20th Century Immigration Laws

During the beginning of the twentieth century immigration laws became increasingly harsh, especially towards Mexican immigrants. Many historians cite the Immigration Act of 1917 as the beginning of these exclusions, but Grace Pena Delgado argues that this exclusion began in the preceding decades. In her essay “Border Control and Sexual Policing: White Slavery and Prostitution along the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1903-1910”, Delgado explains how the border became a site of gender and sexual exclusion during this time period. These exclusionary policies began in the late nineteenth century and worked with the moral codes of the progressivists, who believed that the white-slave trade problem was equivalent to importation of prostitutes from Mexico …show more content…
Delgado points out that “the bill was the first federal immigration law that made importing women for prostitution, particularly those from Asia, a felony.” and was the first of many laws that limited who could cross the border on conditions of morality (160). The Immigration Act of 1903 was the next law passed with the distinct purpose of trying to exclude prostitutes. Although this law was the first step towards direct exclusion of immigrants on the basis of gender and sensuality, a mere four years later the Immigration Act of 1907 was passed which established harsh guidelines that had to be followed for legal immigration. Delgado points to the pivotal section of this article that “prohibited “alien” women and girls from engaging in prostitution for three years after arriving in the United States.” as a passage that would be the basis of the deportation of many women (160). The act was also the first that made it legal for the procurers of prostitutes to be imprisoned and fined (160). Delgado asserts that this particular section was especially important because it was assumed that procurers brought women across the border who were either weak or inexperienced; therefore by targeting the ones bringing the women across the border, the government would be able to stop a larger amount of prostitution than if they solely focused on finding the actual prostitutes (163). The involvement of immigration officials was further intertwined with the suppression of immoral women with the passage of the Mann Act in 1910. Not only did it make “it a crime to transport women across international and interstate lines to prostitute them, to have sex with them, or to cohabitate with them.” (177). But it also made immigration officials responsible for obtaining information about the trafficking of women. Delgado claims that these laws