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Chinese and Latin American people were encouraged to come to the United States as laborers (miners). The employers liked them because they were cheap labor. But, the white people here primarily the Irish and the German felt threatened, and that their jobs were being taken. This prompted the Foreign Miners Tax which placed a tax on Chinese and Mexican immigrants. This was done in hopes of discouraging further immigration.

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The Ostend Manifesto, written by James Buchanan, was a document urging the United States to purchase Cuba from Spain. The reason that people wanted the United States to take over Cuba was because they wanted to expand slavery. This reasoning sparked tensions between the North and South, contributing to the Civil War.

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The Homestead Act, signed by Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, states that all adult citizens, who has never bear arms against the United States are granted 160 acres of government land with the incentive that the landowners would live on the land and cultivate the land. This act encourages settlements in the west and westward expansion. It also meant that immigrants, slaves, women, and other minority groups who can gain citizenship were able to own land legally in the United States.

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The Spanish government frees all the slaves it owns in Cuba and Puerto Rico, as well as all slaves 60 and older in the Moret Law. In Puerto Rico, this resulted in the freeing of around 10,000 out of a total of 40,000 slaves, but the law was never really enforced in Cuba, as this would have resulted in the freeing of a much higher proportion of enslaved people (357,000 out of 950,000). Although an important step forward, it fell well short of ending slavery on Spanish-held soil.
Moret Law
Background

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(Lila C.)In 1900, after the end of the Spanish-American war, the United States began deciding what territory they wanted. When Puerto Rico came into question about what they were going to do with it, Joseph Foraker, who is pictured above came up with the plan that Puerto Rico would get a seat on the senate, but could not vote. This has impacted Puerto Ricans and Latino people because they are being controlled and governed by the United States, but have absolutely no control over anything that happens, when every other state does.

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1898 -- With the goal of “civilizing Puerto Ricans,” public education was changed so that English was the sole medium of instruction in all grades.   This led to a succession of language policies in Puerto Rico over the next 70 years.  

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1898 -- With the goal of “civilizing Puerto Ricans,” public education was changed so that English was the sole medium of instruction in all grades.   This led to a succession of language policies in Puerto Rico over the next 70 years.  

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On December 10th 1898, the Treaty of Paris was signed. Under the Treaty of Paris, Puerto Rico ceded to the US. This caused the US to then implement new language policy. This included all high school classes were to be taught in English instead of Spanish which was the most known language there. They did this because they wanted Puerto Rican boys and girls to advocate for American colonialism.

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Previously the "Frontier Ranger Battalion", after new legislation was passed in 1901, the "Texas rangers" or " Los diablos tejanos" (The Texan devils) were founded. They were a group of law enforcement tasked with "protecting" the Mexican border. This came from a lack of resource for a proper military, but need for protection from perceived hostilities at the Mexican border. Divided into Companies of 20 men, these gray-area law enforcers were a dangerous and violent group. An investigation revealed they killed anywhere between 300 and 5,000 hispanic men, women, and children. They did execution-style killings, and also lynched.

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1901 Platt Amendment (Douglas Griffiths)

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1901 Platt Amendment (Douglas Griffiths)

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During the Spanish-American war America had a large military force stationed in Cuba. Once the war ended America signed a treaty with Cuba forcing Cuba to give what is now known as Guantanamo Bay as well as allowing America to intervene for the "preservation of Cuban independence" basically forcing Cuba in a subservient position to the United States

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1904 -- A Step to Puerto Rican Citizenship 

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1904 -- A Step to Puerto Rican Citizenship 

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In 1904, Isabel González paved the way for Puerto Ricans to become American citizens. She was a Puerto Rican activist who wanted to go to the Unites States to find the father of her unborn child. When she arrived, she was excluded as an alien, which led to her challenging the government in the case Gonzales v. Williams. This case brought light to the issue of citizenship status of those who live in territories acquired by the United States.

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1912--New Mexico's Path to Statehood Often Faltered

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1912--New Mexico's Path to Statehood Often Faltered

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On January 6, New Mexico enters the union as a "bilingual state." A main reason why they were not entered earlier was the fears Americans had regarding "New Mexico's essentially foreign culture." On the other hand, part of the want to include New Mexico in the union was their impressive economy and population size. However, in the State Constitution, it was ruled that schools could not be segregated based on "Spanish descent."

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There was a sea here once, a sea that slowly dried while mountains pushed up and broad valleys and mesas filled with grasses and forests. Volcanoes erupted in molten fury, sharp-clawed sloths and woolly mammoths lived and died and left their bones. And finally, man began walking on this ground we now call home.

Folsom Man, Clovis Man, the Basket Makers, the Anasazi. People came, lived and moved on. Apaches, Navajo and Pueblo people settled and stayed. Spaniards and Mexicans came and stayed, too, looking for riches, claiming the land and raising their flags.

Ancient history? Yes. New Mexico's road to statehood in 1912 really began on a summer's day in 1846, when an American Army general and his men crossed over Raton Pass.

Before that day, New Mexico's history was not leading toward American statehood. "What we were on a trajectory here was to be eventually a Mexican state," said state historian Rick Hendricks. "It took a war to put us on the road to statehood."

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But those early years - who we were, where our parents and grandparents were born, our skin color, language and religion, even our landscape and the minerals under our ground - had direct and indirect bearing on our long and tortured road to being admitted to the union.

New Mexico's dance with statehood was slowed by a host of factors, including partisan politics here and in Washington, D.C., reluctance among New Mexicans to take the leap and a series of bad luck and odd happenstance.

But a theme arises again and again between the time the Stars and Stripes was first raised in Santa Fe in 1846 and New Mexico's admittance as the 47th state in the Union 66 years later.

Historian Robert W. Larson, a University of New Mexico alumnus who wrote the definitive history of the drive to statehood, sums up the prevailing obstacle over six decades: "... an unfortunate but instinctive distrust of New Mexico's essentially foreign culture was the last and most durable brick added to the strong wall of opposition that prevented the territory from joining the Union until 1912."

American nativism raised its head again and again as a dubious nation looked at New Mexico and saw "a race speaking an alien language" (as one congressman put it) and "the heart of our worst civilization ... with all the signs of ignorance and sloth" (the New York Times) and made sure the door to statehood stayed firmly closed.
Inauspicious beginning
What is now New Mexico was a land unto itself when Gen. Stephen Kearny and the American Army took it for the United States in the summer of 1846. The troops met no resistance as they marched to Santa Fe in Mexico's most northern holding, but that did not mean the people, who had lived under the crown of Spain and the Republic of Mexico for nearly 250 years, welcomed the change.

Skirmishes erupted, the new civilian government crawled forward in fits and starts in frequent conflict with military rule, and the governor was scalped alive.

Col. Sterling Price, who was left to deal with New Mexico as Kearny and his troops quickly headed farther west, put it dryly: "The opinion that New Mexicans are favorably inclined to the United States government is entirely erroneous."

In 1848, with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War, New Mexico was annexed to the United States.

Two years later New Mexicans had hammered out a Constitution and brought it before the voters, who approved it 8,371 to 39. It was an overwhelming endorsement of a new form of government.

But New Mexico's fate was not in its own hands. The debate over slavery was splitting the nation, and Congress was uncomfortable admitting new states that might tip the balance. When President Zachary Taylor, a proponent of statehood for New Mexico, died in July 1850, an early and easy entry into the union was doomed.

Instead, Congress settled New Mexico's eastern boundary dispute with Texas and created the Territory of New Mexico, a large swath that included most of modern-day Arizona and part of southern Colorado.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had come with the promise that New Mexico would be admitted to the union "at the proper time," and the New Mexico Territory would spend the next 64 years waiting to find out when that would be.
Nothing comes easy
Who lived in the young territory? The population was a little more than 61,000 in 1850 and inhabitants were natives of Mexican, Spanish and American Indian descent with an ever-growing smattering of Anglo newcomers who had traveled the Santa Fe Trail for trapping and trade.

The Roman Catholic Church was an integral part of daily life and political sway, and Spanish and native languages were spoken as often as English. Larson, in his book "New Mexico's Quest for Statehood," notes that New Mexicans once elected as one of their nonvoting territorial representatives in Congress a Catholic priest who spoke only Spanish and required a translator.

The population of the territory was not united on the question of whether New Mexico would be better off as a state or a territory. And that wrangling, which waxed and waned with arguments about taxes, land mass, political influence and the role of the Catholic Church, would go on for decades.

As the years clicked by, Congress brought more and more states into the union and took up statehood for New Mexico a half-dozen times. It came within a whisker of approving it on more than one occasion.

Each time a bill was introduced, many of the same arguments were made. On the plus side, New Mexico met and exceeded the population requirement, it had established public schools and developed a strong livestock industry. On the negative side, New Mexico was predominantly Hispano, its adults were largely illiterate and its language and culture were very different from the "Americans" who were deciding who would join them as a nation.

Easterners' prejudices were only buoyed by reports of gunslinging in the Lincoln and Colfax county wars and even by the testimony of territorial Gov. Lew Wallace's wife, who described the local housing as "a collection of brick kilns" and opined that under statehood "the Americans would bear the taxes and the Mexicans hold all the offices."

The modern perception is that outside forces continually deprived New Mexico of joining the union, but state historian Hendricks points out that "New Mexico did it to itself on several occasions."

In 1866, a constitutional convention adjourned without taking action when a quorum failed to show up in Santa Fe. In 1890, voters rejected a constitution by more than two to one.

"The reasons that keep New Mexico from being a state that are put forward - they're primarily Hispanic, they're Roman Catholic, they don't speak English, they're poorly educated - those four things that keep coming up over and over and over probably wouldn't have been issues," Hendricks said, if the people and their leaders had been united in their desire to push for becoming a state.
Welcome to Montezuma
As the years rolled by, neighboring Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Idaho managed to find their stars on the American flag.

As the 20th century dawned, New Mexico's population had reached nearly 200,000. The state was crisscrossed by railroads and Fred Harvey hotels, and its fortunes began to change.

In 1902, Congress took up a bill to bring Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona into the union, and rather than speculating about odd and foreign territories, members of a Senate committee actually toured New Mexico to see and hear from her citizens.

The bill died in the Senate the next year, but two years later statehood popped up again - this time with a proposal to bring New Mexico and Arizona into the union as one state, known as "Montezuma."

The rationale for "Montezuma" was that combining Arizona's smaller population with New Mexico's larger population would constitute a more appropriate congressional representation than if they were admitted separately. New Mexico's territorial delegate, Bernard Rodey, made the case that the two territories contained distinct populations and were separated by a mountain range. That proposal died, but it came up again the next year.

In 1906 the joint Arizona-New Mexico state was to be called "Arizona" and have its capital in Santa Fe. Congress approved the joint state but allowed New Mexicans and Arizonans a referendum on the idea. New Mexicans approved the measure, but Arizona voted it down and the joint state idea was quieted.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma managed to become a state in 1907.

In 1910, the U.S. Census recorded the population of the New Mexico Territory as 327,301. A dozen railroads were in full swing and the president of the United States, William Howard Taft, had paid a visit.

Had the time finally come for the bricks to be removed from the wall of opposition? A new state constitution was written, Congress took up statehood for New Mexico and Arizona once again. It took eight months of negotiations - with objections that Arizona's constitution made judicial recall too easy and New Mexico's made amendments too difficult - but on Aug. 21, 1911, Taft signed the bill promising statehood to both New Mexico and Arizona.

Less than five months later, on Jan. 6, 1912, New Mexico became the 47th star on the flag when Taft signed the New Mexico statehood bill. (Arizona joined the union a little more than a month later.)

New Mexicans officially became Americans and inaugurated the first popularly elected governor, William McDonald.

How did the long march to statehood influence who we are today? The results of being late to the party of America were probably more psychological than practical, according to Hendricks.

"I think certainly it affected how New Mexicans viewed themselves and thought other people viewed them," he says. "The citizens of New Mexico didn't have all the rights and privileges of a citizen of the United States for a long time, and I think that's a big thing."

Keeping the door to statehood closed for a people who looked and spoke and lived differently from the rest of ethnically European America was also a black mark on the young nation, Hendricks says.

"New Mexico had all the particulars we needed. We had an economy that was sufficient. We had sufficient population. We had a body politic that had been involved in electing representatives to Congress," Hendricks says. But "New Mexico was unique in being as Mexican as it was, and maybe that was just too much for the eastern United States to swallow. It was just a very, very different place. I think for the country probably it's a very unfortunate episode."

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New Mexico's path to statehood often faltered

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There was a sea here once, a sea that slowly dried while mountains pushed up and broad valleys and mesas filled with grasses and forests. Volcanoes erupted in molten fury, sharp-clawed sloths and woolly mammoths lived and died and left their bones. And finally, man began walking on this ground we now call home.

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In 1915, this League was founded by Mexicans in Arizona in order to support the Latino population and oversee any potentially harmful legislation from the government. The League claimed more than 500 members and was founded by the man above, Manuel Gonzales. To join, members each paid $1 the first year and $5 annually. The League sought legislation in order to protective these individuals.

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The Immigration Act (or the Asiatic Barred Zone Act) was put in place to filter people immigrating to the US, including but not limited to: idiots, imbeciles, people with diseases and the poor. To be able to tell who was essentially intelligent or not, immigrants were given literacy tests. The barred zone, in which no one from this area was allowed to enter the U.S. at any given time, was from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. Though it wasn't necessarily barred, one of the goals of this act was to limit the amount of Europeans entering the United States. Part of this act required "aliens" to pay $8 tax regularly admitted.

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Summary

This law is best known for its creation of a "barred zone" extending from the Middle East to Southeast Asia from which no persons were allowed to enter the United States. Its main restriction, however, consisted of a literacy test intended to reduce European immigration, with exemptions for those who could show they were fleeing persecution. It had taken Congress two decades to enact a literacy test, after repeated vetoes by the White House. They were successful amid heightened fears of immigration and the spread of radicalism during World War I and the Russian Revolution. This law also further clarified funding and administrative procedures to facilitate enforcement of immigration laws and expanded excludable classes of immigrants.

Source

CHAP. 29.-An Act To regulate the immigration of aliens to, and the residence of aliens in, the United States.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled . . . .

SEC. 2. That there shall be levied, collected, and paid a tax of $8 for every alien, including alien seamen regularly admitted as provided in this Act, entering the United States . . . .

SEC. 3. That the following classes of aliens shall be excluded from admission into the United States: All idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, insane persons: persons who have had one or more attacks of insanity at any time previously; persons of constitutional psychopathic inferiority; persons with chronic alcoholism; paupers . . . persons afflicted with tuberculosis in any form or with a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease; persons . . . mentally or physically defective . . . persons who have been convicted of or admit having committed a felony or other crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude; polygamists . . . anarchists . . . prostitutes . . . persons who directly or indirectly procure or attempt to procure or import prostitutes . . . contract laborers . . . persons likely to become a public charge; persons who have been deported under any of the provisions of this Act . . . persons whose tickets or passage is paid for with the money of another . . . stowaways . . . all children under sixteen years of age, unaccompanied by or not coming to one or both of their parents, except that any such children may, in the discretion of the Secretary of Labor, be admitted if in his opinion they are not likely to become a public charge and are otherwise eligible;

[Barred Zone]

unless otherwise provided for by existing treaties, persons who are natives of islands not possessed by the United States adjacent to the Continent of Asia . . . The provision next foregoing, however, shall not apply to persons of the following status or occupations: Government officers, ministers or religious teachers, missionaries, lawyers, physicians, chemists, civil engineers, teachers, students, authors, artists, merchants, and travelers for curiosity or pleasure, nor to their legal, wives or their children under sixteen years of age who shall accompany them or who subsequently may apply for admission to the United States . . .

[Literacy Requirement]

That after three months from the passage of this Act, in addition to the aliens who are by law now excluded from admission into the United States, the following persons shall also be excluded from admission thereto, to wit: All aliens over sixteen years of age, physically capable of reading, who can not read the English language, or some other language or dialect, including Hebrew or Yiddish . . . .

[Asylum Exception]

That the following classes of persons shall be exempt from the operation of the illiteracy test, to wit: All aliens who shall prove to the satisfaction of the proper immigration officer or to the Secretary of Labor that they are seeking admission to the United States to avoid religious persecution in the country of their last permanent residence, whether such persecution be evidenced by overt acts or by laws or governmental regulations that discriminate against the alien or the race to which he belongs because of his religious faith;

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Immigration Act of 1917 (Barred Zone Act) - Immigration History

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Although this law is best known for its creation of a "barred zone" extending from the Middle East to Southeast Asia from which no persons were allowed to enter the United States, its main restriction consisted of a literacy test intended to reduce European immigration.

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On March 2nd of 1917, President Wilson signed the Jones-Shafroth Act which granted Puerto Ricans statutory US citizenship. This means that the citizenship was granted by the Congress and not by the Constitution. As a result, the act created a bill of rights for Puerto Rico which separated its government into the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches. The country’s official language is also determined to be English. In addition, Puerto Ricans could now participate in U.S elections and send a non-voting representative to the congress.

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In addition to granting U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans, the Jones-Shafroth Act separated powers among the island's three branches of government and established a bill of rights. With the outbreak of World War I, U.S. officials viewed Puerto Rico as vital to protecting the newly-opened Panama Canal. The act was viewed as a way to strengthen the bonds between the island and the mainland.

Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives and Records Administration

Puerto Ricans served with distinction in both world wars. About a month before the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones-Shafroth Act, which granted Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship. Two months later Congress enacted the Selective Service Act of 1917, eventually making all Puerto Rican men between the ages of 18 and 45 eligible for the draft. In total, approximately 20,000 Puerto Ricans served in World War I and 65,000 served in World War II.
We are conferring on them what they ought to have had years ago . . . the privilege of being American citizens and being placed under the protection of our flag.
Representative Horace M. Towner of Iowa, Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives, February 24, 1917

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H.R. 9533, An Act to provide a civil government for Porto Rico (Jones-Shafroth Act), June 30, 1916

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In addition to granting U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans, the Jones-Shafroth Act separated powers among the island's three branches of government and established a bill of rights. With the outbreak of World War I, U.S. officials viewed Puerto Rico as vital to protecting the newly-opened Panama Canal.

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In 1928, Octaviano Ambrosio Larrazolo became the first Hispanic American to serve in the U.S senate. The previous Senator serving before him, was Andrieus A. Jones, who was the New Mexico senator. When he was in office he passed away, so Larrazolo got elected to fill his unexpired term. Larrazolo who was born in Chihuahua, Mexico took his seat on December 7th, 1928.

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In 1928 Octaviano Ambrosio Larrazolo was elected to fill the unexpired term of New Mexico senator Andrieus A. Jones, who had died in office. Upon taking his seat on December 7 of that year, he became the first Hispanic American to serve in the United States Senate. Larrazolo, who was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, on December 7, 1859, was known as a gifted orator and a champion of civil rights. A former teacher and principal, he was devoted to achieving equality in education for Spanish-speaking Americans. At the 1910 New Mexico constitutional convention, Larrazolo was instrumental in securing the inclusion of a provision recognizing the Spanish language for use in conducting public business. His commitment to ensuring equal citizenship rights for Hispanics led to his break with New Mexico's Democratic Party in 1911. In 1918 he was elected as a Republican to the office of governor of New Mexico. His brief three-month service in the Senate 10 years later opened the doors for other Hispanic Americans.

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Octaviano Larrazolo: A Featured Biography

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In 1928 Octaviano Ambrosio Larrazolo was elected to fill the unexpired term of New Mexico senator Andrieus A. Jones, who had died in office. Upon taking his seat on December 7 of that year, he became the first Hispanic American to serve in the United States Senate.

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The League of United Latin American Citizens, also known as LULAC is founded in 1929. The group is made because of the concerning amounts of discrimination and hatred that Latin Americans are receiving at the time. The growing Mexican American population after the Mexican War were being segregated and discriminated against so harshly that they decided they needed to create an organization to defend themselves. With this in mind three groups are founded: The League of Latin American Citizens, The Knights of America, and The Order of the Sons of America. Eventually, in February of 1929 these three groups combine and form LULAC with Ben Garza as their president. The group fought against the horrid discrimination that Mexican Americans were facing in the time of the groups creation and even now to this day the group fights for equality among all Latin people.

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At the height of the Great Depression, Mexican Immigrants an Mexican Americans were rounded up by the government and sent to to Mexico. This was because of President Hoover’s campaign in the 1930s: “American jobs for real Americans.” Local laws were passed to forbid any government employment of people of Mexican descent. Other companies like Ford followed suit. The bad economy during the time caused Americans to easily find Mexicans as a scapegoat for the countries’ problems. Research showed that about 1.8 million Mexicans were deported during the crises of the 1930s, and 60% of those people were full American citizens. This is significant today to Mexicans, Latinx people, Hispanics, and Spanish people because during Trump’s presidency, the ICE raids and zero-tolerance policy was all-too similar to the Harris Bill and we need to recognize that when our country is in a political or economic crisis, it is never a reasonable solution to target a single group of people for a whole country’s problem.