NARA II Screenings

Lordy…it has been a while since my last post, but in the time that’s passed, I have managed to finish off my research in the State Department records at Archives II. From everything I had been lead to believe, the State Department records are some of the worst-cataloged and difficult-to-navigate collections imaginable. The finding aides are in multiple parts, depending on the year (Prior to 1949 has one system, 1949-1963 has another, and 1963- a third,) or department.

But at least there are finding aides.

Having moved on from State, I was hoping to look at the Department of Justice and Bureau of the Budget Records. A substantial portion of the DoJ files have been declassified, but pretty much anything after WWII has to go through another round of security review before you can even see any of the files. (Why the initial security review was not sufficient, who knows? The staff certainly doesn’t!) This review can take up to six weeks to even get a case number assigned, and an indefinite amount of time for the actual review to take place. And to make matters worse, the bulk of the finding aides are classified. It is almost impossible to figure out what departments are where (i.e. how do I even request the Office of Legal Counsel files, to have them reviewed?) It seems as though these requirements are to maintain the privacy of case files, but I am only interested in administrative records, pertaining to immigration policy. I have contacted the archivist who works on the collection, but I’m not entirely optimistic that I will see any of the files anytime soon.

The Bureau of the Budget records also have no comprehensive finding aids. Instead, there is an alphabetical list of the sub-record groups (i.e. Department of State Budget Records, 1949-1952, Legislative Files, 1939-1970), that points to the Master Location Registry (MLR) for the record group (51). Aside from the fact that a number of the entries in the alphabetical list do not match up with the MLR, the only way to get to the finding aides for each sub-record group is to find the collection in the MLR, and then request box #1, which supposedly contains the finding aid.

The catch? Each box (Even the ones containing only finding aides) has to be reviewed onsite before they will give them to you (something they do not tell you in advance.) So while at least the records are reviewed as you order them (hopefully), there’s not telling how long that review can take.

All in all, if you plan a trip to Archives II, make sure to leave yourself ample time, and understand that you might not see the boxes you want on the first trip…

Goodbyes of a Sort

My time in D.C. has come to an end, and I'm honestly a bit sad to leave. Two months isn't a lot of time to spend in one place, especially a place like this one. Thankfully I've found a lot of great sources, though every door I opened led me to three more that I'll need to follow up on later on.

To recap the archival materials I used this summer:
NARA I
- Basic INS records, though these never went anywhere
- Congressional Records, especially House and Senate Judiciary Committee Records. Particularly useful here were the Special Subcommittee on Emigration and Refugees, 1955-1959.

NARA II
- Department of State Records. Vexing at times, and I'm sure I've only scratched the surface, but incredibly useful.
- Secretary of Agriculture Records. Not useful at all.

Library of Congress
- Emanuel Celler Papers. (Boxes relating to Immigration and Refugee issues.)

I spent the first few days of this week going through my notes and putting everything onto a time line in excel, so that I could sort by date, keywords, etc. I'm still going through what I have, but I already know that the 1955-1959 period, and especially the Refugee Relief Act, is much more important than what scholars have given it credit for. I also am getting more and more interested in the issue of Military Brides, and how so much of our immigration rules about what constitutes "family" migration emerged from wartime exigencies.

I'm also playing around with a few ideas about governmental institutions, and trying to place together how State fits in with the rest of federal immigration/refugee policy. Daniel Tichenor has already posited the congressional lag thesis of postwar immigration policy, where the Executive Branch led the way toward immigration liberalization, but I wonder if it's even more nuanced than that, with State leading the way, and other agencies following. I need to think about this more.

Anyways, for now this will be my last post, until I spend some more time going through my research, or until I hit my next archive!

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more posts from Emily and Sam.

Phil

The Importance of International Affairs in Immigration Policy, Part 1

I’ve been spending more time in the Library of Congress lately, and have found a couple of really interesting documents. One in particular I’d like to talk about today:

The first is a document entitled “Refugee Problems, World Survey,” a State Department report from 1958. The document outlines U.S. refugee policy throughout the world, and U.S. interests in various refugee crises. Of interest to my work are the sections on Hong Kong. The document states

It is a basic policy of the United States to seek to promote friendship for the United States among the captive populations and to bolster their hope and faith in ultimate freedom. As long as the Chinese refugees in Hong Kong, having rejected Communism, were willfully enduring unexampled misery and hopelessness rather than return to their Communist-dominated homeland, the United States could not remain unidentified with efforts to meet the problem.

State then lists three possible courses of action – to “remain indifferent”; to offer substantial aid; or “to begin a program of limited and selective assistance.” State recommends the latter.

On the surface this decision isn’t surprising – while supporting Chinese refugees in Hong Kong was seen as an important part of the fight against Communist China, by discrediting the regime and by giving hope to others still inside the “Bamboo Curtain,” in practice, the U.S. focused their refugee efforts much more on eastern Europe, and on escapees from the Iron Curtain. Legislators designing refugee legislation spoke of “token numbers” of refugees from China, and shied away from any effort that would admit great numbers of Asians.

But by viewing only the domestic picture, or the legislative debates, a rather one-sided picture emerges – whatever their motivations, legislators did not want to resettle large groups of Chinese refugees. But, going back to State’s report, the reason given for advocating only limited intervention is illuminating. After discounting the first proposition (doing nothing,) on principle, the report states

The second alternative was not practicable, since it constituted a virtual assumption of responsibility at vast cost to the United States for a matter that properly rested with the sovereign British authorities in Hong Kong. Moreover, such a program would have been in conflict with the British political position and would have contained a threat to British prestige in the Far East.

While we can’t simply take the report’s word on face value, the added element of U.S.-British diplomacy incorporates another dimension to the pros and cons of refugee intervention. I need to play with this idea more, but I think the Colonial, and specifically British, interests in Hong Kong need to be considered, when analyzing East Asian refugee policy. (I’ve also found a number of other documents referring to Britain’s interests in Hong Kong, to the point where one State Department dispatch writes that Britain most probably recognized the government of Communist China to protect it’s own business interests in the territory.)

In my next post I’m going to talk about a series of cases prepared by Congressman Celler’s staff, to highlight the restrictiveness of the McCarran-Walter Act (Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952.)