From Johnson-Reed to Hart-Celler: The Theo-logic of U.S. Immigration Policy

Familiarity with the discourse around U.S. immigration policy seems to suggest a tension bordering on a paradox, which is heralded by the two iron giants of the U.S. border: the Statue of Liberty, with its beacon-promise of welcome, and the borderwall, with its death-dealing rebuff. But historians of immigration policy have challenged this reading by revealing how practices of inclusion and exclusion are not a paradox but a production, working in tandem to constitute legal and symbolic Americanness. In this paper, I build on such historical work by arguing that the production of Americanness is driven by a theo-logic, which seeks to construct a chosen nation against a heathen other using policies of inclusion and exclusion. To illustrate my argument, I read two key moments in U.S. immigration policy—the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act creating the national origin quota system and the 1965 Hart-Celler Act ending it—through this theo-logic.