Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2017 July 30

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July 30

Enforcement method for extreme US anti-immigration law

File:Asiatic Barred Zone.png

To contain the Yellow Peril, the Immigration Act of 1917 established the Asiatic Barred Zone, from which the U.S. admitted no immigrants.

Is this caption correct ? I found this pic in the Yellow Peril article but not the one mentioned in the caption (until I added it there). Splitting the exclusion zone up by longitude and latitude in many nations doesn't seem practical, as would-be immigrants aren't likely to even know what coords they came from, much less be able to prove it. So, if the Act really did do this, was it enforced just by banning all immigration from nations mostly in the zone and allowing all immigration from nations mostly outside it ? Or did they just take the word of would-be immigrants from split nations as to which side of the line they were on ? If neither, then how exactly did they enforce it ? StuRat (talk) 12:02, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

The act really did set boundaries by longitude and latitude, but it refers to "any country, province or dependency" that was within the appllcable zone. Logically, this means that if you came from a "country, province or dependency" that the boundary passed through, then you weren't affected—but I have no idea of how immigration officials treated this in practice, which is what the question asks about. --69.159.60.147 (talk) 20:16, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

It should be noted that the lines of latitude and longitude are drawn here to skirt the Treaty ports of China from the excluded zone. This may have more to do with the realpolitik of dealing with the European powers that controlled those treaty ports; the lines seem rather to be drawn to avoid creating conflict with the European powers that controlled those ports, perhaps because of the trade issues that an embargo of this nature would have created. --Jayron32 12:04, 31 July 2017 (UTC)