Disputing Disparate Regimes in Employment

Abstract

Lawmakers in at least ten states adopted policies restricting or outright barring noncitizen immigrants from public and/or publicly funded employment between 1889 and 1914. Such laws drew inspiration from West Coast anti-Chinese nativism, arose out of widespread anti–“temporary” immigrant sentiment among building trade unionists, and grew in number and in force following the Panic of 1893. In periods of recession (especially during the mid-1890s and the mid-1910s), these policies were often implemented with vigor. In good times, they were widely perceived to be “dead letters” by labor leaders, employers, and public commentators. Nevertheless, the US Supreme Court unambiguously upheld their constitutionality in 1915, rendering the employment rights of noncitizen public works laborers and public employees tenuous across many major immigrant-destination states. This chapter argues that disputes over the passage, implementation, and adjudication of such blue-collar nativist hiring laws created increasingly disparate regimes of citizenship rights in key domains of employment.