Day 288: Immigration Law Isn’t about Immigration, on Substack
Lately I’ve been studying how the feds took over the business of immigration law from the states back in 1876.
I knew that the shift had as much to do with Union victory as it did with immigration concerns. You find that out immediately when you start reading the congressional debates and newspaper reports about immigration in that era.
And I knew that, during Reconstruction, the lawyers and judges who secured federal power through control over immigration often did so in stirring language of racial equality.
What I didn’t know is how far the pro-Unionists would go to legally cement their victories before the Supreme Court — as far, it appears, as unlawfully holding a young Chinese woman in detention for a year and a half after the courts had already declared her free to go.
Immigration in 1876 wasn’t about immigration. It was about federal v. states’ rights. Today, it’s about many things, including globalization, urban and rural income inequality, and the right to prescribe moral behavior by law.
This week on How We Got Here, on Substack.