page_title: Institutional racism
section_title: In immigration
hierarchical_section_title: Institutional racism / United States / In immigration
caption_attribution_description: English: Audience inside the Azteca Theater, Houston, TX
context_page_description: Institutional racism is a form of racism that is embedded as normal practice within society or an organization. It can lead to such issues as discrimination in criminal justice, employment, housing, health care, political power, and education, among other issues.
  The term "institutional racism" was first coined in 1967 by Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton in Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. Carmichael and Hamilton wrote that while individual racism is often identifiable because of its overt nature, institutional racism is less perceptible because of its "less overt, far more subtle" nature. Institutional racism "originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than [individual racism]".
  Institutional racism was defined by Sir William Macpherson in the UK's Lawrence report as: "The collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin.
context_section_description: The previous sections talk about institutional racism against black people or communities; however, Eastern and Southern Europeans who were white at various times were discriminated against. Many other minorities also suffered from institutional racism. One example is immigration policies against Chinese. The intensified job competition during the 1870s on the West Coast between Chinese workers and Whites invoked anti-Chinese movement. The first Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was passed to prohibit Chinese immigrating to the United States, resulting in only 10 Chinese immigrants into the U.S. in 1887. The labor shortage after the decline of Chinese immigrant labor proved the fact of White racism. For more information, see History of Chinese Americans. There were other anti-immigration policies in history against France and Ireland in the late 1700s (see Opposition to immigration), Southern Europeans, Eastern Europeans, Jews, Africans, Arabs, East Asians, and Indians (see Immigration Act of 1924). Anti-immigration sentiment can also affect minorities who have been U.S. citizens for several generations (see Internment of Japanese Americans and Mexican Repatriation). Later growth in immigration was fueled by changes engendered by the 1965 Immigration Act, reversing the national origins quota system in place since the 1920s, which discriminated against certain ethnic minorities, particularly those originating in the eastern hemisphere.
  Between 1929 and 1939, during the Great Depression, close to one million Chicanos of Mexican descent were deported or pressured to leave the US. About half of them were US citizens, most of whom had never crossed U.S. borders or traveled to Mexico. The campaign was a response to migration west of the Oakies and housing and wage labor shortages in California during the Great Depression. The Secretary of Labor in the Hoover administration, William N. Doak (Hoovervilles) scapegoated "illegal immigrants" (migrant workers) as taking jobs from Americans. While not specifying Mexicans, the practice targeted for removal anyone who even vaguely looked Mexican. In 1931, the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, the Wickersham Commission found the methods employed by Doak's underlings to be unconstitutional. The Policy continued into the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
  In 'Decade of Betrayal', social history professor Raymond Rodriguez documented that history of the Mexican Repatriation, a social history of the 1930s focusing on an estimated 1 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans unjustly deported or scared into leaving their homes in the United States by federal and local officials seeking remedies for the Great Depression. Rodriguez and co-author Francisco Balderrama wrote the 1995 book, which sparked legislative hearings and formal apologies from the state of California and Los Angeles County officials.
  In carrying out these policies, local welfare and profitable charitable agencies along with the police intensified the targeting of the Chicanos.
  According to Hoffman, "from 1931 on, cities and counties across the country intensified and embarked upon repatriation programs, conducted under the auspices of either local welfare bureaus or private charitable agencies". The Los Angeles chairman of the board of supervisors' charities and public welfare committee, (and later LA Mayor) Frank L. Shaw had researched about the legality of deportation but was advised by legal counsel that only the federal government was legally allowed to engage in deportation proceedings. As a result, the L.A. County supervisors decided that their campaign would be called "repatriation", which Balderrama asserts was a euphemism for deportation.
  C.P. Visel, the spokesman for Los Angeles Citizens Committee for Coordination of Unemployment Relief began his "unemployment relief measure" that would create a "psychological gesture" intended to "scarehead" Mexicans out of the United States. His idea was to have a series of "publicity releases announcing the deportation campaign, a few arrests would be made 'w
caption: Interior Azteca Theater, Houston Texas, 15 July 1927
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