Indian, Filipino Americans suffered from legal racism

Dear Editor,
Last July 4, Guyanese and other Americans celebrated the 240th anniversary since the United States declared its independence from Britain. It is a date that Guyanese should not forget for another reason. As a note of history, Indians (and that would include Indo-Guyanese) were not allowed to become naturalised citizens until the eve of the independence celebration of 1946 after the victory of WWII that ended in late 1945.
The Luce-Celler Act of 1946, signed on July 3, allowed Indians and Filipinos to be naturalised. The Act overturned federal immigration laws that discriminated against Indians and Filipinos by reopening immigration from India and the Philippines and allowing those nationalities (regardless of race) to become US citizens through the naturalisation process.
Prior to the passage of the Luce-Celler Act, only “white persons born in India were eligible to naturalisation in the US”. French, English, Portuguese nationals born in India could become US citizens, but Indians were barred from entry except as students, visitors, and tourists. There were few in each of those categories as Indians preferred to study in England and there were few Indians who went abroad as tourists.
Before the Second World War, US sought to enlist nationals of those countries to fight on its side against the Axis powers that threatened to destroy Europe and American interests. Many Filipinos and Indians enlisted and fought for the US, with many dying or injured in combat. The families of the dead and the injured soon found that they could not immigrate to the US and become citizens because of the legal discrimination against them as people of colour. Discriminatory restrictions on entry in the US for those Indians and Filipinos who survived combat remained in force. Analogously, the US allowed whites from India and other countries, including those who did not fight for America, to immigrate and become naturalised.
Feeling a sense of guilt, the Congress passed the Luce-Celler Act that permitted Indians and Filipinos who had legal status in the US to become citizens. The Act also activated an earlier law (approved some 40 years earlier and that was never put into effect) that allowed for a quota of 100 Indian immigrants per year. When a wave of Indian immigrants arrived in the US in the late 19th century, the US passed the Naturalization Act of 1870, denying Indians and other Asians the right of naturalisation. The racial discrimination against Indians stemmed from the court’s interpretation of “the Caucasian race”. Although Indians are considered as belonging to the Caucasian race, the court concluded that they were not “white” to be granted US citizenship; only whites were allowed citizenship. The Act also ended de jure discrimination against Filipinos. As the Philippines became officially independent from the US in 1946, Filipinos would have been barred from immigrating without the Act. Upon becoming citizens, the new Indian and Filipino Americans could now own homes and farmland and petition for family from their nation of birth, although only a maximum of 100 from each country were allowed per annum.
There were only about 2500 Indians who were eligible for naturalisation at the time of the Act. Those Indians who fought on the side of the US were not allowed into the country. It was most unfortunate that those Indians and Filipinos who shed their blood for America suffered racial humiliation, intolerance and exclusion. It was hardly different from the Hitlerite racism and theory of racial superiority they were called upon to fight and gave their lives.
According to literature on the issue, support for the Luce-Celler Bill came from “diverse segments of American society, including colleges and universities, churches, writers and intellectuals, corporations, and Indian Americans themselves”. Among those who supported the bill were “W E B DuBois, Albert Einstein, Pearl S Buck, and Upton Sinclair”, all notable Americans. The great Einstein praised the Bill as being “an advantage for the US and in general for the stabilisation of peace and prosperity in the international sphere”.
The literature also noted that Luce-Celler Act was inspired by the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1943, “which addressed Japanese propaganda that pointed repeatedly to Chinese exclusion from the US”. The US Government felt it was in “its interest to extend a similar gesture of goodwill to India to ensure the country would remain a stalwart against Japanese imperialism in Asia”. The US realised it needed to cement India’s friendship after the war as the colony was on the verge of getting independence, conditionality for it joining the war effort. Millions of Indians fought alongside the Allied Powers in WWII and over a million Indians died or were injured in that war. Aside from the benefits accrued to the US by Indian soldiers and investors, the Act addressed the ongoing struggle for racial equality in America.
Yours truly,
Vishnu Bisram