ABSTRACT
This chapter considers a variety of cultural materials, including case law, fiction, political cartoons, journalism, and nativist propaganda to explore how American perceptions and attitudes toward the racialized foreignness of new immigrants informed, influenced, and refracted these radical changes in immigration law. Immigration policies shape American understandings of national membership through the dialectical interplay of legal inclusion and exclusion. The chapter explores the legal transformation of the United States into a gatekeeping nation, which joins other work in demythologizing the often celebratory image of America as a "nation of immigrants". Chinese immigrants and their American allies orchestrated numerous legal test cases to challenge the newly established Immigration Bureau and it's abusive. Over a twenty-five-year span, Chinese petitioners like Chae Chan Ping and Fong Yue Ting deluged circuit courts with habeas corpus suits challenging the admission and deportation decisions of federal immigration inspectors.
