My project for the next few months will be a web mapping project based on my dissertation research on intimate partner and family-based changes to U.S. immigration and naturalization law following World War II. The project will create interactive maps showing profiles of over thirty bills that were introduced in Congress between 1945 and 1951, data about connections between the bills’ sponsors and the immigration and naturalization committees in the House and Senate, and data about the existence of state-level anti-miscegenation laws.
These maps and their data will demonstrate how momentum was building in Congress at the end of World War II to rectify some of the inequalities under U.S. immigration and naturalization law (e.g., gender- and race-based). However, the maps and data will also show that there were limitations to this momentum: access to liberalization was contingent upon social privilege afforded by U.S. citizenship, military affiliation, sexuality, and ideas about family. Thus, growing liberalization efforts simultaneously functioned to strengthen inequalities. My tentative title will be “The War Brides and Sweethearts’ Acts: Legislating (In)Equality in U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Law.”
A variety of restrictionist legislation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to the establishment in the early 1920s of a racialized quota system of U.S. immigration and naturalization. This system’s quota sizes depended on the degree to which racialized groups of people were perceived as good prospective immigrants; those perceived to be the best had the largest yearly quotas. Some groups of people were racially excluded from admission under this system.
Racial exclusion efforts by Congress were undermined gradually between 1943 and 1965. First, Congress enacted piecemeal legislation to allow naturalization by people from China (1943) and from India and the Philippines (1946), granting each group token immigration quotas. In 1952, Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act (McCarran-Walter Act), which included a section prohibiting restrictions on naturalization based on race, sex, or marital status. Yet, the racialized quota system of the 1920s remained until 1965. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Celler Act), the racialized quota system of the 1920s was eliminated.
Two focal points of my project are the War Brides Act (1945) and the Sweethearts’ Act (1946). At the end of World War II, spouses and children of U.S. citizens (USCs) could already immigrate to the United States. However, this process could take time, and military personnel who had returned to the United States were often understandably impatient to be reunited with spouses whom they had married while abroad. Accordingly, Congress passed the War Brides Act in December 1945. This law created a temporary three-year window of time during which spouses and children of USCs, who had labored in the U.S. military during World War II, could enter the United States faster, including through waivers of disease and disability-based exclusionary laws.
About six months later, in June 1946, Congress passed the Sweethearts’ Act. At that time, no law existed allowing intended spouses to enter the United States for the purpose of marriage. The Sweethearts’ Act created a temporary one-year window of time during which visitor’s visas were available to the intended spouses of USCs who had labored in the U.S. military during World War II. Under the Act, USC partners had to pay a bond after which their intended spouses could temporarily enter the United States. If a couple married, the bond would be refunded. If the couple did not marry, the bond would be forfeited to pay for the deportation costs of the non-USC partner.
Congress passed three amendments or extensions of each law. Following the War Brides Act, Congress passed laws in 1947, 1950, and 1951. As for the Sweethearts’ Act, Congress enacted further legislation in 1947, 1948, and 1949.
To the extent that most people know about the War Brides Act, the Sweethearts’ Act, and their amendments and extensions, they are often seen as minor nodes on a post-World War II arc of liberalizing immigration and naturalization laws. Except for the 1947 amendment to the War Brides Act, the amendments and extensions are largely seen as more of the same as the original acts. Less important than the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act and the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, the War Brides Act, the Sweethearts’ Act, and their amendments and extensions have received surprisingly little scholarly attention. (Despite this, some of the scholarly attention has been incredible and inspired my interest in the topic!)
However, in researching the legislative history of the War Brides Act and Sweethearts’ Act, I learned that things were much more complicated than they appeared. First, both laws and their respective follow-up legislation involved a number of choices legislators made in terms of how to liberalize the law and who deserves to benefit from its liberalizations. Second, as we understand legal change by remembering important laws that have been enacted, we can sometimes forget the critical context of those bills which were not passed. I was surprised to learn that between 1945 and 1952 a variety of legislators introduced about thirty bills which were not passed that dealt with the immigration of spouses and intended spouses. Considering the War Brides Act, the Sweethearts’ Act, and their amendments and extensions in this context will help give greater nuance to understanding what liberalization looked like in this period and to understanding how these bills also strengthened inequalities under the law.
The core of my web mapping project will be a website with an interactive map that will help people visualize the burst of liberalizing legislative energy that occurred regarding the immigration of spouses and intended spouses between 1945 and 1952. As shown in the image below, part of the website will include an interactive map of the United States and a slider to change the time by month. As time passes, more markers will appear on the map, helping users see the extent of the legislative activity. When users click on the markers on the map, profiles of the bills will appear on the left side of the page. These profiles will help users understand how individual bills liberalized some laws while also reinforcing inequalities through specific provisions or limitations.
Additionally, I plan to add two other maps to the website, and hopefully all three maps can be displayed in the same area at the same time through toggle mechanics. The second map I will add will highlight which bills were proposed by members of the congressional committees and subcommittees specializing on immigration and naturalization and which were not. This will allow users to see changes in the ability of committee members to shape immigration and naturalization policy. The third map will show data about the status of state-level anti-miscegenation laws, allowing users to see how state norms regarding anti-miscegenation might have influenced federal immigration legislation.
I think this project will be informative for anyone interested in learning more about U.S. immigration and naturalization law. The bill profiles, data on committee membership, and data on state anti-miscegenation laws should be especially useful to researchers and scholars.
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