The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled recently that
Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia must be released and returned to his
family. He was wrongfully deported to the high-security prison in El Salvador
based on what the Trump administration calls an “administrative error.”
However, during a recent visit to the Oval Office with
President Donald Trump, El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele stated that he
will not return Abrego Garcia, echoing sentiments expressed by Trump and his
administration.
This is a rare moment of a U.S. president openly defying a
Supreme Court order. But, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s actions –
such as claiming immigrants do not deserve due process as well as the targeting
of documented, legal residents and international students – are not
unprecedented at all.
Rather, this is just the latest chapter in a white
supremacist history of immigration and citizenship in the U.S., which is
disinformation at its worst because America has never been just a white
country. Racist attempts throughout U.S. history to declare white supremacy as
triumphant have all ultimately failed.
This is even as federal websites are scraped of mentions of
diverse leaders, Black history books have been banned, and recently, the U.S.
Naval Academy banned close to 400 books of history that violate orders to
remove mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion. Schools, universities and
colleges face significant funding cuts if they do not discontinue their DEI policies
and curricula.
Yet despite this recorded factual history, many Americans
still believe that this country has historically been white. This may be
stating the obvious, but Black and indigenous groups have been a part of this
country’s cultural fabric for centuries longer than whites. But even that is
not the full story.
While Hispanic and Asian groups are often characterized as
newcomers to this country, members of such ethnic and racial groups have been
on American soil for centuries, some with roots as far back as the 1600s.
During the westward expansion of the U.S. following the
Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, a
large number of indigenous, Hispanic and Asian residents of that land became
“American” not because they came to America, but because America came to them.
It feels ridiculous to remind people that the story of
immigration to America is not just the story of Europeans coming across the
Atlantic, but also groups who went across the Pacific or through the Caribbean,
many of whom were Asian, Hispanic or African.
As described in the 2024 book Diversity in America by
Vincent Parillo and the 2022 book Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and
Colonialism in American History and Identity by Paul Spickard and
colleagues, America has never been a country dominated by whites.
Prior to the Revolutionary War and for much of America’s
early history, federal immigration laws were relatively loose, particularly for
European immigrant groups in the 1700s and 1800s.
For many European families that arrived through Ellis
Island, paperwork such as visas, permits and green cards was often nonexistent.
But over time, racist laws and immigration quotas specifically targeted
non-white groups’ arrival to America while leaving Europeans a relatively
easier pathway to immigration.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 explicitly stated that only a
“free white person” could become a citizen. This was followed by laws such as
the Naturalization Act of 1870, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the
Emergency Quota Act of 1921, and the Immigration Act of 1924, all of which
placed restrictions on immigrants from non-white countries.
Explicit racism defined America’s immigration policies until
the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, the first policy that removed
rather than instated racial barriers in immigration.
Whiteness has been central in determining who could become a
citizen and a full-fledged member of American society. Native Americans were
barred from full citizenship until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, and
Black Americans did not gain equal citizenship and legal rights until after the
Civil Rights movement.
Then, non-white immigrants who met the standards of legality
and time of residence were barred from citizenship. In the cases Ozawa vs
United States (1922) and Thind vs United States (1923), the Supreme Court ruled
that Japanese and Indian immigrants could not become naturalized citizens
because they did not meet the standards of “white.”
Notably, the court applied inconsistent logic across these
cases in the service of protecting these racist standards.
As Reece Jones describes in the 2022 book White Borders,
punitive immigration law and citizenship restrictions have historically been
tied to protecting white supremacy. This history is paralleled today;
anti-immigration members of the White House administrations such as Steve
Bannon and Stephen Miller have described immigration as a “great replacement”
which threatens a “white genocide.”
Today, while explicitly racist laws regarding immigration
and citizenship have been relegated to history, inequalities remain. Research
shows that there are tangible differences in the naturalization acceptance of
different immigrant groups, with non-white and Hispanic applicants being less
likely to be approved than white applicants.
Additionally, the odds of being approved for citizenship
drop significantly for immigrants in majority-white counties.
To be sure, Americans today are not responsible for the
racist sins of the country’s past. Still, much of the current discourse that
supports the current administration’s treatment of immigrants is rooted in
claims such as, “My family came here the right way!” or “This has always been a
white country!”
Here is a reminder that the U.S. has been very diverse for
centuries, but non-whites were barred from equal immigration laws and fully
participating in U.S. democracy as citizens. The actions of the current
administration are certainly shocking, but it is only the latest chapter of
historical and ongoing white supremacy in immigration and citizenship.
It is time to stop the ongoing white dominant narrative and
close the book on racism in this country for good.
Dr. Neeraj Rajasekar is an Assistant Professor of
Sociology at the University of Illinois-Springfield and a Public Voices Fellow
with The OpEd Project. This article was originally published in The Fulcrum.