This week and next I am starting to move on from the Immigration Act of 1924 and delving into the history of the U.S. Border Patrol. Interestingly, the Border Patrol also dates from 1924, but not from the Immigration Act; it was established instead in the Labor Appropriations Act.
Even more interestingly, there was no appetite in the Immigration Act of 1924 for setting any kind of quota on Mexican immigration; that law was entirely focused on excluding Asians and restricting Southern and Eastern Europeans (Italians and Jews) through a national origins-based quota. Mexico was seen as sparsely populated, the Mexicans as a helpful source of unskilled labor in the agricultural sector and on railroads, and it was widely believed that Mexicans by and large didn’t really want to stay in the United States, they just wanted to make some money on a seasonal basis and then return to their families.
Based on my read of the Congressional debates over the Immigration Act, I think some of the impetus for the creation of the Border Patrol in 1924 was less about keeping out Mexicans and more about making sure that the Asians being excluded and the Europeans being restricted didn’t just travel to Mexico or Canada first and then sneak across one of our very large land borders. But it also had a lot to do with Prohibition, a topic I first explored in this post:
In fact, that’s how the U.S. Border Patrol describes its own early history; it starts not at the Southwest border, but in Detroit, chasing bootleggers.
Here are a few of the books I looked up at the AU Library this week and am going to read through before I come to any firm conclusions:
Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol by Kelly Hernandez
Imaginary Lines: Border Enforcement and the Origins of Undocumented Immigration, 1882-1930, by Patrick Ettinger
At America's Gates Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943, by Erika Lee
Border Policing: A History of Enforcement and Evasion in North America, Holly M. Karibo and George T. Diaz, eds.
U.S. Border Security: A Reference Handbook by Judith Ann Warner
William Hanson and the Texas-Mexico Border by John Weber
Stay tuned! And let me know what you think of some of my earlier posts.