The Power of Token Quotas: Cold War Chinese Refugees and the Liberalization of U.S. Immigration Law

During World War II and the Cold War, the exigencies of international alliances began fissuring the wall constructed against Asian immigration into the United States that began with the 1875 Page Act, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, and reached a zenith with the 1924 Johnson-Reed Immigration Act.  Supporters of the repeal of Chinese exclusion argued successfully that the United States had to give credence to its claims of friendship with China by removing race-based barriers to Chinese entry and naturalized citizenship lest this valued ally turn to Japan. The need to maintain alliances continued to provide compelling reasons to liberalize immigration restrictions over the course of the Cold War, particularly in the form of refugees left homeless by the sharp political divides of the re-aligning world.  Humanitarianism, anti-communist competition, and concern for international stature provided powerful reasons for the US to admit refugees—a goal shared by presidents, some sectors of the Department of State, and by enough members of Congress for successive laws to pass granting special visas and parole despite concerns that refugee quotas might undermine the existing system of immigration restriction.  These worries proved valid, as illustrated by the admission of token numbers of Chinese refugees.  Advocates of immigration reform such as President Kennedy and Emmanuel Celler used refugee admissions to argue that commensurabilities of politics and economic potential should supersede considerations of race and national origins in immigration law.  The relatively smooth integration of refugee populations—attained through economically and politically selective processes, family reunification preferences, positive publicity of successful settlement, mobilization of ethnic and religious organizations, and symbolic admission of once excluded groups such as Chinese—helped to pave the way for the transformative shifts associated with the 1965 Immigration Act.