White Borders

The History of Race and Immigration in the United States from Chinese Exclusion to the Border Wall

By: Reece Jones

Narrated by: Jeremy Durm

“This powerful and meticulously argued book reveals that immigration crackdowns … [have] always been about saving and protecting the racist idea of a white America.”
—Ibram X. Kendi, award-winning author of Four Hundred Souls and Stamped from the Beginning

“A damning inquiry into the history of the border as a place where race is created and racism honed into a razor-sharp ideology.”
—Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The End of the Myth

Recent racist anti-immigration policies, from the border wall to the Muslim ban, have left many Americans wondering: How did we get here? In what readers call a “chilling and revelatory” account, Reece Jones reveals the painful answer: although the US is often mythologized as a nation of immigrants, it has a long history of immigration restrictions that are rooted in the racist fear of the “great replacement” of whites with non-white newcomers. After the arrival of the first slave ship in 1619, the colonies that became the United States were based on the dual foundation of open immigration for whites from Northern Europe and the racial exclusion of slaves from Africa, Native Americans, and, eventually, immigrants from other parts of the world.

Jones’s scholarship shines through his extensive research of the United States’ racist and xenophobic underbelly. He connects past and present to uncover the link between the Chinese Exclusion laws of the 1880s, the “Keep America American” nativism of the 1920s, and the “Build the Wall” chants initiated by former president Donald Trump in 2016. Along the way, we meet a bizarre cast of anti-immigration characters, such as John Tanton, Cordelia Scaife May, and Stephen Miller, who pushed fringe ideas about “white genocide” and “race suicide” into mainstream political discourse. Through gripping stories and in-depth analysis of major immigration cases, Jones explores the connections between anti-immigration hate groups and the Republican Party. What is laid bare after his examination is not just the intersection between white supremacy and anti-immigration bias but also the lasting impacts this perfect storm of hatred has had on United States law.

Critic reviews

“A highly recommended, in-depth history of migration that accounts for the lives affected by American border policing and immigration restrictions.”
—Library Journal, Starred Review

“The author’s ability to connect the dots is impressive—and depressing, since the politics of ethnic hatred persist.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Reece Jones explores the tragic, ludicrous, and endlessly violent creation and maintenance of America’s borders . . . Jones’s greatest contribution is to show the forces that really drove the Trump campaign.”
—Chicago Review of Books

“White Borders is a searing indictment of the US immigration restrictions from Chinese Exclusion through the Trump presidency. This powerful and meticulously argued book reveals that while immigration crackdowns are justified as protecting jobs and workers, they’ve always been about saving and protecting the racist idea of a white America.”
—Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist

“With eloquent prose and masterful storytelling, Reece Jones narrates the hard history of immigration policies of the US settler colonial state that was founded and rooted in white supremacy, from Chinese exclusion to the border wall.”
—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

“Reece Jones’s White Borders is a damning inquiry into the history of the border as a place where race is created and racism honed into a razor-sharp ideology. Deeply researched and movingly written, White Borders is an indispensable book.”
—Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The End of the Myth

“Reece Jones guides us through the long, tangled, and still developing history of how the United States came to know itself as a nation through the increasingly strict control of movement across its borders. Jones demonstrates in this assiduously researched and carefully crafted book that the nation’s borders are in fact central to making the state what it is: a key tool in the maintenance not just of white supremacy but of whiteness itself.”
—Brendan O’Connor, author of Blood Red Lines: How Nativism Fuels the Right

Real American History

In 2024 immigration is the hot issue but it’s far from the first time. Whether it’s called the Confederacy, Ku Klux Klan, Nazi or today’s Trump Christian Conservative the book shows the struggle of immigrants and laws made to keep whites in power.

This should replace all history books in schools

Well…it at least should be required reading by all American history students in high school.

As an immigration attorney I can attest to many of the arguments made in this book. The anecdotes are real. The fear most immigrants feel is debilitating. And the ignorance spouted off by the GOP about the “solutions” is racism couched as “economics”.

This country was founded by immigrants and all of our ancestors (I’m a white male with European ancestry) came here seeking refuge from oppression and economic opportunity. That is the SAME reason people come here today. Except now they come from mostly non-white countries and this terrifies a huge portion of our country who buys into the lies spread by conservative media. This book reveals these tactics are as old as our country itself and provides great context and history to this never-ending problem.

May we as Americans break free of this racial rhetoric and live up to our country’s original dream. People from around the world come here precisely because they still believe in us…and we all too often we fail them.

Very good book

This book does a good job of linking groups together that oppose immigration. It documents how the groups are founded and funded. And goes over a quick history of border enforcement to show the racist origins.
Reese shows how John Tanton starts out as a slightly racist environmentalist pushing for closed US borders to a White supremacist founder of many anti immigration foundations that are labeled as hate groups by the SPLC.

It’s a good book with a lot of references.

Eye opener! Must read for high schoolers

This should be required reading in all public schools in America… and required reading for anyone who wants to become an immigration lawyer or who wants to be employed by the federal government in any form of immigration enforcement.

Rambling waste of a provocative title

Book is mired down with too many uninteresting historical details, too much general race history and too much “this happened, then that happened” and hardly any quotes from the immigrants themselves or the key players. It’s basically written like one long rambling blog. It also is heavily biased in favor of Democrats and barely mentions their complicity in persecution of nonwhite immigrants.