Opening the Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion

U.S. immigration and naturalization laws tracked shifting power dynamics in the Pacific as the United States emerged as a preeminent world power during World War II and the Cold War. Much is known about America's long history of barring Asians from immigrating and from U.S. citizenship, but how did Asian exclusion in the United States end? Jane H. Hong argues that the mid-twentieth century movement to repeal Asian exclusion was part of U.S. empire-building and the rise of an informal U.S. empire in postwar Asia. Drawing on archives in the United States, India, and the Philippines, Hong explores how a transpacific movement of Asian, Asian American, and white American advocates lobbied U.S. Congress for repeal. For many Asians in the U.S., repeal offered a means to survival, while for Asian colonial leaders, repeal laws also served state- and nation-building projects in Asia. The dismantling of formal empire underpinned postwar Asian immigration to the Unites States, even as advocates on both sides of the Pacific worked to redraw the ethnic and racial boundaries of the American nation. Positioning repeal at the intersection of U.S. civil rights struggles and Asian decolonization, Hong raises thorny questions about the meanings of nation, independence, and citizenship on the global stage.

• | Author: Jane H. Hong
• | Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
• | Publication Date: November 18, 2019
• | Number of Pages: 280 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 1469653354
• | ISBN-13: 9781469653358