Bootlegged Aliens: Immigration Politics on America's Northern Border by Ashley Johnson Bavery

Reviewed by: Bootlegged Aliens: Immigration Politics on America's Northern Border by Ashley Johnson Bavery Joel Stone Ashley Johnson Bavery. Bootlegged Aliens: Immigration Politics on America's Northern Border. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. Pp. 290. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Hardcover: $49.95. This is an engaging historical combination—an explosive and personal topic, from a dynamic and complicated time, that is seldom discussed in fine detail. Ashley Johnson Bavery's volume looks at political and legislative trends in the 1920s and 1930s related to illegal immigration in Canada and the United States. Seen largely through the lens of activity in Detroit, Michigan, and the border cities of Ontario immediately across the Detroit [End Page 142] River, it includes a close examination of related social and economic factors driving these trends. As the title suggests, this timeline meshes perfectly with the era of national alcohol prohibition or restriction in both countries, and the related—and highly successful—smuggling industry that developed with Detroit as ground zero. Many volumes have been written about the colorful life of rumrunners, fast boats, and gangsters. Also well covered in literature of the period are the open conflicts between labor and industry, conservatives and communists, poor residents and the police, and idealistic citizens and corrupt politicians. Detroit offered the perfect landscape for study in this regard. Bootlegged Aliens sets itself apart by drawing all of these factors into a compelling and in-depth narrative specifically about immigration. The account begins by establishing the deep schism that illegal immigration caused in Detroit's neighborhoods. On one side were legacy citizens and the first- or second-generation Western Europeans who had established themselves in the nineteenth century. On the other side were the newcomers, largely Southern and Eastern Europeans, Asians, and poor migrants from the American South. The terms "foreign" and "undesirable" took a broad brush to entire ethnic communities, tainting both legal and illegal residents. The fear of deportation was a powerful influence in many Detroit factories and homes, and some of the eugenics-fostered propaganda was frighteningly similar to tropes of the same period flowing from Germany and Britain. An important task for this author was outlining various legislative initiatives, the forces behind them, and their ultimate human cost. She successfully defined the personalities surrounding assorted immigration laws and policies, and how these affected everything from local mayoral politics to Depression Era welfare efforts and reforms. Indeed, then as now, the topic of immigration created strange bedfellows, perhaps best exemplified by the cooperation between the Nativist Detroit Federation of Labor and progressive reformer Frank Murphy. Stylistically, this book defines the implications of various initiatives with specific examples, sprinkled liberally throughout the pages, that bring people to life and emphasize how personal and human this story was. These are refreshing and enlightening. Editorially, with highly focused treatises a degree of repetition is to be expected in contextual explanation [End Page 143] and terminology. Here, it distracts from this volume's dense, well-cited data and broad context. Bavery establishes that the smuggling of immigrants, and the resulting campaigns to either encourage or hinder their success in Detroit and the border cities, had powerful implications for various social and political trends of this era, and for decades afterward. A century later, as both nations face much the same rhetorical invectives and passionate politicking related to immigration, this work adds perspective to our long history of protection and exclusion. Joel Stone Detroit Historical Society Copyright © 2022 Historical Society of Michigan

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