Defectives in the Land : Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics

Defective. Handicapped. Ugly. Dependent. These words are Douglas Baynton s chapter titles, labels that were used to describe disabled immigrants during the period of American history when a series of laws were put in place to restrict immigration from less desirable nations (from Southern and Eastern Europe, 1882 to 1920s). Baynton s history details the ways in which a great variety of disabled immigrants were turned back during these years, among them the deaf, blind, epileptic, and mobility-impaired, also people with curved spines, hernias, flat or club feet, missing limbs, and short limbs, also those who had intellectual or psychiatric disability, even men diagnosed with poor physique or feminism (underdeveloped sex organs). The labels and defects are named in immigration policies and procedures; Baynton insists, quite reasonably, that immigration law offers the clearest revelation of the era s cultural assumptions about disability. One of his findings is that disability, even more than race (which is usually highlighted in immigration histories), was the main concern of immigration restrictionists. Over time, the idea that disabled people were dependent, and thus a burden, got amplified and became a social issue, not confined to family or local community. Meanwhile, the stigma of visible defects grew in intensity, along with the fear of traits that could not be seen (germ theory, defective germ plasm, infectious diseases). Polluted heredity flowing into the future was an ever-present fear. Until now, with Defectives in the Land, the issue of discrimination against people with disabilities in immigration law has gone unrecognized and unexamined." "Baynton argues that screening out disability emerged as the primary objective of U.S. immigration policy during the late 19th and early 20th century." — Journal of Social History Immigration history has largely focused on the restriction of immigrants by race and ethnicity, overlooking disability as a crucial factor in the crafting of the image of the "undesirable immigrant." Defectives in the Land , Douglas C. Baynton's groundbreaking new look at immigration and disability, aims to change this. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Baynton explains, immigration restriction in the United States was primarily intended to keep people with disabilities—known as "defectives"—out of the country. The list of those included is long: the deaf, blind, epileptic, and mobility impaired; people with curved spines, hernias, flat or club feet, missing limbs, and short limbs; those unusually short or tall; people with intellectual or psychiatric disabilities; intersexuals; men of "poor physique" and men diagnosed with "feminism." Not only were disabled individuals excluded, but particular races and nationalities were also identified as undesirable based on their supposed susceptibility to mental, moral, and physical defects. In this transformative book, Baynton argues that early immigration laws were a cohesive whole—a decades-long effort to find an effective method of excluding people considered to be defective. This effort was one aspect of a national culture that was increasingly fixated on competition and efficiency, anxious about physical appearance and difference, and haunted by a fear of hereditary defect and the degeneration of the American race.