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[[File:Impossiblesubjects.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|<i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691160821/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0691160821&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=2dae211853031ea991e4df9262a149af Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America - Book Review]</i> by Mae Ngai]]
As Ngai described it, the codification of immigration “remapped the nation in two important ways.” (3) First, “new ethnic and racial map based on new categories and hierarchies of difference” was drawn, and second, “a new sense of territoriality” was “marked by unprecedented awareness” through “state surveillance of the nation’s contiguous land borders.” (3) On the path to citizenship, Ngai reveals that the fear of Chinese laborers crossing physical boundaries from Canada and Mexico were misplaced. Instead, many of the immigrants posed as persons who were legally admissible. They often used fraudulent certificates that identified them as merchants, claimed to be American citizens by native birth, or as the Chinese born sons of U.S. citizens, known formally as derivative citizens” (204)
Thus, immigration reform became analogous with discussions of civil rights through a struggle for membership and recognition as a citizen. Immigration reform was particularly evident in the book’s conclusion in discussing a post-World War II America in which an influx of American Jews, Italian Americans, and Greek Americans, and others struggled for equality during the post-New Deal. While lengthy and greatly detailed, Ngai compacted many of her major points into the conclusion that American cultural pluralism was becoming more prevalent which criticizes ideas of American nativism and cultural homogenizing assimilation in the United States.
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[[Category:20th Century History]] [[Category:Book Review]] [[Category:United States History]][[Category:Immigration History]] [[Category:Videri.org]]