Expelling the Poor

This is a vital, impressive look at how Massachusetts and New York systematically deported poor Irish immigrants and often their American families decades prior to the Chinese Exclusion Act. Hirota clearly demonstrates not only the inhumanity and rank xenophobia of this policy, but also how these policies provided the legal basis for the Chinese Exclusion Act and later restrictive immigration policies. Importantly Hirota follows deportees back to the UK and Ireland, cataloging the humanitarian catastrophe that these policies created. This chapter is normally overlooked in US history, and unfortunately this book is all the more needed today. Highly recommend