Deportation

Prisoners and gendarms on the road to Siberia, 1845

1891 certificate of identity of the Imperial Government of China. The case to which this document pertains is representative of the many Chinese deportation case files within the records of the US District court, Los Angeles County, California.

Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country.^[1] Today the expulsion of foreign nationals is usually called deportation, whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation.^[2] Deportation is an ancient practice: Khosrau I, Sassanid King of Persia, deported 292,000 citizens, slaves, and conquered people to the new city of Ctesiphon in 542 C.E.^[3]

Military occupation

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the deportation of people into or out of occupied territory under belligerent military occupation:^[4]

External deportation

Ethnic Germans being deported from the Sudetenland in the aftermath of World War II

All countries reserve the right to deport foreigners, even those who are longtime residents. In general, foreigners who have committed serious crimes, entered the country illegally, overstayed and/or broken the conditions of their visa, or otherwise lost their legal status to remain in the country may be administratively removed or deported.^[5]

In many cases, deportation is done by the government's executive apparatus, and as such is often subject to a simpler legal process (or none), with reduced or no right to trial, legal representation or appeal due to the subject's lack of citizenship. For example, in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, more stringent enforcement of immigration laws were ordered by the executive branch of the U.S. government, which led to the expulsion of up to 2 million Mexican nationals from the United States.^[6] In 1954, the executive branch of the U.S. government implemented Operation Wetback, a program created in response to public hysteria about immigration and immigrants from Mexico.^[7] Operation Wetback led to the deportation of nearly 1.3 million Mexicans from the United States.^[8][9]

Already in natural law of the 18th century, philosophers agreed that expulsion of a nation from the territory which it historically inhabits is not allowable.^[10] In the late 20th century, the United Nations drafted a code related to crimes against humanity; Article 18 of the Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind declares "large scale" arbitrary or forcible deportation to be a crime against humanity.^[11]

Deportation often requires a specific process that must be validated by a court or senior government official. It should not be confused with administrative removal, which is the process of a country denying entry to an individual at a port of entry and expelling them.^[12]

Internal deportation

Striking miners and others being deported at gunpoint from Lowell, Arizona, on July 12, 1917, during the Bisbee Deportation.

Deportation can also happen within a state, when (for example) an individual or a group of people is forcibly resettled to a different part of the country. If ethnic groups are affected by this, it may also be referred to as Civil War on the suspicion they were Northern sympathizers.^[13]

During World War II, Joseph Stalin (see Population transfer in the Soviet Union) ordered the deportation of Volga Germans, Chechens, Crimean Tatars and others to areas away from the front, including central and western Soviet Union. Some historians have estimated the number of deaths from the deportation to be as high as 1 in 3 among some populations.^[14][15] On February 26, 2004 the European Parliament characterized deportations of the Chechens as an act of genocide.^[16]

The Soviet Union also used deportation, as well as instituting the Russian language as the only working language and other such tactics, to achieve Russification of its occupied territories (such as the Baltic nations and Bessarabia). In this way, it removed the historical ethnic populations and repopulated the areas with Russian nationals. The deported people were sent to remote, scarcely populated areas or to GULAG labour camps. It has been estimated that, in their entirety, internal forced migrations affected some 6 million people.^[17][18] Of these, some 1 to 1.5 million perished.^[19][20]

After World War II approximately 50,000 Hungarians were deported from South Slovakia by Czechoslovak authorities to the Czech borderlands in order to alter the ethnic composition of the region.^[21] Between 110,000 and 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans on the West Coast,^[22] as well as about 3,000 Italian American^[23] and about 11,500 German American families,^[24] were forcibly resettled from the coasts to internment camps in interior areas of the United States of America by President Franklin Roosevelt.^[25]

In the late 19th and early 20th century, deportation of union members and labor leaders was not uncommon in the United States during strikes or labor disputes.^[26] For an example, see the Bisbee Deportation.^[27]

Colonial deportations

Deporting individuals to a colony is a special case that is neither completely internal nor external. Such deportation has occurred in history. For example, Britain deported religious objectors and criminals to America in large numbers before 1776,^[28] and transported criminals to Australia between 1787 and 1855.^[29]

Deportation in the Holocaust

People being deported during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Nazi policies openly deported homosexuals, Jews, Poles, and Romani from their native places of residence to Nazi concentration camps or extermination camps set up at a considerable distance from their original residences. This was the policy known as the "Final Solution". The euphemism "deportation", occurring frequently in accounts of the Holocaust in various locations, thus means in effect "sent to their deaths" — as distinct from deportations in other times and places. ^[30]

See also

Notes

References

• Aguila, Jaime R. "Book Reviews: Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. By Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez." Journal of San Diego History. 52:3-4 (Summer-Fall 2006).
• Balderrama, Francisco and Rodriguez, Raymond. Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. ISBN 0-8263-1575-5.
• Campana, Aurélie. "Case Study: The Massive Deportation of the Chechen People: How and why Chechens were Deported." Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence. November 2007. Accessed August 11, 2008.
• Christensen, Peter. The Decline of Iranshahr: Irrigation and Environments in the History of the Middle East, 500 B.C. to A.D. 1500. Copenhagen, Denmark: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1993. ISBN 87-7289-259-5.
• Conquest, Robert. The Nation Killers. New York: Macmillan, 1970. ISBN 0-333-10575-3
• Daniels, Roger. Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. ISBN 0-06-050577-X
• Dillman, Caroline Matheny. The Roswell Mills and A Civil War Tragedy: Excerpts From Days Gone by in Alpharetta and Roswell, Georgia. Vol. 1. Roswell, Ga.: Chattahoochee Press, 1996. ISBN 0-9634253-0-7
• Fischer, Ruth and Leggett, John C. Stalin and German Communism: A Study in the Origins of the State Party. Edison, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2006. ISBN 0-87855-822-5
• Forsythe, David P. and Lawson, Edward. Encyclopedia of Human Rights. 2d ed. Florence, Ky.: Taylor & Francis, 1996.
• Fragomen, Austin T. and Bell, Steven C. Immigration Fundamentals: A Guide to Law and Practice. New York: Practising Law Institute, 1996. ISBN 0-87224-093-2
• García, Juan Ramon. Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954. Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1980. ISBN 0-313-21353-4.
• Gibney,Matthew J. and Hansen, Randall. "Deportation and the Liberal State: The Involuntary Return of Asylum Seekers and Unlawful Migrants in Canada, the UK, and Germany." New Issues in Refugee Research: Working Paper Series No. 77. Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2003.
• Gutiérrez, David G. Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1995. ISBN 0-520-20219-8
• Henckaerts, Jean-Marie. Mass Expulsion in Modern International Law and Practice. Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1995.
• Hing, Bill Ong. Defining America Through Immigration Policy. Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 2004. ISBN 1-59213-233-2
• Hitt, Michael D. Charged with Treason: The Ordeal of 400 Mill Workers During Military Operations in Roswell, Georgia, 1864-1865. Monroe, N.Y.: Library Research Associates, 1992. ISBN 0-912526-55-6
• International Law Commission. United Nations. Yearbook of the International Law Commission 1996: Report of the Commission to the General Assembly on the Work of Its 48th Session. New York: United Nations Publications, 2000. ISBN 92-1-133600-7
• Iorizzo, Luciano J.; Rossi, Ernest E. (2010). Italian Americans: Bridges to Italy, Bonds to America. Youngstown, N.Y.: Teneo Press.  
• Jaimoukha, Amjad M. The Chechens: A Handbook. Florence, Ky.: Routledge, 2005. ISBN 0-415-32328-2
• Kennedy, David M. (1999). Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. Cambridge, Mass.: Oxford University Press.  
• Kleveman, Lutz. The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia. Jackson, Tenn.: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003. ISBN 0-87113-906-5
• "The Law of Necessity As Applied in the Bisbee Deportation Case." Arizona Law Review. 3:2 (1961).
• "Lewis Attacks Deportation of Leaders by West Virginia Authorities." New York Times. July 17, 1921.
• Lindquist, John H. and Fraser, James. "A Sociological Interpretation of the Bisbee Deportation." Pacific Historical Review. 37:4 (November 1968).
• López, Ian F. Haney. Racism on Trial: The Chicano Fight for Justice. New ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01629-7
• Martin, MaryJoy. The Corpse On Boomerang Road: Telluride's War on Labor, 1899-1908. Lake City, Colo.: Western Reflections Publishing Co., 2004. ISBN 1-932738-02-9
• Mata, Albert G. "Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954 by Juan Ramon García." Contemporary Sociology. 1:5 (September 1983)
• Mawdsley, Evan. The Stalin Years: The Soviet Union 1929-1953. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-7190-6377-9
• McCaffray, Susan Purves and Melancon, Michael S. Russia in the European Context, 1789-1914: A Member of the Family. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
• McKay, Robert R. "The Federal Deportation Campaign in Texas: Mexican Deportation from the Lower Rio Grande Valley during the Great Depression." Borderlands Journal. (Fall 1981).
• Naimark, Norman M. Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-674-00994-0
• June 4, 2008.Agence France Press.Nurbiyev, Aslan. "Relocation of Chechen 'Genocide' Memorial Opens Wounds."
• President's Mediation Commission. Report on the Bisbee Deportations Made by the President's Mediation Commission to the President of the United States. Washington, D.C.: President's Mediation Commission, November 6, 1917.
• Silverberg, Louis G. "Citizens' Committees: Their Role in Industrial Conflict." Public Opinion Quarterly. 5:1 (March 1941).
• Smith, Cary Stacy; Hung, Li-Ching (2010). The Patriot Act: Issues and Controversies. Springfield, Ill.: C.C. Thomas Publisher.  
• Suggs, Jr., George G. Colorado's War on Militant Unionism: James H. Peabody and the Western Federation of Miners. 2nd ed. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. ISBN 0-8061-2396-6
• Tetsuden, Kashima (2003). Judgment Without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment During World War II. Seattle: University of Washington Press.  
• Valenciana, Christine. "Unconstitutional Deportation of Mexican Americans During the 1930s: A Family History and Oral History." Multicultural Education. Spring 2006.