Timelines

Migration ist eine globale Realität und seit jeher Teil der Menschheitsgeschichte. Dennoch gehört sie bis heute zu den am stärksten umkämpften öffentlichen Themen. 

Sowohl Menschen als auch Grenzen sind ständig in Bewegung. Wer sich bewegen darf und wem Rechte zugesprochen werden, zeigt, wer als Teil der Nation angesehen wird. In Deutschland wie in den Vereinigten Staaten sind diese Debatten — und die damit verbundenen politischen und gesellschaftlichen Praktiken — eng mit sich wandelnden Vorstellungen von „Rasse“, Kultur und Sprache verbunden. 

Diese Zeitleisten zeigen, wie Rechte und Zugehörigkeit durch Gesetze, migrantische Bewegungen und Kämpfe, globale Ereignisse und kulturelle Werke ausgehandelt, infrage gestellt und neu definiert wurden — und wie diese Geschichten bis heute nachwirken. 

Entstanden sind die Zeitleisten in einem community-basierten Prozess gemeinsam mit Partner*innen aus migrantischen Selbstorganisationen, Bildungsinstitutionen und Wissenschaft sowie mit Unterstützung vieler weiterer Beteiligter und Ehrenamtlicher.

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1917
List of “Undesirables” Expanded

Reflecting the growing popularity of the eugenics movement (see also: Eugenics Movement fuels nativism and racism, 1915) in the early twentieth century, the Immigration Act of 1917 expanded the criteria for inadmissibility to the United States to include illiteracy, epilepsy, and mental illness. The 1917 Act also established the Asiatic Barred Zone, which extended exclusionary measures aimed at would-be Chinese immigrants (see also: Chinese immigrants face exclusion) to include all of Asia and the Pacific Rim.

This law came on the heels of several other pieces of legislation that curtailed immigration, including the 1903 Anarchist Exclusion Act, the first law barring entry based on political opinion, and the Immigration Act of 1907, which barred entry to individuals whose physical or mental capacities might “affect the ability to earn a living.” Additionally, the Expatriation Act of 1907 revoked the citizenship of any U.S. American woman who chose to marry a foreign national. In this same period, immigration officials also grew concerned with immigrants whom they perceived to be gender and sexual dissidents. Though the term “homosexuality” would not appear in immigration law until the 1950s, officials increasingly used the 1917 Act to deny entry to such persons on the grounds that they were “likely to become a public charges.”
Map of the Asiatic Barred Zone. History Beyond
Map of the Asiatic Barred Zone.
The Immigration Act of 1917 added to previous legislation by creating a barred zone that included most of east Asia and the Pacific Islands. At the time, The Philippine Islands were not included in the Asiatic Barred zone, because they were an occupied territory of the United States.
United States
Sources
  1. Mae Ngai. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. New Jersey and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
  2. Margot Canaday. The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century America. Princeton University Press.
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