Alien Nation: Alternative Mapping of the Americas through Chinese Migrations

The idea of the “illegal alien” was constructed in the Americas based on the Chinese migrant.  This paper traces an alternative mapping of the Americas by focusing on the trajectories of Chinese migration through the Americas from the “coolie” period through WW II.  In particular, the paper will focus on three stories of border crossing between Mexico, the United States and Canada. 

The first episode tells the story of Marcus Braun, a US immigrant inspector, as he goes undercover and follows Chinese migrants as they move up the West coast of Mexico to sneak across the border to the US.  The second vignette discusses the plight of naturalized Mexican citizens of Chinese descent when they arrested in San Antonio for crossing into the US illegally.  The third story explores the case of a group of Chinese who arrived in British Columbia, were locked in a train and brought to Tampico, Mexico, and were then forced to work in slave-like conditions on a plantation.  What all three of these episodes show is that migrants did not simply move from point A in China to point B in the Americas, but rather that there was a lot of zigzagging through the Americas.  Migrants remained mobile in the Americas.