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The United States has long had a contentious history when it comes to migration. From President Trump’s infamous campaign pledge to ‘build the wall’, to Japanese American internment during the Second World War, political flashpoints throughout the nation’s history have spurred several controversial migration policies. Beyond their base immorality, many historians and modern liberal politicians argue that these policies belie the founding ideals of the United States; namely its promise to become an ‘Asylum for Mankind’, as termed by revolutionary Thomas Paine. In his revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense, Paine asserted the role of the United States to act as a republican refuge for migrants escaping political, religious and economic persecution across the Atlantic. The same ideology has since been associated with the Statue of Liberty in New York harbour, seemingly welcoming migrants of every culture and creed to the country. Yet, this telling of US migration history is merely a form of popular historical mythmaking, albeit a particularly potent one. In reality, modern policies seeking to restrict both the rights and mobility of migrants are hardly new. From the founding of the United States, legislators sought to manage its territorial borders, resulting in fiery political debates and outrageous policies that would not be out of place under the Trump administration. My thesis sheds light on these crucial founding years, exploring the ideas driving the development of national migration policies during the late eighteenth century. It considers the balance of power between state sovereignty and the federal government in determining migration policy, exploring how regional ideologies of migration expanded into national debates on a broader range of issues, from foreign policy to slavery.
Unlike modern legislation, early US migration laws were largely determined by state governments without much federal interference. For much of the founding period, states had unrestricted control over the rights, citizenship and mobility of migrants. As a result, a patchwork of migration policies ensued across the United States, motivated by the competing, and often conflicting, notions of citizenship, partisanship and popular participation of its constituent states. Politicians from liberal and restrictive states weighed up the economic potential of migration with the perceived threat that ‘unworthy’ migrants might pose on American society. Following the ratification of an ambiguous Constitution in 1788, the federal government spent much of the 1790s struggling to reconcile the legal irregularities amongst its constituent states, implementing and adjusting national migration policies, from naturalization to refugee relief. Partisanship also played a significant role in this process. The birth of the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties saw key distinctions arise in national discourse on migration, with each party seeking to forward a particular vision of American society and who that ought to include. Meanwhile, representatives from slave states sought to protect the institution of slavery from any foreign or federal influence. It is also crucial to consider the influence of migrants on policy through extra-legal political participation, exploring the tension between the architects of policy and those subject to it. The emergence of the press and migrant societies saw political discourse thrive in the public sphere, giving significant lobbying power to un-naturalised migrants who were otherwise excluded. My research aims to gain a deeper understanding of this tumultuous period, analysing the influence of state legislation, regional interests, and local experiences of migration on national migration discourse throughout the founding decades. Ultimately, it provokes the question: How representative were federal policies of regional attitudes to migration, and how did this impact the policymaking process as a whole?
My research highlights the long-standing regional interests underpinning ideological and partisan divisions on migration. Regional ideas of migration forged in the colonial period relied on historic assumptions about sovereignty, settlement, and citizenship, laying the groundwork for partisan conflict on the issue. Yet, partisan ideology did not subvert regional interest; the two were intrinsically linked. Colonial attitudes to migration were entrenched in state law and political discourse well beyond independence, continuing to influence national policy with the same liberal and restrictive ideologies throughout the 1790s. Altogether, the thesis reveals that regional interest was not a short-term phenomenon as has been previously concluded; it had a profound impact on the evolution of policy, both in terms of its content and enforcement. Not only does this challenge the idea that modern policies depart from traditional or intended approaches to migration enshrined at the founding, but also roots its partisan ideologies in the colonial period. Ultimately, neither the content nor controversy of modern migration policies are exceptional. As is the case for much of American political history, answers to current questions on migration and citizenship trace back to the founding itself.