An editorial on why we, as Asian Americans, have a sacred obligation to protest the recent Arizona immigration legislation.

How the Arizona Immigration Bill relates to the Chinese Exclusion Act…

…And why Asian Americans Should Care

On May 8, 1882, President Chester Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act into existence.  It was, without a doubt, one of the most shameful (and least-known) episodes of our nation’s history; for the next sixty-one years, Chinese immigrants were banned from entering the United States.  The few who did fit the narrow entry requirements found themselves confined to a prison on San Francisco’s Angel Island and subject to stringent medical, psychological, and physical examinations before they were finally allowed to set foot in the United States.  While the law was repealed in 1943, to this day, the Chinese Exclusion Act remains the only legislation which explicitly banishes immigrants by ethnicity—a dark reminder of a supposedly bygone era when a certain people were denied a fundamental human right—simply because of their appearance.

Now, one hundred and twenty years later, during the “post-racial” Obama era, history is repeating itself in the form of Senate Bill 1070—a deceptively unassuming name for the most controversial immigration law since the Chinese Exclusion Act.  While Senate Bill 1070 differs from the Chinese Exclusion Act in certain areas, it is certainly a spiritual descendant of the infamous legislation of 1882—born out of the same rampant bigotry, nativism, and rabble-rousing as its lesser-known ancestor.  Indeed the circumstances behind SB1070 bear a frightening resemblance to the situation which spawned the Chinese Exclusion Act. 

First, however, a brief examination of SB1070 is necessary.  Among other things, Senate Bill 1070 gives local law enforcement authorities broad powers to enforce immigration laws—itself forbidden under federal law, as only national agencies, such as the Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), have the authority to handle such matters.  Yet perhaps the most nefarious part of this law is the power of police to act based on “reasonable suspicion,” a dangerously vague term that precludes the use of a search warrant.  Given such ambiguity, SB1070 is all but codifying racial profiling; Racewire.com reports that, “when pressed about the criteria police officers will use to determine whether there will be ‘reasonable suspicion’ to detain a person, [Arizona Governor Jan] Brewer said: ‘I do not know what an illegal immigrant looks like…racial profiling is illegal.’”  While that may well be the case, there is also nothing in the bill specifically detailing an alternative to racial profiling, as well as a way to determine whether racial profiling was used in any one situation.  Given that “3 out of every 10 Arizonans are Hispanic, 1 out of 10 is American Indian, and 13% are foreign born,” permission to detain and arrest such people at will has just been issued.  

Obviously, SB1070 is not an exact carbon copy of the Chinese Exclusion Act; since the era of civil rights, racism has simply mutated, transformed, and been forced underground.  As a result, while SB1070 differs from the Chinese Exclusion Act in that it does not specifically target a certain race— in one heated debate with immigration advocate Isabel Garcia (televised on CNN), State Senator Russell Pearce is quick to point out that “illegal is not a race, it’s a crime”—the intentions are identical: to label a certain ethnicity as perpetual foreigners, guests, and aliens who have no real right to be in America.  Anyone who can read between the lines—save perhaps self-deceiving conservatives of the far-right—can immediately understand SB1070’s underlying message: that “illegal” equals “Hispanic.”  Latino-American writer Miguel Guadelupe says it best: “this is a bill that allows police to suspect all Latinos of being undocumented, and gives them the right to question their status at any time, for any reason.”

Additionally, the rationale for SB1070 is identical to the reasoning behind the Chinese Exclusion Act; then, as now, nativist rabble-rousers used inflammatory speech to gain national prominence in order to set public opinion against immigrants and advance their own hypocritical goals.  In 1882, it was the so-called Workingman’s Union, composed, ironically, of recent Irish immigrants seeking to deflect racism onto the Chinese; their leader, Dennis Kearney, was a menial laborer miffed at the fact that Chinese immigrants worked for less wages (itself a form of discrimination).  In 2010, it is groups such as the Tea Party—82% of which, according to a recent CBS survey, believe immigration is a “hot button” issue—as well as hate groups such as the infamous Stormfront (a modern, twentieth century Nazi group) have taken the lead in pushing SB1070.  According to one report from the New York Times, Pearce has been photographed with a featured speaker at a neo-Nazi convention; Pearce has also, in the past, backed bills that would explicitly ban the formation of associations based on ethnicity and race—a clear indication of his views on those who look different from himself.  As if this weren’t enough, Gawker.com reported that State Senator Chuck Gray, yet another Republican backer of the bill, had been following Stormfront on his Twitter account; Gray later removed Stormfront from his Twitter account after being questioned by Gawker.com.  All in all, it seems that, aside from the names, little has changed since 1882; the rule of the mob is still in force, and hate is still hate, whatever one may call it.

In a familiar twist harkening back to Dennis Kearney’s pre-pubescent whining, Pearce has also claimed that illegal immigrants are “taking jobs from Americans…and a billion dollars in Arizona just to educate their children.”  First of all, illegal immigrants contribute more to state finances than Senator Pearce and his ilk would like to admit; according to Americanprogress.org, “the Texas-based Perryman Group calculated that if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Arizona, the state would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, and…140,324 jobs.”  This is likely due in part to the fact that illegal immigrants in Arizona, as with illegal immigrants the world over, often find themselves mired in an underground economy and given menial, low-paying, but critical jobs—jobs that residents usually do not want.  Certainly this was the case with Chinese immigrants in both past and present, who worked in niche markets such as hand laundries; given that laundry was seen as women's work, and women were in short supply in gold-rush towns like San Francisco, Chinese immigrants were able to eke out an existence doing work that no one else wanted to.  Additionally, like today’s illegal immigrants, many of whom work in the disgusting, fetid confines of meatpacking factories and slaughterhouses (see Fast Food Nation for more information), Chinese immigrants also found themselves working on the transcontinental railroad, dying by the thousands in avalanches, cave-ins, and premature detonations. 

Also, it should also be pointed out that, if the child of an illegal immigrant is born in the United States, that child is an American citizen.  Perhaps Senator Pearce has conveniently forgotten this fact—or perhaps he intends to challenge the citizenship of children born in the United States to parents who are not permanent residents.  If that is the case, then there is a direct parallel to the discrimination inspired by the Chinese Exclusion Act; one prominent example was the case of Wong Kim Ark, who, despite being born to Chinese parents in the US, found himself barred from re-entry after a trip to his ancestral homeland—all because of his ethnicity.  Indeed, Wong had to appeal to the Supreme Court to have his citizenship restored, for a right that was his in the first place.  One shudders to think what Pearce and his ilk will do to the children of non-permanent residents; imagine, then, Wong's case multiplied a hundredfold, as such children are forced to carry identification papers with them—simply because their facial features are different than that of the dominant majority.

The last, most obvious parallel may be that of immigrant holding facilities; by now, many readers may have heard of “Tent City,” a semi-permanent camp outside the Maricopa County Jail.  Created by the infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio (who relentlessly pursued illegal immigrants, ignoring other targets such as rapists and thieves) as well as Senator Pearce, Tent City houses nearly 2,000 inmates (many of them illegal immigrants) in canvas, military surplus tents.  Ringed by barbed wire and forced to work for the duration of their stay, Tent City bears more than a passing resemblance to that other center of immigration incarceration—the deceptively unassuming Angel Island in San Francisco’s harbor.  While those imprisoned at Angel Island found themselves in wooden barracks, and did not have to carry out manual labor, the idea behind both Angel Island and Tent City are one and the same: pack undesirable foreigners into crowded, squalid conditions, isolate them from mainstream society, permit a handful to enter, and deport the rest.  At any rate, both Angel Island and Tent City were (and are) places of punishment and detainment; both Tent City’s walls and barbed wire and Angel Island’s solitary location amidst the swift currents of the San Francisco Bay will attest to that fact.

It was Maya Angelou who said it best: "history, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived.  However, if faced with courage, it need not be lived again."   While SB1070 is a shamefully racist, discriminatory piece of legislation, it is nothing new, having succeeded the Chinese Exclusion Act by one hundred and twenty-eight years.  Now, at this historic moment, this turning point, we as a nation have the ability to choose: we can decide to repeat the mistakes of the past and cause other immigrants pain and suffering—or perhaps we can decide to create a new future, a brave new world of open acceptance, not blind conformity; of difference, not homogeneity, and amnesty, not punishment.  We can choose to listen to the lynch mob—or we can choose to listen to our collective conscience, the part of us that countless philosophers have considered, debated, and studied, the separation of human compassion and intelligence from raw fear and animal instinct.

As Asian Americans, we must raise our voices against this travesty; after all, we owe it to our ancestors—both literal and spiritual—who were banished, beaten, killed, and ultimately forgotten simply because of their appearance.  To object to the parallels between the Chinese Exclusion Act and Senate Bill 1070—to let history repeat its vicious cycle—is not simply illogical and downright cowardly—it is also a denial of all the trials and tribulations of those who came before.  To paraphrase a famous revolutionary, we can bow to the will of racists and bigots and live on our knees—or we can remember how we too, were once denied, and stand on our feet, against this hateful legislation.

The choice is ours.