The early summer of 1913 found the new U.S. commissioner general of immigration, a somewhat rumpled man with a drooping walrus mustache named Anthony Caminetti, agonizing over how to fix what he considered serious problems at the nation’s borders. The number of immigration inspectors, doctors, and interpreters, he quickly discerned, was “wholly inadequate” to what was needed to curb an alarmingly large number of immigrants entering the country.
His concerns foreshadowed a broader national reckoning with identity and belonging that would ultimately change the face of the nation. America had once been populated largely by people from English-speaking, Protestant countries. But starting in the 1890s, a new tide of foreigners had been surging into the United States: Italians and east Europeans, Catholics and Jews. From dusty cowboy saloons of the west to the gentlemen’s clubs of New York, people were asking what it meant to be American, and just who should be allowed to become one.
Caminetti brought a tangled web of talents — and prejudices — to the job. As the son of an Italian immigrant, he knew the sting of slurs that might have given him a unique perspective. When running for the U.S. House of Representatives earlier in his career, one political enemy promised to live on macaroni and ravioli for a whole month if he was elected. Another, according to one account, hired a comedian to travel through his congressional district imitating the accented English of its Italian immigrants. Even Caminetti’s wife, Eliza (Ella) Ellington Martin, a WASP with roots stretching back to the American Revolution, after attending a Fourth of July speech he gave before they were married told a friend that it would have been better if “an American” had delivered the remarks.
Anthony Caminetti, 1914. [Library of Congress]
Yet for all the discrimination he faced, Caminetti failed to evince any sympathy for other newcomers, seeing them as competition rather than kindred spirits. And though he worried about immigrants generally, he was particularly concerned with those from Asia. A seemingly endless stream of men willing to work for lower wages seemed poised to descend upon the United States, stealing jobs and destroying American society with their unfamiliar cultural and religious beliefs. Already the United States had taken strict measures to limit immigrants from China and Japan. Caminetti believed the country faced yet another urgent threat, this time from India.
Working men from India had first begun to arrive in the United States in the early years of the 20th century, many bitterly angry at British rule of their homeland. London had governed India as a colony since 1858, and through the East India Company for centuries before that, displaying such contempt that signs at British clubs famously read “Dogs and Indians Not Allowed.” Callous regulations crippled the ability of farmers to make a living.
Most landed at the Angel Island immigration center in San Francisco Bay, modeled on Ellis Island, and quickly discovered hostility almost as intense as what they experienced under the British. Immigration inspectors employed often capricious ways to keep Indians out, claiming they were likely to become public charges or carried diseases such as hookworm. Those who did make it into the country faced discrimination and even violence. Anti-immigrant groups such as the Asiatic Exclusion League were swelling in number, and communities up and down the West Coast turned on Indian workers, ransacking their homes and attacking them in the street in an effort to drive them from the country. By the time Caminetti arrived in Washington, only a few hundred a year were entering the United States.
Still, Caminetti remained on edge. With India’s population then over 250 million, he feared more would sneak into the country via American outposts such as Hawaii and the Philippines. And a decade after President William McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist, he noticed a disturbing tilt toward radical leftist ideology among the existing Indian immigrant community.
In 1913, a group of Indian laborers and university students had formed a secretive organization named Ghadar, or revolt, that aimed to overthrow British rule in India. Based in San Francisco’s Mission District, they published a seditious newspaper and began raising money to launch an armed revolution back home. Although they were inspired by the Founding Fathers to rebel against colonialism, Caminetti feared their politics could be turned against the United States. Indeed, key leaders of the group, such as former Stanford University lecturer Har Dayal, openly embraced the far-left Industrial Workers of the World and even seemed to support anarchism.
The only way to smash the Indian threat, Caminetti believed, was with legislation specifically designed to keep them out. He jumped at the opportunity to speak at congressional hearings on Indian immigration in early 1914, armed with mountains of figures and material. Some of his claims were outlandish, but his passion was undeniable, and he emerged as the star of the proceedings, capturing headlines around the country. One paper even speculated that Caminetti was receiving enough attention and praise to run for governor of California.
Adding to his sense of urgency, a spectacular challenge to Canada’s strict immigration laws was unfolding. A ship named the Komagata Maru had arrived in Vancouver harbor hoping to disembark over 300 prospective Indian immigrants. For some two months, the Canadians refused to let them ashore, leading to several dramatic confrontations between the passengers, immigration officers, and even the Canadian navy.
Passengers dressed to go ashore on the Komagata Maru, 1914. [Wikimedia Commons]
On June 12, as the crisis continued, Caminetti wrote to Secretary of Labor William Wilson that the Komagata Maru incident underscored the need for American lawmakers to act. “I feel that congress, if possible, be induced to pass some legislation regarding Hindus at the present session, and I suggest that the matter be made the subject of consultation with the president.”
Yet members of Congress and many Americans were not comfortable singling out one ethnicity so bluntly, and both the legislation and Caminetti’s political career failed to advance.
Overcoming his disappointment, Caminetti seized a new opportunity to tackle immigration more broadly — the revival of the contentious literacy test. Back in the 1880s, three Bostonians, worried about the ability of immigrants to assimilate with existing American culture, had formed a group known as the Immigration Restriction League, arguing that all newcomers be able to read a brief text in their own language.
Since then, Congress had twice passed literacy legislation, only to see it twice vetoed, first by President Grover Cleveland and a second time by President William Howard Taft. President Cleveland, capturing the mood of those who opposed the bill, argued it marked a “radical departure from our national policy relating to immigration,” a policy that had “encourag[ed] those coming from foreign countries to cast their lot with us and join in the development of our vast domain.”
New literacy test legislation, championed by Alabama Rep. John Lawson Burnett, and Senator Ellison Smith of South Carolina, was gaining support. While it didn’t specifically target Indians, Caminetti held high hopes it would help him achieve his objective. Yet President Woodrow Wilson, the son of a Presbyterian minister, held strong beliefs about the role of the United States as the shining city on the hill, a beacon to the rest of the world. He, too, vetoed the bill.
Over a year would pass before Congress would take a new crack at immigration legislation, introducing a bill very much like the literacy test. And having learned that targeting Indians directly was considered abhorrent, lawmakers from the West Coast devised a new strategy to single them out. Rep. Denver S. Church of California had been carefully drawing and bending lines through recommended maps of Asia that would show who could and could not enter the United States. To the untrained eye, it seemed like citizens of any number of countries might be caught up in the American restrictions. But there was little doubt that the map was drawn with Indians in mind.
The California Rep. Everis Hayes didn’t try to conceal the idea behind the work-around. Summarizing the map’s real purpose, he wrote: “This bill does not change existing conditions with reference to an Asiatic who comes or has been coming to the United States, except the Hindu. He is the only man whose status will be changed by this bill.” Even Secretary of State Robert Lansing could publicly state his support and in autumn of 1916, the new immigration bill sailed through Congress.
In response, on January 30, 1917, Wilson offered a single page of remarks about the bill that had been laid on his desk. “In most of the provisions of the bill I should be very glad to concur.” But he went on to state that he would again veto the bill. “I can not rid myself of the conviction that the literacy test constitutes a radical change in the policy of the Nation which is not justified in principle,” he wrote. “It is not a test of character, of quality, or of personal fitness, but would operate in most cases merely as a penalty for lack of opportunity in the country from which the alien seeking admission came.” This time, Burnett was waiting for him. On February 1, the House overruled Wilson’s veto by a comfortable margin. Three days later the Senate followed suit, and one day later what history would variously remember as the Immigration Act of 1917 or the Asiatic Barred Zone Act became law.
Caminetti was ecstatic. In his annual report written not long after, he said that although the Asiatic exclusion clause had been overshadowed by the fierce literacy-test debate, it was “in the bureau’s judgment, the most far-reaching and most beneficial provision of the Burnett-Smith Immigration Act.” Saying that the impact had not been “fully understood and appreciated,” he noted that it was already clear the bill had “settled the Hindu immigration problem, which a few years ago threatened to be one of the most distressing phases of immigration that the country had yet encountered.” The Asiatic exclusion clause, he claimed, “removed any possibility that the hordes of coolies who inhabit the islands adjacent to Asia or who are found throughout continent ever will be brought to the United States.”
In 1924, setting even tighter restrictions, Congress passed fresh legislation limiting the number of immigrants based on nationality ratios dating back to 1890. Not coincidentally, this maintained the white European character of U.S. immigration and essentially shut out Indians. Caminetti’s vision for America, built through restrictive, race-based immigration policies, would last until sweeping immigration reforms under Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965.