Expelling The PoorAtlantic Seaboard States & the 19th-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy

Hidetaka Hirota

The hordes of Irish immigrants who came to North America in the 19th century were more often paupers, traumatized by famine, disease, war and social injustice. Their transatlantic migration to eastern seaboard cities like Montreal, Boston, New York and Philadelphia is well documented. Less understood is how rampant anti-Irish nativism toward these immigrants had far-reaching effects on America’s immigration policies. Professor Hirota, whose book began as a doctoral dissertation at Boston College under the direction of Professor Kevin Kenny, has produced a groundbreaking study of how anti-Irish regulations eventually led to restrictive federal regulations that helped shape immigration policy in the United States. Hirota reveals how states like New York and Massachusetts used colonial poor laws to not only exclude Irish immigrants, but to send them back to Ireland before they could get settled.

Oxford University Press | 320 pp / $37 / 2017