Abstract

The 19th- and early 20th-centuries were marked by pervasive anti-Asian sentiment, and antipathy towards people of color more generally. Giving legal effect to the anti-Asian nativism prevalent at the time, U.S. policies prohibited most Asian immigration and naturalization. In particular, immigration laws sought to exclude Asian laborers and working-class immigrants from entry. During the same period, however, the federal government determined that other Asian visitors—especially Chinese government officials, merchants, religious leaders, and students—could be useful in advancing U.S. political and economic interests abroad. Thus, in marked contrast to its inhospitable treatment of their working-class counterparts, U.S. policy facilitated the entry of this subset of useful, and thus desirable, Asian visitors.

This early dichotomy typifies a U.S. policy that has long categorized different groups of immigrants as desirable or undesirable and that has presumptively considered immigrants of color undesirable unless they possess some special characteristic or identity perceived to advance U.S. interests domestically or abroad.

Drawing from archival sources, this Article uses the admission of Chinese students into postsecondary institutions in the Jim Crow South as a lens through which to explore the evolution of U.S. immigration and foreign policy. We argue that the status and construction of Chinese international students evinces the complex and sometimes-contradictory nature of U.S. policy. Extending them only "temporary" status and emphasizing that they remained "foreigners" rather than immigrants capable of naturalization, U.S. policy allowed for their entry and acceptance into higher education institutions without challenging the broader existing racial order. Nonetheless, despite their strategic utility to advancing U.S. interests, even "desirable" Asian visitors endured much of the same racist treatment and nativist sentiment faced by other more permanent Asian immigrants.

This Article concludes that these constructions of "desirable" and "undesirable" foreigners/immigrants, frequently based on race and social class, and critically, foreign-policy interests, continue to characterize contemporary U.S. immigration and naturalization policy.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Winter 2025

Publication Information

64 Washburn Law Review 249-289 (2025)

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