A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning ... (ISBN 0674022181)

Everything you wanted to know about immigration to the USA:
Densely written and footnoted, based on substantial research, this study of immigration to the United States from before the Revolution up to yesterday is a hard book to read but certainly rewarding for the serious student of the subject. Marred a little by too many infelicitous grammatical constructions and several historical errors (the author after all is not an historian but a "political scientist") the book is still a substantial narrative and reference work on this important subject. As Zolberg tells it, the story of immigration to America is the story of how Americans, or at least their political, social, cultural and economic elites, manipulated rules and regulations about entry to the country for the purpose of creating a sort of new nation. At first the goal was a largely Anglo-Saxon Protestant nation, the preservation of which required some reluctance to admit non-English speaking northern Europeans and naturally the Irish, despite their normal use of English for the most part. Eventually economic needs dominated and all sorts of non-Protestant and non-English speaking Europeans were welcome in order to create a powerful nation, but the acceptance of non-whites was always low on the list of desiderata, even the citizenship of black ex-slave was questioned by attempts to ship them off back to Africa. Political, economic, and cultural concerns ended this state of affairs in thd 1920's when the management of immigration to preserve the ethnic make-up of the United States became paramount. After WWII a variety of liberalizations occurred as required by the Cold War, but the idea of immigration as a privilege not a right was continued. But the importation of Mexican labor by a back door continued even though Hispanic immigrants were not really deemed good candidates for Americanization. Asian immigrants had been restricted for a long time as well. More recently with the decline of Europeans wanting to come to America immgration policy came to attempt more limitation by numbers than by ethnic identity. At present immigration to America is largely non-European. The Mexican problem remains and Zolberg convincingly asserts that it is a special situation and can only be handled by a joint American, Canadian, and Mexican effort. Globalization also calls into question the absolute maintenance of national boundaries. Although Zolberg's analysis is a liberal one and his description of American policy historically is painted as racist and un-welcoming, still those opposed to too much immigration and to immigration from non-European sources could still find much here to support their position. If America has never really been blindly immigration-friendly but always calculating as to which immigrants would be best to allow and which to bar, then there is nothing to stop a continuation of an immigration policy which fulfills a particular set of desiderata about what America is and should be. No point calling those who oppose illegal immigrants from Mexico racist if America and all its leaders have always been in some sense racist in their immigration policy. What you can call those against Mexicans is FUTILE since Zolberg shows how conflicted American values and ambitions are in the face of needed Mexican labor. Nothing here helps to solve our current difficulties with illegal immigration except to suggest that we need to define exactly what legal might mean and exactly what we as American desire for our country. A very much closed border would lead us to a quasi-police state. A very open border would bring every properous country down to a common level of poverty and misery. There has to be a third way.

a must-read on U.S "wanted but not welcome" policies:
From colonial times to the present, the compromises that emerged over American immigration policy created a state of limbo for groups who were, as Aristide Zolberg puts it in this wide-ranging and erudite book, "wanted but not welcome." In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Asian immigration and naturalization were restricted, but southern and eastern Europeans were allowed in at record levels. In the early 1920s, the nativist camp eventually prevailed over business interests as strict national-origins quotas were imposed, severely limiting immigration for the next four decades. The historical rhetoric resembles today's. Zolberg quotes inventor Samuel Morse invoking the imagery of an invading army of immigrants when he penned a series of articles and books blaming immigration for undermining the American character. Debates in the 1950s invoked the "invasion" image that would lay the groundwork for today's tiered-entry system with front, side, and back doors. After World War II, Americans became uncomfortable with race-based immigration. Discontent had been rising over the controversial bracero guest-worker program, begun in 1942 to ease a wartime shortage of farmworkers. Amid discussions of easing immigration policy in the 1950s, Nevada's U.S. Sen. Pat McCarran and Pennsylvania's U.S. Rep. Francis E. "Tad" Walter, both Democrats, commissioned a review that concluded that it was impossible to seal the border. Their response was a back-door solution: an expanded guest-worker program, but with a ban on allowing guests to become permanent residents. "Albeit well-nigh useless with regard to border control, the system was highly effective as a deterrent to the incorporation of Mexicans, in particular, by way of naturalization," Zolberg writes, pinpointing an issue at the heart of today's immigration conundrum. "Borders are necessary to establish and preserve distinctive communities, notably self-governing democracies," Zolberg writes. In addition, given economic disparities among nations, open borders would attract a flood of immigration from poorer to more affluent nations. Yet he also views nativist attacks on immigrants as a far bigger threat to democracy than migration itself. He advocates neither allowing unlimited immigration nor a moratorium on immigration. He argues for giving admissions priority to those in most need--unskilled workers and those fleeing violence. Zolberg contends that to eliminate unauthorized immigration would require creating a police state. Instead, he sensibly advocates improved border security, combined with protection of the rights of minority groups upon whom the populist right has unleashed its wrath. --Michele Wucker Author of Lockout: Why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong When Our Prosperity Depends on Getting It Right (PublicAffairs Press, 2006; paperback August 2007)

Comprehensive and well written:
Zolberg's comprehensive history of immigration policy was a new addition to the syllabus in my graduate migration seminar. I think the class as a whole found it useful, if a bit overwhelming. In the humanities and the social sciences there is a lot of talk about "socially constructed" race categories, ethnic political interests, national identities, etc. All of this work contends there is nothing inherently "inside" of people that makes them distinct, but rather it's the way that debates play out in the political arena that groups and separates people. Of course much of the "social constructivism" literature forgets to analyze the construction. That's where Zolberg comes in. "A Nation by Design" is useful because it is a 500 page account of how policy makers in the United States constructed an immigration policy, and along the way, cemented many ideas of race, ethnicity, and American identity. My only quibbles: there are graphs and charts in the back but they are never referenced in the text; the book is full of names of obscure intellectuals and bureaucrats and it gets confusing; Zolberg often buries important theoretical claims in the middle of sub-sections. Maybe it's not a good beach read, but definitely worth having on your shelf.