This article examines the u.s. Congressional debates in 1981 and 1982 over the Amerasian Immigration Act (aia), which provided preferential immigration status for the Amerasians of Southeast Asia. The debates exposed conflict on issues of American identity, race, and nation and the gendered nature of u.s. immigration and citizenship policy. This article considers how lawmakers on both sides of the debate justified accepting the Amerasians as American children or rejecting them as Asian. In each case, lawmakers in the post-Vietnam War era struggled to reconcile the physical appearance of the Amerasians and their racial hybridity with an American national identity. The aia is evidence of the confusion. While the bill defined Amerasians as children of American citizens, it failed to grant them American citizenship. This article argues that although the rhetoric of inclusion and kinship within the aia recognized the Amerasians as children of American fathers, the exclusion of citizenship from the bill formalized their status as the children of “others,” and thus foreign children. Ultimately, the bill exposed the problematic existence of mixed-race populations in the United States, and a history of exclusionary immigration and citizenship policies against people of Asian descent.

中文翻译：

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“血腥政治：在 1982 年亚美亚移民法中复制‘他人’的孩子”

本文考察了美国国会在 1981 年和 1982 年就《亚美亚移民法案》（aia）的辩论，该法案为东南亚亚美亚人提供了优惠的移民身份。辩论暴露了在美国身份、种族和国家问题以及我们移民和公民政策的性别本质问题上的冲突。本文考虑了辩论双方的立法者如何证明接受亚美亚人为美国儿童或拒绝他们为亚洲人的合理性。在每种情况下，越南战争后时代的立法者都在努力调和美亚人的外貌及其种族混血与美国民族认同。aia 是混乱的证据。虽然该法案将美洲人定义为美国公民的子女，但未能授予他们美国公民身份。本文认为，尽管 aia 内关于包容和亲属关系的言论承认亚美亚人是美国父亲的孩子，但从法案中排除公民身份使他们正式成为“其他人”的孩子，因此也是外国孩子的身份。最终，该法案暴露了美国混血人口存在的问题，以及针对亚裔的排他性移民和公民政策的历史。