A/P/A Graduate Student Working Group & Social: Featuring Naomi Louie

Presented by the A/P/A Graduate Student Working Group. Hosted by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU.

REGISTRATION (open to all graduate students)

The A/P/A Graduate Student Working Group begins the semester with a workshop (1:00-2:30 p.m.) featuring Naomi Louie (PhD student, NYU History) who will present her paper, “Charting a Different Path: The Structure of Chinese Exclusion in Canada and the United States.” Lunch will be served.

A graduate student social (2:30-4:00 p.m.) will follow the meeting.

Both the meeting and social are open to all graduate students working in and around the field of A/P/A Studies.

NYU campus access guidelines: This is an in-person event, open to graduate students from NYU and nearby universities. Registration is required. Non-NYU guests may be asked to present a government-issued photo ID. NYU guests must present their NYU ID.

Accessibility note: This venue has an elevator and is accessible for wheelchair users. There are single-stall, all gender restrooms available. If you have any access needs, please email apa.rsvp@nyu.edu.

Naomi Louie, “Charting a Different Path: The Structure of Chinese Exclusion in Canada and the United States”

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the United States and Canada both passed Chinese Exclusion laws aimed at barring Chinese migrants from gaining admittance to their borders. America passed its version in 1882, while Canada followed suit in 1923. The two nations came to share a vision of Chinese exclusion that was remarkably similar, as the structure of the 1923 Canadian Chinese Immigration Act was based in part upon the 1882 American Exclusion Act. But in effect, the two acts diverged. Under the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act, only 44 Chinese immigrants attained legal admission, in comparison to the thousands who entered the US after the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Why would an act that followed a similar structure as the American Chinese Exclusion Act produce fewer legal admissions? I argue that the answer lies in how Parliament designed the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act to avoid the problems that frustrated their American counterparts as they sought to enforce Chinese exclusion. Canada closely studied America’s experiment with the 1882 Act, as the Chinese Exclusion Act marked the first time that the US implemented exclusionary immigrations laws that were applied solely on the basis of race and nationality. Each piece of federal anti-Chinese legislation introduced by Canada, beginning with the 1885 head tax and ending with the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act, was deeply informed by American Chinese exclusion. Viewing the American Exclusion Act as a cumbersome, flawed piece of legislation full of loopholes and difficult to enforce, Canada innovated upon the act’s structure. Canada’s version blended elements of the American 1882 Act with the legal and governmental traditions that Canada, as a self-governing white settler Dominion of the British Empire, had inherited from its imperial progenitor. Chinese exclusion in Canada was further supplemented by a strong centralised federal government. This version of federalism enabled Canadian immigration officials to exert a higher degree of regulatory control than their American counterparts and to avoid court-imposed limitations over the law’s enforcement. 

Image: Courtesy of the Paper Trail Collection, UBC Library, Rare Books and Special Collections, RBSC-ARC-1838-DO-0521, and the Royal BC Museum.