Alien land laws

Alien land laws were a series of legislative attempts to discourage Asian and other "non-desirable" immigrants from settling permanently in U.S. states and territories by limiting their ability to own land and property. Because the Naturalization Act of 1870 had extended citizenship rights only to African Americans but not other ethnic groups, these laws relied on coded language excluding "aliens ineligible for citizenship" to prohibit primarily Chinese and Japanese immigrants from becoming landowners without explicitly naming any racial group. Various alien land laws existed in over a dozen states before they were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1952. Like other discriminatory measures aimed at preventing minorities from establishing homes and businesses in certain areas, such as redlining and restrictive covenants, many alien land laws remained technically in effect, forgotten or ignored, for many years after enforcement of the laws fell out of practice.

Resentment against Asian immigrants in the U.S. grew with their population. Although American businesses had initially recruited Chinese immigrants as a cheap labor source in the emerging railroad and mining industries (and, in the Reconstruction South, to replace slaves on sugar plantations) by the late 19th century, fears of a largescale "Mongolian" plot to take land and resources from white Americans became widespread. Contemporary newspapers and politicians cultivated the idea of a Yellow Peril: an imminent threat to white morality and economic interests posed by Chinese and other Asian immigrants. Nativist groups prevented the Naturalization Act of 1870 from granting citizenship rights (and therefore the ability to vote and serve on juries) to Asians, and successfully campaigned for laws to reduce and finally, with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, stop immigration from China.

The end of Chinese immigration came around the same time as the opening of Japan, when Japanese citizens were for the first time in the nation's history allowed to emigrate to other countries, and Japanese soon replaced Chinese as the primary target for labor recruiters. New Japanese immigrants, including many recently released from indentured labor contracts with Hawaiian plantations, moved to rural areas in Western states and took up tenant farming, taking over land formerly occupied by Chinese farmers. The sharp increase in the population of Japanese residing in the U.S. and their success in the agricultural industry soon resulted in an exclusionary movement similar to that faced by the earlier wave of primarily Chinese workers. Following the pattern set by the anti-Chinese movement, anti-Japanese lobbyists first limited Japanese immigration to the U.S. with the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 and then stopped East Asian immigration completely with the Immigration Act of 1924. The Cable Act of 1922 added further complications to the ban on citizenship for Asian immigrants, stripping U.S.-born women of their citizenship if they married men ineligible for naturalization. Meanwhile, alien land laws became a common tool to prevent Asian immigrants already in the country from becoming a permanent presence in hostile white communities.

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