Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America

Although mainly motivated by concerns about the ethnic and racial composition of the US, the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924 could not erase economic interest in immigration. By the 1920s, there was no need for immigration in the industrial workforce but that was not the case in agriculture. In the West and Southwest, there were few family farms. As fruits and vegetables were grown, there was a need for cheap, plentiful, and seasonal labor (93). Most whites considered this labor beneath them. With Asian immigration cut off by law, there was a push to find alternative workers.

Loopholes in the 1924 law allowed for the recruitment of Filipinos and Mexicans. At this time, the Philippines was a colonial possession of the US and therefore its people, as colonial subjects, could come to the US without restriction. However, the mythology of the Philippines as a “benevolent project” (94) exploded when Filipinos arrived in California to work in the 1920s. Most were young males. When they visited dance halls and dated white women, there were race riots and legal proposals to expel them from the continental US in response. Mexicans provided another source of labor and were treated conducive to a form of “imported colonialism” (95).