Traces the origins of the illegal alien in American law and society, explaining why and how illegal migration became the central problem in US immigration policy - a process that profoundly shaped ideas and practices about citizenship, race, and state authority in the twentieth century.
Uncovers the story of the Tape family in post-gold rush, racially explosive San Francisco. The author paints a picture of how the role of immigration broker allowed patriarch Jeu Dip (Joseph Tape) to both protest and profit from discrimination, and of the Tapes as the first of a new social type - middle- class Chinese Americans.
How Chinese migration to the world's goldfields upended global power and economics and forged modern conceptions of race