Opening the Gates to Asia

Jane H. Hong is associate professor of history at Occidental College.
For more information about Jane H. Hong, visit the Author Page.

“Hong . . . advances the history of the repeal of Asian exclusion in the US beyond its longstanding pre–WW II focus on China and Japan. She instead concentrates on the years between the war and the landmark 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. In that period she finds complex interaction between domestic and international developments that affected the status of immigrants from India and the Philippines, as well as those from China and Japan. . . . As the author mines public and private research sources across the Pacific, she keenly elucidates these questions and hints that this is merely part of a much larger analysis of post–WW II immigration.”--CHOICE

"By exploring the nuances and negotiations that took place among Asian Americans, Asian nationalists, and white elites in Washington, Hong provides both a forthright critique of the limits of American racial liberalism as well as a far richer understanding of repeal."--Pacific Historical Review

"I have studied American immigration and racial history extensively, yet Hong’s book revealed a plethora of new information to me. Hong’s efforts to expand the history of Asian exclusion and its repeal have resulted in a significant work. It is a must read for any scholar interested in American immigration history."--Southern California Quarterly

"Jane Hong offers an impressive examination of the multiple forces that shaped America’s repeal of Asian exclusion, and adds depth and nuance to U.S. immigration history, braiding it with the history of U.S. diplomacy and civil rights. By investigating the dismantling of the Asian exclusion regime, Hong refines understandings about the United States’s growing internationalism and underscores its transpacific shift during the early twentieth century."--Cindy I-Fen Cheng, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"This book contains compelling analysis, astute observations, and a number of new and important sources. Hong makes intriguing and complex arguments while tracing the complicated transpacific struggle for repealing exclusion."--Charlotte Brooks, Baruch College

"Opening the Gates to Asia is a stunning and original work that offers a comprehensive analysis of how the United States liberalized its exclusionary immigration policy. Jane Hong emphasizes the significance of the global and the international by foregrounding U.S. empire (as it transformed from a formal to an informal one), the influence of Asian and Asian American political actors within an expansive geography, and a comparative understanding of civil rights and social movements. This book, based on extensive archival research, brings into conversation disparate fields of study to offer a transpacific analysis of the intertwining of U.S. imperial and immigration policies."--Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, University of California, Irvine