From All Points: America's Immigrant West, 1870s–1952

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Indiana University Press, 2007 M05 11 - 649 pages
A history of immigrants in the American West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and their effect on the region.

At a time when immigration policy is the subject of heated debate, this book makes clear that the true wealth of America is in the diversity of its peoples. By the end of the twentieth century, the American West was home to nearly half of America’s immigrant population, including Asians and Armenians, Germans and Greeks, Mexicans, Italians, Swedes, Basques, and others. This book tells their rich and complex story—of adaptation and isolation, maintaining and mixing traditions, and an ongoing ebb and flow of movement, assimilation, and replenishment. These immigrants and their children built communities, added to the region’s culture, and contended with discrimination and the lure of Americanization. The mark of the outsider, the alien, the nonwhite passed from group to group, even as the complexion of the region changed. The region welcomed, then excluded, immigrants, in restless waves of need and nativism that continue to this day.

“Written in the fashion of Oscar Handlin, this study makes a convincing case that immigration history comprises an essential part of the history of the American West, and that appreciation of the former and the roles played by myriad alien arrivals is essential for understanding the latter. . . . Barkan . . . combines vignettes based on immigrant reminiscences with keen analysis to explore four related themes: various groups’ arrivals, their economic influences, their effects on public policy, and their adaptation and assimilation. The resulting narrative is readable and informative. . . . Recommended.” —Choice

“A remarkable synthesis of the West as a region of immigrants. It tells the story of how vital immigrants were to economic growth and modernization. This will be the prime reference for 21st century scholars of immigration and ethnicity in the American West.” —Annals of Wyoming, Spring 2010
 

Contents

INTRODUCTION Defining ThemesThe West Westerners and Whiteness
1
PRELUDE Western Immigrant Experiences
23
PART 1 Laying the Groundwork IMMIGRANTS AND IMMIGRATION LAWS OLD AND NEW 1870s1903
35
PART 2 Opening and Closing Doors 19031923
95
PART 3 Give Me a Bug Please RESTRICTION AND REPATRIATION ACCOMMODATION AND AMERICANIZATION 19231941
223
PART 4 Americas Dilemma RACES REFUGEES AND REFORMS IN AN AGE OF WORLD WAR AND COLD WAR 19421952
353
APPENDIX
463
NOTES
489
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
575
INDEX
585
Copyright

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About the author (2007)

Elliott Robert Barkan is Professor Emeritus of History and Ethnic Studies at California State University. He is author of Our Multicultural Heritage: A Guide to America's Principal Ethnic Groups and And Still They Come: The Immigrant in American Society, 1920s–1990s. He lives in Corona, California.

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