Liberty, Restriction, and the Remaking of Italians and Eastern European Jews, 1882-1965

Abstract

This project explores how Italian and Jewish immigrants mobilized against U.S. immigration restriction policies from 1882 to 1965 and, in the process, altered their identity and their place in American society and politics. Like specialists in Asian and Mexican migration, this study shifts the focus from the restrictionists to the restricted, but it also challenges the assumption that restriction barely affected Southern and Eastern European migrants because they were "white on arrival." This dissertation follows the emergence of distinct yet structurally similar responses to restriction that Italians and Eastern European Jews shared with other restricted or excluded immigrants, namely Chinese, Japanese, and Mexicans and explores how their different transnational identity affected their responses to restriction. Italian and Jewish immigrants' ability to naturalize allowed them to take advantage of the political process as a powerful tool to articulate their discontent with immigration restriction and to voice their pleas for a more humane immigration policy. As they gradually coalesced into increasingly influential interest groups, they negotiated their integration into American society to preserve an ethnic identity rooted in their transnational ties, fought to overcome domestic discrimination, and challenged the stereotypes that mainstream America had of them as undesirable citizens.