![]() Eugenics was a guiding force behind much of this legislation, particularly the Johnson-Reed Act. Immigration legislation, from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first law to bar immigrants, to the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which imposed national origins quotas, revealed the xenophobia and racism prevalent in American society. First- and second-generation Americans, some of whom had immigrated only decades earlier, targeted newcomers, whom they perceived as different from themselves by virtue of language, skin color, custom, religion, political inclination, and behavior and because they carried with them the supposed physical dangers of disease and disorder. In this way the spaces of the railroad mimicked and replicated the conflicts in American society. (4) Railway officials carefully monitored the movement of immigrants through the railway system, intent on limiting their contact with other more privileged passengers. Racial segregation pervaded the space of the railways as well, not only for African American travelers in the southern and eastern states but also for Asian immigrants and Native Americans in the West. ![]() In train cars and railway stations, foreigners newly arrived from Italy, Poland, or Russia were segregated from native-born American passengers by virtue of their lower class and national origin. (3) A difficult railway journey often bridged an immigrant's passage from the port of entry on the East Coast to his or her intended home farther west. (2) While immigration histories frequently focus on social experiences of immigrants, the physical spaces through which they traveled were also part and parcel of the immigrant experience, and yet this aspect is largely overlooked. (1) In San Francisco the dreadful conditions at the Angel Island Immigration Station were infamous to Asian immigrants, who feared the exhaustive interrogation sessions and extended detention periods. Those who arrived in New York Harbor at the turn of the twentieth century met the awe-inspiring sight of the Statue of Liberty, followed quickly by the stress of inspection procedures at Ellis Island. ![]() From the moment of landing on American shores, an immigrant's journey was far from over.
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