x | The Making of Modern Immigration: An Introduction powerful catalysts for empathy for everyone with a beating heart. The photographs of Haitians in church, burying the dead, or singing celebratory songs of life work to lay waste to the claims of difference between peoples. The presence of this group of Haitian Americans, ordinarily not prone to visibility in U.S. life and now thrust to the fore by their former countrymen and -women, was a reminder that the arms of the United States encircle the planet. It is so much gossamer that separates us. Distance, yes, but the bonds we share with the other practically erase distinctions between us and them. They are, in fact, us. Our common humanity is brought home by the immigrant communities that make up our people. The flow of generosity to those outside the borders of the United States is built in part on the particular regional and strategic relationships that have been built up over the years, but the source for these relationships is due also to the vast num- bers of immigrants who have already come to these shores from all over the world. They supply a rationale both for the identity Americans hold dear and for the iden- tity they seek to project. What this encyclopedia attempts to do is to track precisely how this popular composite identity has come to be created. These volumes contain a wide array of personalities, events, ideas, legislative actions, and, most importantly, the contexts for the immigrant experience in the United States. It is hoped that students of im- migration history—which is shorthand for the history of the United States itself— will see in the authors’ analyses, a picture that is diverse and complex. While each entry may be taken as a discreet commentary, we strove to form a collaborative. That is, while each author has a unique perspective on a subject, we are also con- scious of the work of others. We see our contributions as necessarily limited, but connected. We are also striving to make sense of the problems attendant upon the immigration question seen in its totality even while admitting the fragmentary na- ture of our individual essays. An Impossible Task Just as soon as a claim is made to give a comprehensive historical assessment to immigration in the United States, one is immediately struck by the sheer folly of the task. Consider what has been left out from or is given short shrift in these pages. There is much to take away by reading about immigration to the United States from Canada, but why not include a similar essay on Mexico? We have an essay on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) but nothing on the undocu- mented per se. We have a very useful pair of essays on Chinese exclusionary mea- sures, but nothing on the Irish solely. Many of the assembled essays touch upon the perennial problem of race in the United States, yet we have nothing on the forced migrations of first nation peoples onto reservations. Readers will also look in vain for a general entry on immigration as such. There are some very practical reasons
Previous Page Next Page