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Déjà Vu and the Gendered Origins of the Practice of Immigration Law: The Immigrants’ Protective League, 1907–40

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Felice Batlan
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Abstract

Donald Trump's administration has provoked crisis after crisis regarding the United States’ immigration policy, laws, and their enforcement. This has affected millions of immigrants in the U.S. and those hoping to immigrate. Stemming from this, immigration lawyers are providing extraordinary amounts of direct pro bono legal services to immigrants in need. Yet the history of the practice of immigration law has been largely understudied. This article closely examines Chicago's Immigrants’ Protective League between 1910 and 1940. The League provided free counsel to tens of thousands of poor immigrants facing a multitude of immigration-related legal issues during a time when Congress passed increasingly strict immigration laws. The League, always headed by women social workers, created a robust model of immigration advocacy at a time when only a handful of women were professionally trained lawyers. The League's archival documents, manifests how Trump's immigration policies have a long and painful history. U.S. immigration law and its enforcement have consistently been cruel, inhumane, arbitrary, and capricious. Told from the ground up and focusing upon the day-to-day problems that immigrants brought to the League, one dramatically sees how immigration laws and practices were like quicksand, thwarting the legitimate expectations of migrants. The League, in response, participated in creating what would become the practice of immigration law, engaging, and quickly responding to changing laws, rules, policies, and the needs of migrants.

Type
Original Article
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , November 2018 , pp. 713 - 769
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2018 

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Footnotes

She thanks her dear friends and colleagues who provided comments, suggestions, and support, including Linda Gordon, Margaret Power, Lucy Salyer, Robert Balanoff, Chris Schmidt, Gautham Rao, Graeme Dinwoodie, Martha Vail, Tristan Kirvin, Kathleen Baker, Carolyn Shapiro, Edward Lee, Lori Andrews, Jean Wegner, Touline Elshafei, Ricardo Lesperance, and participants in the Chicago–Kent Faculty Workshop. She learned a great deal about the current practice of immigration law from her students who traveled to the South Texas Family Residential Detention Center to represent migrant women and children seeking asylum.

References

1. See, for example, Graham, Latria, “When We're Needed, We'll Show Up,” Harvard Law Bulletin (Spring 2017): 34–41Google Scholar; Sara O'Brien, “Airport Lawyer Service Helps Fliers Worried about the Travel Ban,” CNN Tech, March 7, 2017, http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/07/technology/airport-lawyer-travel-ban/index.html (accessed November 17, 2018); Jonah Engel Bromwich, “Lawyers Mobilize at Nation's Airports After Trump's Order,” New York Times, January 29, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/29/us/lawyers-trump-muslim-ban-immigration.html (accessed November 17, 2018); and Lucy Westcott, “Thousands of Lawyers Descend on U.S. Airports to Fight Trump's Immigrant Ban,” New York Times, January 29, 2017, http://www.newsweek.com/lawyers-volunteer-us-airports-trump-ban-549830 (accessed November 17, 2018).

2. See, for example, Amrit Cheng, “The Muslim Ban: What Just Happened?” ACLU Blog, December 6, 2017, 3:45 PM, https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/muslim-ban-what-just-happened (accessed November 17, 2018); Carrie Schedler, “The 300-Plus Attorneys Who Volunteered at O'Hare,” Chicago Magazine, November 27, 2017, http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/December-2017/Chicagoans-of-the-Year/The-300-Plus-Attorneys-Who-Volunteered-at-OHare/ (accessed November 17, 2018); Diala Shamas, “Lawyers Alone Can't Save Us from Trump. The Supreme Court just Proved It,” The Washington Post, June 27, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/06/27/the-supreme-courts-travel-ban-order-shows-that-lawyers-cant-save-us-from-trump/?utm_term=.3f7319aef779 (accessed November 17, 2018); and Glenn Thrush, “Trump's New Travel Ban Blocks Migrants from Six Nations, Sparing Iraq,” New York Times, March 6, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/travel-ban-muslim-trump.html (accessed November 17, 2018).

3. “Professor Batlan at O'Hare Airport Protest over Immigration Ban,” Chicago-Kent Faculty Blog, February 21, 2017, http://blogs.kentlaw.iit.edu/faculty/2017/02/01/professor-batlan-ohare-airport-protest-immigration-ban/ (accessed November 17, 2018).

4. Anna Silman, “These Are the Attorneys Fighting Trump's Immigration Ban at Airports Around the Country,” The Cut, January 31, 2017, 11:15 AM, https://www.thecut.com/2017/01/the-women-fighting-trumps-immigration-ban.html (accessed November 17, 2018). Some observers estimated that women lawyers composed 70% of airport volunteer lawyers.

5. See, for example, City of Chi. v. Sessions, 888 F.3d 272 (7th Cir. 2018); Hawai'i v. Trump, 874 F.3d 1112 (9th Cir. 2017), rev'd; 585 U.S (decided June 26, 2018); Int'l Refugee Assistance Project v. Trump, 857 F.3d 554 (4th Cir. 2017); Cnty. of Santa Clara v. Trump, 275 F. Supp. 3d 1196 (N.D. Cal. 2017); and Proclamation No. 9645, 82 Fed. Reg. 13, 209 (Sept. 24, 2017).

6. See Anthes, Louis, Lawyers And Immigrants, 1870–1940: A Cultural History (Levittown, NY: Scholarly Publishing, 2003)Google Scholar; Ngai, Mae M., Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Salyer, Lucy, Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and Heeren, Geoffrey, “Illegal Aid: Legal Assistance to Immigrants in the United States,” Cardozo Law Review 33 (2011): 619–74Google Scholar. These are all excellent works of scholarship that this article draws on, and my comments should not be understood as a criticism.

7. Batlan, Felice, Women and Justice for the Poor: A History of Legal Aid (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Geoffrey Heeren makes the error of assuming that the Immigrants’ Protective League (IPL) did not engage in legal work until the late 1920s when it hired a professional attorney. As will be discussed, its staff of social workers provided legal aid to immigrants. Heeren, however, is correct that legal aid societies handled many cases for immigrants with claims involving contracts, torts, and frauds, but few cases concerning immigration law. Heeren, “Illegal Aid,” 636–39.

8. On women lawyers, see Babcock, Barbara, Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Norgren, Jill, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President (New York: New York University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Mossman, Mary Jane, The First Women Lawyers: A Comparative Study of Gender, Law and the Legal Profession (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2006)Google Scholar; and Drachman, Virginia, Women Lawyers and the Origins of Professional Identity in America (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1993)Google Scholar. This article is part of a much larger project on the history of the League and the practice of immigration law. It specifically does not address the 1922 Cable Act that separated women's citizenship from that of their husbands. The League handled many of these matters for women clients. On the Cable Act see, Gardner, Martha, The Qualities of a Citizen: Women, Immigration, and Citizenship, 1860–1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. For just some of the vast historiography on immigration, see Benton-Cohen, Katherine, Inventing the Immigration Problem: The Dillingham Commission and Its Legacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hirota, Hidetaka, Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kang, S. Deborah, The INS on the Line: Making Immigration Law on the U.S.–Mexican Border, 1917–1954 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Garland, Libby, After They Closed the Gates: Jewish Illegal Immigration, 1921–1965 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kanstroom, Daniel, Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Schrag, Peter, Not Fit for Our Society: Nativism and Immigration (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Zolberg, Aristide, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Reimers, David R., Unwelcome Strangers: American Identity and the Turn Against Immigration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; and Higham, John, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

10. Part of the excellent scholarship on immigration law includes Hirota, Expelling the Poor; Kanstroom, Deportation Nation; Ngai, Impossible Subjects; and Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers. On the history of women legal providers who were not formal lawyers, see Batlan, Women and Justice. Although a small number of historians have written about the League, none have analyzed the League as a legal advocacy organization that also represented immigrants free of charge. In part, this is because the League and its mission changed over time as it increasingly took on the role of being a legal advocate for individuals. However, such omission is also because of the close, even symbiotic, relationship between the League and the Hull House Settlement, which made the League look like a bastion of social work, deeply connected to a large variety of social and political reforms rather than providing representation for individuals in legal matters. For example, see Carol Nackenoff, “The Private Roots of American Political Development: The Immigrants’ Protective League's ‘Friendly and Sympathetic Touch,’ 1908–1924,” Studies in American Political Development 28 (2014): 129, 134–41; and Robert Buroker, “From Voluntary Association to Welfare State: The Illinois Immigrant Protective League, 1908–1926,” Journal of American History 58 (1971): 643–60.

11. Libby Garland uses this phrase in her discussion of Jewish organizations representing immigrants in immigration proceedings; Garland, After They Closed the Gates, 87. Michelle McKinley discusses the importance of legal historians turning their interest to the role of “legal intermediaries” and “fixers,” often non-attorneys at the lower rungs of the legal hierarchy. This is an apt description of the League, although it had substantial intellectual and cultural capital. Michelle McKinley, Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy and Legal Mobilization in Colonial Lima, 1600–1700 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 44.

12. For other historical work about the lived experience of law, see Anne Twitty, Before Dred Scott: Slavery and Legal Culture in the American Confluence, 1787–1857 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Kenneth Mack, Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); and Hendrick Hartog, Man and Wife in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

13. See Ngai, Impossible Subjects; and Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers.

14. Kang, The INS on the Line; and Julian Lim, Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2017).

15. See Benton-Cohen, Inventing the Immigration Problem; Doug Coulson, Race, Nation, and Refuge: The Rhetoric of Race in Asian American Citizenship Cases (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2017); and Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (New York: Liveright, 2017).

16. See Hirota, Expelling the Poor, discussing Massachusetts deportation of poor and sick immigrants; Brendan P. O'Malley, “Protecting the Stranger: The Origins of U.S. Immigration Regulation in Nineteenth-Century New York” (PhD diss., CUNY, 2015), pointing to the aid that the New York Immigration Commission at times extended to immigrants.

17. Henderson v. Mayor of N.Y., 92 U.S. 259 (1875).

18. Page Act, Ch. 141, 18 Stat. 477 (1875).

19. Kerry Abrams, “Polygamy Prostitution, and Federalization,” Columbia Law Review 105 (2005): 641–716.

20. Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Pub. L. No. 47-126, 22 Stat. 58.

21. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers, 7, 17.

22. Immigration Act of 1882, Ch. 376, 22 Stat. 214 (1882).

23. Anti-Contract Labor Law of 1885, ch. 164, 23 Stat. 332 (1885).

24. Kitty Calavita, U.S. Immigration Law and the Control of Labor: 1820–1924 (London: Academic Press, 1984), 51–66.

25. Ibid., 62.

26. Immigration Act of 1891, Ch. 551, 26 Stat. 1084 (1891).

27. Ibid.

28. See Garland, After They Closed the Gates, ch. 1.

29. On the concept of the white, independent able-bodied man as the ideal citizen, see Barbara Y. Welke, Law and the Borders of Belonging in the Long Nineteenth Century United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

30. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers, 141–44.

31. Immigration Act of 1893, ch. 206, 27 Stat. 570 (1893).

32. See Treasury Department, Doc. No 1391, Immigration Laws and Regulations, art. 6 (March 11, 1893); Treasury Department, Doc. No. 1600, Immigration Law and Regulation (April 25, 1893).

33. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers, 147–48.

34. See Treasury Document No. 1391.

35. Nishimura Ekiu v. United States, 142 U.S. 651 (1892); and Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers, 53. For current events on this same issue, see Katie Benner and Charlie Savage, “Due Process for Undocumented Immigrants, Explained,” New York Times, June 25, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/us/politics/due-process-undocumented-immigrants.html (accessed November 17, 2018).

36. White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910, ch. 395, 36 Stat. 825 (1910).

37. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers, 132–33. On the broader history of deportation, see Kanstroom, Deportation Nation.

38. Edith Abbott, “Federal Immigration Policies, 1864–1924,” University Journal of Business 2 (1924): 347–67, at 351.

39. “Immigrant Aliens Admitted to Illinois,” Box 47, Immigrants’ Protective League Records, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago (hereafter IPL records UIC).

40. For a discussion of the Americanization of immigrants and the role of state government, see Christina A. Ziegler-McPherson, Americanization in the States: Immigrant Social Welfare Policy, Citizenship, and National Identity in the United States, 1908–1929 (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2009).

41. For examples of how historians have used concepts of social control, see Andrew Urban, Brokering Servitude: Migration and the Politics of Domestic Labor during the Long Nineteenth Century (New York: New York University Press, 2018); and Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Values (New York: Viking, 1988).

42. Jane Addams's writings are powerful evidence of her belief in pluralism as crucial to a vibrant democracy. Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics (New York: Macmillan Company, 1915).

43. On Hull House and Jane Addams, see Louise W. Knight, Jane Addams Spirit in Action (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010); Jean Bethke Elshtain, Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy (New York: Basic Books, 2001); Rivka Shpak Lissak, Pluralism and Progressivism: Hull House and the New Immigrants, 1890–1919 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); and Felice Batlan, “Florence Kelley and the Battle Against Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism,” December 1, 2010, https://ssrn.com/abstract=1721725 (accessed November 17, 2018).

44. Costin, Leah, Two Sisters for Justice: A Biography of Grace and Edith Abbott (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 69Google Scholar; and Nackenoff, “The Private Roots,” 134–41.

45. See O'Malley, “Protecting the Stranger,” discussing the development and history of the New York Commission. Indeed, League leaders believed that Illinois needed such a commission and it was their hope that the state would take over the work of the League.

46. Costin, Two Sisters, 70.

47. Ibid., ch. 5.

48. Abbott remained the Director of the League until 1917 when she was recruited to serve as the first director of the Child Labor Division in the Children's Bureau which was part of the United States Department of Labor. After spending 2 years with the Bureau, she returned to Chicago to once again lead the League. In 1921, she was again beckoned to Washington and became chief of the Children's Bureau. Abbott and the Bureau came under attack from conservative forces who saw them as communists and believed that unmarried and childless women such as Abbott should not head a division responsible for child and maternal welfare. Abbot returned to Chicago in 1934, where she taught at the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration, published multiple articles and books, and exerted significant influence on the Social Security Act of 1935. Robyn Muncy, “Abbott Grace,” in Women Building Chicago, 1780–1990: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Rima Lunin Schultz and Adele Hast (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); and Linda Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1900–1935 (New York: Free Press, 1994).

49. In 1971, Robert Buroker analyzed the League's board of directors from 1908 to 1917. He found that seven were lawyers, eight businessmen, eight professors, five social workers, three journalists, one a physician, and one a politician. These categories seem incorrect and may carry with them some gender stereotyping. For example, Breckinridge was a professor and social worker with a law degree. Continuing with his analysis, he determines that there were fourteen Protestants, five Jews, and two Catholics. Buroker, “From Voluntary Association to Welfare State,” 648.

50. In 1926, Adena Miller Rich, formerly an executive officer of the Illinois League of Women's Voters became the League's executive director, and after Jane Addams’ death, went on to lead Hull House.

51. “Protecting the Immigrant Girl,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 15, 1911, 8; and “Urge U.S. Immigrant Station to Guard Girls in Chicago,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 30, 1912, 15.

52. There is a large literature on white slavery. For just some examples, see Gardner, The Qualities of a Citizen; Brian Donovan and Tori Barnes-Brus, “Narratives of Sexual Consent and Coercion: Forced Prostitution Trials in Progressive-Era New York City,” Law & Social Inquiry 36 (2011): 597–619; and Christopher Diffee, “Sex and the City: The White Slavery Scare and Social Governance in the Progressive Era,” American Quarterly 57 (2005): 411–37.

53. The literature on women's roles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is vast. Some canonical works include Katherine Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830–1900 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995); Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); and Lori Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990).

54. IPL, Annual Report 1917, 9; and Grace Abbott, The Immigrant and the Community (New York: The Century Co., 1917), ch. 1.

55. The classic work on Progressive Era reformers’ desire for order is Robert Weibe, The Search for Order (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967).

56. Abbott, The Immigrant and the Community, 19–20; IPL, Annual Report 1912, 11; and “Immigrants are Easy Prey,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 28, 1911, 8. By the turn of the century, a large number of benevolent organizations provided a variety of types of aid to immigrants. Many of these organizations were run by women and based on religion or ethnicity. See, for example, Garland, After They Closed the Gates (discussing Jewish organizations, including the National Council for Jewish Women); and Deirdre Moloney, American Catholic Lay Groups and Transatlantic Social Reform in the Progressive Era (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).

57. Abbott, The Immigrant and the Community, 16.

58. Ibid., 68–69.

59. IPL, Annual Report 1914, 11; Abbott, The Immigrant and the Community, ch. 3

60. Ibid.

61. For a discussion of the breadth of Hull House's network, see Nackenoff, “The Private Roots,” 134–41. On just some of the issues that the Abbots’ and Breckinridge were interested in, see Sophonisba Breckinridge and Edith Abbott, The Delinquent Child and the Home (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1916); Edith Abbott and Sophonisba Breckinridge, Truancy and Non-Attendance in the Chicago Schools (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1917); and Sophonisba Breckinridge, New Homes for Old (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1921).

62. Abbott, The Immigrant and the Community, ch. 2; and Grace Abbott, “The Chicago Employment Agency and the Immigrant Worker,” American Journal of Sociology 14 (1908): 289–305.

63. Abbott, The Immigrant and the Community, 72.

64. Ibid., 72–74.

65. IPL, Annual Report 1915, 15.

66. IPL, Annual Report 1909, 5.

67. Ibid., 4.

68. IPL, Annual Report 1917, 27.

69. Ibid.

70. Ibid.

71. Ibid. Mack was eventually appointed to the federal bench, and his decisions regarding immigration would reflect his long involvement in the IPL. For the sole biography on Mack, see Barnard, Harry, The Forging of an American Jew: The Life and Times of Judge Julian W. Mack (New York: Herzl Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

72. IPL, Annual Report 1915, 23. As historians have demonstrated, immigration to the United States was not exceptional. Many countries experienced massive immigration. What is important here is that the leaders of the League believed that immigration made the United States exceptional. A word of warning is important, however. Although Abbott and the League spoke broadly about the benefits of immigration, the League itself does not seem to have provided services to Asians until World War II. Likewise, settlement houses, in general, did very little for African-Americans who were migrating from the Southern United States to Northern cities. By the early 1920s, the League began providing services to Mexican immigrants in Chicago.

73. Restriction of Immigration Hearings Before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, House of Representatives, 64th Cong., First Session on H.R. 558 (January 20 and 21, 1916), babel.hathitrust.org.

74. Abbott, Grace, “Adjustment—Not Restriction,” The Survey 25 (January 7, 1911): 527–29Google Scholar, at 527.

75. IPL, Annual Report 1910, 7.

76. Restriction of Immigration Hearings, 3.

77. Ibid.

78. IPL, Annual Report 1910, 8.

79. IPL, Annual Report 1913, 8.

80. IPL, Annual Report 1915, 21.

81. IPL, Annual Report 1916, 15–16.

82. Mrs. Kenneth F. Rich (Adena Miller), “Considerations as Changes in Naturalization Law and Procedure” (January 1934), 45, Box 5, fl. 60, IPL records UIC.

83. Abbott, The Immigrant and the Community, 107–15.

84. Ibid., 117–18, 120–23; and IPL, Annual Report 1915, 20.

85. Abbott, The Immigrant and the Community, 122–24.

86. Ibid., 120–22.

87. Restriction of Immigration Hearings, 5.

88. Ibid.

89. Ibid., 5–6.

90. Ibid., 6.

91. “Important Amendment Added to Immigration Law,” South Central News, July 9, 1928, Box 6, fl. 63, IPL records UIC.

92. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers, 40.

93. Ibid., 47.

94. Ibid., 70–83. Under the Geary Act, Chinese immigrants were entitled to appeal decisions of immigration officials to the federal courts.

95. Anthes, Louis, “The Island of Duty: The Practice of Immigration Law on Ellis Island,” N.Y.U. Review of Law and Social Change 24 (1998): 56–600Google Scholar.

96. Ibid., 580–85.

97. Ibid., 583.

98. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers, 158; and Garland, After They Closed the Gates, 47–48.

99. Wischnitzer, Mark, Visas to Freedom: The Story of HIAS (Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1956), 41Google Scholar, 54. HIAS also lobbied against immigration restrictions, represented clients in deportation hearings, and provided bonds, and other immediate aid to immigrants. Eventually its work spread across much of the world as it sought to save Jews during World War II and after.

100. See Garland, After They Closed the Gates, 50–52, for a discussion of the suspicions that Jewish immigrant aid organizations confronted. “Letter from John Burke to Secretary of Labor William Wilson, Nov. 11, 1920; and Reply from Assistant Secretary Louis Post, Nov. 17, 1920,” American Catholic History Classroom, https://cuomeka.wric.org/iteams/show/481 (accessed November 17, 2018).

101. Abbott, “Federal Immigration Policies,” 365.

102. Ibid.

103. On legal cosmopolitism during the progressive era, see Witte, John Fabian, Patriots and Cosmopolitans: Hidden Histories of American Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104. See Batlan, Women and Justice; Tanenhaus, David, Juvenile Justice in the Making (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; and Nackenoff, “The Private Roots,” 139–49.

105. On the complaints of lawyers about immigration officers, the Immigration Bureau, and the procedures that it used, see Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers, 189.

106. On the anti-Semitism experienced by Jewish lawyers, see Auerbach, Jerald, Unequal Justice: Lawyers and Social Change in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976)Google Scholar.

107. Garland, After They Closed the Gates, 47.

108. For example, see Abbott, “Federal Immigration Policies”; and Abbott, Edith, Immigration: Select Documents and Case Records (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924)Google Scholar.

109. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers, 102. Under the Geary Amendment to the Chinese Exclusion Act, Chinese, who were primarily on the West Coast, had much greater success than non-Chinese immigrants on the East Coast in bringing habeas corpus actions

110. Batlan, Women and Justice, 168–72.

111. Ibid.

112. IPL, “The Immigrants’ Protective League,” Box 6, fl. 66. (1925/1926), IPL records UIC.

113. IPL, “Complaints Against Attorneys Who Represent Aliens in Deportation Hearings,” February 1932, Box 4. fl. 50, IPL records UIC.

114. IPL, “Adjustment of Old People: A Deportation for which the League Arranged, December 1, 1927,” Box 4, fl. 50, IPL records UIC.

115. IPL, “Case Statement,” December 1, 1929, Box 4, fl., 50, IPL records UIC.

116. Garland, After They Closed the Gates, ch. 5; and Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers, 147.

117. Urban, Brokering Servitude, 138–39, 143.

118. Ibid., 139.

119. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers, 47.

120. National Archives, “The Fate of Mali Kaltman: The Value of Immigration Records and Genealogy,” Prologue Magazine 74 (2015), https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2015/winter/mali-kaltman.html (accessed November 17, 2018) (discussing a detained woman who claimed that a man was her fiancé).

121. Abbott, Immigration: Select Documents and Case Records, 345.

122. Ibid.

123. Urban, Brokering Servitude, 168.

124. Ibid., 142–57.

125. See Lochner v. New York 198 U.S. 45 (1905) (striking down law that regulated the hours of bakers as violating bakers’ constitutional right to contract).

126. Urban, Brokering Servitude, 141. On the tensions and contradictions among freedom, wage labor, and slavery, see Stanley, Amy Dru, From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

127. Urban, Brokering Servitude, 170–71.

128. Ibid. Here Urban discusses senior immigration officials’ preference to avoid certain religious or ethnic organizations when placing immigrants in domestic service.

129. On domestic labor in the early twentieth century, see May, Vanessa H., Unprotected Labor: Household Workers, Politics, and Middle-Class Reform in New York, 1870–1940 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. At times, immigration officials would themselves hire detained immigrant women as household help. Gardner, The Qualities of a Citizen, 105.

130. Urban, Brokering Servitude, 171.

131. Abbott, Immigration: Select Documents and Case Records, 346–47.

132. Ibid., 347–48.

133. Ibid., 379.

134. Ibid., 377–82.

135. Ibid.

136. Ibid.

137. Ibid.

138. Ibid.

139. Ibid., 375–76.

140. Ibid., 385–86.

141. Cott, Nancy, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 150–55Google Scholar; and Stanley, From Bondage to Contract.

142. Immigration Act of 1907, 34 Stat 898 (1907).

143. Abbott, The Immigrant and the Community, 77.

144. Ibid., 77–78.

145. Ibid., 78. The Commissioner of Immigration on Ellis Island, William Williams, long believed that women officers would threaten the professionalism of the entire enterprise. Until the 1920s, the service only hired women as low-level matrons charged with supervising detained women. Urban, Brokering Servitude, 168.

146. On how immigration officials defined prostitution and identified prostitutes as well as on what constituted immorality, see Gardner, The Qualities of A Citizen, ch. 4. In the 1930s, the United States Supreme Court vaguely addressed the issue of what constituted prostitution and immoral conduct such that a woman immigrant was deportable. It found that a woman from Denmark who had lived in the United States and was returning from a trip to Europe was not deportable even though she was traveling with a man and having sexual relations with him. The court found that she was entering the country to take work as a domestic and not for the purposes of immoral conduct. Hansen v. Haff, 291 U.S. 559 (1934).

147. Abbott, Immigration: Select Documents and Case Records, 400–2.

148. Ibid., 401–2.

149. Ibid.

150. Ibid.

151. Ibid.

152. On lawyers’ complex relationships with “clients” during the Progressive Era, see Spellinger, Clive, “Elusive Advocate: Reconsidering Brandeis as Peoples’ Lawyer,” Yale Law Journal 105 (1996): 1445–1535CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

153. IPL, Annual Report 1917, 7–9.

154. Ibid.

155. “Shysters Prey on Foreign Born in Draft Graft,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 19, 1917, 1.

156. Ibid.

157. “Socialists Give Cold Welcome to the Draft,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 21, 1917, 3.

158. IPL, Annual Report 1917, 9.

159. Ibid., 11–12.

160. Ibid., 7–9.

161. Ibid.

162. Ibid.

163. Ibid.

164. IPL, Annual Report 1915, 10.

165. Ibid., 10.

166. An Act to Regulate the Immigration of Aliens to, and the Residence of Aliens in, the United States, 39 U.S. statues 874 (1917).

167. Ibid., §3.

168. Hutchinson, E.P., Legislative History of American Immigration Policy, 1798–1965 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), 481CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

169. IPL, Annual Report 1917, 11–13.

170. Ibid., 13.

171. An Act to Limit the Immigration of Aliens into the United States, 42 stat. 540 §2 (1921).

172. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers, 134.

173. Ngai, Impossible Subjects.

174. 42 stat. 540 §2 (1921). Given current fears of immigration from Mexico, Central America, and South America, it is important to understand that under the 1921 and 1924 Acts, immigrants from Canada and the Americas were exempt from quotas but were subject to other requirements.

175. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers, 134, quoting Annual Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1923, 10.

176. 42 stat. 540 §2(d) (1921).

177. Naturalization Act, 34 stat. 596 (1906).

178. Martha Gardner writes that the 1921 Act was a departure from previous immigration laws in that it only provided a preference for wives of United States citizens and residents and not an exemption. Gardner, Qualities of a Citizen, 121.

179. There is a growing body of literature regarding who was considered white for purposes of naturalization law and how this generated continued consternation and lawsuits. See Coulson, Race, Nation, and Refuge; Roediger, David, Working Towards Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to The Suburbs (New York: Basic Books, 2005)Google Scholar; and Jacobson, Mathew Frye, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

179. Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 3

180. IPL, “Report” (1925?), Box 5, fl. 53b, IPL records UIC (hereafter “Report”).

181. Ibid.

182. Ibid.

183. Ibid.

184. Ibid.

185. 42 stat. 540 §2(d) (1921).

186. Abbott, Immigration: Select Documents and Case Records, 456; Garland, After They Closed the Gates, 69–71, discussing Jewish organizations’ opposition to the practice as well as a number of lawsuits filed regarding the practice. The results of these lawsuits were mixed and inconsistent.

187. Ibid., 457.

188. Ibid., 392–97, 454, 457.

189. Ibid., 395.

190. Ibid., 457.

191. Ibid., 458–59.

192. Ibid., 458–60.

193. Johnson–Reed Immigration Act, 43 Stat 153 (1924). The original 1924 Act reduced the 1921 Act's 3% national origins quota to 2% of the 1890 census, rather than using the 1910 census. The use of the 1890 census was a blatant attempt to further reduce the number of non-Western-European immigrants. Pursuant to the 1924 Act, the new quota numbers for specific countries was supposed to take effect in 1927. It was so controversial and generated so much opposition that Congress delayed the effective date twice until 1929. When the act finally went into effect, the ratio for quotas was 2% of the 1920 census. As an example, the new quotas permitted 85,721 immigration visas for migrants originally from the United Kingdom, more than 25,000 for Germans, 6,000 for Poles, 5,802 for Italians, 869 for Hungarians, and 100 for Armenians. Presidential Proclamation 1873 (March 23, 1929).

194. 43 Stat 153, §13 (1924).

195. Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 3.

196. See 43 Stat 153, §4, 5, 6, 11 (1924).

197. Ibid., §9 (1924).

198. Mrs. Kenneth Rich (Adena Miller), “Considerations as Changes in Naturalization Law and Procedure” (January 1934), 38, Box 5, fl, 60, IPL records UIC.

199. See Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 61; and Garland, After They Closed the Gates, 72.

200. Adena Miller Rich, “What is the National Origins Plan for Immigration Quotas?” Box 6, fl. 63, IPL records UIC.

201. Mrs. Kenneth Rich, “Considerations.”

202. Ibid.

203. Ibid.

204. IPL, “The Immigration Situation in Certain Latin American States” (December 13, 1928), Box 5, fl. 51, IPL records UIC.

205. “Suspension of Immigration Bill” (1927), Box 6, fl., 63, IPL records UIC.

206. The Armenian genocide began in 1915 when the army of the Ottoman Empire began rounding up, expelling, and executing Armenians who lived in the Empire. Widespread murders of Armenians continued until 1917 and then began again from 1920 to 1923. At times, Armenians were directly executed and at other times forced to go on “death marches” to a series of concentration camps. During such marches deportees were starved, beaten, shot, and raped. Approximately 1,500,000 Armenians were murdered. See Coulson, Race, Nation, and Refuge, 89; Payaslian, Simon, “The U.S. and the Armenian Genocide: Review Article,” Middle East Journal 59 (2005): 132Google Scholar.

207. IPL, “The Immigrants’ Protective League,” Box 6, fl 66. (1925/1926), 3, IPL records UIC.

208. Congressional Record, Sixty-Ninth Congress, Second Session, December 14, 1926, No. 8, p. 411.; and Act of May 26, 1924 (43 Stat 153).

209. Congressional Record, Sixty-Ninth Congress, 408–10.

210. Garland, After They Closed the Gates, 43–45.

211. Jewish organizations led the fight to admit Jewish migrants with now-expired 1921 visas. Famed attorney Louis Marshall argued that the United States had a moral duty to honor visas that it had provided and that immigrants with visas were already Americans. Congress voted down a law that would have allowed immigrants holding 1921 visas to enter the country. Ibid., 72–76.

212. IPL, “Report,” Case 3.

213. IPL, “Report,” 7.

214. IPL, “Report,” Group 8.

215. “Immigrant Protective League Reorganizes,” Social Service Review, May 1926, 3.

216. Mrs. Kenneth F. Rich, “The Significance of Ellis Island to Illinois,” November 1928, Box 6, fl. 63, IPL records UIC.

217. IPL, “Memorandum” (1925/1926), 1, Box 6, fl. 66, IPL reports UIC.

218. Ibid.

219. IPL, “Frequency of Problems in Cases Arising in June, July, August 1926,” Box 6, fl. 65, IPL reports UIC.

220. IPL, “New Cases Handled by Immigrants Protective League in 1925,” Box 6, fl. 66, IPL reports UIC.

221. IPL, “Present Office Staff: Some of Its Present Needs and Opportunities,” June 1927, Box 6, fl. 66; IPL “Report.”

222. Ibid., 2.

223. IPL, “New Staff Assistance,” Box 6, fl. 63, IPL reports UIC.

224. IPL, “Around the Table,” Box 6, fl. 63, IPL records UIC. Helen Jerry had spent 3 years in Lithuania before graduating from the Denver University Law School. She was the third Lithuanian female lawyer to be admitted to the Bar and the only Lithuanian woman lawyer in Illinois.

225. IPL, “The Immigrants’ Protective League,” Box 6, fl 66 (1925/1926), IPL records UIC.

226. Mrs. Kenneth Rich, “Separated Families, Prepared for Oral Presentation at the National Conference of Social Work, Fifty-Fourth Annual Session, Des Moines, 1927,” 10. Abbott Papers, Box 4, fl. 8, Edith and Grace Abbott Papers, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

227. IPL, “The Immigrant Protective League,” 3.

228. IPL, “The Coming of an Armenian Family,” January 1932, Box 4, fl. 50, IPL records UIC.

229. Ibid.

230. Act of May 29, 1928, Chap. 914, 45 Stat. 1009.

231. IPL, “The Coming of an Armenian Family,” 262.

232. Herbert Hoover, “White House Statement on Government Policies to Reduce Immigration,” March 26, 1931, in Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/white-house-statement-government-policies-reduce-immigration (accessed November 21, 2018).

233. Edith Abbott, “Immigration and Naturalization Legislation, 1921–1932,” Abbott Papers, Box 12, fl. 9, Edith and Grace Abbott Papers, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

234. Hoover, “White House Statement.”

235. IPL, “Report of the Director” (December 12, 1930), Supp. II, Box 5, fl. 65, 15, IPL records UIC.

236. IPL, “The Coming of an Armenian Family.”

237. Ibid.

238. IPL, “Report of the Director” (December 12, 1930), 1, 14, Supp. II, Box 5, fl. 65, IPL records UIC.

239. IPL, “Report of the Director” (April, May, June 1931), 13–14, Supp. II, Box 5, fl 65, IPL records UIC.

240. Ibid.

241. Ibid.

242. Ibid., 14

243. Edith Abbott, “Federal Immigration Policies,” 347–67, at 356–57.

244. The National Immigrant Justice Center is a program of Heartland Alliance. https://www.heartlandalliance.org/programs/justice/, https://www.immigrantjustice.org/press-releases?q=press-releases&page=2 and https://www.heartlandalliance.org/program/national-immigrant-justice-center/ (accessed November 17, 2018).