Impossible Subjects - Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America - Grand Format

This book traces the origins of the "illegal alien" in American law and society, explaining why and how illegal migration became the central problem in US. imrni-gration policy—a process that profoundly shaped ideas and practices, about citizenship, race, and state authority in the twentieth century. Mae Ngai offers a close reading of tEl legal regime of restriction that commenced in Al 1920s—its statutory architecture, judicial genealogies, administrative enforcement, differential treatment of European and non-European migrants, and long-term effects.
She shows that immigration restriction, particularly national-origin and numerical quotas, remapped America both by creating new categories of racial difference and by emphasizing as never before the nation's contiguous land borders and their patrol.