What is the history of immigration policy in the USA? Were the indigenous made citizens?

[devilgrrl]

When did the government decide who can and who can't come in. Were immigration laws written to keep certain groups of people out?

Please post links, I need an education on the subject.

Thanks.

[hobbit709]

1. The locals were 3/5 of a person, just like the slaves.

[customerserviceguy]

6. Do you have a reference for that?

I thought that the 3/5ths rule applied only to slaves. If it had been zero for slaves, the South would not have had disproportionate strength in Congress and the Electoral College.

That "counting" of people who couldn't even vote led to a slave state supplying the President for 32 of the first 36 years of the institution of the US Presidency, with Massachusetts' John Adams being the only exception. Angela Davis taught me that factoid.

[hobbit709]

9. Same Article

(Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.)

This was changed by the 14th Amendment.

That 3/5 of all other persons included Indians not taxed.

[customerserviceguy]

11. I read that differently

I assume that "Indians not taxed" refers to Native Americans who were held not to be under the sovereignity of the Constitution, therefore not part of the larger American society, and thus, not taxed.

[virgogal]

2. This is the one that astonished me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act

[devilgrrl]

3. Good find! Thanks!

:thumbsup:

[customerserviceguy]

7. This country has been notorious in it's treatment of Asian immigrants

Executive Order 9066 proved that. It doesn't surprise me that ethnic Chinese were screwed with as well.

[virgogal]

8. I had to do a report on this SCOTUS case for a class I took.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States

[dkf]

13. The rich white guy who built the railroad in California only hired Chinese laborers.

He did not give white workers the opportunity to get a job. This caused great resentment among a struggling white population. The animosity towards the Chinese got so bad that it became unsafe for them to venture outside of their neighborhood. The Chinese became boxed into the Chinatown area and became a closed insular society. This didn't change until attitudes towards the Chinese changed as they became our allies in world war ii.

When I learned all this on a tour I took through Chinatown I was pretty floored. I had no idea.

[customerserviceguy]

4. As I recall

Native Americans were made citizens of the US in 1924.

[NuttyFluffers]

14. correct, in part against their will.

suddenly when you are a "citizen" all sorts of "help" gets speeded up, like the increase in kidnapping NA children to imprison in gov't (often religious) boarding schools to finish off the job of genocide. funny how being a citizen gives gov't access to bypass sovereignty rights and treaties in order to "save the children."

NA Studies, easily the most depressing major in all of college...

[X_Digger]

5. Here you go..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Immigration_to_the_United_States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_Act_of_1875

[devilgrrl]

10. thanks for the links.

:-)

[readmoreoften]

12. The white people were gracious and the brown people were violent and untrustworthy.

It's true! I learned it all in my New-Official Texas-Board-Of-Education-Approved-American History Book ! (Distributed by Walmart, subsidiary of America, Inc.)