Focusing primarily on the exclusion of the Chinese, Lucy Salyer
analyzes the popular and legal debates surrounding immigration law
and its enforcement during the height of nativist sentiment in the
early twentieth century. She argues that the struggles between
Chinese immigrants, U.S. government officials, and the lower
federal courts that took place around the turn of the century
established fundamental principles that continue to dominate
immigration law today and make it unique among branches of American
law. By establishing the centrality of the Chinese to immigration
policy, Salyer also integrates the history of Asian immigrants on
the West Coast with that of European immigrants in the East.
Salyer demonstrates that Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans
mounted sophisticated and often-successful legal challenges to the
enforcement of exclusionary immigration policies. Ironically, their
persistent litigation contributed to the development of legal
doctrines that gave the Bureau of Immigration increasing power to
counteract resistance. Indeed, by 1924, immigration law had begun
to diverge from constitutional norms, and the Bureau of Immigration
had emerged as an exceptionally powerful organization, free from
many of the constraints imposed upon other government agencies.