How Not to Fix Immigration
Kelly Lytle Hernández’s new book, Racist by Design , makes a strong but incomplete—and counterproductive—argument.
In her book Racist by Design: Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration Control, historian Kelly Lytle Hernández presents a picture of the U.S. immigration system as a machine designed to exclude certain groups of people. Using illustrations by artist Mariah Tso, she highlights key names, dates, Supreme Court cases, racist proclamations, and concepts like eugenics, no due process, and warrantless arrests.
These elements suggest that immigration control has always functioned to exclude particular individuals, requiring only occasional "oil or glue" to keep it running smoothly.
However, many historians would argue that the immigration system is more misaligned and mismatched, with occasional breakdowns and random fluctuations. Lytle Hernández, a UCLA professor known for her work on the Border Patrol, mass incarceration, and Mexican anarchists, contends that the U.S. has maintained a "whites-only immigration system" since its founding.
She emphasizes that this system has evolved over time, but remains fundamentally racist in its design. The term "whites-only" is meant to help us understand the racialized power dynamics at play, rather than being taken literally.
The book argues that U.S. immigration policy has been motivated by racism throughout its history. For example, the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited naturalization to "free white persons" and the 1803 Immigration Act aimed to block Black Caribbean immigrants fleeing the Haitian Revolution. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act further reinforced this pattern, with quotas favoring Europeans and North Western Europeans.
Despite liberalizing laws over time, the proportion of white immigrants remained high, with 94% of foreign-born residents being white by 1940. Even after more permissive periods, such as the passage of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, immigration control continued to be intertwined with debates over the treatment of Black people and Native Americans.
Lytle Hernández reframes the immigration story to emphasize not just who is allowed in, but also those who are kept out, complicating the notion of the U.S. as a nation of immigrants.
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