Powers to Exclude: Restriction in an Era of U.S. Expansion and Empire

FAIN: FEL-289334-23

Julian Lim
Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ 85281-3670)

Writing a book on the interplay between U.S. imperialism, territorial expansion, and immigration restriction from 1865 to 1929. 

"Powers to Exclude" reconceptualizes the origins of U.S. immigration law within a history of expanding borders, territorial anxieties, and U.S. empire. From the 1870s to the 1920s, the United States underwent great geospatial change: the borders of a post-Civil War West grew to encompass the archipelagoes of the Philippines, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. Yet U.S. sovereignty in these territories was never automatic; it was challenged continuously by heterogeneous and mobile populations. White settler struggles for control in the West transformed into new colonial contests over immigration, borders, and territorial control in the islands, with Congress and the Supreme Court constantly in tow. Destabilizing the seeming naturalness of borders, my book examines how turn-of-the-century Americans systematically produced new ideas about the nation’s supposedly inherent power to regulate immigration, and spotlights the volatile landscape in which ideas about the nation’s right to exclude took root.