Timelines

Migration is a natural part of living systems, and human history is no exception. Yet it remains one of the most debated public issues of our time.

Both people and borders move. Who is allowed to move, and who is granted rights, lies at the heart of how nations define belonging. In Germany and the United States alike, these debates have been deeply intertwined with evolving ideas of race and ethnicity.

These timelines trace how citizenship and belonging have been constructed, challenged, and redefined through laws, social movements, global events, and cultural works — and how those histories continue to shape the present.

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.”

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

Mae Ngai. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. New Jersey and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Margot Canaday. The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century America. Princeton University Press.

Related Events

1875

Chinese Immigrants Face Exclusion

1915

Eugenics Movement Fuels Nativism and Racism

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