Stranger Citizens: Migrant Influence and National Power in the Early American Republic

Abstract

Even for established early modern nation-states, the question of citizenship, the rights it confers, and the rights of resident aliens and migrants were subjective political sticky wickets. For a new nation, congealed from the Atlantic mélange of the British Empire, the issue was still more mucky. Add to that the universal and global nature of America's natural rights' revolutionary philosophy, the emergent American republican identity that thrust new political duties and expectations upon average men (usually white), and the new nation's need for open trade and an expanding labor force, and the issue clouded even further. John McNelis O'Keefe candidly touts the relevancy of this study given the policies of the previous administration, but it is just as relevant for the prior 240 years. In a republic such as the United States, the rights and duties of citizens, residents, and migrants are paramount yet evolving concerns in which the powerless contest with the powerful for the control of vital resources—among them their lives, liberty, and their pursuits of happiness.