The history of Chinese immigrants in America has always been about much more than one particular ethnic group. As Michael Luo’s “Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America” demonstrates, understanding America’s efforts to keep Chinese laborers out, and the violence enacted against those who stayed in, is essential to understanding the evolution of America’s immigration system as we know it today.

That’s because restrictions against Chinese immigrants represented the first major flex in the modern era of the federal government’s power to control its borders. Chinese laborers were the first group to be barred from the entire country based on national origin, and lawsuits involving this group were often major tests of constitutional liberties

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