Immigration, Politics, and Identity Fall 2015

Annual Review of Political Science, 2005

■ Abstract With nearly one in ten residents of advanced industrialized states now an immigrant, international migration has become a fundamental driver of social, economic, and political change. We review alternative models of migratory behavior (which emphasize structural factors largely beyond states' control) as well as models of immigration policy making that seek to explain the gaps between stated policy and actual outcomes. Some scholars attempt to explain the limited efficacy of control policies by focusing on domestic interest groups, political institutions, and the interaction among them; others approach the issue from an international or "intermestic" perspective. Despite the modest effects of control measures on unauthorized flows of economic migrants and asylum seekers, governments continue to determine the proportion of migrants who enjoy legal status, the specific membership rights associated with different legal (and undocumented) migrant classes, and how policies are implemented. These choices have important implications for how the costs and benefits of migration are distributed among different groups of migrants, native-born workers, employers, consumers, and taxpayers.

Immigrant America, 4th ed., 2014 - Chapter 5. The immigrant world has always been a difficult one, torn between old loyalties and new realities. For the most part, the politics of the first generation -- to the extent that such politics have existed -- have been characterized by an overriding preoccupation with the home country. Early participation in American politics has been limited to the more educated groups, those prevented from going back to their countries of origin, and those exceptional circumstances in which the very survival of the immigrant community is at stake. Even then, however, old loyalties die hard because individuals socialized in another language and culture have great difficulty giving them up as a primary source of identity. Throughout the history of immigration, the characteristics of sending countries have also made a significant difference in shaping the politics of the first generation as well as the timing of its shift into American-based concerns. Immigrants in the past or present may have come from: 1) stateless nations -- divided lands contested by warring factions or occupied by a foreign power; 2) hostile states -- dictatorships that oppressed the entire population of their countries or singled out the immigrants' own group for special persecution; 3) consolidated but indifferent nation-states, that neither promoted nor acknowledged the migrants' departure; or 4) states that actually supported and supervised emigration, regarding their nationals abroad as outposts serving their country's interests. These diverse origins interact with contexts of reception to give rise to a complex geometry of political concerns among the foreign born that mold, in turn, the politics of later generations. Depending on this variable geometry of places of origin and destination, immigrant communities may be passionately committed to political causes back home, either in support of or in opposition to the existing regime; they may see themselves as representatives of their nation-state abroad; or they may turn away from all things past and concentrate on building a new life in America. Examples of these and other possible outcomes are found both at the turn of the twentieth century and at present. We look first at the earlier period in order to provide a backdrop against which to describe contemporary developments.

Journal of …, 2006

Seymour Martin Lipset was a colleague of mine at George Mason University, and for the years I was there we taught a course together on comparative politics that was originally based on his book American Exceptionalism. I learned an extraordinary amount from ...

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2018

na ncy Foner, K ay de au x, a nd K ath a r ine m. donato In the last half century, the United States has undergone a profound demographic transformation in the wake of a massive inflow of immigrants. In 2016, immigrants represented approximately 14 percent of the U.S. population; together with their U.S.-born children the figure was more than 25 percent, a remarkable eightysix million people. This growth in immigration, mainly from Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean, has altered the racial and ethnic composition of the nation. The non-Hispanic white population in the United States declined from 83 to 62 percent between 1970 and 2015, and the Hispanic population grew from 4 to 18 percent in the same period. Asians, fewer than 1 percent of the U.S. population in 1970, are now 6 percent. The number of black immigrants (from Africa and the Caribbean) has also increased, and close to 10 percent of blacks in the United States are now foreign born. The result has been greater racial and ethnic diversity in a wide swath of both urban and rural neighbor

Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets

Although the Statue of Liberty, one of the premier symbols of the United States, welcomes “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” America’s relationship with its immigrants has long been ambivalent. Throughout the United States’ history, there have been persistent and charged debates over the nature and consequences of immigration. At times, America has greatly restricted the number and characteristics of newcomers, despite its aspiration to be identified as a “nation of immigrants” and a “melting pot.” The heated, contentious debate over who should be included in the United States, and how they should be included, persists in the halls of Congress, the judiciary, the executive branch, and at the state and local levels. The literature related to history and contemporary debates regarding immigration politics and policy in the United States is expansive. This article addresses scholarship on a number of specific policy debates, as well as popular reacti...

2003

Most serious attempts to study immigration to the United States acknowledge that the results of the present immigration policy were, in effect, an accident — the product of a miscalculation by the authors of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act. Their disagreements tend to center on the consequences of immigration. However, despite the mounting evidence that these consequences may not be as positive as often argued, there has been a certain reluctance to limit immigration (or discuss the issue frankly), and even a campaign by several groups to maintain it as such or even increase it. Another paradox is that immigration continues to be popular with practically all the ideological and political elites of the United States. At the same time, however, there is perhaps no other issue that represents a larger divide between ordinary Americans (who largely oppose current immigration levels) and their political elites. This paper attempts to address this paradox through the prism of my discussio...

Loyola of Los Angeles law review, 2019

at UCLA and an influential scholar and teacher of immigration and citizenship. He has written two general audience books: Americans in Waiting (2006) and Immigration Outside the Law (2014), and co-authored two casebooks: Immigration and Citizenship: Process and Policy (8th ed. 2016) and Forced Migration: Law and Policy (2d ed. 2013). The recipient of many teaching honors, including the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award in 2014, and one of twenty-six law professors nationwide profiled in What the Best Law Teachers Do (2013), he is now at work on a new book, The New Migration Law, with the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Politics, 1998

Du Bois Review, 2007

There is a deep irony about the current political moment. Though having an immigrant background is arguably a core feature of how most Americans understand themselves, the topic of immigration has in recent years risen to a fever pitch of political controversy and polarized views. Of course, the immigrant streams to the United States today differ substantially from those that characterized the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Instead of bringing in millions of South, Central, and Eastern Europeans looking for better opportunities than were available in their homelands, the current immigrant wave has drawn most heavily from those with Latin American and Asian origins. Concomitant to these changes in economic, cultural, and political context as well as in who constitute the new immigrants, are a series of deep questions about civic belonging, the social consequences of immigration, and what appropriate policy responses to recent immigration should be. To be sure, the United States is not alone in facing challenges posed by largescale population movements. Debates rage among European Union nations over the numbers, effects, rights, and entitlement of immigrants to many of these nations as well. Indeed, the much publicized "riots" in the suburbs of France underscored the challenge of the treatment and prospects for assimilation of recent immigrant groups in the European context. The larger questions here are many, complex, and fundamentally global. However, mainstream media discourse on immigrants and immigration focuses overwhelmingly on whether or not major new federal legislation will be passed here in the United States. Will we build a "great wall of America"? Are employers finally to face serious sanctions for hiring undocumented workers? Will we literally deport millions of undocumented people now living, working, and making homes for themselves and their families in this country? These political and policy-related questions are important. But even this set of issues falls far short of capturing the full dimensions and import of the current challenge of immigration, whether here or around the globe.