Overview

The danger of deportation hangs over the head of virtually every non-citizen in the United States. In the complexities and inconsistencies of immigration law, one can find a reason to deport almost any noncitizen at almost any time. In recent years, the system has been used with unprecedented vigour against millions of deportees. We are a nation of immigrants - but which ones do we want, and what do we do with those that we don't? These questions have troubled American law and politics since colonial times. Deportation Nation is a chilling history of communal self-idealization and self-protection. The post-Revolutionary Alien and Sedition Laws, the Fugitive Slave laws, the Indian removals , the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Palmer Raids, the internment of the Japanese Americans - all sought to remove those whose origins suggested they could never become true Americans. And for more than a century, millions of Mexicans have conveniently served as cheap labour, crossing a border that was not official until the early 20th century and being sent back across it when they became a burden. By illuminating the shadowy corners of American history, Daniel Kanstroom shows that deportation has long been a legal tool to control immigrants' lives and is used with increasing crudeness in a globalised but xenophobic world.

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9780674024724

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An ambitious reframing of the history of U.S. immigration law since colonial times. Making rich use of primary and secondary sources, this important book is both a work of legal history and an analysis of modern doctrine and policy. It examines the evolution of deportation as a system of post-entry social control that views noncitizens as eternal guests on eternal probation. Kanstroom contrasts deportation as post-entry social control with a concept of deportation as extended border control that is limited to correcting mistakes in the admission process or enforcing the conditions of admission... Deportation Nation makes an invaluable contribution by bringing us to the brink of these questions about a fundamental aspect of justice in immigration, but leaves some of the answers for another day. -- Hiroshi Motomura Law and History Review (09/01/2008)

Kanstroom is a committed advocate and a provocatively tendentious historian, not a detached policy analyst. This accounts for both the strengths and the limitations of his admirably accessible, well-written, and usefully endnoted book. It will be valuable to anyone who wants to understand the precursors of today's broad deportation power, as well as its evolution into an instrument of wide-ranging governmental power over the conduct, status, and insecurities of immigrants hoping to sink roots in the USA.--Peter H. Schuck Journal of International Migration and Integration

Author Information

Daniel Kanstroom is Professor and Director of the Human Rights Program at Boston College Law School.

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