Laws Harsh As Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law / Edition 2

by Lucy E. Salyer

Overview

Focusing primarily on the exclusion of the Chinese, Lucy Salyer analyzes the popular and legal debates surrounding immigration law and its enforcement during the height of nativist sentiment in the early twentieth century. She argues that the struggles between Chinese immigrants, U.S. government officials, and the lower federal courts that took place around the turn of the century established fundamental principles that continue to dominate immigration law today and make it unique among branches of American law. By establishing the centrality of the Chinese to immigration policy, Salyer also integrates the history of Asian immigrants on the West Coast with that of European immigrants in the East.

Salyer demonstrates that Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans mounted sophisticated and often-successful legal challenges to the enforcement of exclusionary immigration policies. Ironically, their persistent litigation contributed to the development of legal doctrines that gave the Bureau of Immigration increasing power to counteract resistance. Indeed, by 1924, immigration law had begun to diverge from constitutional norms, and the Bureau of Immigration had emerged as an exceptionally powerful organization, free from many of the constraints imposed upon other government agencies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807845301
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	11/20/1995
Series:	Studies in Legal History
Edition description:	2
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.81(d)
Lexile:	1790L (what's this?)

About the Author

Lucy E. Salyer is associate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A tremendous contribution to our understanding of how legal alien residents gradually came to lose their constitutional rights in the United States.—Western Legal History



Brilliant, well-researched and well-written.—Law and History Review



Salyer's fresh approach to the study of immigration law contributes a critical and vitalizing measure of complexity to a dimension of immigration history.—American Journal of Legal History



An elegantly written, well conceived book that makes an important contribution to the field.—Pacific Historical Review



This excellent book, carefully and thoroughly researched and engaginglywritten, represents some of the finest recent scholarship in the history of American law.—American Historical Review



This is an important study for American historians of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially those who focus upon the American West, immigration, nativism, ethnicity, and Asian Americans.—Western Historical Quarterly



This is an important, compellingly written, and exhaustively researched work on Chinese immigrants and the shaping of American immigration law.—Journal of American History



Meticulously researched and presented with nuance . . . . Those interested in immigration history and policy, Asian American studies, and administrative law will find it an important work.—Political Science Quarterly



At a time when immigration is again becoming a 'hot' issue, Lucy Salyer's brilliant explication and analysis of how the now infamous Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 shaped and transformed American immigration law is doubly welcome, both as an analysis of hysteria past and as a warning about the dangers of overzealous administration. Laws Harsh as Tigers is an important work that all historians of race and ethnicity should read and ponder.—Roger Daniels, University of Cincinnati



Lucy Salyer offers a new reading of a critical chapter in the making of modern America with fresh material, thoughtful interpretations, and marvelous prose. Laws Harsh as Tigers is excellent immigration history, excellent social history, and excellent legal history. Its publication marks the emergence of a gifted young historical talent.—Charles W. McCurdy, University of Virginia

Editorial Reviews

"This excellent book . . . represents some of the finest recent scholarship in the history of American law.

"American Historical Review"

An elegantly written, well conceived book that makes an important contribution to the field.

"Pacific Historical Review"

Brilliant, well-researched and well-written.

"Law and History Review"

"""This excellent book . . . represents some of the finest recent scholarship in the history of American law.

"American Historical Review""

"An elegantly written, well conceived book that makes an important contribution to the field.

"Pacific Historical Review""

"Brilliant, well-researched and well-written.

"Law and History Review""

Contributes a critical and vitalizing measure of complexity to a dimension of immigration history.

"American Journal of Legal History"

This is an important study.

"Western Historical Quarterly"

From the Publisher