The U.S. has a
longstanding history of creating its own rules (regardless as to whether these
rules run in conjunction with the nation’s founding principles, inscribed in
the almighty Constitution) in order to reap the benefits of
“expansionism”—really just a fluffy term for imperialism (the U.S.—just as it
has its own ideological, damsel-in-distress narrative of how it ushered depraved,
savage countries under its wing and nourished all the poor with its
riches—employs words that obfuscate the true nature of their meaning). Mae M.
Ngai, in Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens
and the Making of Modern America, addresses one instance in which the U.S.,
through a series of cases in the early 20th century, creates a new
legal category that would allow the nation to sweep up the Philippines, but
deny Filipinos citizenship:
Known collectively as the Insular Cases, the Court’s rulings invented a new legal category
called ‘unincorporated territory,’ which alleviated the United States from the
promise, assumed in the Northwest Ordinance and by historical practice, of
eventual statehood and, with it, equal status and full citizenship rights to
its inhabitants….The Court made the innovative claim that the territories
acquired from Spain belonged to, but were not part of, the United States.
(100)
What does this
mean for the Filipino immigrant—the “National”—to be discouraged from crossing
over to the metropolitan mainland they’re called to pledge allegiance to?
Nationals occupied a liminal status that was
neither citizen nor alien.
(100)
I’m interested
in pinpointing Carlos Bulosan’s character’s internal journey towards
self-identification as a Filipino assimilating (not quite “benevolently”) into
American culture. He consistently struggles to unify nostalgic remnants of his
native land, with the vicious, unforgiving nature of life on the mainland—his
conceptual dream-home, constantly re-defined by the impermanency of his
experience. What kind of future can the migrant laborer hope to establish? How
does American imperialism/capitalism affect the Filipino immigrant, given its
lengthy history of using race to condemn others as disposable units (e.g.
subsuming Filipino’s and all immigrants of color under the term, “nigger,” and
accusing their men of slandering the virtues of white women in a very Jim
Crow-esque attempt to strip them of natural rights)? The Filipino immigrant
must locate himself amidst the aftermath of a very gritty timeline, whilst
cultivating a future, or means of subsistence, in a country that refuses to
recognize him as an equal.
Ngai, Mae M. "From Colonial Subject to Undesirable Alien: Filipino Migration in the Invisible Empire." Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2004. 100. Print.
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