, and state authority in the 20th century (Ngai, Impossible Subjects 1-14). Ngai moreover does a close reading of the legal framework of restriction that began in the early 20th Century: statutory architecture, judicial genealogies, and administrative enforcement, differential treatment of European and non-European migrants, and long-term effects (Ngai, Impossible Subjects 17-90). In term of method, Ngai's grounds her extensive analysis on an extensive literature review -- that includes Eric Muller's Free to Die for Your Country -- as well as wide-ranging archival research that includes unstudied records of the U.S. Border Patrol and the INS. Ngai contribution to American history debates, legal history, and ethnic studies. Impossible Subjects is a sweeping re-examination of U.S. immigration in the 20th century. In historical/cultural analysis, Ngai examines the immigration legacy of Filipinos, Mexicans, Japanese, and Chinese - a foursome that, in at least one way, encountered aspects of illegal alieness, alien citizenship, colonial subjectivity, and were imported contract workers (Ngai, Impossible Subjects 91-224). Ngai brings to presence how immigration policy, specifically national-origin and numerical quotas, re-shaped the US by creating both new categories of racial difference and by giving emphasis to land borders and their policing (Ngai, Impossible Subjects 22, 25-27, 32-37, and 89, 249-254). The confluence of these phenomena gave rise to the category of "illegal alien," a new legal and political "Filipino Nationals," "Braceros," "Nisei Renunciators," and "Paper Sons" challenged conventional forms of subjectivity whose participation in the nation was a social truism but a legal problem. Individual members of the categories previously outlines became subject devoid of rights and barred from citizenship.

The construction of the illegal immigrant and discriminatory US policies

The United States of America is the great melting pot of the world's immigrants, or is it? A white, middle-class, Protestant, European American lifestyle is what the great melting pot of American folklore was truly intended to articulate to the immigrants of the early 20th century. Mai Ngai counters this image of the US as the embracive playground of diverse immigrants and powerfully weaves the tale of how race, nationality, assimilation, and immigration all became interwoven concepts in overtly discriminatory US immigration policy of the mid-20th century in her newest book Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. As Mae says, "The telos of immigrant settlement, assimilation, and citizenship has been an enduring narrative of American history, but it has not always been the reality of migrants' desires or their experiences and interactions with American society and state." (5) Throughout the history of the United States, there has been a clear struggle to define who can gain citizenship in this great nation. Ngai's book attempts not to tackle this debate, but rather how the construction of the illegal immigrant came about because "the promise of citizenship applies only to the legal alien, the lawfully present immigrant. The illegal immigrant has no right to be present, let alone embark on the path to citizenship." (6) Her book begins in 1924 with the adoption of the Johnson-Reed Act which established numeric quotas for immigration from countries across the globe. Prior to the 1920s, immigration was relatively unrestricted as, "the free global movement of labor was essential to economic development in the New World." (17) Ngai points out that it is vital to note that this pre-Johnson Reed Act period did see the exclusion of Chinese laborers who migration disturbed the precious ideas of manifest destiny in the West. She stresses that the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was most important because the Supreme Court gave Congress absolute control over immigration as part of foreign relations. Throughout her book, Ngai focuses on what she believes to be the two biggest consequences of the Johnson-Reed Act, the first being creation of the concept of illegal alien and the second being racially ranking the desirability for certain groups to immigrate to the United States. Perhaps the most powerful quote of the entire book goes, "Immigration restriction produced the illegal alien as a new legal and political subject, whose inclusion within the nation was simultaneously a social reality and a legal impossibility - a subject barred from citizenship and without rights." (4) Ngai points out that the irony of this newly created status is that the undocumented or illegal immigrants are woven into the economic fabric and labor market of our nation, and yet as they are cheap labor, they are disposable labor who can easily lose their ability to live in even the subhuman conditions in this oh so great nation. Now that this new quota s

Reframing immigration history

Mae Ngai's ambitious book compels historians and general readers alike to critically reassess traditional understandings of and approaches to U.S. immigration. Much of the histories on U.S. immigration and immigration policies have told a similar tale. The United States, the narrative goes, has been tainted by a long history of exclusion, a blight on the nation's democratic tradition that was only recently removed with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965. Such a narrative not only reaffirms the myth of American universalism, but also consistently fails to produce any new critical knowledge about U.S. immigration and U.S. history. Impossible Subjects differs from these other works of immigration history in this important respect: it proceeds with the conviction that the United States was never a "nation of immigrants." Ngai examines the era between 1924 and 1965, an unconventional periodization in immigration history that situates the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act (usually signifying the end of one regime) at the beginning of her study, and the Immigration Act of 1965 (usually signifying the beginning of another) at the end. Beyond simply filling a historiographical gap in immigration history, the focus on this period of immigration restriction enables a reevaluation of U.S. immigration laws, and more broadly of U.S history, on several levels. First, it demonstrates that restrictionist policies did not merely function as a tool for exclusion, but more, it created-through a racial and geographical remapping of the nation-new categories and concepts deeply implicated in race that defined the spaces and limits of national inclusion. Second, these categories and concepts, most notably "illegal aliens" and "national origins," are not natural or fixed conditions and markers, but are the product of positive law that, when scrutinized, reveal the ways in which its uses have shaped and defined the United States in the twentieth century, particularly its ideas and practices about race, citizenship, and the nation-state. Finally, this periodization allows for a reconfiguration of immigration history beyond a nationalist framework. By suggesting that the making of modern America rested on the exclusion of nonwhites from the geographical and ideological borders of the nation during this regime of restriction, the book argues against the normative telos of immigrant settlement, assimilation, and citizenship as the defining narrative of American history, a narrative that is confined to the nation-state and that invariably reproduces American exceptionalism. By charting the historical origins of the "illegal alien" and the genealogy of immigration laws that have consistently reproduced it, Ngai has ultimately written a stunning history that goes far beyond narrating the history of U.S. immigration restriction. It is a book that deserves to be read widely.

The legally constructed "illegal aliens"

IMPOSSIBLE SUBJECTS, written by Mae Ngai, is the best of recent books on the 20th-century American history of immigration. She reveals that the problem of "illegal immigrants," which has been regarded as one of the most serious problems since the late 20th century, is indeed a legal construction. According to the author, immigrants from Mexico were drawn into the U.S. Southeast because the Southeast political economy, especially agri-business, raised need for the massive wave of low-wage immigrant workers and at the same time defined them as the racially "foreign" people who were rendered alien to America, which was defined as the nation of Caucasians. What enabled the American Government and people to attach racialized foreignness to the Mexican immigrants (and, inevitably, American citizens of Mexican origin) were Immigration Acts, border policing, and discriminatory control of visas.Mae Ngai argues that positive laws concerning immigration policy have constructed the category of "illegal aliens" from Mexico, and the implementation of the laws by Border Patrols and INS has reinforced the labeling of racially alien immigrants. She bases her analysis on the critical legal theory which suggests that laws constitute social formations. Her usage of the new legal theory in her inquiry into the American immigration history is highly excellent and persuasive. The historical analysis of the immigration problems in this book seems to be applicable to other countries' history. For example, Ngai's insight shall give light to the recent Japanese conservative media discourses on the "illegal migrants" from China, South Korea, and Latin American nations which describe the undocumented migrant workers as illegal, criminal and, in case of women, prostitutes.I would have dedicate five stars to this book if its text were easier to read (it is possible that I felt this book's text not very easy to read because I am not of a native-English tongue).