A Transatlantic Reform: Boston's Port Protection Program and Irish Women Immigrants

by Deirdre M. Moloney

HISTORICALLY, UNDER UNITED STATES immigration and citizenship laws and policies, women have been treated differently from men. In the nineteenth century, for example, the Page Law effectively curtailed Chinese women's immigration. The 1922 Cable Act revised existing laws by granting married female immigrants a naturalization status separate from that of their immigrant husbands, although some female citizens of the United States who married foreign nationals were still required to relinquish their United States citizenship. Moreover, those immigration laws which were gender-neutral on their face, could be applied unevenly, according to prevailing social norms dictating male and female behavior. Yet, female immigrants' behavior was also regulated in more informal ways, as illustrated by a Boston port program established jointly by the Charitable Irish Society (CIS) and the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, which sought to assist Irish immigrants, particularly women, when they disembarked in Boston from their transatlantic journeys.