Question

According to the reading the Open Boarders Myth by Gerald Neuman and Citizenship in Nineteenth Century America, what types of laws or legal standings were most important to a persons rights and duties in the 18th and 19th centuries?How does highlighting these laws and legal standings challenge what historians thought about immigrantion law and citizenship?

Answer 1

In his lengthy article on, “The Lost of Century of American Immigration Law” in the Columbia law review, Mr. Newman notes that local and state laws had worked to control the immigration and restrict migration in the North American Colonies and later the US.

The legal framework employed had its origins in English weak laws and prohibited the movements of paupers, vagabonds and other undesirables. Newman states that after independence, the local government in many places retained control over the settlement. The idea was to restrict the permanent settlement of anyone who was likely to become reliant local charity efforts, or who might be an antisocial element. These preventions, in fact, were acknowledged and written into the article of confederation in which Article IV describes that state retained the powers to limit the movement of Paupers, Vagabonds and fugitive from justice.

Historical experience in states confirms that restrictions on free travel did not go away with the new constitution, and indeed new preventions on migrants from the outside of the United States were introduced. To reduce Irish pauperism, New York and Massachusetts built upon poor colonial laws for controlling and regulating the local movement of the poor to check the landing into the state of destitute foreigners.

As the immigration rose in the 18^th century and economic conditions in some areas became worse, Congress began to pass immigration legislation. The Chinese exclusion act of 1882 and Alien contract labor laws of 1885, restricted certain labors from immigrating to the United States. The federal government passed some specific laws to regulate immigration and control people residing in the country.