“They Do the Work Others Won’t Do": United States Immigration Policy and the Figure of the Immigrant Domestic Servant

This paper attempts to compare and connect two periods: the late-nineteenth century, and the present. The historic focus of this paper looks at how influential Protestant ministers, members of the American business elite, and wealthy American families, sought to intervene in the debate surrounding Chinese immigration. Although the United States Congress ultimately passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred Chinese laborers from entering the country, in the years that preceded and followed the legislation, Chinese immigrants were not without white supporters. This paper argues that white Americans sympathetic to Chinese immigration deployed the figure of the Chinese domestic servant as the most convincing piece of evidence that Chinese immigration performed a beneficial function to the American people. Supporters of Chinese immigration created a racial and economic discourse surrounding the Chinese in which servants played a central role, and consistently proved the worth of their entire “race.”

The second part of this paper moves from a historic context into a more contemporary one, by examining how pro-immigration commentators and policy makers use the figure of the immigrant domestic servant today. It argues that advocates for more open immigration into the United States utilize the immigrant servant and maid in a manner that has largely escaped scrutiny. By asserting that immigrant workers free middle class women from the “second shift” of domestic labor, and perform work that native-born white and black American feel is beneath them, supporters of open immigration have avoided a more complex examination of the colonial relationship that such arguments rest on, and the position of the United States in the world.