Emerging from the Margins of Historical Consciousness: Chinese Immigrants and the History of American Law

Abstract

During the past generation legal histories of Chinese immigrants who came to America during the second half of the nineteenth century have reshaped our view of their significance for the history of American law. The preceding three generations of professional legal historians perceived the legal experience of Chinese immigrants as marginal to the history of American law and wrote no histories about it. Those who did write about Chinese immigrants viewed them as the passive and nonassimilating victims of harsh and discriminatory laws. Though Chinese immigrants continue to occupy "at best an obscure niche in the historical consciousness of the average educated American," 1 important recent legal studies demonstrate that they are now firmly within the mainstream of scholarly study. These

Salir adelante (perseverance): Lessons from the Mexican immigrant experience

“…Immigration legislation in 1965 expanded immigration and shifted United States immigration policy in four ways. First, it ended the explicit exclusion of Latinos and Asians found in prior immigration laws (Cole & Chin, 1999; Harris, 1993; Massey, Durand, & Malone, 2002), Second, it ended the explicit preference for Western European immigrants (Johnson, 2009). Third, it opened immigration to highly skilled and professional labor (arguably an implicit exclusion of immigrants of color) (Johnson, 2009).…”