Anti-Immigration Rhetoric in the United States of America: From the Chinese Exclusion Act to Donald Trump’s First Presidential Term

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign of 2015/16 marks a turning point in the use of inflammatory anti-immigration rhetoric. This paper will examine how this moment has once again magnified a specific type of discourse around race. Under the Trump administration, the call for immigration control at borders, building walls, as well as stopping immigration altogether for selected nationalities, has come into the center of public and political debates. However, today’s discourse on immigration, security, and exclusion can be traced back to examples of public and political discourse at various times in the history of the United States. Moreover, solutions for the immigration “problem” from the 19th and early 20th century still resonate in today’s debates on restrictions and exclusions of immigrants. The paper analyses the anti-immigration rhetoric in media products from different historical moments to trace the genealogy of exclusivist and discriminatory discourse and politics.