#68 The Politics of Immigration in American History with Andrew Gyory
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 629 Ratings
🗓️ 28 August 2017
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was the first major legislative act in American history to restrict immigration. In this episode we talk with historian Andrew Gyory about the reasons that immigration became such a powerful political issue in the late 19th century, and how studying this period of history can help us better understand the politics of immigration in 2017. Dr. Gyory is an expert on the history of immigration and the author of Closing the Gate: Race, Class, and the Chinese Exclusion Act, (UNC Press, 1999).
More on this episode and The Road to Now, please visit our website: www.TheRoadToNow.com.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Our friend Dolphus Ramser was born and raised in Concord, North Carolina, a town so rich |
| 0:07.4 | with history that it provided the inspiration for its independent record label and management |
| 0:12.6 | company. |
| 0:13.7 | So great was the city's influence on Ramser that he continues to live and work in Concord |
| 0:19.0 | today with a full-time staff located in both North |
| 0:22.2 | Carolina and California. He and his team always put their clients music first, work as |
| 0:27.7 | hard as they can, and have fun along the way. Visit ramsar.com to learn more. |
| 0:36.8 | Welcome to the Road to Now, where we look to the past and everywhere in between. |
| 0:40.8 | To understand the present, I'm Bob Crawford, and joining me as always is Dr. Ben Sawyer. |
| 0:45.7 | So, Ben, who do we have on the show this week? |
| 0:47.8 | We have Dr. Andrew Jory. He is a historian who wrote an incredible book about the Chinese Exclusion Act. |
| 0:55.8 | This book was published in 1998, and at that point he made the argument that from this point in 1882, |
| 1:03.3 | the same arguments have always come up when we talk about immigration and excluding people from immigration and cutting off immigration. |
| 1:12.8 | And I don't think he could have known when that book was published in 1998 and when he was writing it 20 years ago, |
| 1:18.4 | how incredibly important what he was writing was going to be 20 years later. |
| 1:24.0 | No, I guess we often don't know. And Ben, I'm sure some things that you've written, you don't realize how pertinent they'll be in the future. |
| 1:30.7 | Dr. Jury's book is Closing the Gate, Race Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act. |
| 1:36.1 | It's available on Amazon.com. |
| 1:38.1 | I highly recommend everyone get it, particularly at this moment in history. |
| 1:43.1 | In 2015, Dr. Jury wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post right after Donald Trump came |
| 1:49.9 | out with his Muslim ban, right? |
| 1:52.2 | It was after, in the wake of the San Bernardito shootings and Trump makes a speech, he says, |
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