The Face of the Nation: Immigration, the State, and the National Identity 9780804764827

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The Face of the Nation IMMIGRATION, THE STATE, AND THE NATIONAL IDENTITY

The Face of the Nation Immigration, the State, and the National Identity KEITH FITZGERALD

(())

Stanford University Press Stanford, California 1996

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 1996 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America CIP data appear at the end of the book Stanford University Press publications are distributed exclusively by Stanford University Press within the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central America; they are distributed exclusively by Cambridge University Press throughout the rest of the world.

For Angela

Acknowledgments

r COULD NEVER acknowledge everyone who played an important part in helping me produce this book, although a few contributions must be singled out, people and organizations without which this book would not have been written. Norman Furniss encouraged me and offered excellent advice at every stage. Not only did he consistently improve the product, but his mentoring and friendship inspired me to persevere when I became dispirited. Russell Hanson gave me excellent advice on both the substance of the book and how to go about improving it. I also benefited from the guidance of Alfred Diamant and Byrum Carter at the beginning of the project. I have found teaching bright undergraduates extremely helpful in writing this book. A few students' contributions deserve special credit. Laura Free, Paul Kirby, and Caleb Rush did excellent work as research assistants. Each challenged me intellectually and helped me improve my writing by pushing me to clarifY what I was trying to say. Laura deserves special mention. She read most of the text and gave me sound advice about improving it. Several friends and colleagues read portions of the book and made important editorial and substantive contributions. I especially thank Davida Alperin, Michael Berkman, Victoria Brown, Barbara Trish, and Eliza Willis. I was fortunate to have had advice from]. David Greenstone at an early stage of planning this work. Muriel Bell at Stanford University Press patiently worked with me to improve the book. One of the Press's readers offered pages and pages of detailed, constructive criticism. I tried to carry out each helpful suggestion and solve each problem this reader identified. The extent to which I succeeded will largely decide the success of this book. Jay Semel, director of the University of Iowa's Center for Advanced Study, invited me to be a resident there and provided me with resources, including a comfortable, quiet office. I would also like to acknowledge the support of Kathleen Johnson, Victoria Brown, Bill Ferguson, Susan Ireland, Leslie Lyons, David Magnus, Mark Montgomery, Paul Munyon, Irene Powell, Lee Sharpe, and Eliza Willis. Angela Baker helped me at every stage of producing this book. I could not have done it without her. K.F.

Contents

r. Introduction 2.

The Puzzle oflmmigration Policy and Theories ofPolicymaking

3. Institutions, Policymaking, and Immigration Policy

22

54

4. The Development and Expansion of a Sectoral State: Federal Immigration Policy, 1879-1924 96

s.

The Articulation of a Sectoral State: Immigration Policy, 1924-41

145

6. The Redefinition of the State: Immigration Policy During and After World Warll, 1941-52 178 7. Establishing the Boundaries for the Contemporary Era, 1951-65

8. Conclusions: Immigration, the State, and the National Identity Notes

245

Bibliography Index

275

257

206

229

Tables and Figures

TABLES

r. Preference Categories Under the 1952 and 1965 Immigration 29 Statutes 2. The Theoretical Puzzle: A Comparison of Three Major Theoretical 64 Traditions of Public Policy Formation 3. Distinct Meanings of the Term State Compared

So

4· Regime Characteristics and Agenda-Setting Processes 5. Summary oflmmigration Legislation, 187 5- I 924

o.

112

Congressional Hearings, 46th- 52d Sessions

118

7· Congressional Hearings, 62d-68th Sessions

134

8. Congressional Hearings, 88th-89th Sessions

94

222

FIGURES

r. Total Distribution oflmmigrants to the States, I977-88 2. Yearly Distribution oflmmigrants to the States, 1977-88

11 12

3. The Changing Sources oflmmigration by Continent, I950-8o 4· Percentage oflmmigrants Obtaining High School Education by 14 Source Country

s. Percentage oflmmigrants with Four Years of College by Source Country

15

6. Immigrants' Occupations by Continent of Origin, I 988 7. Refugee and All Immigration Totals, 1950-88

28

JO

8. The Size of the INS and Border Patrol Budgets, I 931 -89

31

13

xn

Tables and Figures

9. Capacity of the State Bureaucracy as an Explanatory Variable for Immigration Policy's Political Patterns 59 10.

The Elements of the Political Regime

I I.

Monopoly Participants in Modern Political Regimes

I 2.

Total Immigration by Region, I 86 5- r 924

I

3. Yearly Immigration,

I 92 5-6 5

148

81

1 OJ

85

The Face of the Nation IMMIGRATION, THE STATE, AND THE NATIONAL IDENTITY

CHAPTER

11

Introduction

THIS BOOK HAS two complementary goals. One is to contribute to recent work in political science that places political institutions at the center in explaining public policy. The second is to explain important features of United States immigration policy. An understanding of how institutions influence the content of public policies helps solve the most puzzling features of immigration policy. Immigration policy, in turn, illuminates central issues and implications for recent institutional political theories. Pursuing these complementary goals together entails something more than the sum of the parts. It involves contemplating the place of politics in the contemporary human condition. This book's stress on political institutions departs from the way political scientists have explained policy in much of the modern era. For a generation, most political scientists tried to explain public policy by tracing its features to demands that came from outside politics, from economic elites or dominant classes. They reduced the political system to a device that responded to social change by translating it into "outputs," public policies that, contrary to the apparent view of political science, do not seem automatic to the people struggling to enact them. There was always some recognition of the importance of"within-puts" (the way political institutions altered social demands in reacting to them), but these analysts tended to neglect what was special about politics and political institutions as forces structuring culture and economics. The price of this neglect sometimes showed up in how little political science had to say to people outside the discipline. Some of the best public policy research showed that public officials' actions emerge from technological, cultural, or economic forces outside politics. The critical truth of these studies said, in effect, "What a shame it is that it all has to work out this way." Students and potential activists, who wish to see politics as a way of changing the world, respond with cynicism or dejection to such conclusions. They go from unwar-

2

Introduction

ranted optimism (everything is possible) to informed pessimism. The political science discipline taught them, after all, that politics does not matter. In the last decade, some political scientists have begun to react against such gloomy reductionism. (By reductionism, I mean the tendency to trace politics' causes and motives to nonpolitical sources.) Much of their work has shown that some political phenomena are irreducibly political. A major tactic these scholars have used is to focus on political institutions, especially "the state." Theoretical movements with labels like "the new institutionalism" and "bringing the state back in" have argued that politics does matter because policies shape technology, economics, and culture as much as the other way around. Politics matters because the ideas and choices made by political participants shape policy. Politics matters because old policies provide legacies that define later policy alternatives. Politics matters because political institutions open some and close other options for policy innovation. Those same political institutions began as political innovations. Our political acts long oudast us. These efforts by political scientists promise to open up the political imagination, to rediscover how and why politics does matter. Politics consists of people acting together to identify and pursue common ends. Concrete statements about these common actions and ends, or policies, embody the impact of politics on the world. It is fitting, then, that scholars who study public policy have been at the forefront of the realization that politics and political institutions cannot be reduced or explained solely by exogenous economic or cultural forces (Hall 1986; March and Olsen 1989). This institutional perspective has challenged both pluralist (Lindblom 1977) and neo-Marxist (or class-conflict) (Esping-Anderson 1985; Poulantzas 1978) models of policy formation, which are the dominant theoretical traditions in modern political science. Both traditions stress the role of social forces in shaping public policy. They tend to neglect public institutions as either autonomous forces or unique resources of political power that could play a pivotal role in policy innovation. The institutionalists stress that political power is distinct from economic power; the implications of politics' uniqueness have led them to reach other conclusions that challenge us to rethink a host ofbasic concepts. The public nature ofpolicymaking, they claim, makes time, context, process, history, and language crucial features of politics as a form of life (Ashford I 992; March and Olsen I 989). 1 The movement away from reducing politics to its economic or cultural origins is represented by a specific group of new institutionalists, for example, the "state-as-actor" group, who are, by legacy, a variety of"realists." Of course, there is nothing new about realism. It has its modern roots in Machiavelli. The present-day state-as-actor realists to whom I refer do not claim that the "reason of the state" actually exists in nature (much less that it is morally correct). Instead, they say that the personnel of the state act as if a state interest existed. 2 The

Introduction

3

realists thus reject the reduction of politics to economic or cultural sources. They contest pluralist and class-conflict political theories by showing that states can be autonomous while pursuing their political interests. Autonomy means that a person acts on her or his own behalf, as opposed to being an agent for someone else such as an economic class or social constituency. Autonomy can apply to collectivities and organizations, too. The political implication of the term autonomy is best understood in comparison with the ideas it opposes. Class-conflict theorists have tended to argue that state actors, such as bureaucrats, work to pursue the interests of economically defined classes. For example, they say that social welfare policy originated with capitalists (Domhoff I 990). The welfare state serves capitalists by teaching people to behave as workers and maintaining the lower classes' quiescence (Cohen and Rogers I983; Offe I984). Hence even when they innovate, state bureaucrats serve the interests of the economically dominant classes. Pluralists argue that most people's motives are economic. Because even the politically motivated must appeal to the majority's economic concerns to secure support, political decision makers reflect the balance of economic interests (Dahl I96I). 3 One extreme view contends that state bureaucrats are always motivated by money (say, increasing their budgets) (Niskanen I97I). More commonly, pluralists see bureaucrats as agents oflegislatures or political constituencies (Wildavsky I964; Moe I984). By reducing political motives to economic ones, both the pluralist and class-conflict theories portray bureaucrats as only relatively autonomous. Realists resist this diminution of political action by arguing that (sometimes) state bureaucrats are not anyone's agents but their own. Like everyone, state bureaucrats must gauge their actions strategically by considering other people's powers and concerns. But they act to pursue their own ends, which are political in nature. For example, state actors may pursue a foreign policy that aims to make the nation economically secure. They do so not only because it is what capitalists or interest groups want but because it makes the state more powerful (Krasner I978). Actors associated with state bureaucracies have political interests that are different from those of economic or cultural groups. States have unique interests, and their power to pursue them is an important explanatory variable. The realists showed that the presence or absence of a strong state can explain variations in policy from one country to another (Skocpol I979; Weir and Skocpol I983). Later research by like-minded scholars has shown how variations in the strength of state bureaucracies affected the rhetoric people used to consider issues. Similarly, policy legacies rhetorically constrain the alternatives policymakers deem legitimate (Hall I 989). The findings of this stream of research show that political motives and institutions shape policy at least as much as economic or cultural factors.

4

Introduction

The state-as-actor theorists (or, for short, realists) represent the new institutionalism by emphasizing the significance of political factors in explaining public policies. Again, this approach contrasts with an earlier generation's tendency to explain politics as caused by economic or cultural forces. This difference in emphasis does not mean that advocates of either of these approaches clash over every feature in the political landscape. For example, institutionalists do not reject the pluralists' portrait of American politics as driven by societal interests and liberal rhetoric. They seek to explain why the United States's governance by interest groups is exceptional when compared to the regimes of most other capitalist democracies. American politics is also exceptional because it lacks a socialist influence. The absence of comprehensive social welfare policies such as those that European socialists helped initiate is part of this exceptional pattern. American politics is fragmented and unusually focused on doling out goods to small constituencies (Fiorina 1979; Lowi 1979). This fragmentation of policy on the national level and the complexities of American federalism (Peterson 1981) limit the capacity of public bureaucracies to provide efficient, innovative, or uniform public policy (Robertson and Judd 1989). The new institutionalists differ from a previous generation's scholars in their stress on the causal significance of political motives and structures to explain this American exceptionalism. Pluralists and class-conflict theorists alike stressed the dominance ofLockean or bourgeois values in limiting American politics (Engels 1959; Hartz 1955; Lipset 1963). The institutionalists, including realists, stress the impact of the American state itself on this Lockean culture and the other manifestations of American uniqueness. Specifically, they show how patterns of institutional development create power motives for actors situated in political institutions. The successful pursuit of these motives explains the contrasting patterns of policy and political culture (Ikenberry, Lake, and Mastanduno 1988; Skowronek 1982). Comparativists have argued that the United States is an exception among the advanced industrial societies. Its state is "weak." From an institutioncentered perspective, the absence of an absolutist legacy may account for policy restraint in the United States. 4 Constitutional features of the American Republic, including federalism and the separation of powers, have interacted with certain features of urban and regional development to move the United States in a different direction from other capitalist democracies (Katznelson 1981, 1985; Robertson and Judd 1989). Institutionalists interpret American policy restraint as an outgrowth of political arrangements and the paths of action they enabled and foreclosed for politicians striving to meet political goals. These goals, such as security and international influence, and the challenges of economic development and social change require collective and authoritative actions. Institutional factors limit the state's impact on society in the United States, and this policy restraint reinforces the resistance of social and cultural interests to a strong state. The renewed appreciation of politics and institutions has offered a fresh ap-

Introduction

5

proach to interpreting the well-noted pattern of public policy restraint in the United States. It has shown that political choices made by earlier generations set boundaries on both policies and ideas for later generations. This view may frustrate those who wish for a more European style of politics in the United States. Yet it should encourage students and potential activists because it shows that politics matters-even in ways that outstretch the imagination of those caught up in the tumble of events. Politics causes economic and cultural patterns. This means that politics affects what we do and who we are. Understanding politics is crucial not only as a means for improving policy but for gaining insight into our personal identities. The new institutionalism makes a contribution because it includes purely political elements in its political analyses. It is time, however, to evaluate the reemphasis on political institutions. Several years ago, a leading advocate of "bringing the state back in" conceded that the movement had yet to present a coherent theoretical position (Skocpol 1985). Critics have argued since that the new focus on the state has failed to generate a progressive research agenda and is conceptually confused (Almond 1990;jacobs 1992). Scholars who clash over the value and importance of bringing the state back in agree that an absence of clear concepts makes it difficult to evaluate state-centered explanations. Even the term state has several different meanings in the works of those who consider the concept crucial (Skocpol 1985; Almond 1990). This conceptual confusion makes it difficult to assess how well the new institutionalism explains public policy. A theory that is conceptually confused cannot offer clear explanations for events, and a theory that does not account for events has empirical problems. The case of American exceptionalism exemplifies the empirical problems of the new institutionalism. The depiction of American politics as fragmented and distributive and its state as weak is only partly true. In fact, pockets or sectors of state strength thrive in the United States and can exert confined but distinct influences over policy. This is (partly) what an examination of the case ofUnited States immigration policy will show. The ability of sectors of state strength to exert confined but distinct influences over policy challenges the argument that the weakness of American political institutions leads to policy restraint. Realists of the state-as-actor school have acknowledged as much. As Theda Skocpol and her collaborators have shown, state bureaucracies sometimes have played crucial roles in developing American public policy. Major facets of the New Deal successfully built on state strength, and others foundered because of the lack of an established national administration (Finegold 1988; Weir, Orloff, and Skocpol 1988). Similarly, state actors in diverse institutional circumstances used their resources to influence trade policy toward the state's goals (Ikenberry, Lake, and Mastanduno 1988). This observation fits with Stephen Skowronek's view of the development of national American political institutions (1982). Institutional innovation responded to specific breakdowns in the nineteenth-

6

Introduction

century regime of"parties and courts." The new regime was built in areas where the old regime failed. The United States is not so much a weak state or a pluralist state as a sectoral state, that is, a nation that has cultivated strong national administrative powers. These strengths, however, work only for limited sectors in the orb of policy that characterizes the public spheres of capitalist democracies. State strength is not a constitutional feature of the American political regime (as it is in France, for example). Yet there are policy domains in which the state, or at least specific agencies or bureaus, plays a defining political role. Thinking of the United States as a sectoral rather than a weak state means that the realist contention that state strength explains the contents of policies begs important questions. Why is the state in the United States strong in some policy domains but weak in others? How does an institutional theory account for the variation in state strength in the United States? These questions challenge a theory that has said mainly that the United States has weak policies because it has a weak state. It also points out the need for theoretical clarification in the new institutional research program. Thus far, state-centered explanations have mainly sought to correct the mistake of leaving political motives and institutions, particularly the modern state, out of policy explanations. They have succeeded by showing that the state can be or has been autonomous in the United States, just as they have shown that political structures are important on their own. Having succeeded, they have not focused their attention on explanations for the mottled pattern of state strength that I call a sectoral state. This empirical problem is related to a theoretical one. The state-as-actor (or realist) focus on the state risks replacing one overemphasis (on a set of pet economic variables) with another (state capacity, state autonomy). The case of immigration policy sheds light on both the empirical and theoretical problems posed by the United States's sectoral state. My tactic for filling the new institutionalism's theoretical and empirical lacunae is to pose and solve a puzzle that this immigration policy well exemplifies. Realist explanations, which claim that the interests of state bureaucrats are the cause of policy, work for some policies, such as aspects of immigration policy in which historical events led to the construction of state strength. Pluralist or class-conflict explanations work for other policies, including other aspects of United States immigration policy, in which the American state is weak. These explanations name societal forces as the causes of policy. This situation presents a paradox. Realism, classconflict theory, and pluralism each claims to be a general theory of policy formation. Yet each seems to have an empirical purchase limited to specific domains of policy, including different aspects of immigration policy. The politics of some policies appear to be state-centered, whereas the politics of other policies resembles what pluralist and class-conflict theorists predict from socially generat~d policies. What we need empirically is an explanation for these wholly different political patterns. To solve this empirical puzzle, I believe we have to explore

Introduction

7

at the theoretical level the limitations of pluralism, class-conflict theory, and realism. In this book, I offer an explanation for the variation in policy and political patterns that compose the United States's sectoral state. My central empirical claim is that the explanation for these contrasting patterns of inmligration policy and politics lies in their institutionalization, that is, in the legacies of the policies themselves and the political battles that surrounded them. Contingent institutional developments that took place before the New Deal and World War II established the policy and politics of immigration that would prevail long after the postwar era. These same patterns created the problems that critics and reformers of immigration policy addressed in the 1980s and 1990s. To ground this explanation on a coherent and programmatic foundation, I present a way of thinking about politics that I call "improvisational institutionalism." I begin by considering the limitations of realism, pluralism, and classconflict theory. Each identifies distinct causal patterns in which certain interests account for policy characteristics that analysts and critics decry. Yet each theory explains only some aspects of immigration policy. State-as-actor realism improves upon reductionistic theories by admitting wholly political motives into the picture. Yet as the case of American immigration policy shows, state interests do not always define policy. Variation in the history of state development accounts for the domination of state interests in some policy sectors and of societal interests in others, yet such an explanation risks being too convenient. To argue that the state's interests explain policy characteristics when the state is strong and state strength explains policy characteristics is too post hoc and tautological to be satisfactory. I offer improvisational institutionalism as a way of placing the claim that variation in institutional resources explains different patterns of policy on firmer theoretical grounds. Improvisational institutionalism is more synthetic than creative. It pulls together the contributions of various authors, most of whom are identified with the new institutionalism, and puts these contributions into the form of a coherent theory with clear, empirical implications. Like other state-centered studies, the theory of improvisational institutionalism puts politics and political institutions at the center of policy explanations. It also provides a better explanation for the complexities of an important public policy, immigration policy, than do studies from other perspectives. Improvisational institutionalism, as presented in Chapters 2 and 3, accounts for the distinct political patterns that differentiate divergent aspects of immigration policy. I show in the empirical chapters (4 through 7) that the bones and sinews of American political development and the political interests this development generated shaped immigration policy and account for the distinct politics that surrounds different aspects of that policy. These findings are important because immigration policy is consequential (as I discuss below). Immigration policy itself raises

8

Introduction

fascinating theoretical questions about how we understand modern political institutions and their place in the human condition. The most exciting feature of the new institutionalism is that it puts politics back at the center of policy explanation. Politics can be defined as the human effort to act collectively to define and accomplish collective goals. The idea that our political actions matter is cause for optimism for anyone who wishes to change the world for the better. It suggests that it might be possible to make the world a rational place in which to live. This policy is not only an instrument for achieving values, it is a way of defining values. Immigration policy, I will argue, specifically shapes who "we" are and how we define ourselves. If the new institutionalism says that culture and economics are (at least partly) political outcomes, immigration policy is about a polity choosing who and what it will be. The goals of improving our understanding of institutions and immigration policy are especially harmonious. Immigration policy in the United States defines a public sense of collective identity. Immigration has had an acute influence in this land populated mainly by the progeny of those from other places. Immigration and the policy that shaped it gave form to the face of the American nation. The impact of immigration policy supports the new institutionalists' contention that politics matters. Yet institutionalism also suggests that politics constrained this formative policy in ways that were not fully recognized by political actors involved in making history (not to mention that politics also influenced who the powerful political actors would be). Before we can redeem the hopeful promise of politics' importance, that is, that we can choose rationally who we want to be and how we want to shape our collective identity, we need to have a better appreciation of the way political institutions shape our choices. Immigration policy is a good place to begin such an investigation.

Immigration Policy and Political Institutions Immigration policy is especially well suited for an evaluation of theories that stress the importance of political institutions for understanding policy. The study of immigration policy is an investigation of the formation of the polity. The faces that Americans see when they look in a mirror are constantly changing. For some time now the population has been becoming, on average, older. More of us live in cities than in the past. One of the most notable changes in the faces of the nation is that they are becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. After centuries of being predominantly white and Northern European, the United States is becoming darker skinned, African, Hispanic, and Asian. These changes are more than skin deep. They reflect changes in the cultural, economic, and political character of the nation. They are changes in American identity, and they necessitate the defining of a different "we." Immigration policy is the main

Introduction

9

policy that directly influences these changes. If politics matters, does this mean that a democratic polity can choose by its immigration policy what it wishes to become? The answer to this question depends on how we account for the origins of policy, or, to put it differently, how democratic we believe the United States to be. Immigration policy shapes a society's identity and influences the fates of economic classes and organized groups. It can determine the availability and cost of both unskilled and highly skilled labor. It can aid or inhibit the labor movement. It can fuel growth in richer or poorer regions of the country. It can also reinforce or undermine the cultural advantages of ethnic or cultural groups. Yet if the state-as-actor realists are to be taken seriously, then it is just as important that immigration directly involves the "reasons of the state." From Machiavelli's time forward, realists have identified sovereignty as a definitive state interest. Sovereignty means, if nothing else, controlling geographical borders and access to the privileges of membership (that is, citizenship). Immigration policy is also an instrument of foreign policy. A state can use immigration policy to encourage its enemies' enemies and its friends' friends and to say whom it values and whom it shuns. Immigration policy, therefore, is a symbol that can be used to pursue a state's interests. It occupies the intersection of state and social interests and hence is potentially a contested terrain between state and society. Simultaneously, immigration policy defines the boundaries between state and society; it has implications for the idea of"the nation," an idea nationalists have sometimes used to blur the contrast between state and society. Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr., define a nation as a political system in which the "citizens share a sense of historic identity and destiny" (1978, 3). The changes immigration policy causes in the face of the nation change the way Americans define their shared destiny. Therefore, immigration policy is a component of nation building. A people have few means by which to change the face of their nation. Immigration policy may be the most important way. A change in immigration policy can immediately and effectively modify the composition of a nation's population. Immigration policy, then, partially decides a nation's identity. Immigration policy is thus a portentous political phenomenon. But how well do we understand it? Particularly, do we know where immigration policy comes from and why it takes the form it does? Because it shapes the identity and destiny of the nation and the collective sense of shared identity and destiny, immigration policy serves as a good measure of how well we understand the policy process. If we cannot explain why immigration policy has the characteristics it does, we are unable to understand the role of politics in nation building and the shared life of a national community. We cannot accept such a failure to tell us whether politics matters. I have already alluded to problems in the way prevailing theories deal with policy, including immigration policy. Society-centered models mirror the poli-

IO

Introduction

tics surrounding some aspects of immigration policy. State-centered theories reflect the politics of other aspects. Each family of models has an explanatory domain, but none is comprehensive. That is, neither pluralism, class-conflict theory, nor realism explains immigration policy generally. Thus it is helpful to develop a perspective of the qualitatively distinct domains of immigration policy. The next section provides background for making qualitative distinctions in the broad domain of immigration policy by discussing the practical importance of immigration to the United States. Immigration policy is vital because it has had profound consequences on the culture, economics, and politics of the United States. Perhaps even more important is the defining power immigration policies have on the formation of national identity. Immigration policy helps make institutions, interests, and identity. Real "states," "nations," "classes," "societies," and "cultures" become what they are because of immigration and the policy that shapes it.

The Contemporary Significance if Immigration Policy in the United States Immigration policy's implications and its connection to central issues in political science merit further study. So does its contemporary significance. Immigration and the policies that regulate it shape the economic, cultural, and political landscape of the United States. This ongoing process of change operates through the demographic impact of immigration but also through its introduction of new ideas and traditions. Debates on immigration policy reflect and define conceptions of a shared identity. In several respects, then, to understand the American nation, society, or culture, we must understand its immigration policy. Immigration affects economics by shaping the demography of employment. Immigration policy has dramatically altered the demographic composition of the United States and will continue to do so for years to come. For example, the United States Bureau of the Census estimated a few years ago that "if there were no net immigration after July I, I986, the U.S. population would grow to 259 million people in 2000, peak at 270 million people around 2030, and then proceed to decline to 220 million by 2080." By contrast, if immigration rates are nearer what they have been for the last few decades, the population of the United States in the year 2080 should be about 292 million (Spencer I 989, I 3- I 4). Demographers have argued that because of the declining birth rate of the native population, immigration is the key demographic category in the contemporary era (Bouvier and Gardner I986, 4). Immigration is essential to reproduce the population. Furthermore, as the native population ages, it will increasingly fall upon newcomers to pay the taxes that will support the aged. The skills that newcomers possess will decide their productivity and their ability to generate tax revenues.

Introduction

I I

Their human capital will be crucial to the fiscal stability of American social security programs. New immigrants are also most likely to live in cities and on the coasts. As their numbers increase, their economic impact will grow. Immigrants already contribute to the ditferent growth rates among the states. California, New York, Texas, Illinois, New Jersey, and Florida have been among both the fastest-growing states and the most likely places for immigrants to settle for the last few decades. The Census Bureau estimates that both facts will continue to be true into the future. States that attract fewer immigrants, such as Iowa and Kentucky, will have a difficult time reproducing their population (Spencer I 989). Figure I shows that several states have nearly been left out of the immigrant wave of the I970s and 1980s. California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois have attra~ted hundreds of thousands of residents from abroad. Figure 2 shows that the uneven geographic distribution of immigrants has persisted and even grown during this time. Immigrants have concentrated in larger states with urban populations, accentuating cultural differences between them and their rural cousins. There is considerable debate among policy analysts on who comes out ahead from this geographically concentrated pattern of immigration. Nev-

1600 1400 1200

l.,

~

1000 800 600 400 200 CA FL NJ MA VA WA HA KY NE ME NH WV MY SD NY TX IL OE MD MI lA AR AK MS ID DE ND WY

Intended State Residence FIG. r. Total Distribution oflmmigrants to the States, 1977-88. When they enter

the United States, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) asks them where they intend to reside. Source: U.S. Dept. ofJustice, INS, 1978 - 80, 1982-89. (The INS did not report statistics for 1980 and 198 r .)

12

Introduction Allothen

200

.......

150

~

~100

0

E

~

New York

50

197719781979 1980 19811982 1983 19841985 198619871988 FIG. 2. Yearly Distribution of immigrants to the States, 1977-88. Distribution of immigrants to the states measured by their intended state of residence. Source: U.S. Dept. of Justice, INS, 1978 - 80, 1982-89. (The INS did not report these statistics for the years 1980 and 1981.)

ertheless, policy analysts have argued that the prevalence of unskilled immigrants depresses wage rates, economic opportunities, and the potential for organization of unskilled workers in the agricultural and service sectors of the United States economy. Loose enforcement of immigration laws also encourages inefficient industries by allowing them to substitute cheap, exploitable labor for capital investment. Cheap foreign labor may have a favorable impact on tax revenues in the long run {though this contention is a matter of dispute). Clearly, however, newcomers burden the public services of communities in which they settle in large numbers. Cheap labor also attracts business and spurs economic growth, creating a competitive disadvantage for non-immigrant-receiving communities. In summary, the economic impact of immigration is complicated but considerable. The sources of immigration to the United States have changed dramatically over the last few decades and have had considerable cultural effects. Asians, after being strictly limited from moving to the United States for generations, began settling in large numbers in the I 970s. Figure 3 dramatically illustrates the growth of Asian immigration between 1950 and 1980 by comparing the numbers of immigrants from different continents. Representative years separated by a decade illustrate the gradual trend over this period. Asians constituted only r.82 percent of all immigrants in 1950 and 46.05 percent in 1980. They had gone from the least common source recorded by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to the most common. Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, and other Southeast Asians went from rarities to common new elements of the urban mo-

Introduction

I

3

saic of the fastest-growing cities. The Census Bureau recently reported that "Asians and Pacific Islanders ... are projected to be the fastest-growing race/ ethnic groups with annual growth rates that may exceed 4% during the 1990s" (Day 1993, xxi). Along with Koreans, Filipinos, and others, these new Asian immigrants have introduced novel elements to a society that is increasingly recognized as "multicultural." Latinos are becoming more common too. According to the Census Bureau, "the Hispanic population may double within thirty years and triple in sixty" (Spencer 1989, 1). The Spanish-origin population aged 65 and older may quadruple by 2015 and grow to seven times its present size by 2030. The white, non-Hispanic population will probably peak in size by 2020 and then steadily decrease. Latinos (or Hispanics-even the nomenclature is politically charged) will constitute a higher percentage of the non-AfricanAmerican population. Only fertility, mortality, and immigration rates can affect the ethnic composition of the nation (Day 1993; Spencer 1989). Although Figure 3 does not include estimates of Hispanic-Americans who have settled in the United States without legal sanctions, it still captures the changing ethnic character of immigration since 1950. Immigrants from Latino backgrounds bring with them language, Catholicism, folkways, and political traditions that are different from those of natives (Portes and Rumbaut 1990). 5 Natives sometimes worry about the assimilability of groups that come in such large numbers. By forming ethnic enclaves, immigrants can live their whole lives in their adopted homes without needing to learn

250000 ~

200000

-~

e

..s 150000 '()

ll§ 100000

z

"3

~ 50000 0

.

Europe

1950

1960 .

Asia

1970

D

1980

N. &S. America

FIG. 3. The Changing Sources of Immigration by Continent, 1950-80. Representative years over four decades. Source: U.S. Dept. ofJustice, INS, 1981.

14

Introduction

English. There have always been fears that immigrants would not assimilate, however. More important, as immigrants became part of American culture in the past, they maintained unique elements of their own cultures (Glazer and Moynihan 1963). Recent and future immigrants will bring new cultural patterns to this country that will change its identity (Portes and Rumbaut 1990). The various immigrant groups differ from the native population in ways that have both economic and cultural implications. For example, as Figure 4 shows, Mexicans (the single largest source of immigration for the last few decades) are far less educated than the native population of the United States. The same is true of those emigrating from Latin America generally. Asians and Africans, on the other hand, are far more educated. Nearly all Nigerians, Taiwanese, and Indians, for example, have graduated from high school, as Figure 4 illustrates. These percentages are much greater than those for native Americans. Figure 5 shows the same comparisons based on percentages from national sources finishing college education. These numbers give even stronger evidence that countries such as India are on strong grounds in suspecting that the United States is encouraging "brain drain." By contrast, Mexican, Dominican, and Laotian immigrants are unlikely to possess the education to move quickly into the higher echelons of American society. These numbers do not suggest a coherent labor policy strategy. As we shall see in later chapters, the reason for this incoherent policy is that foreign policy goals have more to do with these numbers than domestic labor needs do. Alejandro Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut (1990) have

Nigeria

100 80

~c:: §

~

60 40 20 0

DR Laos

Col.-Columbia OR-Dominican Republic ES-El Salvador Guat-Guatamala Incl.-India

F 1G. 4. Percentage oflmmigrants Obtaining High School Education by Source Country (Compared to the United States Average) . These nations all have a comparably high numbers of recent immigrants. Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census 1984 (Table r).

Introduction

70

60

50

I

5

Ind. Arg.-Argentina Aus.-Australia OR-Dominican Republic ES-El Salvador GuaL-Guatamala Incl.-India Nig.-Nigeria

Taiwan Nig. Egypt

Isreal

20 10

0

exico0 R

ES LaosGunl

5. Percentage oflmmigrants with Four Years of College by Source Country (Compared to the United States Average). Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census 1984 (Table 2).

FIG.

shown that these differences contribute to variation in these groups' assimilation patterns. Large numbers of uneducated, non-English-speaking people may make for ethnic enclaves that will remain distinct from and marginal to the rest of American society (Portes and Rumbaut I990). Meanwhile, conflict is already beginning to emerge between those immigrants whose prospects for economic success are highest and African-Americans who have not enjoyed the fruits of this nation's wealth. In the past few years, movies such as Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, rap songs, public controversies, and ethnic targeting during the Los Angeles riots of I 992 have highlighted the growing tension between natives of African descent and upwardly mobile Asian immigrants. In a society divided over issues of multiculturalism and ethnic accommodation, immigration, and the policy that shapes it, is increasingly significant. Consider the contemporary effects of immigration on politics. The cultural changes mentioned above are already changing the face of American politics. A recent example ofhow immigration alters politics illustrates this transformation. After the death ofRepresentative Claude Pepper (D.- Fla.), a special election was held to replace him. Pepper had held the seat from its creation in I962 until his death in May I989. The seat was won by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a thirty-sevenyear-old Cuban emigre and conservative Republican. There was more to this event than a young woman of color replacing an old, white man, as striking as

I

6

Introduction

that may be. Pepper had been a living monument to the politics of the New Deal, the politics of a previous generation's immigrants. In this contest, however, the question, What does it mean to be an American? eclipsed New Deal-era issues. 6 The impact of postwar immigration here was on the American creed. The shift from economic immigration before World War II to political immigration during the Cold War meant that antistatism and an aggressive anticommunist stance had replaced equal opportunity as defining ideas of American identity. Ethnic identity and its relation to being an American pushed class-based economic issues aside, too, as immigration's role in the 1994 elections proved. Because of immigration, this example shows, politics today centers on "who we are" as much as "who gets what." Recent immigration has rendered the old politics obsolete, especially in the fastest-growing communities of the United States. This recent impact of immigration points to its broad political significance. Policy affects both economics and culture. The effects of immigration policy also dramatize why theories of politics matter. Politics arises from central facts of the human condition. To act on the world, we must make choices. Our choices matter, and we cannot escape this fact. Some of these choices imply choosing who and what we want to become. These are inherently political choices, that is, they involve collective decisions about collective identity. Immigration policy is politically significant because it is a collective decision that shapes the nation's identity. This policy tells the world how a nation defines itself As Michael Walzer points out, communities can make immigration policy without many constraints typical of more domestic policies. Yet immigration policy is not a typical foreign policy. The right to choose an admissions policy ... is not merely a matter of acting in the world, exercising sovereignty, and pursuing national interests. At stake here is the shape of the community that acts in the world, exercises sovereignty, and so on. Admission and exclusion are at the core of communal independence. They suggest the deepest meaning of self-determination. Without them, there could not be communities if character, historically stable, ongoing associations of men and women with some special commitment to one another and some special sense of their common life. (Walzer 1983, 6r -62) Immigration policy has practical implications for the economy and for economic distribution. It helps shape culture, especially in the long run, because it changes demography. It states to the world who and what a polity takes itself to be, while reshaping the polity itself In this sense, immigration shapes the face of the nation both concretely and consciously. I have already argued that an institutional approach will help explain the political dimension of immigration policy formation (Chapter 2 elaborates this contention further). This book uses the new institutionalism's insights to explain how the United States immigration policy became what it is. 7 Immigration policy reminds us of an important prem-

Introduction

I

7

ise for institutional theorizing. Communities, including nations, are political projects. They are constructed out of arguments and the meanings that people attach to politics. Neither the state nor the polity exists apart from the web of meaning that people use while constructing institutions and communities. The meaningful character of immigration policy, that it shapes not only the skin tone of the nation's face but the perceptual schemas people use to interpret what they see while looking at this face in the looking glass, challenges us to move beyond simple conceptions of interest and identity. This observation inspires the reconstruction of the theory of institutions presented in Chapter 3 that I call improvisational institutionalism.

Plan of the Book The book proceeds as follows. In Chapter 2, I identifY the most puzzling features of contemporary immigration policy by reviewing various criticisms by policy analysts and moral critics. Because critics consistently identifY certain major aspects of immigration policy, these will be the focuses of the rest of the book. Part of what makes politics compelling in the modem era is that it expresses the human hope of making the world a rational place. From the perspectives of efficiency or justice, actually existing immigration policies seem irrational. Given that, I ask, Where do these policies come from? Why do they have the characteristics they do? I review the modem theories of public policy formation and the research based on these theories that study immigration policy in search of answers to these questions. I find that the policy literature fails to account for the very aspects of immigration policy that critics identifY as the most consequential and enigmatic. To begin a discussion of these puzzling features of immigration policy, one must first acknowledge an important fact. State-centered (or realist) explanations tend to emphasize the ends of state bureaucrats as definitive in policy. Pluralist and class-conflict theorists stress social forces in their explanations. The fragmented or sectoral character of American public policy results in schizoid policies, however. For example, the government is perfectly capable of running a vigorous campaign against smoking cigarettes while supporting the American tobacco industry. One might expect one policy on tobacco, with one set of interests dominating. The reality is that two policies coexist, which implies that two sets of interests define the ends of public authority. Similarly, in immigration policy, distinct aspects of policy appear directed toward completely different goals. This book focuses on three important and distinct aspects of immigration policy. The first is the policy regulating admission to the United States for permanent residency ("front-gate immigration''). The next is refugee policy, which regulates admission of people fleeing political repression. Finally, I detail the policies that deal with the flow of unsanctioned migrant laborers across the U.S.

I

8

Introduction

border with Mexico ("back-door immigration"). Critics ofback-door immigration policy portray it as a complex scheme oflabor exploitation that suits powerful interests in agriculture and light industry. Many details of front-gate immigration policy seem suited to serve powerful groups with economic motives as well. Others seem motivated by foreign policy goals. The pattern of politics mixes both pluralistic and statist elements. More recent immigrants have been refugees than from any other specific category of sanctioned or unsanctioned groups. Critics claim that the component of immigration policy dealing with refugees has done a poor job of tying admissions to labor needs. The poor fit between refugee policy and labor needs has injured many affluent and powerful interests, some economists argue. Refugee policy has been, however, an important substantive and symbolic element of U.S. foreign policy with the developing nations, especially those of the Western Hemisphere. Foreign policy goals dominate in this area. A state-centered explanation fits refugee policy. Societycentered explanations work best for front-gate and unsanctioned immigration. Why?H These contrasting patterns lead to the question, Why do the international goals of public officials define one aspect of immigration policy while specific goals of social groups define another? Society-centered explanations fail to explain immigration policy comprehensively. Neither does the state-centered theory, despite its promising political focus. I argue that to explain why these various perspectives have their own limited domains, a general theory of political institutions must be laid out. I argue that institutional developments created these different aspects of policy and their specific patterns of politics. These patterns have persisted long after people forgot the conditions that caused them. For example, in refugee policy, specific events long ago resulted in the creation of national public bureaucracies. These bureaucracies had clear legal mandates and other specific administrative resources to respond creatively to refugee flows. These resources later allowed national public officials to create a "refugee policy," which officials then used to pursue their interests. Refugee policy became state-centered. In other aspects of immigration policy, such as those governing the regulation of workers across the border with Mexico, no analogous process of institution building happened. Here, the patterns of state weakness that some have characterized as typical of American politics became institutionalized. The pattern of politics was distributive (that is, the politics of this issue centered on providing selective goods to particular beneficiaries). The absence of state development allowed special interest groups to dominate the policy formation process. Here, policymakers suited the terms and details of policy to provide employers with cheap, exploitable labor. To provide a theoretical foundation for this argument, Chapter 3 shows how to go beyond the realist, or, state-as-actor, version of new institutionalism that has become popular in the last decade. This chapter begins by clearing up the

Introduction

I

9

sometimes murky terminology surrounding "the state." The discussion offers clearly delineated and theoretically based definitions of "the state," "the regime," "the national administrative bureaucracy," and "national policy networks." In this effort, the works of Michael Mann (1986) and Peter Hall and G. John Ikenberry (1989) are especially useful. I place these terms in the broader theoretical framework of structuration theory (Giddens 1984; Mann 1986) to construct an alternative to state-as-actor approaches rooted in realism. I refer to this new enhanced institutional perspective as improvisational institutionalism. Though this effort is somewhat complex, the results explain the empirical puzzle that American immigration represents. The basic argument is as follows. At the most general level, policy innovations concerning immigration are the outcome of the process of industrialization. Large-scale capitalist development in the United States created a great demand for unskilled labor. Immigrants, often fleeing economic or political turmoil at home, met that need. Their arrival in the United States excited opposition from workers here, who were trying to organize into labor unions, and various others who felt threatened by them. Local authorities found the large numbers of immigrants difficult to handle, too. These groups eventually organized and succeeded in getting the federal government to place some restrictions on immigration. Such a general explanation, however, does not explain the most consequential features of immigration policy. Why, for example, is refugee policy regarded as distinct from other aspects of immigration policy? And why has the United States never effectively dealt with migration across the border with Mexico? I argue that to answer these questions one must look at the political regimes that processed the general pressures for immigration control. The characteristics of regimes provide actors with specific resources upon which they draw as they innovate. Regime characteristics enable, but they also constrain action. Regime characteristics are a limited set of options. An important feature of regimes is policy networks (the rules and resources that decide who participates in policy deliberations). The regime includes dominant rhetorical frameworks used by participants during episodes of policy deliberations as well. The episodic character of policy innovation is another component of the explanation. The way that the early proponents of immigration restriction framed the issue led them to come up with policies structured along particular lines. For example, because race was so important to the original opponents to immigration, policymakers used racially motivated national quotas to restrict immigration. They could have used simple quantitative limits based on labor market demand. The results of one era's policymaking provide the legacies for the next. These legacies influence later innovations by making some alternatives imaginable, some imaginable alternatives obtainable, and other alternatives seemingly impossible or unthinkable. Reforms after the national quota system had been

20

Introduction

established addressed the quota system's deficiencies. Existing policies structure the rhetoric of later policy controversies. The quota system became the basis of future conversations about immigration policy, which structured the alternatives people later imagined. Thus the present features of policy are historical products, but they are also the products of structural principles embedded in political institutions. To test the explanatory power of this institutional perspective, the book presents an analysis of the development of American immigration policy. The argument is as follows. In the United States, the nationalization of policy and the institutionalization of bureaucratic infrastructure at the national level have been the outgrowths of specific historical events. When this happened, the struggles to transform the old, highly localized political regime had a lasting impact on the resulting institutions (Skowronek 1982). Nevertheless, there are policy domains in which a clear process of state building occurs when social actors dominate policy formation (along with representatives of local public authorities). The history and structure of political institutions must take center stage in policy studies. These contingent historical developments create variable infrastructural resources for the state and thus explain the degree to which the state or civil society dominates politics. Institutionalized policymaking also decides which societal interests will be heard. Policy legacies also influence the rhetoric people use to make sense of the policy terrain when they try to reform it. This approach to studying policy exploits the explanatory power of the historical development of policy instruments across several eras. It supports the view that politics, and especially political institutions, matter. Four empirical chapters then present research on the origins and development of United States immigration policy. The first of these supports the findings of Skowronek (1982) about the way the regime of the late nineteenth century structured efforts to build national administrative capacities. The chapter traces the establishment of national bureaucratic and legal structures for a national immigration policy to the problems of a troubled regime of "parties and courts." Pressures stemming from the tensions of emerging corporate capitalism and ethnic diversification resulted in a clear national policy to restrict immigration. The specific details of the policy that resulted reflected the concerns oflocal officials, laborers, and dominant ethnic groups and shaped the development of immigration policy from then on. The next chapter shows how the new bureaucracies directed at achieving these goals used legal resources to fashion new aspects of policy, including refugee policy. Parallel to these events was the absence of a similar process of institution building with respect to immigration across the border that the United States shares with Mexico. Chapters 6 and 7 continue the analysis for the postwar era, ending at 1965, the year of the last comprehensive reform of immigration policy before the contemporary era. Although the historical analysis ends at

Introduction

2I

1965, the patterns of immigration policy in place then have persisted and defined the contours of major areas of policy reform in the 1980s. The evidence is strongly supportive of the theoretical perspective presented in Chapter 3. I conclude in the final chapter by discussing the normative significance and policy implications of these findings and the significance of political institutions to the formation of American political identity.

CHAPTER

l

The Puzzle of Immigration Policy and Theories of Policymaking

AT THE BEGINNING OF the 1980s, critics of American immigration policy placed it squarely on the national political agenda. These critics were castigating a set of policies that were the result of roo years of national policymaking, legislative actions consisting of false starts, symbolic gestures, dramatic legislative landmarks, incremental adjustments, and halting reforms. The results were complex tangles ofloosely related laws, regulations, and procedures. These policies embraced some people who wanted to enter the country and rejected others. They failed either to reject or to embrace still other classes of immigrants. Despite the complexity of this policy domain, critics advocating reform agreed about the key features of policy and why they needed changing. This chapter begins by reviewing the critics' findings on immigration policy. I focus on these criticisms as a reintroduction to the puzzle presented in Chapter I. Immigration policy may be divided into three aspects: front-gate policy, refugee policy, and back-door policy. The critics' assessments of immigration policy illuminate patterns that set these aspects of policy apart from one another. Yet each of the three most influential empirical theories of public policy formation seems to explain only some aspects of immigration policy. Why? In this chapter, and again in Chapter 8, I consider ambiguities in the term rationality as a way of analyzing each of these theories' explanatory and critical weaknesses. A consistent theme of the critics is that United States immigration policy shows no signs of rational decision making. Although the specific criticisms differ, the theme of a lack of a rationale runs throughout the pre- and postreform immigration policy literature of the 1980s. As an example, consider the following passage from an essay by Vernon M. Briggs, Jr., a Cornell University economist:

The Puzzle oflmmigration Policy

23

The absence of any serious effort to forge an immigration policy based upon labor market considerations means that immigration policy today functions as a "wild card" among the nation's array of key labor market policies (e.g., fiscal policy, monetary policy, employment and training policy, education policy, and antidiscrimination policy) where attempts are made by policymakers to orchestrate the diverse policy elements into harmony of action to accomplish particular objectives, immigration policy has been allowed to meander aimlessly. This is a situation that no sensible nation can allow to continue. (1986, 69)

I discuss the specifics of Briggs's complaint below but first will outline its general character. U.S. immigration policy is "meandering" and "aimless," a "wild card," something no sensible nation would choose. Similar portrayals abound in the literature. The depictions of a policy as irrational challenge empirical political theories. Such theories ought to be able to explain where this "senseless" policy came from. This chapter reviews the various criticisms of immigration policy leveled during the reform movement of the 1980s. Again, the specifics of the critics' complaints about a lack of rationality vary depending on which aspect of policy they address. Hence each aspect should be treated individually. Furthermore, the specific complaints leveled at the distinct aspects of immigration policy correspond to the way popular empirical theories portray policymaking. Consider the logic of three empirical theories of public policy. Pluralism, class-conflict theory, and a state-as-actor realism each accounts for one of immigration policy's "aimless" or irrational aspects. The theories show that these seemingly undirected policies do have ends and thus are rational in the sense that they are means directed toward the realization of specifiable ends. These ends, however, are not those imagined by analysts assuming the standards of general welfare or social justice. Instead, the sources of rationality behind policy reside in the narrower goals of

powerful, yet biased, collectivities. The problem is that no one of these explanations works for all three aspects of immigration policy. This chapter uses the critics' writings as an introduction to the limited ability of pluralism, classconflict theory, and realism to explain immigration policy. On the basis of this analysis of each theory's weaknesses, we can devise a more powerful theory. 1 The puzzle immigration policy presents is not merely an academic one. This question about why immigration policy takes the form it does goes directly to central questions about the nature of the democratic state. Public policy is a collective decision about collective values. In immigration policy, we are talking about a collective decision about the collective identity of a polity. Immigration policy effectively and symbolically says who "we" are and choose to become. In the following section, I review critics' attacks on immigration policy's rationality raised in the reform debates of the 198os. Moral critics find the policy hypocritical, exploitative, and unjust. Policy analysts decry its hidden costs and

24

The Puzzle oflmmigration Policy

inefficiencies. Both moral critics and policy analysts suggest that it is not a democratic result. That is, each hints that immigration policy realizes particular interests at the nation's expense. Again, the various criticisms also point out significant differences between front-gate, back-door, and refugee immigration policy. Each of these aspects has a distinct politics that contributes to the general pattern of irrationality that policy critics decry. Again, the puzzling fact is that popular empirical theories of politics share a critical goal that is to explain why narrow interests dominate in the policy process. A deficit in democracy results in deficient policies precisely because the good of biased, powerful groups elbows out consideration of the nation's good. The three theories I review criticize the limits of democratic choice in contemporary nation-states. They share a suspicious attitude: when policy appears irrational or unjust, it may be the result of a decision-making process that privileges some narrow interests over the common good. Theories that uncover the hidden sources of seemingly unchosen collective actions are powerful. They challenge us to see that what may look natural or inscrutable is a product ofhuman choice. They help enable citizens to hold those with power accountable and even to reclaim a lost or hijacked democratic potential in the modern state. Those lofty aspirations for theory raise the stakes of its failure. If my claim is correct, that none of these popular ways of thinking about politics offers a comprehensive explanation of immigration policy, then that theory's failure makes the goal of democratizing the politics of political identity remote. Can a polity effectively choose its identity? That is the political question that Briggs's assessment of immigration policy raises. Immigration policy is about the face of the nation, or providing character to the national community. People who believe in politics, and especially democracy, would hope that a deliberate choice about this issue could exist. The immigration policy critics indicted the United States's policy as irrational. Now we can turn to a closer consideration of these critics' work.

Immigration Policy and Its Critics As the United States entered the r98os the critics of immigration policy had lodged several claims against it. Reforms enacted during that decade responded to these criticisms. Critics have renewed most of these indictments, however, in their reviews of the aftermath of these reforms. These criticisms can be viewed as an attack on the rationality of immigration policy. The theme of rationality is a standard for judging policy for reasons that the final chapter of this book brings into focus. Here, it suffices to say that one reason that criticisms of immigration policy's irrationality stand out is that the theories used to explain where policy

The Puzzle oflmmigration Policy

25

comes from stress that policy is rationally motivated. So these criticisms challenge theories that explain public policy. If these theories adequately explain policy, they should explain what might be called its "rationality deficits." Policy analysts who study immigration policy concern themselves with its efficiency. That is, they try to measure how well policy achieves its goals. By profession, policy analysts focus on the tangible economic costs and benefits of policies. They assume that the goal of policy is economic efficiency. Those who have studied immigration policy in the United States have been, on balance, faultfinding. Although immigration usually helps the economy, policy's failure to choose strategically among immigrants harms many sectors of the economy and population. These costs fall on the nation's least advantaged. Briggs sums up the consensus: "Immigration supplies workers without regard to the macro human resource needs of the economy.... The overwhelming proportion of all those persons who have emigrated to the United States have been admitted regardless of their skills, education or geographic settlement preferences" (1984, 45). 2 The immigration of cheap labor discourages capital investment in laborsaving technologies and indirectly causes inefficiency by disrupting labor markets and closing opportunities for disadvantaged groups. Those unskilled workers and their dependents strain public budgets in areas struggling to make ends meet. It is inflexible and unresponsive to changing economic needs. 3 Immigrants, sanctioned and unsanctioned, contribute to the pool of unskilled workers, the so-called secondary labor market (North and Houston 1976; Piore 1979a). Barry Chiswick, an economist who has studied the impact of immigration extensively, has written that "substantial research indicates that a large immigration oflow-skilled workers depresses employment and wage opportunities for low-skilled workers, without respect to the race or ethnicity of the immigrant or native-born Americans. While immigration is not the cause of poverty in recent years it has inadvertently made it more difficult for low-skilled Americans" (Chiswick 1992). The immigrant-inflated secondary labor market supports inefficient and noncompetitive industries and discourages labor replacement by capital investment (Fogel 1983; Muller 1985; Wachter 1980). Many secondary laborers work in the service sector and do odious jobs that may be undesirable to domestic workers, yet some work at potentially good manufacturing jobs. Because so many immigrants enter the United States without regard to their skills (most refugees, for example), or enter without legal sanction, they swell the secondary labor market. They make labor cheap and are exploitable (Piore 1979a and b). For example, unsanctioned workers cannot complain to authorities about unsafe or unfair working conditions because they fear deportation (Chiswick 1988). Some argue that this labor migration hurts the international competitiveness of the United States (Borjas 1988; Fogel 1983; Muller 1985; Wachter 1980). 4 Although it might drive down wages (some would see this as a competi-

26

The Puzzle oflmmigration Policy

tive advantage), the abundance of cheap, unskilled labor punishes efficient businesses by supporting their less productive competitors (Fogel I 98 3; Wachter I98o). One study carried out in the I970S found that employers paid one in five unsanctioned immigrants below the minimum wage. These same workers depressed wages further because they made unionization difficult in manufacturing jobs where unions are ordinarily found (North and Houston I976). 5 The social costs of this oversized secondary labor market pervade the economy. The predominance of unskilled laborers among immigrants provides a roadblock to social mobility by historically disadvantaged citizens. 6 Wage deflation and competition for unskilled jobs impede African-Americans, Latinos, women, and domestic migrants in their search for work. Many economists argue that those who do find work are paid poorly because of the wage competition from illegal aliens (Chiswick I988; Fogel I983; Wachter I98o). 7 The effects of immigration frustrate members of these groups. Despite political victories for civil rights, traditionally excluded groups have a difficult time progressing up the economic ladder. Jobs are too scarce and pay too poorly to serve as a rung for the economic climb, and immigration policy makes both problems worse. Low-skilled and unemployable immigrants have mainly settled in a few large urban areas (especially New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami). There they strain already tight state and local budgets (Chiswick I982). Figure I displays sanctioned immigration's uneven geographic distribution from 1977 to I988. Several small states have received almost no immigrants (Arkansas, Delaware, and Idaho, for example), nor have some larger states (including Minnesota, North Carolina, and Ohio). California and New York have been the destinations of the largest numbers of immigrants, beyond their proportionate share. Florida and Texas join California in the class of the fastest-growing states and, as Figure I shows, immigrants have been an important component in this growth. Unsanc"ioned immigrants have composed a large portion of the low-skilled workers ,. :w have come to this country to work and live since the I920s. Their numbers are notoriously difficult to calculate (Corwin 1984). Partly in recognition of the problems cited in the last few paragraphs, the United States reformed its laws on unsanctioned immigration in the 198os.H Under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (P.L. 99-603, or IRCA), those unsanctioned immigrants who sought permanent residency could have their status regularized if they met certain conditions, including continuous residency in the United States from r January 1982. Large cities in southern California and Texas had the largest numbers of undocumented residents. The Southwest (especially southern California and Texas), the East Coast, and Chicago have accepted disproportionate numbers of immigrants (INS, 1990). The present version of the amended Immigration and Naturalization Act stresses "family reunification" as a most important criterion for admission. When we consider the interaction between family re-

The Puzzle oflmmigration Policy

27

unification and the ad hoc admission of refugees and policy's failure to regulate the flow of unsanctioned immigrants, an economically rational policy appears remote (Briggs 1986; North and LeBel 1984). The IRCA closed the loophole that made hiring unsanctioned immigrants legal by holding employers responsible for verifying their employees' citizenship, thus encouraging discrimination against those with Hispanic surnames. It did not effectively end the flow of illegal immigrants or the general unskilled character of much immigration to the United States (DeFreitas 1991). Why did immigration increase during the recession of the early 1990s? The answer is the same as for all the irrationalities that policy analysts decry. These inefficiencies follow from the fact that immigration policy, especially after 1965 and before IRCA, lacks a strong labor market policy rationale. Most immigrants gain admission into the United States despite their employment skills or lack thereof. Many enter without legal sanction, and these workers are largely employed in poorly paid jobs. The trends are toward a less economically enriching immigrant work force (Borjas 1988). The occupational distribution ofboth legal immigrants and those unsanctioned workers in the United States who applied for legalized status under the provisions ofiRCA substantiates this criticism. 9 Figure 6 presents INS data on the occupations declared by immigrants in 1988, broken down by the area of the world from which they came. Most immigrants reported no occupational category. Of immigrants from Oceania, 50.69 percent reported no occupation. This was the lowest percentage for any geographical region. Of Asians, 66.56 percent declared no occupation. This was the high. As these figures show, although a comparably high percentage of immigrants, sanctioned and unsanctioned, were high-level managers and technicians, most with any occupation were unskilled laborers or were in the service sector. The admissions policy of both the 1952 and 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Acts provided quota categories that stressed family reunification over labor market concerns. (Table I presents the immigration preference categories under these acts.) Admissions based on family reunification account for the majority of immigrants with no stated occupation. Quotas in this category interacted with refugee policy decisions. When officials adjusted refugees' status to permanent residency, or when refugees became citizens, they could bring in family members under family reunification quotas. The complaint of policy analysts is that there are already too many unskilled and unemployable in the work force. The United States cannot afford more because they contribute directly and indirectly to macroeconomic inefficiencies and social welfare costs. Also, in the world market for productive immigrants, the United States has fallen behind (Borjas 1988). Two other sources of immigration contribute to immigration policy's seeming lack of economic rationale. The first is the number of immigrants who have come in recent decades as refugees and asylees. Figure 7 shows the proportions

Europe

Asia Professional (8.59'16) ~ "''·"··-·;·' (3.96'K) (1.86'K) Suppon (3.70'K) Skilled Cnft (2.21'K) (5.09'16) (2.66'16)

Mrica

Oceana (12.15'K)

(14.04'16)

(5.60%)

uppon (4.97'K) 0

Cnft(2.13%)

Occupouon (52.43'16)

0

Occupation

Cnft (4.95'K)

(50.69'16)

Caribbean

Central America

Professional (3.62'16) Managerial (l.l"l'K) Sales (1.48'16) Adm. Suppon (3.60%)

Professional (3.29'16) Man•gerial (2.05'16) Sales (I.SO'K)

r

Adm. Suppon (5.06'16)

Skilled Cnft (7.39'16)

Laborer (11.15'16) F'armong (3.4 1%)

'o Occup•uon (51.95%)

Laborer (12.33%) F'annong (0.63'16)

The Puzzle of Immigration Policy

29

TABLE I

Pr~ference Immi~,>Tation

Categories Under the 1952 and 1965 Immigration Statutes

and Nationality Act of 1952

Immigration Act of 1965

Exempt from preference categories and numerical quotas: Spouses and unmarried minor children of U.S. citizens.

Exempt from preference requirements and numerical quotas: Spouses, unmarried minor children and parents, and parents ofU.S. citizens.

First Preference: Highly skilled immigrants whose services are urgendy needed in the United States and the spouses and children of such immigrants. 50 percent.

First Preference: Unmarried adult children of U.S. citizens. 20 percent.

Second Preference: Parents ofU.S. citizens over 21 and unmarried adult children of U.S. citizens. 30 percent.

Second Preference: Spouses and unmarried adult children of permanent resident aliens. 20 percent. (26 percent after 1980)

Third Preference: Spouses and unmarried children of permanent resident aliens. 20 percent.

Third Preference: Members of the professions and scientists and artists of exceptional ability. 10 percent. Labor certification required.

Fourth Preference: Brothers, sisters, and unmarried children of U.S. citizens and accompanying spouses and children. 50 percent of numbers not required for first three preferences.

Fourth Preference: Married children of U.S. citizens. 10 percent.

Nonpreference: Applicants not entided to one of the above preferences. 50 percent of numbers not required for first three preferences, plus any not required for fourth preference.

Fifth Preference: Brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens over age 21. 24 percent. Sixth Preference: Skilled and unskilled workers in occupations for which labor is in short supply in the United States. 10 percent. Labor certification required. Nonpreference: Applicants not entided to one of the above preferences. Any numbers not required for preference applicants.

of refugees admitted to the United States since 1950 as compared with other immigrants. Since the late 1970s refugees were a major immigrant group. Relatives of prior refugees came in under the two family reunification quota categories. These three categories (refugees and the two categories of close relatives of recent immigrants) accounted for most sanctioned entrants into the United States, especially after the mid-1970s. Many of these people were unemployable or had no particular skills, as Figure 6 shows. Clearly, the admission of refugees, however well justified by obligations to 6 (opposite). Immigrants' Occupations by Continent of Origin, 1988. Source: INS 1989.

FIG.

30

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700 600

500 'ration policy against the United States, it could no longer afford to maintain this inward-looking policy (Divine 19 57, I 53). In I 94 7 the process of removing racial barriers to Asian immigration and naturalization was begun with legislation introduced by Representative Walter Judd (D.-Minn.). While supporting this legislation, the State Department stressed the importance of the bill in furthering friendly relations with the affected nations and "containing Communist expansion" (Divine I957, I 55). The American Legion and the American Coalition voiced opposition, but religious organizations now openly denigrated race as the basis for an exclusive immigration policy. The legislation passed in 1950. 4 Robert Divine has summarized the consideration of the repeal of Asian exclusion: "The debate ... revealed once again that the primary motivation was a desire to implement American foreign policy in Asia by removing a source offriction" (1 56). The repeal of Asian exclusion had little substantive impact except for those

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few Asians who could now be naturalized as United States citizens. The change was a small part in a larger effort to improve relations with Asian nations to promote commerce and repel communism. The implication of the action, however, was that the state bureaucracy and the policy network for immigration policy became sufficiently empowered to redefine the ends of immigration policy. The international mission of the United States had gained precedence over domestic racial biases. THE INITIATION OF THE BRACERO PROGRAM

Labor migration across the border between the United States and Mexico was never a concern of the social movements that pushed for immigration restriction. These policy activists opposed the costs of front-gate immigration. They opposed the vast streams of European immigrants that were populating the industrial regions of the East and Midwest. The migration oflabor in the Southwest was not politically significant. No force had organized compelling the state to restrict it.' Except for a small Border Patrol, the only significant policy for Southwest labor migration had been the suspension of the contract labor provisions during World War I to encourage it. During World War II, the United States forged an international agreement with Mexico to import contract laborers to fulfill war-induced labor shortages. In this aspect of immigration policy, the state had no established role. Organized interest from the southwestern farm regions could use the war as a reason to push for a policy the national bureaucracy did not want. The policy network that generally dealt with immigration issues did not make policy here. Only a small set of societal interests participated in these policy deliberations. Predictably, the state attempted to protect its interests-maintenance of the Good Neighbor Policy with Mexico. Yet, only decades later, after a policy network had matured, could it muster the force to counter these societal interests. There were several reasons why agricultural interests wanted a cheap source oflabor at the outset of the war. The war interrupted the labor supply, causing wage pressures. The Dust Bowl had abated, depriving growers of the Okies who had been a reliable source of labor. The military draft had further cut into the labor supply, and economic recovery in California in particular provided betterpaying industrial jobs that drew agricultural pickers off the farms. These wage pressures had already led organized agricultural interests to request and receive wage regulations administered under federal authority. The employers themselves were responsible for administering the wage guidelines (Galarza I964, 42). This regulatory scheme aggravated the decrease in labor supply by artificially suppressing demand. By I942, agricultural interests were lobbying state and federal governments for relief of this labor shortage. They based their appeal on a claim that crops would spoil in the fields because of the shortage. The growers,

I

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traditionally staunch exponents of free enterprise, called for government intervention. A scheme to import labor would require both administration and financing that they did not wish to underwrite (Galarza 1964). From I94I until the adoption of the bracero program, cotton and beet growers in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and California appealed to state and federal authorities for a labor importation program. They sought aid to get their crops to market (U.S. Congress, House ofRepresentatives I942; Craig I97I). 6 The Department of Agriculture and Justice turned down the growers' requests in I94I, but pressure from the states and Congress mounted. California governor Culbert Olsen, for example, lobbied the Agriculture, State, and Labor Departments for a bracero program. He argued that the program was necessary for "national defense" (Craig I97I, 39). Appeals to the necessity of maintaining uninterrupted food supplies in support of the preparation for the war effort led the War Manpower Commission to direct the Agriculture Department in the summer of 194 I to provide an adequate supply of farm labor (Galarza I 964). The next year an interdepartmental commission investigated the labor shortage. It included representatives of the Agriculture, State, Justice, and Labor Departments, the War Manpower Commission, and the Office of Coordination of Inter-American Affairs. The Employment Service certified that employers in the sugar beet industry lacked workers, but it could not certify other labor shortages (U.S. Congress, House ofRepresentatives I942, I2439). The State Department sought to avoid endangering the already shaky Good Neighbor Policy with Mexico. Mexico had been displeased with the contract labor scheme in World War I and the discriminatory and exploitative behavior ofU.S. employers toward Mexicans. In July I942, a delegation headed by Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard went to Mexico City to negotiate an agreement for importing braceros. The negotiations took ten days, and, at the State Department's insistence, the United States acceded to most of Mexico's demands, including guarantees of nondiscrimination, adequate housing, employment for at least three-fourths of the contract period, and the underwriting of transportation costs by the United States. Wages were to be set at the "prevailing wage" of the employment area and no lower than thirty cents an hour. Because employers were still setting the wages, this provision was insignificant (Craig I97I, 40-48). The growers criticized the U.S. negotiators for being too generous to the Mexicans. The aspect of the arrangement that most dissatisfied critics was the Farm Security Administration's (FSA) management of the plan. The FSA was a New Deal agency, which the growers regarded with suspicion. According to Craig, "Agraria saw in the FSA administrated program the potential danger of a government-regulated domestic farm labor force, and all that implied" (I 97 I, 4 7). The growers rallied support and lobbied to have the administrative arrangements of the program reformed.

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In January I943, Congress shifted control of the program to the War Manpower Commission. Under its aegis, the program operated until I95I, with periodic renewals. Only one organized interest, labor, expended resources to oppose it. Only the State Department's interest in modifYing it to suit the concerns of Mexico rendered it anything other than a program tailored to meet the patronage demands of regional societal interests. Thus the first example of an active policy concerning migratory labor in the Southwest was a program initiated and designed by civil societal interests located in the periphery. The newly organizing societal interests largely avoided the immigration policy network, although the State Department did maneuver to protect its foreign policy interests. The program was so focused on particular sectional ends that no coherent policy network was institutionalized as a result. The established patterns of interaction in policy networks in place before the crisis hit structured the war's impact on immigration policy. The capacity of the state bureaucracies to offer expert advice and practice administrative discretion put them in a position to define the terms used to discuss these issues. The war, however, favored state-controlled inside initiatives; security was a consensual goal of practically everyone of consequence in the policymaking process. The entire focus of immigration became state-centered as Americanism became defined in terms of the war effort. Significantly, the situation of agriculturalists looking for labor replacement was also favorable to an inside initiative. Here, however, the war created a labor shortage that policymakers became convinced had to be addressed. Temporary procedures were enacted that set up a new labor market for Mexican migrant workers. POSTWAR DEVELOPMENTS IN IMMIGRATION POLICY

By the war's end, the institutional differentiation of immigration policy into specific domains, each with its own political logic, was complete. Front-gate restriction began as a response to demands from labor that unfair sources of competition be limited. Now, however, the federal government ran a contract labor scheme in a part of the labor market that unions had never organized: the agricultural sector. The policy network for this aspect of immigration policy was classic distributive politics. Consumers in the bracero program made specific requests for selective benefits from patronage-oriented congressional committees. The politics was still locally based and the power was societal. The bracero program did not end after the war. In refugee policy, by contrast, through a series of inside initiatives, state bureaucrats and insiders had built from administrative strength an immigration policy aspect that had become part of foreign policy. Congress would balk at the state's efforts to maintain this sector of strength after the war, but the special status of refugee policy would only be reinforced after the war. Front-gate immigration policy had a well-established policy network,

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with bureaucrats playing an important if not dominant role. In this era these actors identified needs for changes in the law to make it more administratively rational and compatible with broader state goals. THE DISPLACED PERSONS PROGRAM

World War II had left millions of displaced persons (DPs) throughout Europe-Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and other survivors of work, concentration, and death camps, prisoners of war, the Volksdeutsch from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and various refugee groups. In addition, the establishment of communist regimes in Eastern Europe immediately following the end of hostilities created new refugees. Many DPs were unwilling to return to their previous homes. This presented the victors of the war with a practical problem because they had divided Germany and Austria into administrative zones under military control. Once the Allies put the displaced persons in camps, something had to be done with them. The problem was not merely logistic. Most of the survivors of the Holocaust did not want to stay in Germany, nor did the Gennans want them to stay. The rebuilding of a politically stable Germany was a crucial aspect of the United States's postwar response to communist expansion. Similarly, the United States could not simply ship anticommunist refugees back to Soviet-controlled areas. The State Department faced domestic pressure from Jewish lobbies and White House influence for a humane response to the survivors of the Holocaust. Immigration law, Congress, public opinion, and the overriding concern with security all mitigated against allowing large numbers of DPs to immigrate. The United States did not legally recognize refugees as a category, nor did it have any formal policy toward them at the end of World War 11. In the last chapter it was shown that the State Department had used its infrastructural resources to balance domestic political pressures and manage the political agenda. Its personnel pursued institutional and personal interests in their response to the diaspora from the Third Reich. The logistic centrality of the United States as the military administrator of portions of Germany, the growing recognition and publicity of the gargantuan horrors of the Holocaust, the new position as the dominant power in the face of communist expansion, and the domestic political pressures that these forces unleashed all compelled the United States to respond to the DP problem. The facts surrounding the creation of a DP policy show that the crisis proportions of the problem and the efforts of American Jews played crucial roles in setting the agenda for a United States response. They could do so, however, because of the existence of a previously established policy network for immigration policy. They had also gained access to and held positions in an expanded and secularized state. The results of these political pressures reveal the way the state could respond politically to its own advantage when the international issues of security and anticommunism came into play even though it

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was under tremendous domestic pressures. These issues were also crucial for the later development of an autonomous and state-centered immigration policy. Concerning the latter, a precedent was established that refugee policy would be considered outside the domain of normal immigration policy. It was made an aspect of foreign policy as a symbolic weapon in the fight against communism. The legislature became an agent of the state bureaucracy, passing enabling legislation at the State Department's request. Subsequently, refugees became the major source of immigration. The state handled their admissions almost exclusively as an aspect of foreign policy. When European hostilities ended in 1945, about two million displaced persons remained. Among them were Jews from throughout the Third Reich's territory; ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union and Eastern and Central Europe; and Poles, Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, and Hungarians who had either escaped from or had been moved out of their homelands and wished not to return to areas under Soviet or communist control (Bouscaren 1963; Schectman 1962). The Allies built camps in which Jews and other concentration camp survivors were mixed with displaced Nazi collaborators. The United States Army had an official policy of equal treatment of the DPs, but army personnel often regarded and treated them as inferior. The anti-Semitism of army and State Department personnel often led to the favorable treatment of groups composed largely of Nazi collaborators (Dinnerstein 1982, 22-34). An established network of interests, largely composed ofJewish organizations, had long been at work in advancing a refugee policy in the United States. As the full story of the Holocaust and tales of mistreatment and horrid conditions in the DP camps became known, these groups mobilized, using their positions and contacts in the foreign policy network to seek better treatment for Jewish DPs. Congressmen Emanuel Celler led Jewish members in the House of Representatives in expressing concern to the War Department about the treatment of Jewish DPs. Leaders of the World Jewish Congress contacted George Warren, the State Department's adviser on refugees and DPs, asking for "urgent attention" to the conditions in the DP camps. Secretary of the Treasury Henry]. Morgenthau, Jr., proposed to President Harry Truman that a cabinet-level committee coordinate an administration response to the DP problem (34-35). Though Truman took no action in response, Morgenthau went to the State Department. He suggested an investigation into the DP's predicament. The State Department complied. The acting secretary of state, Joseph C. Grew, arranged a meeting between Warren, John Pehle, a Morgenthau associate who headed the War Refugee Board, and (at Morgenthau's suggestion) former INS commissioner general Earl G. Harrison, who was then serving as the American representative to the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees. Grew expressed the conclusions of those at the meeting that something had to be done to help the DPs, especially the Jewish ones, to President Truman. Truman assented to a plan to send Harri-

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son on a fact-finding mission to the camps (Dinnerstein I982, 36). Harrison issued a dramatic report documenting the worst claims about conditions in the DP camps and the hostility of U.S. Army personnel toward the Jewish DPs. 7 He recommended preferential treatment for the survivors of the Holocaust and suggested that the British expedite resettlement of Jews in Palestine and that the United States allow as many to immigrate as possible. Even before he issued his official report, Harrison spread word of the urgency of the problem to Grew, the new secretary of the treasury, Fred Vinson, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and General Dwight Eisenhower, who commanded American troops in Europe. Truman reacted to Harrison's work by initiating diplomatic pressure on Britain to allow Jewish emigration to Palestine and by pressuring General Eisenhower to improve treatment ofJewish DPs. The army's first goal was to establish a strong Germany to check the Soviet threat. The DP problem was beyond both its capacities and its interests so it asked Washington to solve the problem by hastening resettlement (Dinnerstein I982, 42- 54). Following the Harrison report, Truman asked the British to allow IOo,ooo Jewish DPs to resettle in Palestine on 3 I August I945· Britain had little interest in a plan that would incite Arab reaction against an already high rate of Jewish immigration to the British-controlled region. It suggested a joint inquiry to investigate the DP problem as a means avoiding outright rejection of the request. The United States Department of State was also sensitive to the political ramifications of Truman's request. A department communique on the subject of the proposed conference noted that the Middle East involved "interests . . . which are vital to the U.S.," including material interests such as oil and shipping and the possible spread of Soviet influence in the Arab community (73 -8I). The Harrison report moved the president to seek Jewish movement to Palestine, a goal not shared by the State Department (Stevens I962, 125 -40)." To its displeasure, the Joint Committee (whose membership included James McDonald on the American side and Richard Crossman for the United Kingdom) unanimously endorsed the idea of allowing Ioo,ooo DPs to emigrate to Palestine. The British were placed in an uncomfortable position. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin suggested that the Americans supported this proposal because "they do not want too many of them in New York." Prime Minister Clement Attlee's cabinet rejected the Joint Committee's findings (Dinnerstein I982, 94-97). Truman continued pressuring Attlee to admit the Jews. On 22 December I945, he directed by executive order that U.S. consuls give preferential treatment to DPs attempting to immigrate to the United States under existing immigration laws. He expressed the opinion that these laws might need to be changed. Nothing had happened by June of the next year. Loy Henderson, head of the State Department's Near East desk, advised his superiors to establish an intergovernmental committee that would coordinate a DP policy with the British. Truman accepted the proposal. He first set up a cabinet-level committee consisting

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of the secretaries of war, state, and treasury. Each appointed career civil servants from their respective departments to represent them. The departments selected the members of the Cabinet Committee on Palestine and Related Problems (the Grady Committee) specifically as people known to be unconnected with the Jewish lobby. They believed this would improve cooperation with the British (Dinnerstein 1982, 102). The Grady Committee worked with its British counterparts to propose that 10o,ooo Jewish DPs be allowed into the Palestine contingent when the territory was partitioned into Jewish and Arab sectors. This proposal split American Jews between Zionists, who opposed the proposals as a move away from the eventual creation of a Jewish state, and non-Zionists, who were more favorable to any constructive proposal to improve the plight of EuropeanJewry (ro3-6). The same split occurred over Truman's proposal to allow more DPs to come to the United States. Mainstream Jewish groups worked with Catholic and Protestant social service agencies supporting DP immigration, intentionally deemphasizing the plight of Jewish DPs per se. The older, better-connected Jewish groups took a leadership role in building a pro-DP coalition. Recognizing that the immigration laws were the stumbling block to greater DP immigration, Jewish leaders worked with other religious lobbies to form the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons (CCDP) with former INS commissioner Earl Harrison as its chair. The CCDP consisted of representatives of the same religious organizations that had actively promoted refugee admission in the previous decade. These experienced propagandists and lobbyists stressed that most DPs were nonJews. They recommended that Congress allow in 400,000 to the United States outside immigration quotas. The State Department endorsed this idea as a means to forestall pressure for a Jewish state in Palestine and to help the ideological fight against communism inasmuch as many of the DPs were anticommunists (Dinnerstein 1982, 123, 135). President Truman, following the advice of the State Department, the Justice Department, and his adviser on minorities, David Niles, continued to support both Palestinian settlements for the DPs and the relaxation of immigration laws. 9 Though the administration and the Departments of State and Justice supported immigration of DPs as a blow against communism, Congress and the public feared their admission, seeing them as a source of subversion. Senator William Chapman Revercomb (R.-W.Va.), who equated DPs with Jews and Jews with communists, headed the new Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration.1" Though Revercomb was extreme in this regard, he was not unusual among his colleagues. Anticommunism ended legislative efforts to allow in DPs (Dinnerstein 1982, I 40-41). The first clash of these two interpretations in the relationship of the DP issue to the battle against communism came over the United States's participation in the United Nation's new International Refugee Organization (IRO). Though U.S. representatives to the United Nations had

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participated in the founding of the IRO, Senate approval was necessary for official participation in it. The State Department mobilized support from the administration, various concerned departments, and its old ally in the Senate, Senator Arthur Vandenburg (R.-Mich.). The Senate ratified the treaty, thus supporting the statesponsored interpretation of refugee policy as a tool for battling the Soviet threat (Dinnerstein I982, I43-45). These two versions of anticommunism continued to dominate the debate over the refugees. Forces within the bureaucratic state continued pressuring for DP relief Solving the DP problem was important for pursuing U.S. interests in the Middle East and against the Soviet Union. The pro-refugee members of the policy network built a coalition of religious, humanitarian, and foreign policy professionals using anticommunist rhetoric. The new secretary of state, George C. Marshall, applied the notion that aiding refugees could help the United States counter communist aggression directly to the DP problem. He linked DP resettlement to the Truman Doctrine, claiming that aiding the victims of Nazism and communism differentiated "us" from "them." The CCDP /State Department-proposed admission of 40o,ooo DPs to the United States was submitted as legislation by Representative William Stratton (R.-Ill.) in June I947· The State, Commerce, Labor, and Justice Departments, the U.S. Army, and Marshall himself supported the Stratton bill (Congressional Quarterly I947, 637). President Truman transferred Ugo Carusi from INS to the State Department to coordinate the department's efforts for the DPs because legal expertise on immigration law was an important strategic advantage in formulating and passing legislation (Dinnerstein I982, I 5 I). When Senator Homer Ferguson (R.-Mich.) submitted a bill similar to the Stratton bill in the Senate, administration support followed. Though the familiar nativist organizations rallied to oppose the DP legislation (for example, the American Coalition, the Junior Order of United American Machinists, the Veterans of Foreign Wars), both the AFL and the American Legion were coaxed to support the legislation. Supporters promoted the DP bill as a temporary measure in an attempt to separate it from the general subject of immigration. They portrayed it as a tool in the fight against totalitarianism (Dinnerstein I982, I43- 53). The public still overwhelmingly opposed immigration oflarge numbers of refugees (Simon I985). A revealing glimpse of how the state could use its resources to gather, collate, and control information was the way it handled visitors to the DP camps, including members of Congress on fact-finding tours. The State Department and the army shared an intense immediate interest in clearing out the DP camps. The State Department's Goldsmith Dorr wrote to General Lucius D. Clay (who had assumed command of the U.S. Army in Europe) asking him to use tours of camps by visiting legislators to impress on them the need for DP relief Clay followed these instructions extremely well. An American consul in Germany

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remarked in correspondence to Ugo Carusi that "if that large group of Senators who visited the Munich D.P. camps knew how well the stage had been set and the play rehearsed they would crawl into holes." DP camp tours also won over the American Legion to support the legislation (Dinnerstein I982, I 53). The coordinated information campaign by the State Department, the army, the administration, and the CCDP first won public support for limited refugee admission in 1948, when the Eightieth Congress finally considered the admission of the 200,000 DPs in the next two years. The opponents of the admission of DPs justified their thinly veiled antiSemitic stance by saying that too many DPs were subversives and communists. Senators Revercomb and Patrick McCarran (D.-Nev.), both members of the Immigration Subcommittee, led the opposition in that body. Their tactic was to accept the admission of the DPs in principle. Admission would then be limited to those in DP camps on 22 December I945, reserving 50 percent of the DP visas for agricultural workers and 50 percent for refugees from the Baltic region and eastern Poland by mortgaging the quotas from these nations for as long into the future as necessary. Many Jews, mostly from urban areas, had entered camps in Germany and Austria from Eastern and Central Europe after 1945. There were few Jews from those areas designated for special consideration. These innocuous sounding provisions practically excluded them. The State Department and other groups that had been supporting the legislation expressed displeasure. These exclusions were unassailable in their support for anticommunists (including the very groups among whom Nazi collaborators were most common) and thus undercut the proposal's opposition (Dinnerstein 1982, 16r -69). The House passed a similar bill, and Revercomb and McCarran skillfully managed the conference so that the result was even more anti-Semitic than the original Senate bill. Outflanked, President Truman signed the bill while bitterly denouncing its discriminatory features (Congressional Quarterly I948, r 9 3-9 5). The bill did serve other long-term state interests, however. It established the principle that refugees were special immigrants, recognized their treatment as an aspect of foreign policy, placed the new refugee policy in the protracted battle against communism, and implied that the ordinarily strict application of visa issuance by the State Department and security requirements of INS would be administered differently for refugees. The act established the Displaced Persons Commission (DPC) to administer the admission of refugees. The personnel of the commission were appointed by the administration and came from the immigration bureaucracy and the prorefugee policy network. They interpreted provisions of the law liberally, thereby avoiding the anti-Semitic intentions of the framers of the legislation. As Leonard Dinnerstein puts it, "The DPC ... showed how a government bureau could change the intent of a law by the nature of its administration .... The DPC sought every loophole and stretched every ambiguity to help bring people to the

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United States under terms of the act" (1982, I8J). Ugo Carusi, the former commissioner general of immigration, was appointed by Truman to head the agency. His fellow commissioners were Edward M. O'Connor, head of the War Relief Services for the National Catholic Welfare Conference, and Harry N. Rosenfield, a former assistant to Oscar Ewing at the Federal Security Administration. The DPC hired its staff from the United Nations Refugee Relief Agency, the IRO, and other agencies with a similarly pro-refugee perspective (I 84). The agency was more liberal than either State Department consuls or INS officials in applying immigration procedures. It soon abandoned the geographic and employment requirements of the law, handling cases on a first-come, firstserved basis. The IRO and various Jewish relief agencies worked with the DPC in expediting cases. Not only Jews benefited from this generous administration. The security elements of the state bureaucracy allowed Waffen S.S. members to immigrate, despite a provision in the law stating that no former members of hostile organizations should be granted that privilege. This action came after advice to the DPC from the Central Intelligence Agency that the Waffen S.S. was strongly anticommunistic (Dinnerstein I982, I 87- 206). These events had not escaped the notice of Senator McCarran, who had become chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee when the Democrats won back Congress in the I948 elections. The administration and the House Subcomittee on Immigration, now chaired by Representative Celler, attempted to liberalize the law to sanction Jewish immigration. McCarran used his position to push instead for greater security measures in its administration. Stressing the threat of communist subversion, McCarran agreed to greater DP numbers and a later DP camp cutoff date. In exchange, McCarran returned control over issuance of visas to the State Department and INS. The Truman administration went along with this compromise, and the new DP Act went into effect I June I950. Many in the DPC became demoralized. Carusi resigned. Jewish DP immigration declined for the remainder of the program as the State Department and INS administered the law more strictly (Dinnerstein I982, chaps. 9 and IO). The displaced persons from World War II presented the United States with a problem it could not avoid for practical and political reasons. The masses of displaced people had to be resettled. Officials saw the Jews as an impediment to establishing a stable political environment. Other immediate state interests were also involved. The United States wished not to offend the Arabs, who controlled oil and key shipping lanes. Hence Jewish resettlement to Palestine was problematic. The human refuse from the war and the political refugees from communism also had to be considered as an aspect of the postwar policy of anticommunism, especially for propaganda purposes. The departments, bureaus, and agencies crafted responses to the DP problem with these concerns in mind. They participated in this process with other members of a centered and estab-

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lished policy network. Especially significant were Jewish and other religious organizations that had been in Washington working on refugee issues for over a decade. The members of this policy network, both inside and outside the bureaucratic state, shared information. They worked together to fashion a policy that would be humanitarian toward the survivors of the Holocaust but consistent with the state's interest. Anti communistic rhetoric was both instrumentally helpful in providing a rationalization for the diverse goals of the policy network and strategically important for undermining residual nativistic opposition. It also provided a focus for refugee policy that would become permanent. Opposition elements of the policy network, including members of Congress, accepted anticommunism as the guiding principle of a previously unestablished aspect of immigration policy. Consistent with that rhetoric, they placed security issues in the forefront of immigration policy. The result of the DP problem was the creation of the refugee as a legal entity, a classification of immigrant so special that it existed outside ordinary immigration law. Furthermore, refugee policy was established as a foreign policy issue rather than a domestic one. It was particularly an aspect of the global fight against communism. This framing of the issue grew out of the peculiar circumstances following a massive war and permanently altered immigration policy formation in the United States up to the present. Divine comments that "the displaced persons program served as a model for later policy. The use of immigration legislation to strengthen the countries of western Europe, pioneered in the displaced persons program, became an established part of American foreign policy in the continuing power struggle with Soviet Russia" (1957, 145). THE RATIONALIZATION OF IMMIGRATION LAWS AND PROCEDURES

Repeal of Chinese exclusion and the creation of a refugee policy in the DP program put immigration issues squarely on the political agenda for the first time since 1924. The experience of the war and these policy developments resulted in the general acceptance of the predominance of foreign policy concerns in immigration matters. The new issue cleavage was between the two interpretations of the United States's hegemonic mission. One view of the new American role was international liberalism that called for deracialization of the quota system. The other was anticommunism. While strong societal forces argued for each side, the State Department and the INS were comfortable with both, for, from their perspective, each fulfilled specific interests. Comprehensive reform of immigration laws was too wide open for the state to dominate the legislative process completely. Either foreign policy perspective would allow federal agencies to obtain greater power to regulate immigration while moving toward general liberalization. Immediately after the war, the old restrictionist lobby obtained support in

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some quarters of Congress for postwar restriction. As in the DP issue, however, others in the policy network persuaded labor to desert the restrictionist fold (Divine I957, I 59). Having lost their most significant source of support, the restrictionists never progressed very far. Nevertheless, the repeal of the Asian exclusions along with the DP issue prompted leaders in the Senate to instruct its Immigration Subcommittee to review immigration law in I947· Senator Pat McCarran was in charge of the investigation. McCarran reopened deliberations after a respite caused by the time-consuming DP issue. In 1949, the subcommittee heard testimony from former communists such as Elizabeth Bentley and Louis Bundez to the effect that an international communist conspiracy took advantage of lax immigration laws. The committee recommended legislation barring the immigration of any communists or other members of totalitarian organizations. The McCarran Act of I 9 so incorporated these recommendations. 11 The McCarran Act expanded the powers of the Visa Division, allowing it to ban politically sensitive visitors without explanation. It also empowered the INS to carry out internments during emergencies similar to that carried out against the Japanese during the war (Hosokawa 1969, 45 r- 54). The INS stated in its 1952 annual report that the law meant that ferreting out communists among potential immigrants had replaced identifYing criminals as its primary investigatory duty (U.S. Department ofJustice 1952, 53). The immigration aspects of the internal security legislation were not central issues in the debate over the bill. President Truman raised specific objection to them in his veto message, but his veto was overridden. Quietly, both the rhetoric and the content of immigration law became more directed toward security concerns and anticommunism (Divine I957, I62-63). The findings of the Senate Judiciary Committee investigation of immigration laws that had begun in 1 94 7 foreshadowed the shift in the tenor of the debate. It released its report in 1950 (U.S. Congress, Senate, I950). The subcommittee had compiled a 900-page report based on testimony from the INS, the State Department, and interested private parties. In content and scope, the report was reminiscent of the Dillingham Commission findings. It presented sociological estimations of the effects of immigration on the larger society, specific considerations of present policy, and clear policy recommendations. The investigators betrayed a sympathy with the goals of the National Origins Act: to preserve the numerical dominance ofNorthern and Western European ethnic groups within the population as a whole. The report criticized the failure of the law to achieve these ends rather than the ends themselves. Yet there were several differences in both the participants in these policy deliberations and the terms used to debate the immigration laws. The rhetoric of the report was heavily weighted toward security concerns, especially anticommunism. Though the report foreclosed the immediate prospects for the liberal-

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ization that some members of the immigration network had sought, it had completely redefined the restrictionist position in international terms. On the other hand, an antirestrictionist lobby had grown, including members of the foreign policy community who were active in promoting the deracialization of immigration policy toward Asia. The National Committee on Immigration Policy, for example, had been assembling its own evidence supporting a more liberal policy. Sociological and economic experts participated again. This time, however, they argued against the old restrictionist objections to immigration. Instead, the theme of the testimony of experts was the salutary effects of a more liberal policy on foreign relations (Divine 1957). The Senate report recommended continuing the racial quota system but adding some labor policy provisions. Within each quota, priority was to be given to immigrants having skills unavailable in the domestic labor market (30 percent of the quota). The next 6o percent of the quota would be reserved for relatives of U.S. citizens and resident aliens. The remaining quotas would be open on a firstcome, first-served basis (nonpreference quotas). At the time of the national origins debate, Secretary of Labor James]. Davis first advocated combining the restrictive quotas with work force provisions. This old idea found favor in the Senate report. The report argued that "more emphasis should be placed upon the interests and needs of the United States in determining whom among the applicants for admission should be admitted" (Divine 1957, 168). The Senate report based these recommendations on expert testimony of consultants from both concerned government agencies and the academic community (U.S. Congress, Senate 1950). This language shows that the idea of a state interest was a force in the reform deliberations. Although such an interest was compatible with or was an aspect of the social control and political management oflabor, there were other examples of state-centeredness in the proposals. The proposal for the continued exclusion of the Western Hemisphere from the quota system was advanced as consistent with the Good Neighbor policy. Also, although invidious distinctions of race were retained in the committee report, the committee's recommendations contained several liberalizing efforts. First, the fact that even after the Judd Amendments the law treated Asians on a racial basis while treating others as nationalities was recognized as an illiberal aspect oflaw that also conflicted with foreign policy goals. The committee proposed deracialization of the quotas. They would be made nation-specific rather than race-specific. 12 Sex-biased provisions of immigration law granted resident alien status to men's noncitizen wives but not to women's noncitizen husbands. The committee recommended ending the discrimination against women. 13 The committee report served as the basis for the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952. The bill itself was complex and technical. The complexity grew from its

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origins within a community of legal experts from the Justice Department and the judiciary committees. Their primary concern except for stiffening security provisions and deracializing immigration policy for foreign policy purposes was legal rationalization (Divine 1957). The act kept the national origins provisions, although national quotas replaced the racial bans on Asians. The act expanded exclusions on the grounds of communism and subversion. The immigration policy network had been organizing independently to reform immigration policy. The judiciary committees, INS, and the Visa Division of the State Department dominated the process. When the McCarran-Walter bill came up for consideration in both houses, a broader network of interests entered the debate. Liberal interests, including Italian and Jewish organizations and the Americans for Democratic Action, opposed the retention of the national origins scheme on the grounds that it represented a failure to modernize policy. They advocated the integration of immigration policy into broader foreign policy. Senators Hubert H. Humphrey (D.-Minn.) and Herbert Lehman (D.-N.Y.) submitted their own bill that included more room within the quota admissions for refugees, relatives, and skilled laborers. Cleavage on the issue was over which view the nation wished to present as its image to the world: international pluralism or anticommunism (Divine 1957, 171- 82). The McCarran-Walter bill passed in early June. It met with a presidential veto by President Truman on 25 June, despite its support by the State Department (183), which stated: Truman's veto message stated an international liberal position. What we do in the field of immigration is vital to the continued growth and internal development of the United States-to the economic and social strength of our country-which is the core of the defense of the free world. Our immigration policy is equally, if not more important to the conduct of our foreign relations and to our responsibilities of moral leadership in the struggle for world peace .... Today we have entered into an alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty, with Italy, Greece, and Turkey against one of the most terrible threats mankind has ever faced. We are asking them to join with us in protecting the peace of the world ... but through this bill we say to their people: You are less worthy to come to this country than Englishmen or Irishmen. (U.S. Department ofState 1952, 78-82) The bill's coauthor, Representative Francis Walter (D.-Pa.), wrote an article for Reader's Digest the next year rebutting the president's position. He cited the support that he and Senator McCarran's staffhad received from the INS, Justice, State, and the Central Intelligence Agency in drafting the bill. He referred to their expert testimony regarding the security threat posed by communist aliens (Walter 1952). 14 Though Congress overwhelmingly sided with Walter in overriding Truman's veto, Truman's position would eventually triumph. Significantly, however, the debate was an intramural one between two visions of the national purpose. The terms of this debate were over how to use immigrants'

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admission to membership into the political community to secure the state's interests. THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE BRACERO PROGRAM

Societal interests imposed the bracero program on a reluctant state during World War II. In the postwar period, the program became permanent. While making it so, a policy network emerged, primarily of opponents to the program, including organized labor and the agencies involved in administering it. In the next chapter we shall see that these developments would result in the death of the program. Meanwhile, a labor market for Mexican labor developed. The program's end would amount to a return to no government control at all. Without the bracero program, the state had no capacity to control this flow oflabor. When the bilateral agreement between the United States and Mexico ended on 3I December I947, growers asked that the bracero program be continued under the authority granted to the secretary oflabor under proviso 9, section 3, of the I 9 I 7 Immigration Act. Low wages supported by the bracero program and increasing unsanctioned immigration resulted in the continued disinterest of domestic workers in stoop labor. The secretary of labor therefore certified that a labor shortage existed and extended the bracero program immediately after the war. When the bilateral agreement expired, however, the protections that it maintained ended. The participation of the U.S. and Mexican governments diminished. There were no longer any wage guarantees, nor were there provisions to protect against the worst forms of exploitation and discrimination (Craig I97I, 54-56). Both the Mexican and the U.S. governments were dissatisfied with these arrangements. The Mexican government, however, felt powerless to object to this legal labor exportation scheme. It was preoccupied with the deleterious effects of unsanctioned immigration, which hurt both its domestic economy and the "wetbacks," who faced the most extreme forms of exploitation imaginable short of slavery. Because workers under the bracero program earned better wages and had better working conditions than unsanctioned immigrants, the Mexican government tolerated them as a source of foreign exchange. The State Department, however, recognized that the unregulated bracero program could harm relations with Mexico. The situation of the undocumented workers had already damaged these relations (58-64). The Labor Department, which now played the only administrative role in the bracero program, had no desire to support a program opposed by its primary constituencyorganized labor. A report by the President's Commission on Migratory Labor in I 9 5 I placed the bracero program back on the political agenda. The Departments of State and Labor and organized labor took the opportunity presented by the report to advocate reforms in the bracero program. The commission's report documented that the unregulated bracero program was harmful to diplomatic relations with Mexico; an enticement to wetbacks by

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establishing contacts with prospective laborers and legalizing their status when apprehended; exploitative of the braceros; and a depressant to domestic wages. The report recommended that foreign labor programs be coordinated through intergovernmental agreements. Upon the release of the report, Mexico petitioned the State Department for redress of the problems decried in the report. After the El Paso Incident later that year, when U.S. officials allowed 4,000 undocumented workers to cross the border, these demands became more insistent. Labor also revived its opposition to the bracero program because of the report (Craig 1971, 67-73). The State Department enlisted the cooperation of the Agriculture, Labor, and Justice Departments. It contacted key members of the congressional agriculture committees to support a renegotiation with Mexico of the bracero program. The State Department assigned U.S. Consul Carl]. Storm to head a negotiating team with Mexico on the subject of the bracero program and undocumented immigrants. It invited the two agriculture committee chairs to join the delegation. Mexican negotiators realized that the Korean War had further pinched the agricultural labor market and thus stood fast in their attempts to obtain a favorable settlement. The agreement that was reached satisfied both the U.S. State Department and the Mexican government. Both sides hailed it as a tonic to ailing relations between the two nations. Agricultural employers were angered at the agreement and charged that Mexicans had outnegotiated the State Department. The State Department felt that it had obtained its objectives. The agreement reconstituted all the protections for braceros contained in the original bilateral agreements and placed the program's administration in the Labor Department's hands. The relevant committee chairs participated in the negotiations. The resulting legislation empowering the Labor Department to administer the program (P.L. 78) conformed to the contours of Mexican-American agreement. Organized labor continued to oppose the program and lost another battle, but the Labor Department had established relations with organized labor and the unions could and would demand inclusion in future considerations of the bracero program (Craig 1971, 70-86). In other words, the dispute over the policy resulted in a new policy network. All the participants in the network, except those that had imposed the policy on the reluctant state, opposed the program. Except for these developments, immigration policy concerning labor migration in the Southwest lacked any realistic policy. Never during the bracero program, for example, did the sanctioned workers of the program outnumber unsanctioned Mexican agricultural workers.

Conclusions Immigration policy during and after World War II expanded and became more complex. This complexity resulted in part from the new position of prominence

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that the United States held in the postwar international system. Nevertheless, distinct patterns in immigration policy innovations can be identified concerning the process, rhetoric, and substance. In those aspects of immigration policy in which a mature policy network and a bureaucratic capacity existed, the political center controlled the agenda and policymaking. This pattern explains refugee policy, the repeal of the Asian exclusions, and the administrative rationalization oflaw and procedure. Regional interests could not dominate among the voices heard in these deliberations. Mature policy networks broadened participation to include established national interest groups. The bureaucratic state played a prominent role in these processes. It was instrumentally important in providing the impetus and personnel for ostensibly private interest groups. State-identified experts played crucial roles. The national administrative apparatus was most dominant in wartime, when it could persuasively claim that it spoke for a national interest. In substance, the policies that resulted from this state-dominated process were shaped to suit the objective interests of the state. Yet, in these areas, the rhetoric of immigration policy also became more national and state centered. Even the controversies were over interpretations of the state's international mission (security and anticommunism versus international liberalism). Immigration issues in prestate eras had been stricdy domestic. In those aspects of immigration policy without a history of policy network autonomy and the building of a bureaucratic state capacity {the bracero program and Southwest labor) peripheral and societal interests (agribusiness) dominated the policy-formation process. These interests set the agenda. They even used the war to manufacture a crisis that justified the imposition of the bracero program on a reluctant federal government. In this aspect of immigration policy, these secular interests dominated, although the state did maneuver to protect its foreign policy interests. The rhetoric of this issue was not national, and disputes were between farmers and labor. In the bracero program, the result of this policy-formation process was the creation of a policy network, but one of very narrow scope. In the more general case of Southwest labor migration, no autonomous policy network and no state capacity formed to control it. The increasing problems that unsanctioned workers posed for the federal government of the United States did not reverse the patronage relations between agriculture and congressional agriculture committees.

CHAPTER

1

Establishing the Boundaries for the Contemporary Era, 1951-65

A GROUP DEFINES itself by drawing membership boundaries. No decision could be more political. Defining who belongs is a uniquely collective and authoritative decision. It says, "This is who we are." Immigration policy is just such a decision. The United States's immigration policy at the beginning of the Cold War defined the nation in a different way than did its popular rhetoric. Though the nation espoused democratic ideals, American immigration policy was undemocratic both substantively and procedurally. In the real world of politics, of course, abstract standards of democracy might never be met. Modern notions of rationality say that immigration policy should be instrumental to achieving someone's interests. Yet, taken in its entirety, no one set of ends defines immigration policy. Even from a comparative standpoint, American policy appears not so much confused as focused on obscure goals. An idealist might imagine a democratic and liberal nation defining itself on universalistic grounds. Such a nation would be open to women and men from all races and nations. Limits might need to be set-no country, no matter how open and wealthy, can absorb newcomers endlessly without costs too high to pay. A people who were democratic could make a statement to the world about their values and their conception of who and what they were. To do so they would give preference to those who, by thought or action, declared their own commitment to freedom and democracy. The United States in the 1950s regarded itself, as its public statements and ceremonies reveal, as the avatar of democratic values. In a world hostile to freedom, justice, and individual selfdetermination, the people of the United States saw themselves as a "city on a hill." The United States was alone, it believed, in its combination of democratic and liberal values. United States immigration policy had vestiges of racism, however. This scar remained even after the McCarran-Walter Act removed formal racial quotas.

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The national quota system said that people can be judged by the color of their skin or the shape of their eyes rather than their character. The McCarran-Walter Act retained and reinforced immigration barriers. Its advocates' words and deeds suggested that they lacked democratic faith as they pursued freedom from communism. The act's means of exclusion bore the signs of an insular and insecure nation at war and under siege by spies and provocateurs. This was not the membership policy of a self-possessed nation, confident in its faith, a city on a hill. A democratic and liberal nation could hardly say to the world that "aliens" could live and work in the country without enjoying the same basic political and social rights as citizens. Yet that is just what the bracero program did while benefiting the interests of a powerful industry in a particular region of the country. Such criticism may be too idealistic to be helpful for understanding American policy. All the major explanatory theoretical traditions of public policy agree that public decisions are social choices, not normatively ideal ones. American immigration policy could have been otherwise, however, and theories of public policy predict that it should have been. By the 1950s, some European nations were carrying out carefully planned work force policies designed to fuel economic growth and keep the national wage bill down. These policies dramatically raised the standard of living of the domestic working class. Such policies, a classconflict theorist might argue, were perfectly predictable in a capitalist state. The United States had such a policy (absent the application of the state's authority, however) in agricultural policy. This policy was specific to a region and section. Quantitatively more significant aspects of American immigration policy were more suited to impede economic efficiency than to improve it. Prominent among these policies was a refugee policy that would only become more significant in time. Although refuge policy did not live up to the ideals of democracy described above, it did look like a policy that state-as-actor realists would expect. It was state-centered, that is, it promoted the international goals of the state. It paid little attention to domestic costs. Front-gate immigration policy had statist elements, particularly in its focus on security. These policy features could just as easily fit the expectations resulting from an interest-group pluralist policymaking process. None of these theoretical approaches comprehensively explains immigration policy, though each seems to explain a part. The contours of immigration policy are explicable in a theoretically comprehensive approach to public policy. I call such an approach improvisational institutionalism. Each of the three main components of immigration policy emerged from a distinct institutional context. In each, the political regime that originally governed the process of policy innovation bore a lasting imprint on the policy that emerged. This imprint, or legacy, then became a given that defined where actors in later eras had to start if they wished to change policy. The legacies themselves shaped people's motives because some people benefited from the status quo and everyone's reality was defined by it. Even the terms of debate involved disputes over the meaning of policies

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and thus were shaped by a previous generation's conflicts. This was so although the problems and perspectives of the dead had long ago faded into historical memory. Front-gate immigration policy, with its racist overtones and its fear of the impure, its protection of American labor, reflected long-forgotten concerns. The interests oflocal charity officials, Northern European laborers attempting to organize, and progressive social scientists who had adopted "scientific" notions that would later find a home in Nazi Germany continued to work their effect. The initial phase of immigration policy innovation happened in a regime that favored local interests. The next policymaking phase privileged national "experts" who were members of an ascendant professional class. Though these social forces did not dominate later regimes, and labor and intellectuals turned diametrically away from racism, the legacy of these regimes and social forces remained in the law and the administrative resources the law generated. These rules and resources structured later efforts to change policy. Reformers had to address quotas and restrictions, and thus they continued to provide the terms of debate and the administrative framework of immigration policy. Furthermore, whole networks of interest groups, bureaucrats, and congressional committees whose relations to one another were established by the process of policy innovation around these policy legacies, had institutionalized their relationships. Another result of these processes was the creation ofbureaucrats with resources to pursue their own goals. Because ofWorld War II, these bureaucrats redirected immigration restrictions toward maintaining security. In a related move, state bureaucrats created a new aspect of immigration policy-refugee policy-which was wholly directed toward foreign policy. The same war allowed vegetable and cotton growers to begin programs that provided them with cheap, pliable labor from Mexico. In the first case, the regime was local and the policy networks were dominated by social forces. A degree of state autonomy and infrastructural capacity came about as a consequence. In the second case, state autonomy had resulted from the previous era. The state played the dominant role during a time when an international crisis threatened the nation. In the last case, a pattern of distributive politics emerged in which pliant members of Congress and bureaucrats provided selective benefits to powerful constituents. In each case these legacies and policy networks provided the rhetorical frameworks and the forums for discussion of Cold War and Great Society policy innovations. Each policy domain seems to conform to a particular model of policymaking-pluralist, class conflict, or realist. These different models work because different patterns of politics followed from the policy legacies of 100 years of episodic innovation. Structural principles created power and constraints. The terms of understanding that agents used as they acted on the world also bore the influence of policy legacies and the reg~me.

The world regime and the United States's position within it changed after the

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war. In the last chapter, we saw how the policy legacies of the past continued to shape patterns of participation in policy networks, patterns of agenda setting within policy deliberations, and the rhetoric of immigration policy. These events reinforced immigration policy's domain boundaries. To put it differently, the distinct politics of these different policy aspects encouraged the process of differentiation to continue. In this chapter, we shall see the same relationships between policy domains and participation in policy networks operating. We will also see the same relationships between state strength and agenda setting exemplified in these policy areas. Finally, these distinct policy domains continued to provide discrete forums for the formation of a national political identity. In this way, the contingent character of American political development led to the distorted rhetoric of national identity expressed in immigration policy. In the following section, I review the developments of this era. Special attention is paid to the agenda-setting process and participation patterns. The next section analyzes the agenda-setting process for innovations in the Cold War era. Again, we see variation in state autonomy and capacity. Patterns of interactions in policy networks continue to predict agenda-setting patterns (see Chapter 3 for the specific hypotheses). Participation patterns reflect well-established relationships in national policy networks. This point is evident by looking at who participated in a few major policy reforms in this era. I conclude this chapter by looking at the rhetoric of immigration policy innovations. The specific terms and issues of immigration policy continued to be shaped by the legacies in each immigration policy domain. This explains partly what did not happen at this time: the construction of a radically different policy based not on country quotas but rather on ideals such as justice and democracy, on the one hand, or economic efficiency, on the other. Nevertheless, the central role of the state in policymaking did have an important part in structuring the rhetoric of immigration policy in these debates. The foreign policy goals of the state in an illiberal world made policymakers acutely aware of the discrepancy between the United States's universalistic values and its de facto illiberality. This is perhaps an ironic claim, given the antistatist core of American liberalism. The state needed to promote a liberalization of immigration law. This feature of Great Society legislation suggests that the civil rights revolution in the 1 96os on domestic matters may be explained partly as a consequence of the nationalization of politics and the establishment of sectors of state strength.

Immigration Policy Innovation and Patterns qf Agenda Setting Improvisational institutionalism suggests that conflict over policy issues results from the routinization of political interactions forged by the political regime. Particularly, bureaucratic autonomy and infrastructure, sometimes the unanticipated results of episodes of policy innovation, change the politics oflater policy-

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making. These variables should explain the process by which new initiatives become agenda items. Specific innovative episodes in the distinct aspects of immigration policy innovation will reveal how well these hypotheses bear out. They should reveal that where the state bureaucracy is infrastructurally strong and a national policymaking network is well established, narrow issues fit the inside initiative model. These conditions apply most clearly in refugee policy on which the State Department had long been at the center of a tightly knit policymaking network. As in the past, the pattern of state-centered rhetoric should continue to apply. The scope of the policy (if not its impact) should be kept narrow in refugee matters. Front-gate reform also involves a national policymaking network and both the State Department and the INS, but the issues involved in an overhaul of the statutes regulating immigration are too broad to keep either the roster of participants or the specification of alternatives strictly in line with the state bureaucracies' interests. Mobilization should be expected. Insiders should bring the issue to the formal agenda but try to push it through by expanding the attention of potentially interested participants. In the process, the bureaucracy will have to compromise on its original objectives. In exchange, it will gain the support of mobilized groups. A couple of other cases of the initiation of immigration policy suggest different agenda-setting hypotheses. Migrant labor across the southwestern border (as in international labor migration from the Caribbean basin) displayed little in the way of an established policymaking network at the national level. The various agencies of the national government that would be expected to play a role in this potential area had not experienced a historical process of infrastructure building. The INS and the Departments of State, Labor, and Agriculture had no experience that would provide them with the resources to control or even count migratory laborers. Any policy innovations in this area come from outside the state bureaucracy. The specification of alternatives should be rooted in societal interests. The bracero program for migrant agricultural labor was one such policy innovation. It did result in a fledgling policy network involving the same agencies. In fact, the bracero program impinged upon the established interests previously institutionalized in policy networks (agriculture, national security, labor, and others). Further policy innovations directly related to the bracero program should involve instances of mobilization, in which established policymaking networks and bureaucracies attempt to redefine or use the new policy domain for their own purposes. The following section briefly summarizes policy innovations in each of these areas. These events are compared to the predictions in the next section. REFUGEE POLICY

A series of special measures and executive branch initiatives marked refugee policy from 1953 to 1965. The foreign policy community designed these mea-

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sures to allow refugees who would otherwise be excluded to immigrate to the United States. The United States made these provisions for two groups. Initially, efforts were undertaken to continue the project of the previous period to use immigration policy to relocate European displaced persons to ameliorate social problems there. Then, especially after the failed Hungarian uprising in I956, immigration policy became an outright tool for checking communism. At first, the idea was to allow in partisans who could later return to their homelands in triumph. Almost immediately, however, these admissions to the United States became permanent. Throughout, refugee policy provided an instrument for foreign policy makers. State bureaucrats intentionally ignored the domestic effects of large-scale admissions. Refugee policy became principally a means of practically and symbolically fighting communism. The indirect effect of this inclination was the subversion of the racially motivated national origins quota system. Immediately after the McCarran-Walter Act passed in I952, President Truman appointed his Presidential Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy. Philip B. Perlman, the former solicitor general of the United States, chaired the commission. The vice-chairman of the commission was Earl G. Harrison, the former commissioner of the INS, and the staff director was Harry N. Rosenfield, a former member of the Displaced Persons Commission. 1 In its final report published in I953, the commission recommended that refugee policy be divorced from domestic considerations. It could then be a flexible element of a global strategy to combat communism (U.S. President's Commission I953, 6I63). The foreign and immigration policy community had already begun carrying out this recommendation. The National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency were using European refugees for intelligence and propaganda purposes in Eastern Europe throughout this period (Loescher and Scanlan I986, 3 I - 39). Congressional action on refugee matters consistently flowed from recommendations and requests of the foreign policy community that stressed the importance of a liberal admission policy for combating communism. Following pressure from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, Congress passed the Refugee Relief Act of I 9 53, which was a "smaller version of the Displaced Persons Act" (Smith I966, 45). President Dwight D. Eisenhower's message accompanying the bill stressed the United States' obligation "to help these people to the extent that we share the obligation of the free world." The bill was the first of several special refugee acts that took effect outside the legal framework of immigration law (Vialet I979, I5; Bennett I966, I35). The next major change in refugee policy came in the wake of the Hungarian revolt of I 9 56. About 20o,ooo people fled Hungary after the revolt. Among them were many participants in the uprising, though most by far were simply moving on to a better life. Such refugees were not "political refugees," technically speaking (Loescher and Scanlan I986, 5 I). The refugees dispersed throughout the non-Communist world, with the United States taking in the largest number,

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Establishing the Boundaries for the Contemporary Era

eventually over 38,ooo. This response came in part due to the general rhetoric of anti-communism. The CIA and the State Department were committed to the Hungarian partisans to whom they had made extensive promises of support. This time, the State Department's Bureau of Security Affairs took a liberal stance toward admitting refugees who were fleeing Communist rule (Loescher and Scanlan I986, 52-55). Congress had adjourned before the Hungarian crisis started. Decades' worth of Hungarian quotas were already mortgaged, meaning officials could not use future spots to let the Hungarians in. So the bureaus and agencies in charge of immigration policy faced serious obstacles in their attempt to help the Hungarians. Pierce Gerety, the State Department official charged with administering the Refugee Relief Act of I 9 53, advised using special visas under that law to admit the refugees. The stringent security conditions of the act excluded most of those seeking admittance. Only 5,000 Hungarians were allowed to enter. Despite these limitations, the Refugee Relief Act of I953 began the process of exempting refugees from the national origins quota system. The inability to accommodate the Hungarians prompted officials in the Justice Department to reinterpret a little-known parole provision of the immigration law, which authorized the attorney general to allow aliens to enter the United States "temporarily under such conditions as he may prescribe for emergent reasons or for reasons strictly in the public interest." Gil Loescher and John A. Scanlan (I986, 56) note that the legislative history of this provision shows that it was intended to meet such situations as the provision of emergency medical care or allowing in a witness to aid prosecution. Nevertheless, the attorney general used the parole procedure to allow I5,ooo Hungarians in before Congress could even convene to consider the question. Nearly twice that number were eventually paroled into the United States by the attorney general. Given the popular support enjoyed by the Hungarian escapees, Congress was not inclined to criticize the actions of the attorney general. Thus an astonishing precedent was set enabling the executive branch to admit large numbers of aliens outside the ordinary legal framework of immigration policy. Once the Hungarians had been admitted, policymakers had to legalize their residency, which was accomplished by three acts in I958. They could not return home. Even those the communists would not have persecuted before they fled would have been if they repatriated. Loescher and Scanlan note that "the Hungarian program not only changed the way that decisions affecting the entry of refugees were made but also affected the way they were resettled after they got here" (58). For the first time, the United States government actually helped immigrants assimilate by coordinating resettlement programs (59-60). 2 Thus the executive branch, headed by the Departments ofJustice and State, unilaterally altered U.S. immigration policy through creative legal interpretation. This improvisation drew on an obscure resource, the parole provision, and the kind of crisis that gave them

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most freedom. State bureaucrats now could allow those fleeing from communist rule to immigrate outside the constraints presented by front-gate immigration policy. They could even aid in refugees' resettlement. The response of the United States to Cubans fleeing after the downfall of President Fulgencio Batista and the subsequent ascent of Fidel Castro proves that both policy and the process by which it is formed had been transformed by the Hungarian precedent. In the two and one-half years after the overthrow ofBatista, about r2s,ooo Cubans came to the United States. The United States Embassy provided unlimited visas. 3 On r January 1961, the U.S. Consulate in Havana closed. Because Cubans could no longer immigrate with legally obtained visas, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy began paroling them into the United States. Before July I96 I, 4,000 Cubans had been paroled into the United States. In the following year, the attorney general paroled 58,530 Cubans. President John F. Kennedy declared that the refugee flow showed that the Cuban revolution was a failure (Loescher and Scanlan 1986, 65). The Cuban refugee program was initiated under a presidential directive in January 1961 to finance the resettlement and adjustment of the Cuban refugees. After the Bay of Pigs debacle and the Cuban missile crisis, it became obvious that the Cuban refugees were in the United States to stay. Throughout these actions, in which Congress played a limited role, the symbolic aspect of the refugees fleeing communism was stressed. 4 In 1965, Congress passed a series of amendments reforming the structure of immigration law. Faced with congressional concerns about the ad hoc, extralegal character of the practice of parole, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations wanted to reformulate the basis of refugee procedures. 5 Yet they also sought to maintain the advantage of being able to act autonomously in the face of rapidly changing events. Congress did not alter the parole provisions of the law but expressed its intention that the parole procedure be used only according to its original design. In exchange, Congress acquiesced to the administration's proposal to create a new seventh preference category for refugees. (The proposal defined refugees in anticommunist terms.)'' Nevertheless, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced, while signing the I 96 5 act at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, that the United States would soon parole more Cuban refugees into the country. GENERAL FRONT-GATE REFORM

The McCarran-Walter Act of I952 did not suit the purposes of a liberal, hegemonic state. The state bureaucracy and the Truman administration rallied to replace the act immediately after Congress overrode the president's veto. Their tactics followed two paths. First, the immigration policy network was mobilized by the state bureaucracies and presidential administrations to overhaul the

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legal framework of immigration policy. Second, the status quo of that legal framework was gradually undermined by a series of special measures that enjoyed popular support in Congress, often because of their appeal to special constituencies and consensually accepted foreign policy goals. 7 The cultivation of allies among a new breed of activist, career-minded legislators by the immigration policy network turned out to be especially significant in this war of attrition. The agenda for general immigration policy reform was set from the inside and eventually prevailed, after a series of minor but cumulative successes, the election to the presidency of the sponsor of several of these less sweeping bills, and the election of a supportive Congress following his assassination. The State Department and the INS carefully and selectively cultivated support among legislators and widened the scope of the reform. They also widened the number of participants in the policymaking process by linking immigration reform to the civil rights movement. The officials involved in making the law specifically tailored aspects of it to suit the interests oflabor, thus gaining its support. The campaign for immigration policy reform began with President Truman's veto message of the McCarran-Walter Act and his appointment of his President's Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy. The commission was composed of representatives of the immigration policy network. Its philosophy as expressed in its report was that "immigration policy should express a spirit of friendliness and generosity to the less fortunate people of the world" (Divine 1957, 165). The commission concluded that the McCarran-Walter Act was detrimental to the United States and its foreign policy because of the racist premises upon which it was based and its manifest xenophobia. The law was not modern enough in its assessment of the needs of the domestic labor market nor worldly enough in its ignorance of the foreign policy implications of immigration and especially refugee policy (U.S. President's Commission, 1953, 263). To rectifY these deficiencies, the commission advocated a new streamlined policy that created a uniform system of quotas for all Eastern Hemisphere nations that would be racially neutral, a new preference system that would emphasize domestic labor needs and family reunification (the latter was especially helpful in the battle against communism), and administrative reform (263). Though the report had no immediate impact on the formal agenda, coming as it did immediately after the presidential veto had been overridden, all but its administrative proposals would eventually be adopted. The commission proposed that visa issuance at foreign consulates be executed by representatives of a new immigration agency. This idea had first been suggested by the Hoover Commission on Administrative Reform, although that commission recommended that the new agency be left within the Justice Department. The State Department had opposed this proposal, and it was not introduced into legislation based on the Hoover Commission's recommendations. Both the State and Justice Departments

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2I

5

opposed the idea of an independent immigration proposal, which appears to have come from former INS and DP program officials, and it went nowhere. A series of makeshift reforms of immigration law emanating from the executive branch were introduced throughout the I950s. The first of these was the act of I I September 1957, which was introduced by Senator John F. Kennedy (D.Mass.). Its intention was to allow various displaced persons who had been allowed to adjust their status to become citizens. It removed the mortgages from various nations' quotas, provided nonquota status to aliens on whose behalf petitions had been submitted before a specified date, allowed certain orphans to immigrant outside the quota system for purposes of adoption, and allowed the attorney general to admit certain excluded aliens. Each of these proposals had strong constituencies, and the legislation was in effect patronage offered by the immigration establishment to dramatize its opposition to the 1952 act." McCarran's successor at the head of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee for Immigration and leader of restrictionist forces, Senator James 0. Eastland (D.-Miss.), acquiesced to the legislation to foreclose the possibility that the carefully crafted package of goods might lead to opening up reconsideration of the McCarran Act. Over the next five years, several minor bills were introduced responding to presidential messages or requests from the bureaucracy allowing for the adjustment of the status of refugees, providing administrative discretion to the Justice Department, and liberalizing or making exceptions to quotas. In each case, legislative support could be found because of the anticommunist content or the advantages provided to constituents of districts with large immigrant populations. The cumulative effect of these measures, when added to the large numbers of refugees who had entered under the parole procedures and whose status had been adjusted, was that the quota system was simply not effective. John F. Kennedy's career in Congress, as is often acknowledged, was not particularly distinguished. One policy area in which he had been active and successful, however, was immigration (Schwartz 1968; Kennedy I 966). Kennedy had even written a book on the subject (1964). It is not surprising, then, that Kennedy placed the powers of the presidency firmly behind the efforts of the state bureaucracies and private organizations that constituted the immigration policymaking network to reform the basic framework of immigration law. In I 962 President Kennedy appointed Abba Schwartz, an experienced participant on both the public and private sides of immigration policy, as administrator of the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs in the Department of State and charged him with drafting reform legislation (Schwartz 1968, I 12- I 3). Schwartz worked with Leon Ulman from the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department in drafting legislation that would effect the recommendations of President Truman's commission from a decade before (113). Senator Philip A. Hart (D.-Minn.) and Represen-

2 I6

Establishing the Boundaries for the Contemporary Era

tative Emanuel Celler (D.-N.Y.) introduced companion bills based on the Schwartz model following a presidential message from Kennedy that assailed the racial quota scheme and the administrative inflexibility of the status quo (Kennedy I964, 102-7). Action on the bills was delayed after President Kennedy's death in late 1963, in part because of the continued opposition to reform on the part of Senator Easdand and Representative Michael]. Feighan (D.-Ohio), chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee. President Lyndon B. Johnson supported the legislation in his I 964 State of the Union message and in a White House meeting with "representatives of private voluntary agencies, religious groups, other interested organizations, and key members of Congress," although his efforts appeared to be geared toward gaining political support for his broader legislative agenda (Schwartz I968, I I 8). Feighan managed to delay hearings long enough into the term that work could not be completed within the first session of that Congress (Kennedy I966, I4I). A nearly interchangeable bill was submitted early the next year following a message by President Johnson. The Johnson administration gave more support to the bill in I965, in part to use it as a trial balloon for a large set of social legislation that would follow (U.S. News and World Report I965). At the hearings, the traditional opponents of immigration reform, including the American Coalition of Patriotic Societies, the American Legion, and the Daughters of the American Revolution, contested the legislation. Supporting the legislation were the secretaries of state, labor, and health, education, and welfare, the attorney general, several officials of these departments (including Abba Schwartz), and representatives of various religious and relief agencies. Labor was coaxed to support the legislation in exchange for the adoption of its proposal that the secretary of labor be empowered to use certification of need to protect labor from foreign competition. Representative Feighan introduced an alternative bill that did away with the administration bill's proposal to make an independent immigration board (after the Truman Commission's proposals) and the leeway it provided to the bureaucracy to relax quotas in many situations. According to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who managed the bill in the Senate, the Johnson administration willingly allowed these aspects of the Feighan bill to be included in the version of its bill reported out by committee to gain Feighan's support (Kennedy I966, I44). An amendment placing a ceiling on Western Hemisphere immigration was also introduced in the House subcommittee but was defeated after strong opposition by the Johnson administration and the State Department, which saw the proposal as an impediment to relations with Latin America (I46). The reform forces failed to stop a similar proposal in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration by Senator Sam]. Ervin, Jr. (D.-N.C.). Kennedy wrote that "the Administration continued opposing a ceiling on Western Hemisphere immigration; however it

Establishing the Boundaries for the Contemporary Era

217

was unwilling to wage a battle for this cause" (I47). The support of those advocating quotas for the Western Hemisphere was necessary, and these ceilings became the price of support for general reform. THE BRACERO PROGRAM

The bracero program was the creation of the organized agricultural interests of the Southwest. They had forced it upon a reluctant State Department during World War II and had obtained its renewal during the Korean War. Early in the I950s, organized opposition to the program formed from a concern about migratory agricultural workers' plight. Among the participants in this movement were labor leaders and religious organizations. President Truman's Commission on Migratory Labor of I 9 5 I criticized the bracero program, claiming that it undermined domestic wage rates in the agricultural labor sector. The commission especially criticized the British West Indies program. Although similar to the bracero program in other ways, this small program did not operate with an international agreement. Unlike the subsequent Commission on Immigration, no changes in immigration policy can be traced to these findings because support for the program by agribusiness "was seldom equaled" in its "political acumen and adroitness" (Craig 1971, 24). These interests included the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Grange, the Vegetable Growers Association of America, the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, the National Farm Labor Users Committee, the Amalgamated Sugar Company, the National Beet Growers Federation, the National Cotton Council, and various state growers' associations, notably those of California and Texas. President Eisenhower's secretary of agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson, was a member of the American Farm Bureau, and these groups enjoyed a comfortable relationship with the department. Domestic farm labor, however, had no clout or organization and little help. Opposition to the bracero program came from selected AFL-CIO affiliates. The Textile Workers Union of America and various religious organizations such as the National Council of Churches and the National Catholic Welfare Conference were the opposing forces. These organizations were prominent in the immigration policy network that included the State Department, INS, and the judiciary subcommittees. The Labor and Agriculture committees anchored the bracero program policy network in Congress. The Labor and Agriculture Departments administered the bracero program. Other than labor, the traditional immigration policy network organizations had no established relations with these state bureaucrats or congressional committees. Although the State Department negotiated the international aspects of the bracero agreement, it did not participate directly in drafting the domestic legislation that supported it. The legislative framework of the bracero program did not undergo any sig-

2I8

Establishing the Boundaries for the Contemporary Era

nificant changes for several years after the bracero program was institutionalized in 1952. The only major legislation was to pressure Mexico to renew the program (Craig 1971, ro5-27). The program allowed 2.5 million Mexican citizens to labor in the fields of the United States from 1952 to I959· The number of braceros averaged 335,000 a year (wr). Yet various structural conditions of the program were changing. Mechanization in key sectors of agriculture such as cotton lessened the dependence of some growers on armies of stoop laborers. Some growers were tired of the Labor Department's strict administration of the program and became more willing to hire unsanctioned workers instead. Growers had never been comfortable with the participation of government agencies outside the Agriculture Department. The Labor Department aggravated farmers by strictly enforcing the wage, housing, and other provisions (IS I- 54). The migratory labor situation became a popular moral issue, especially after CBS broadcasts that exposed the horrid plight of workers. Ironically, Mexico and the State Department became the prime supporters of the bracero program. The Mexicans were concerned about the exploitation their nationals would face if no formal program supported them, yet they had become dependent on the employment and hard currency the program provided. The State Department, a minor player in bracero politics in the past, now saw the program as adding stability to U.S.-Mexican relations (Craig 1971, 151). In 1959, the Department of Labor appointed a consulting group to assess the effects of the bracero program. The commission, made up of representatives of organized labor and religious organizations, reported various problems with the program, including the allegation that skilled laborers were among the braceros.') Later that year, Representative George McGovern (D.-S.D.) introduced legislation that embodied the recommendations of the consultants' report. The hearings on the bill showed the growing division over the program. Growers disliked what they considered ·o be already too stringent regulations. Meanwhile, opposition to the bill grew ;; 11 10ng liberals. The Departments of Labor, Agriculture, and State remained neutral. They testified against Agriculture and Labor's joint administration of the program, but did not support the McGovern bill. This stance represented a compromise between the departments. The State Department contended that the status quo should prevail. Reform had complicated diplomatic ramifications (Craig 1971, I 57). The controversy over the bracero program led to a legislative bottleneck in the Senate, and P.L. 78 was renewed on the last day of the session. Opposition to the bracero program mounted on all sides. After the 1960 election, the Kennedy administration included a new secretary of labor, Arthur Goldberg, who strongly opposed the program and had close AFL-CIO ties. The groups opposed to the bracero program proliferated and the Labor Department applied that regulations in the law more stringently than ever. Meanwhile, bracero employment

Establishing the Boundaries for the Contemporary Era

219

was decreasing and unsanctioned immigration was on the rise. 1" The Mexican government responded to the possibility of the program's cancellation by asking only that it be phased out rather than ended suddenly. In 1963, opponents defeated the renewal of P.L. 78. The Kennedy administration intervened on the side of the State Department supporting a more gradual termination of the program (179-96). By 1964, the opposition oflabor unions and religious organizations on the one hand and agriculture on the other made renewal of the program impossible. It ended at the end of that year. Despite the influential role of the State Department in protecting its prerogatives in its relations with Mexico in shaping policy, "in the case of the bracero program, the government as a whole did not move to counteract the disproportionate power and access enjoyed by agribusiness" (204). OPERATION WETBACK

Truman's Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy noted the increasing size of the flow of illegal migration across the border with Mexico. It recommended that employers of illegal immigrants be penalized to interrupt the unsanctioned labor market. Throughout r 9 53, the Labor Department issued reports documenting the extent of the problem. Disputes with the Mexican government in stopping the flow also attracted press attention. In August 1953, Attorney General Herbert Brownell inspected border areas in California and recounted that the "wetback" situation was "shocking." Upon returning to Washington, Brownell met with President Eisenhower and reported his findings. Soon thereafter, the Justice Department announced that the problem called for a concerted program that included the cooperation of state, national, and Mexican officials, and Mexican cooperation in such a program became a condition of the renewal of the bracero program for the next year. Growers in the Southwest complained that stopping the circulation of illegal workers would lead to an inability to harvest crops (Hill 1954). The Labor Department and the INS continued playing up the "wetback" problem through press releases the next year, and in April General Joseph Swing, the former Commander of the Sixth Army (which was headquartered in Southern California), was appointed as the Commissioner of the INS. Swing dissuaded Brownell from using the Army to secure the border and advocated instead a comprehensive plan including an expanded border control. Mexican officials and local and state police agencies would best work to gain control of the border (Craig 1971). This plan, christened "Operation Wetback," was initiated in 1954 under General Swing's direction in June of 1954. The INS reported great success and immediately requested additional appropriations from Congress to continue the program the next year. Meanwhile, General Swing courted the cooperation of growers by promising that braceros would be more plentiful

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Establishing the Boundaries for the Contemporary Era

in the next year. Richard Craig (1971, 129) claims that "when on April 14, 1955, the United States and Mexico concluded an agreement relating to illegal entrants, the wetback had, for all practical purposes ceased to exist." Apprehensions of illegal entrants decreased drastically over the next few years as the bracero program expanded. Illegal immigration across the border with Mexico began increasing only in the next decade as the bracero program became endangered.

Analysis ofAgenda-Setting and Participation Patterns The politics of immigration policy is influenced by the despotic and infrastructural power of state bureaucracies and the existence and status of established national policymaking networks. Each of the policy domains reviewed above varied in its institutional development. Therefore, one should expect the character of the politics surrounding them to vary as well. One way of specifying this variation is to look at how the agenda-setting process for policy innovations took place. As explained earlier, there are various specific expectations with respect to which models should describe which policy area. Furthermore, the terms of issue specification should vary consistently as well. This section evaluates how well the events described above conform to these expectations. REFUGEE POLICY

State formation in refugee policy had resulted in an autonomous, centralized, and insulated policymaking network. State bureaucracies, most notably the State Department, played the central role in this policymaking network. The scope of refugee issues was narrow during this period. Therefore, developments in refugee policy should have conformed to the inside initiative model, and they did. Initiatives to change policy came from the state bureaucracy and the policymaking network, including President Truman's special commission and the State Department. Issue expansion was carefully limited so that the initial proposals were the only ones seriously considered. Participation in deliberations was limited to specific groups whose support for the proposals was helpful, such as labor unions. Entrance onto the formal agenda was immediate. Careful political bargaining and maneuvering limited entrance onto the public agenda (i.e., after the issue has already been acted on formally). FRONT-GATE IMMIGRATION REFORM

Front-gate reform was a broad issue in which an autonomous and nationalized policymaking network and a state bureaucracy already existed. Policy change conformed to the inside initiative model. The issue's scope did hamper the policymaking network's ability to foreclose issue expansion completely. Nor could the policy network completely limit the participation of concerned inter-

Establishing the Boundaries for the Contemporary Era

22 I

est groups. A decade of refugee policy and minor inside initiative changes undermined the legal framework of the McCarran-Walter Act and led directly to the carrying out of the very changes that the Truman Commission had recommended over a decade earlier. But the policy network could not completely control such a broad issue as general reform, as is shown by the imposition of limits on Western Hemisphere immigration in the McCarran-Walter Act. The details of the bill's new preference system reflected state interests (anticommunism and some labor management elements). Its heavy emphasis on family reunification contained a large dollop of patronage politics. The state had entered the refugee adjustment business, however, and family reunification served its ends too. The old racialist quotas were eliminated. THE BRACERO PROGRAM AND OPERATION WETBACK

The United States government had never established control of its borders with Mexico. The national policymaking network had never established autonomy from local interests. No national bureaucratic apparatus had even been able to keep track of the numbers of people crossing the border. As one would expect, policy initiatives in the area of international labor migration to the Southwest came from the outside and conformed to the outside initiative model. One such case of policy initiation in this period was the bracero program. 11 Nevertheless, a policymaking network for immigration policy existed, and the state bureaucracy played a significant role in attempting to weave this policy into its broader purview. Once agriculture interests established the bracero program, the state bureaucracy had a new basis for attempting to attain a previously unrealized objective: border security. Operation Wetback began at this time. This set of circumstances conforms to the prediction of a mobilization model of agenda setting. In this model, agenda setting starts inside the policy network. Mobilization, however, refers to the attempt to attain public agenda status to gain outsiders' support. Efforts to gain control of the borders, such as Operation Wetback in the 1950s, conformed to this model. By the era's end, different aspects of immigration policy were represented by distinct policy networks. The different role that the state played in these networks resulted in different patterns of agenda setting. Similarly, different patterns of participation reflect the distinctness of these domains. These differences are evident in Table 8. This table presents categorically the witnesses who testified before congressional hearings during this era. The hearings labeled 88-r were those on the bracero program held in the House Committee on Agriculture by that committee's Subcommittee on Equipment, Supplies and Manpower. The next hearings were those heard on the Kennedy administration's version affrontgate immigration reform (88-2). These hearings were held in the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee number one. The third hearings were those held

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Establishing the Boundaries for the Contemporary Era

TABLE

8

Congressional Hearings, 88th-89th Sessions Wimcss atliliation

Government Local and state Federal Business National associations Agriculture Agriculture interest groups Labor Local National Professionals Attorneys Physicians Ministers Ethnic associations Immigrant interest groups Members of Congress Foreign governments Patriotic organizations Religious organizations Migrant workers' interest groups Others TOTAL

Congress/ Session 88-1

9

Conb'Tess/ Session

88-2

9

6 3 3

()

()

()

()

()

17

()

17 6

()

2

Congress/ Session HY-1

8 1 7 1 1 2 2

()

()

2 4

6

4 1 3

()

()

()

()

0 0 10

()

2 10

()

8

7 25 0 9 4

0 9 1

0 11

7 7

()

81

49

54

9 0 12 1

10

by the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization (89-1). The contrast between the two hearings on general reform and the reform of the Mexican farm labor program is easy to see. In the two front-gate hearings, officials from the executive departments of the federal government played a featured role. Almost no local officials testified. In the last hearings, testimony from the representatives of the Justice, State, Health, Education and Welfare, and Labor Departments took up nearly three-fifths of testimony. 12 In the bracero hearings three state and three federal officials testified. National labor unions (including the AFL-CIO), ethnic associations, and patriotic associations (such as the American Foreign Legion) made up the rest of the social groups heard in the front-gate hearings. Agricultural interest groups were most common. Of these seventeen groups, most were local or regional organizations. These included representatives of the Texas Citrus and Vegetable Growers, the

Establishing the Boundaries for the Contemporary Era

223

Trans-Pecos Cotton Association, the Plains Cotton Growers, and the Imperial Valley Farm Labor Contractors Association. The rest represented particular commodity producers' groups, including the National Pickle Growers Association. Labor unions and groups concerned with migrant workers also testified. In the Mexican farm labor hearings, groups in the national economic periphery played a major role. They clashed with national labor unions over the policy in question (U.S. Congress, House ofRepresentatives 1963). Public officials played a backseat role. In front-gate reform, peak interest groups participated with representatives of the state. The patriotic associations included a few local organizations. Committee members asked these witnesses few questions and usually dismissed them with an abrupt "thank you." In the bracero program hearings, 24 witnesses represented either commodity groups or organizations with the name of a specific state, region, or locality in their title. Seventeen witnesses represented organizations that are easily identifiable as national. Among these national groups, labor representatives played a prominent role. In the hearings on the 1965 legislation fifteen witnesses represented groups that were clearly identified as national. Only six organizational representatives were clearly identified as local. Eight witnesses represented ethnic groups. This composition reveals that each of these hearings had a patronage component. For the national origins reforms this element involved ethnic groups that believed the national quotas were discriminatory. The selective benefits they sought were greater numbers for those of their national origins. In the Mexican workers program the selective benefit was access to cheap labor. In the former case, the patronage component reinforced the concerns of the national groups and state bureaucrats. They sought a racially neutral policy, and these two groups formed the winning coalition. In the case of ending the bracero program, national groups led by labor conflicted with the bracero programs' consumers. Localities and commodity groups that profited from cheap labor would lose their selective benefits if the reforms were passed. The national groups eventually won, but the result was only the dismantling of the only broad-scale administrative framework for regulating cross-border labor migration. The undermanned border guard was all that remained to regulate immigration through the back door. These findings carry implications about both the agenda-setting process and participation in policy networks. The historical contingencies of institutional development not only influence immigration policy but also cause the patterns of politics that define it. Immigration policy of the United States has come to reflect the interests of the economically dominant class in the narrow economic sector of agricultural labor. The ruling class literally rules in this aspect of policy. National political institutions with autonomy and capacity never developed. The secular interests served by policy (and its absence) are those of specific, eco-

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Establishing the Boundaries for the Contemporary Era

nomically motivated groups. The immigration policy of the United States now reflects state interests in front-gate and especially refugee policy. The place of the United States in the world regime defmes its goals. Here neither a ruling economic class nor secular interest groups rule. Policy realizes the interests of the established policy network and the state bureaucracy. These findings are consistent with those of the last several chapters of this study. Political power in a sectoral state can be explicated only through an archaeological excavation of institutional development.

The Rhetoric cif National Identity in the Great Society Immigration Riforms The impact of a national process for front-gate immigration reform was consequential for the notions of membership that were expressed. When this nation first moved to regulate immigration, the grounds of differentiation between potential Americans from those who could not assimilate were racial and moral. It was claimed that various racial groups were incapable of exemplifying the republican virtues that made this nation great. Republican virtues of thrift, hard work, independence, and self-sufficiency were used as grounds for excluding the paupers of Europe, so race was not, perhaps, as important ultimately. By the time of the 1924 National Origins Act, a scientized version of racial exclusion became dominant. During and after the war, the state argued against this racial conception of membership. Its motives, perhaps ironically, were reasons of state as well as morality. Policies that discriminated on racial grounds made it difficult for policymakers to promote the United States as democratic and liberal. In the major immigration reforms of the Great Society, liberals representing the Kennedy and Johnson administrations continue to work to remove racial distinctions and promote universal values. Their rhetoric was based less on republican virtue and more on individualistic grounds than before. A concept of due processthat people should be evaluated for membership on the grounds of relevant evidence and excluded for cause rather than racist whim-also emerged. Rhetorically, it is significant that these appeals often found their justification in the claim that it is this procedural liberalism that differentiates us from the communists. Consequently, we should admit people on grounds of who and not what they are. The Cold War structured the terms of debate over what it meant to be American. The debate became a conflict over the meaning of liberalism. Everyone shared the view that the United States was the defender ofliberty and democracy in a hostile world. A defensive view of liberalism held that the United States must be protected from foreign ideas. The more confident view was that an open immigration policy would be an important statement about the liberal values of the country. An immigration policy with restrictions based only on the need to

Establishing the Boundaries for the Contemporary Era

225

limit absolute numbers and exclude criminals and obvious security threats would tell the world that the United States believes in the value of the individual and his or her right to be judged individually. Both sides rhetorically avoided racial discriminations of proto-Americans from others wishing to immigrate. Proponents even justified the patronage-oriented family reunification provisions with such liberal rhetoric (U.S. Congress, Senate 1965). At the hearings before the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary the representatives of the various departments and agencies presented international pluralist rhetoric. Attorney General Nicholas deB. Katzenbach argued that "there is urgency in terms of our self-interest abroad. In the present ideological conflict between freedom and fear, we proclaim to the world that our central precept is that all are born equaland free thereafter to demonstrate their individual talents to the best of their ability. Yet under present law, we choose among immigrants on the basis of where they are-or even, in some cases, their ancestors were born" (U.S. Congress, Senate 1965, pt. 1, 8). The racial quotas allow a person to be restricted from immigrating despite being, say, a brilliant surgeon strictly on the basis of race or national origins. Besides unwisely excluding talented people (who would make excellent Americans), this policy "creates an image ofhypocrisy which can be exploited by those who seek to discredit our professions of democracy" (10). Similarly, Secretary of State Dean Rusk testified, "As long as our immigration law classifies persons according to national and ancestral origins, we cannot convince our critics that we judge each other on the basis of ability, industry, intelligence, integrity, and such factors as determine a man's value to our society ... the national origins system suggests that we think less well of those citizens of the United States who are descended from certain ethnic origins than we do of others" (4 7). Familiarity with the intentions of the national origins scheme may render such an observation banal. The clear point is, however, that universalistic grounds now differentiate the potential American from the undesirable immigrant. The potential American is skilled and productive, yearning for freedom, and a soldier in the fight against communism. The primary reason for adopting an immigration policy "reflecting America's ideal of the equality of all men without regard to race, color, creed, or national origin" is that "we would enhance America's image as leader of the free world in according equal dignity and respect to all peoples of the free world, and thus accomplish a significant forward stride in our foreign relations" (45). As such, the grounds of immigration policy are self-conscious statements of national identity and should not be confused. Senator Robert F. Kennedy stated as much in his testimony for the bill. Our law allows men to be judged only on a finding that an individual has committed some act, or has some characteristic, which bears a reasonable relation to some legitimate governmental end .... It is reasonable to preserve the United States from immigration

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Establishing the Boundaries for the Contemporary Era

which would result in unemployment .... It is reasonable to preserve the United States from the burden of supporting immigrants who cannot support themselves .... It is reasonable to insist that immigrants adhere to our fundamental precepts of political freedom and democratic government .... But in each of these cases. the finding is an individual one-each man is judged on his own merits. Only in the quota immigration systemand nowhere else in our law-are individuals judged on the supposed propensities of a group to which they belong. He quotes his own previous testimony in saying that by correcting this problem, the new legislation "will demonstrate for the world our dedication to individual freedom and our confidence in the future" (U.S. Senate 1965, pt. r, 215-24). Even the opponents of immigration reform accepted the universalistic terms of justification for the reform bill. Senator Sam]. Ervin, Jr., of North Carolina commented on Senator Kennedy's testimony: "I would like to say that you have made the most eloquent argument for the passage of an unwise piece oflegislation I have ever heard." 11 Ervin later explained his objections to the proposals precisely on the grounds that the quota law has functioned in a nondiscriminatory fashion. Reform might interfere with the ability of the United States to take in refugees during times of crisis. 14 Various labor groups, including the AFLCI 0, endorsed the liberal dimensions of the proposed law that eventually passed. James B. Carey, president of the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, representing the AFL-CIO, testified: "We in the labor movement ... have seen clearly, from personal experience, that our present immigration policy is a mockery of the democratic principles we espouse to our brothers in the free trade unions in other countries." He claimed that by personal experience he knew how hard it was to explain the racially discriminatory national origins scheme to "our democratic partners abroad" (U.S. Congress, Senate 1965, 46R). Senator Ervin defended the national origins scheme throughout these hearings. He was at pains to represent his position as racially neutral. His efforts were clearly defensive. At one point in his examination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, for example, he pointed out that under the proposed changes, the national quotas for the English would be reduced. He asked: "Do you not think it would be very unjust for anyone to assert that the people who favor the passage of this bill are prejudiced against Englishmen and for that reason want to reduce the quota of Englishmen who can come to this country-! should say British-from 6s,ooo to r6,ooo annually?" Senator Kennedy answered, "If I understand the question, I think the answer is 'Yes."' Ervin replied: "That is what I thought. Frankly, I think it is just about as fair to those of us who prefer the national quota systems to be charging us with prejudice" (U.S. Congress, Senate 1965, 227). Traditional proponents of the national origins scheme also presented their opposition to reform, not in racial terms but in the language of defensive liber-

Establishing the Boundaries for the Contemporary Era

22 7

alism. The testimony of the representative of the Daughters of the American Revolution serves as an example. (She testified using the name Mrs. William Henry Sullivan, Jr.) In her opening statement she defended the national origins scheme "as the first line of defense in perpetuating our institutions of freedom and the American way of life" (U.S. Congress, Senate 1965, pt. 2, 709). She stated that her organization had always "recognized that the continuing flow of immigrants to our shores has helped to keep the spirit ofliberty alive in the hearts and minds of our people who tend to take freedom for granted .... Unfortunately there is another side to this coin. Sworn testimonies of top immigration officers indicate that a possible 3o to 40 percent of so-called refugees from behind the Iron Curtain are either subversive or criminals or both" (7II- 12.) She added that the Communist Party, USA, opposed the national origins scheme. The witness alluded to the fact that Asians from Latin America could immigrate outside Asian national quotas and quoted a Christian Science Monitor editorial to the effect that some national sources of immigration were "far closer ... to the United States in culture, customs, standards ofliving, respect for law, and experience in government" (713). She explained these concerns: Immigration is definitely a matter of national welfare and security. If this nation is to maintain its cultural hearings, its free institutions, its historic population mixture, in fact, its identity as a Nation, it is imperative that a logical and rational method of governing immigration must be provided. The Walter-McCarran Immigration and Nationality Act was designed to meet these requirements after the most searching study. It has been described as a mirror that reflects the United States as it is (713).

On this final point there was no dispute. The critics of the old system portrayed it as reflecting a dominant conception of national identity that revealed a flaw in the face of the nation. By changing the image of Americanism reflected in the law, the flaw could be removed. They changed the law.

Conclusions Immigration policy at the end of the Great Society era contained the elements that critics, discussed in Chapter 2, regard as irrational. Taken as a whole, it does not admit people based on their contribution to the economy and is not "efficient." Nor does it treat all people equitably and therefore "justly." The policy at the end of this period is not explicable as the outcome of dominant class interests, an incremental interest-group policy process, or the real interests of the state. Each of these sources of motives has its explanatory force in specific aspects of policy. To understand how different explanations of policy seem to work for different aspects of policy, however, one must begin by recognizing that American political institutions are contingent achievements. Patterns of participation in policy

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networks and rhetoric are continually being shaped by policy legacies. These legacies have a structural character but present themselves as resources and constraints to actors who use them to pursue their own agendas for change. In this chapter, we have seen how policy legacies affected the last major phase of immigration policy change before the 1980s. In the next chapter I reflect on the implications of these findings for a critical theory of American public policy.

CHAPTER

Conclusions: Immigration) the State) and the National Identity

IMMIGRATION REDRAWS the face of a nation by changing its population. We must appreciate that when speaking of a nation's population, we rhetorically reduce the lot of millions to a hollow abstraction. Because this book deals with the exercise of power by the powerful, little has been said about immigrants themselves. Immigrants are not mere numbers, however. They are people, and, as this text has stressed throughout, this means that they are competent and political. People cross national boundaries daily (and have since boundaries were drawn) because of human predicaments, often of tragic dimensions. When they move, immigrants bring with them their skills, their traditions, their politics, and their life of meaning. New members reconstruct the meaningful world of their adopted communities. The antipathy they evoke may call forth self-conscious differentiations (and thus "identities") from those threatened by their presence. Their presence changes the nature of the shared-and contested-identity that allows a community or a nation to differentiate itself from others. Of course, immigration is only one among many influences that alter a nation's understanding of itself In the United States, however, immigration has mattered even more than in most nations. Every American schoolchild knows the story: a nation of immigrants who came seeking freedom tamed a wilderness and built a great nation. The narrative is rehearsed at countless public ceremonies, celebrated in innumerable novels, television shows, and movies. It constitutes what Americans think of themselves, and it offers the perfect public mythology for a liberal and democratic society. I mean nothing derogatory by referring to this as a mythology. Mythologies may not be literally true, but they can crystallize greater truths. (One might hope that mythologies in a liberal society would be more firmly rooted in fact than this one is, given the claims of philosophers from John Stuart Mill to Jiirgen Haberrnas for the ability of free

230

Conclusions

inquiry to ferret out the truth.) Because the liberal myth of American immigration policy partially defines what it means to be American, critics' claims that immigration policy is an instrument for narrow interests conflict with the principles of identification that shape the collective self-image of Americans. The evidence on immigration policy provides persuasive documentation that immigration policy in the United States contrasts with the values crystallized by the immigration mythology. In doing so, it does not impugn the immigrants' motives. Instead, the evidence shows that the public authority that regulates immigration defies the liberal and democratic beliefs that the immigration myth celebrates. The class-conflict theorists support the view that immigration policy is an instrument oflabor exploitation and international domination. Throughout the agricultural regions cheap labor is allowed to enter the country illegally. Once here, these laborers work cheaply and consume few of the social or political benefits of citizens. Inefficient industries exploit these workers, and natives have a harder time finding jobs. Meanwhile, a few highly skilled workers are allowed to enter the country, both to ease the exchange of knowledge and to externalize the costs of labor reproduction. Disadvantaged Americans find the road to upward mobility blocked, public welfare suffers from budget constraints, and the labor movement faces an obstacle to organization. Yet people are encouraged to venerate a tradition of political democracy and economic liberalism in which it seems that all those seeking a better way were given their fair shot. Class-conflict theory has exposed a sham. Not only is immigration policy illiberal, it is undemocratic. Power rests with a narrow class faction-and if policy analysts are right, power allows interests that come with high costs for the nation as a whole to define policy. 1 The pluralists present a similar case. By focusing on the political process, they show that these policies result from the despotic anarchy of a policy marketplace in which the inequality of political capital benefits narrow interests to the detriment of the nation as a whole. The predominant self-image Americans hold of their politics-a liberalism of limited but democratic authority-serves as an ideology that obscures a system in which political rule is for sale to the highest bidder. The United States has an immigration policy that supports some sectors of agriculture, the service industry, and light industry in specific regions of the country. Such a policy may be rational for a few, but it is indefensible for the whole. Family reunification, which, like these other provisions of immigration policy, benefits organized constituents, magnifies the impact of a refugee policy that the pluralists do not explain. The few labor management components in immigration policy represent a compromise between organized interests, but rather than "pareto optimality" this "partisan mutual adjustment" achieves a cozy deal for insiders with access. Process itself is the root of the problem, and this finding confirms the critical attitude taken by pluralists such as Robert Dahl and Charles Lindblom. Though ostensibly democratic, front-gate and back-

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door immigration policy emerged in a forum open only to voices amplified by economic power. Other voices were silenced. Both theoretical perspectives play the role of a critical theory beyond being empirical theories. By a critical theory I mean a theory that exposes the hidden sources of rationality in a social process that appears irrational. These policies are irrational in the sense that they are neither practical (moral, just) nor instrumental (efficient). By rationality I do not mean the narrow rationality of the market such as is central to rational choice theory-"that individual actions are motivated by selfinterest" (Hardin 1982, 9). Rather, I refer to a different sense of rationality, that of the forum. 2 In the rationality of the market, individuals have private preferences and make choices based on private calculations that maximize their utility. Coordination among individuals requires only exchanges of values (and, perhaps, media of exchange such as money). This rationality sets the standard in market transactions. Though such rational calculations typify economic exchange, rational choice theorists can be interpreted as extending the pluralists' critical perspective by showing how often political phenomena can be modeled by assuming marketlike conditions and rationality. I characterize such findings as critical because they reveal how much the Arendtian view of politics as an aspect oflife in which collectivities define their commonality in terms of the ends they share is missing in modem politics. The rationality of the forum offers a stark contrast to market rationality. The rationality of the forum refers to the public formation of ends through discussion and debate. In a forum (or, in larger terms, a republic) the antinomies ofliberalism and democracy practically dissolve. Free women and men come together to define projects and, in so doing, themselves and their moral sense. As I argued above, Arendt's view of politics assumes that identities and values are public, shaped by political settings. The rationality of the forum seeks decisions based on agreement. Jurgen Habermas, following Max Weber, identifies two components of the rationality of the forum. These are purposive and practical rationality. In a forum, people come together to discuss both the collective ends and the means by which these ends might be met. Discourse surrounding the former is practical (or moral). Discourse surrounding the latter is purposive. The idea of practical rationality is a useful standard for judging public policy because policymaking consists of collective decisions about collective projects. Politics and policymaking are about "the authoritative allocation of values," as Easton (1965) put it, and this implies a decision about what goals ought to be pursued. Purposive rationality is also an applicable standard by which to judge policy decisions because it focuses on the empirical efficiency of technical means to ends (Habermas 1979, I 17). Each aspect of the rationality of the forum can be used to evaluate policies.

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Conclusions

Policy can be evaluated for its efficiency for achieving an objective (purposive rationality) or for its consistency with stated moral ends and the broader values of society. To relate this to the distinction made above between the rationality of the market and the forum, the received view among political scientists is that private goals motivate policymaking. The political process provides rules of the game that aggregate these interests (Elster 1986). What the normative critics and policy analysts decry, the pluralists and classconflict theory explain. In the policymaking process power is distributed such that narrow interests of economic factions define the ends of policy. Both perspectives suggest that the democratic ideal of a public sphere in which parties come together to make collective decisions is truly different from reality. While making a policy that both influences the composition of membership and makes a statement about the identity of the nation, some voices speak louder than others. Most will not be heard. The self-image of the United States as a democratic polity is called into question by the aspects of immigration policy that classconflict theory and pluralism explain. The empirical inadequacies of these two positions, however, reveal their insufficiencies as empirical and critical theories. Because they fail to account for various features of immigration policy in the United States, they provide only a limited exposition of the politics that allows the nation's self-image to be inconsistent with its actions. The last two decades of immigration to the United States highlight these inadequacies. During the 1970s, the largest single source of immigrants (considering the impact of family reunification) was refugees. They outnumbered the various front-gate preference categories, although they also partly accounted for how these were allocated. Class-conflict theorists and pluralists do not explain refugee policy. Several large cities have swelled with Cuban and Vietnamese refugees and others who have immigrated fleeing economic and political oppression. And a key moral issue in immigration policy is precisely that large numbers of immigrants from communist-dominated areas are designated as political refugees while others fleeing regimes employing similar coercive techniques are systematically designated as economic refugees. The United States granted asylum to campesinos whose sympathy with the Contras in Nicaragua ran them afoul of the Sandinistas, while it deported those fleeing the conditions established by the United States's allies' death squads in Central America. This example is part of a pattern of what Loescher and Scanlan (r986) label a "calculated kindness," a policy of admission that is promoted as a grand statement of openness and generosity but in fact promotes the particular interests of the state. Class-conflict theory and pluralism have little to say about how refugee policy works. Indeed, neither explains why these distinct policy domains developed in the first place. This lack is especially curious given that a major preoccupation of interest groups in immigration policy over the last roo years has been to enforce

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racial purity. Refugee policy and the removal of racial exclusions at the behest of state bureaucrats accounts for the increasingly Asian character of immigration since 1950 noted in Chapter 2. Nor do these theories explain the missing features of immigration policy. Many states managed immigration policies that welcomed immigrants to work in low-wage jobs when the economy expanded but closed the door when the boom subsided. The class-conflict approach does not say why immigration policy lacks labor market management aspects in the United States. If the United States were really conducting a brain drain strategy, it should more carefully screen Third World immigrants for technical skills. It appears to do so for some nationalities but not others. Nigerians who come to the United States must be highly skilled, but the large numbers of Mexicans who settle here are not. These theories have difficulty explaining the administrative complexity of immigration policy, including its highly legalistic cast. Ironically, they also fail to account for the liberal turn in United States immigration policy that initiated the Great Society's reforms. It was immigration reform, after all, that added national origins to the list of suspect categories of discrimination that ideologically justified the civil rights explosion. Realists who argue that states pursue their interests offer a corrective to the empirical and critical deficiencies of society-centered theories. As we have seen, refugee policy has been wielded by insiders to promote American foreign policy interests. The complex administrative structure of American immigration law follows, at least in part, from its placement in the security stage during World War II and then the Cold War. The broader question, however, is what accounts for these theories' limitations. Each policy domain has a central logic that accounts for why certain ends eclipse others. I have argued that a comprehensive view of the development of political institutions in the United States is necessary to account for this complicated picture. Such an account has been presented in these pages. I will briefly review this case in conclusion. The nature of the forum that contemporary political institutions offer us must be appraised thematically and theoretically if we are to overcome the deficiencies of class-conflict theory, pluralism, and realism. Power based in economic relations and economic interests is not the only force shaping policy in contemporary societies. Politics, political power, political institutions, and political organizations all possess characteristics that are distinct from economics. Furthermore, even when economic factors dominate policy formation, they do so as the product of regime rules that privilege economic power. In the United States, a sectoral state with a variegated pattern of regime development, such society centeredness typifies politics, but there are important exceptions. Refugee policy is one. To unravel how such pockets of state centeredness developed, one must look to institutionally mediated innovations. The characteristics of the regime at the time of those innovations empowered and constrained policy innovations that changed the political resources available to later generations.

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Conclusions

Political institutions may be portrayed as forums in which public questions about collective actions are articulated and debated. This implies that rhetoric is an important component of any political process. Power, interests, and institutions are empirically related because the rules of the regime provide resources for some rhetoric to shape interests and the form of policy. The definition of power that informs this work is based on an onto logically enhanced version of the new institutionalism that I call improvisational institutionalism. This theory challenges both individualistic perspectives, which are faulty in part because they assume individuals existing logically prior to institutions, and structurally deterministic theories, which are faulty because they reduce individuals to automatons who act out socialized structures. Improvisational institutionalism sees individuals as competent agents who draw on and reproduce social structural principles and institutions as unintended consequences of their actions. Institutions, and particularly the political regime, provide both rules and constraints, on the one hand, and power to transform nature and other people's actions, on the other. Political power has to do with changing others' actions, although political power can include "power to" as well as "power over." Rhetoric can stitch together seemingly separate interests and thereby allow collective action to occur. Power is both implicit in the idea of agency and mediated by economic and political institutions. Political power is the capacity to realize personal or collective goals through collective action and is thus dependent on authority, persuasion, and force. Although the distinction between politics and economics is an analytic one, it is worth maintaining for the present because modem societies are marked by institutions differentiated according to their political or economic functions. This is not to say that economic institutions such as markets do not generate and are not maintained by political power. Nor does it say that political institutions such as the state are not sustained by and do not sustain economic power. I do contend, however, that the latter is more appreciated than the former, as the selective inadequacies of class-conflict theory and pluralism reveal. Furthermore, theories of political power and its relationship to institutions is underdeveloped when compared to the theory of economic relations and its effects on politics. Political power allows people to identifY, pursue, and achieve their interests through collective action, although these interests may themselves be connected to positions within the political system. Therefore, a theoretical consideration of political institutions is a crucial element of an effort to overcome the limitations of class-conflict and pluralist theories. Both approaches are too general. Neither is sufficiently historical. Improvisational institutionalism overcomes these problems because it sees political institutions not as functional necessities or neutral media but as contingent, historical achievements. People devise institutions to solve immediate problems or accomplish specific goals. Once they exist, however, institutions provide resources upon which people may draw in both for-

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mulating and pursuing their interests. Institutions mediate power. It is within this context that a consideration of the state is undertaken because the state is the key political institution in many contemporary societies. One can draw from recent literature on the state two different meanings of the term. The first is the state as regime. This refers to a set of institutions of authoritative decision making, conflict resolution, and social control located in a nation's capital. These institutions include organizations (and individuals) who have attained formal and informal positions of representation within this forum of collective decision making, that is, policy networks. Policy networks are institutions. They consist of formal and informal, explicit and implicit practices, or rule-governed interactions between actors and organizations. Institutions and the organizations that participate in them are the "mobilization of bias," as Schattschneider claimed, precisely because of the resources the institutions of a regime provide. Policy networks are historically contingent, and their influence is contingent on conditioning factors, including economic and social crises and the creativity of agents who occupy positions within them. Regimes change incrementally, and sometimes rapidly, but within stable periods certain rhetorical frameworks tend to gain favor, if not hegemony. The character of patterns of participation in policy networks and the rhetorical frameworks of a regime shape the projects political actors will come up with and the strategies they use to realize them. These policies provide legacies that structure the political actions of those who follow. Policy legacies thus become important components of regimes. The other derivative definition of the state refers to a key organization that exists within the national policy network: the dominant national public bureaucracy. As many authors have claimed, the state bureaucracy has power as knowledge, force, and position within the policy network. The state bureaucracy has established relations with civil society, which may resist or even organize to reconstitute the state bureaucracy. This implies that the state bureaucracy has interests of its own. These interests are not coextensive with those of civil society or of the dominant economic class, no matter what role the state bureaucracy plays in reproducing economic relations. Many studies that have attempted to make the state a central theme have not successfully distinguished between these two narrower definitions. This represents a problem for two reasons. First, there is an empirical relationship between the regime and the state bureaucracy, which is one of its components. Because the regime is the institutionalization of representation in authoritative decision making, the prominence of the bureaucracy within it is a key factor in defining state-civil society relations. The capacity of the state bureaucracy to marshal its resources to pursue its own interests varies across polities. State capacity, a variable useful in comparative studies, is therefore dependent on making the distinction among the regime, the policy network, and the state bureaucracy. Second,

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the existence of national policy networks is not a foregone conclusion. It is a contingent historical achievement. This fact is less obviously significant if one restricts oneself to the study of continental Western European states that share a history of absolutism. When one looks at the United States, however, one encounters the necessity to go beyond such blunt distinctions as "strong" or "weak" states. The explanatory power of state bureaucracies is conditioned by the development of central policy networks, and the circumstances under which these networks formed confines them to particular domains of action. A consideration of key political factors, especially the key political institutions (including the regime, its policy networks, and the state bureaucracy), rectifies the deficiencies of pluralism and class-conflict theory as both empirical and critical theories. Given the nature of the sectoral American state, it makes sense that in some policy aspects with limited institutional development, social, and especially economic, forces dominate policy. The legacies of the regime characteristics governing policy innovation in these specific policy sectors allow interest groups' and class factions' rhetoric to define the ends of immigration policy. The process of agenda setting displays these groups' influence. Here, pluralist and class-conflict accounts seem to offer persuasive accounts for the hidden rationales for immigration policy. In other policy aspects that have a long history of nationalized policy and bureaucratic capacity, the interests of the state bureaucracy come into play. A long history of resource accumulation has enabled the state bureaucracy to use inside agenda-setting processes to shape the rhetorical terms of new policies. Refugee policy manifests this pattern most clearly. State interests dominate here. Recent developments in United States immigration policy continue to bear out the efficacy of the approach I have advanced. In the next section, I briefly apply the framework to the rhetoric of these recent developments, emphasizing the critical aspect of this theory. This discussion is cursory, but it provides a coherent framework for illuminating moral issues that would otherwise remain obscure.

Recent Events in Immigration Policy In the mid- rg6os, immigration policy underwent its last major statutory reforms: the bracero program ended (and large-scale unsanctioned immigration resumed), and the national origins quota system was replaced with a new system that was racially neutral. Recently, however, immigration-related issues again have made their way onto the political agenda. Throughout the 1970s, refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Cuba were paroled into the United States in large numbers. Additions to refugee law included the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 197 5 and the Refugee Act of I 980. During the same pe-

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riod, illegal immigration from Latin America increased dramatically, reactivating the central policy network leading to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Both the Refugee Act and the act of 1986 were products of national policy networks but with opposite histories. The refugee network was state-dominated. The network for controlling the flow of illegal immigrants developed after the end of the bracero program and the increase in the numbers of unsanctioned workers. The activation of the refugee network during the I 970s was a legislative response to the fact that most immigrants in this period were paroled into the United States outside ordinary channels. Many entered under the special seventh preference category, which was a long-term commitment to create a state capacity against the organized resistance of peripheral interests. The terms in which the debates over legislative proposals took place reflect these differences. J The Refugee Act sought to rationalize and liberalize refugee policy. All participants in the policymaking process lauded the nation's history of openness toward the politically repressed. Liberal elements in Congress succeeded in changing the definition of the refugee from those fleeing communism to those fleeing political oppression. Despite this legal redefinition, overwhelmingly preferential consideration is still given to those escaping communist regimes. The liberal character of the law shields its propagandistic administration through which Americans are continually reminded that "we" are free while "they" are oppressed. By labeling those escaping oppression by U.S.-supported regimes as economic refugees, and thus rejecting them, while accepting those coming from communist regimes as refugees by definition, the state advances a liberal national image. This portrait obscures the role of the state in supporting illiberal foreign regimes. The debate over the attempt to gain control over unsanctioned immigration differs in important ways from refugee policy. The supporters of legislation to stop the flow of unsanctioned immigration complained of the deleterious effects of such immigration on the general economy, social control, security, control of the borders, and foreign relations. Local officials added concerns over welfare costs, and labor unions complained about wage competition. The concerns that had the most influence over the debate, however, were those of the state. In the last few years the issue has been linked with the importation of illegal drugs and terrorism. These two highly charged issues support the state's interest in border control. 4 Members of the central policy network complained bitterly about the lack of central autonomy and the selfishness of particular interests who opposed the legislation (see especially Fuchs 1985). The unsanctioned workers themselves have been portrayed as interlopers, with academics and Mexican diplomats their only defenders (see, e.g., Bustamente 1983). It remains questionable whether the act of 1986 has provided the means to over-

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come resistance to closing the back door for immigrants. Though regularization of the status of unsanctioned but de facto immigrants went on schedule, the 1987 INS budget was nearly half that authorized for IRCA. Pressure from agricultural interests (who delayed passage of IRCA, or the Simpson-Mazzoli bill, as it was known for several years) resulted in a one-year delay in the restriction of Mexican migrant workers announced on 30 June 1987. The terms of the debate shifted over the last twenty years to a more state-centered ground, but the resources to effect a state-centered policy do not yet exist. 5 The impact of state-centered immigration policy on the American identity, however, confounds any simplistic, antistatist attitude. The state's foreign policy concerns in the Cold War led its elite members consistently to push for liberalization. Because the United States as a state wished to distance itself from the illiberality offascism and communism, it had to oppose racist and discriminatory quotas. The state was the avatar of liberalism, and the regime empowered the state to achieve its ends. A sanguine interpretation of these events may be that the state as a modern institution must promote universalistic values. The Cold War is over, however. Policy analysts' instrumentalism suggests a new way that state bureaucrats can regard immigrants as individuals, not representatives of racial groups. People can be seen as human capital. Then, they can be thought of as means in global economic competition.

Immigration Policy and the American Self-Image The regime characteristics governing the recent era contrast with those when the United States first formed a national immigration policy. One hundred years ago, social movements from outside the political center objected to unbridled immigration on religious and ethnic grounds. These social movements discussed democratic values but promoted ethnic homogeneity as a necessary condition for the reproduction of these values. As the state began to provide experts to support the need for restrictive immigration policies, justifications shifted from moral to (pseudo)scientific terms. The more prominent state-affiliated actors became, the more they used rhetoric stressing international dimensions of immigration. Presently, democratic values are rarely discussed openly in immigration debates, except as self-congratulatory preambles. The question this raises is whether the historical development of the state's impact enables or impedes Americans' self-understanding and self-determination of identity. The answer that emerges from the explicitly political analysis that has been presented above is complex. The characteristics of immigration policy in nonstate-dominated policy areas cannot be lauded as particularly democratic, liberal, or rational. In fact, it is precisely in these areas that public authority, insofar as it has an impact at all, uses policy as a tool to externalize costs of production for a

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few among the wealthy while squeezing labor from the unprotected. Despite the conceit that the United States is a land of democratic decision making and political justice, undocumented workers are exploited while unskilled domestic laborers remain unemployed. In contrast, a unified and effective national policy could lead to a more fair solution. State weakness combined with broad public authority leads to undemocratically made policies lacking moral justification. In some of its aspects, immigration policy fits this description. Immigration distributes citizenship to those from abroad wishing to obtain it. Citizenship is the route to achieving the goods the United States has to offer. That the state does not direct the flow of immigration contributes to two effects. First, it causes support for liberal immigration policy to erode, especially in those communities that bear the highest social welfare costs during the contemporary phase of high unemployment. This lack of effective control contributes to a decline in support for the state. In terms raised earlier, state weakness contributes to a chronic legitimation crisis that, ironically, erodes confidence in the state as a solution to social problems. Yet refugee policy, a state-centered policy, has its own problems. The United States proclaims and celebrates its commitment to openness and freedom while it denies entrance precisely to those who flee from nations where political coercion is underwritten and backed by the United States. Allowing in only those people fleeing enemies and excluding those escaping allies in lands that are dominated by the United States supports a national identity (or even nationalism) that exaggerates the commitment of the United States to self-determination and fair play. So on the one hand the state seems to represent a means of universalization-which is instrumental for a liberal policy-while on the other hand the state manages another aspect of immigration policy in an instrumental fashion that not only contradicts the preferred values of the nation but renders the nation's self-image a delusion. Sectors of state weakness allow public authority to be appropriated for particular class, ethnic, and religious ends. Sectors of state strength also fail the tests of democracy and rationality by privileging the interests of the state. This is no paradox. Let us return to the distinction between the state as a policy network and the state as a nationally dominant bureaucracy. The idea of a national set of interests that participate in the formulation of public policies implies both the mobilization of bias and the chronic possibility of democratization. Bias is implied because representation is, as class-conflict theorists and pluralists have argued, tilted toward those who can effectively mobilize resources, especially economic ones. The democratic promise of the policy network is that it operates according to recognized rules-including in the United States, the Constitution, and less formal but consequential organizations and practices-that institutionalize rep-

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resentation of a broader set of interests than might otherwise be included. Furthermore, social movements can penetrate the national policy network, so the "powers that be" may not always be powerful. The bureaucratic state, by contrast, has specific interests that are not always democratic. The access the state authorities possess to surveillance, expertise, and means of communication all suggest that the state bureaucracy inherently possesses means to resist democratic control. Throughout the Cold War era, the state played the role ofliberalizer in immigration policy. Some popular American notions of individualistic liberalism portray the state as antithetical to individualistic values. As we have seen, however, the United States saw itself as competing in an international struggle against forces that would undo the basis of strength of this nation. The state, in the form of the departments and their executive heads, sought to use immigration policy as an instrument in this battle. At first, this instrumentalism included redefining immigration control so that security from foreign agents became a central feature. Eventually, however, the state argued against overenthusiastic anticommunists who saw the threat of communism in all who applied to immigrate. By the state's own rhetoric, the best way for the United States to combat communism was for it to treat all of the world's potential immigrants equally. The postwar immigration policy myth portrayed it as exemplifying the nation's commitment to equal opportunity for all, whatever a person's "race, creed, religion, or ethnic origin." The myth was at least partly a product of the state's use of immigration policy as a symbolic tool in the fight against communism. The Cold War has ended and the threat of communism has dissipated. The state can be expected to continue to attempt to use immigration policy and especially refugee policy as a tool for the pursuit of its ends. With communism gone, it is less clear that the rhetorical effects of this instrumentalism will be to promote the ideal that all who wish to enter here will be considered on equal terms. The implication of the findings of this study for a critical theory of immigration policy (or policy generally) is that the state must be included among those powerful institutions that have a historically specific impact on the reasons of policy. By this statement I do not mean that the state matters because it is an instrument of class rule, a structure that carries out the wishes of a power bloc, a coordinating committee of national capitalism, or even a medium in which mainly rich interest groups get their way. The state is important as a source of distortion for rational decision making on its own terms. Democratization and consistency with a self-image of pluralism are likely to be achieved only through social movements that self-consciously have these ends in mind in policy areas where the state is strong. Recently, in the United States, one may look to the sanctuary movement as an example of such a social movement. Throughout the United States, on the border and in the midlands,

Conclusions

24 I

churches and other activists have violated immigration laws by harboring refugees, especially those from areas where resources of this nation are used (or allegedly used) to create the conditions that give rise to flight. This organized local resistance is a potentially powerful means of publicizing and undermining the inconsistency of state actions. Outside initiatives may be the only effective means of avoiding agenda control in strong state policy areas. Illegal methods such as these are precarious because they threaten the rule oflaw and the legitimacy of the state. There is often a blind faith among those on the Left that social movements are inherendy progressive. This idea is open to question. Was the social movement that resulted in the erection of racial barriers in immigration policy a progressive movement although it was relatively democratic? Is a movement that uses illegal means to undermine the law necessarily unjustifiable-or necessarily justifiable? I do not try to answer these questions here. The strength of the state over social forces, however, is sometimes a source of progress in policy areas in which particular interests consistendy dominate, as in the case of undocumented immigration. The attempt of the center to impose national laws upon recalcitrant local interests, especially when democracy shaped these laws, is an attempt to realize an open society. Though it might reasonably be expected that in the end the national policy network will wear down local interests and gain border control, this conclusion is not necessary. Political action is necessary to support such a movement. Ironically, the very inadequacy of the national bureaucracies to control unsanctioned immigration reduces state legitimacy and unleashes illiberal terms of differentiation. In other words, people begin to regard this generation's immigrants as the latest "new immigrants," that is, inferior, foreign, and therefore subject to reasonable discrimination. A recent edition of the New Republic devoted to immigration issues featured an essay by Nathan Glazer that argued this way (Glazer 1993). Glazer opened his essay by reminding readers that it was immigrants who bombed New York's World Trade Center. The essay went on to impugn the wisdom of the economic criteria that policy analysts use for answering basic issues about immigration policy. Instead, he notes that the issues of cultural identity used in the 1924 National Origins Act are the right ones, even if the answers that act enforced were not. Glazer explicitly rejects the assumption that restriction on the grounds of national origins is racist: Nor would I call a motive that would prefer an immigrant stream closer in racial and ethnic character to the present composition of the American population necessarily racist. In British immigration law there is a category of"patrials" -persons born ofBritish stock in other countries whose status is defined by ancestry, connection to Britain through parents or grandparents. In Germany, people of German origin, no matter how distant, have claims to immigration others do not. Israel has a "law of return" -which was the ground on which the country was labeled "racist." I would not describe any of these

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policies as racist: there is a difFerence between recognizing those who are in some sense one's own, with links to a people and a culture, and a policy based on dislike, hostility, racial antagonism. (Glazer 1993, 18)

Glazer does not say exactly what the difference is.'' It is telling, however, that, Glazer assumes that the American kind would be "European." When control of the borders mattered less and international regime issues mattered more, advocates on both sides of the immigration issues identified "our kind" as those seeking freedom and democracy, not those of European origin. The implications of these findings for practice, then, are that however strong one's desire for the utopian condition of a stateless society or for a unified democratic order, the most realistic path toward a nondelusional democratic policy process is a permanent revolution of state smashing and state building. In the applied setting of immigration policy, this calls for seemingly contradictory strategies of both supporting and opposing the state. In both cases, however, the political means can be consistent with the moral ends; the effort should be toward a historically informed democratic and liberal effort to democratize and liberalize immigration policy; this is the path to the realization of American ideals in immigration policy.

Reference Matter

Notes

CHAPTER 1 1. These concepts and their relationship to explanations of policy are discussed at length in Chapter 3. 2. For a discussion of the basis for such reasoning, see Levi 1988. This motive is political, and it originates endogenously to the international and national state system. Machiavelli argued that the Prince should keep the state's interests primary when engaging in domestic and foreign policy. The realists to whom I refer claim that the personnel of the state often act as if they are heeding Machiavelli's advice. Depending on the state's political resources, its interests can explain the substantive features of public policy (Krasner 1978; Skocpol 1988). For a more thorough discussion of realism, state-centered explanations, and institutionalism, see Ikenberry 1988. 3. Dahl discusses political actors as autonomous agents, but his construction of economic and political motivation reduces the significance of political autonomy. Cf. this assertion with Almond 1990. 4. Absollltism refers to the historical period in central and western Europe when monarchs were sovereign and society had few legitimate means to resist their power. During this era, standing armies, financial administration, and centralized national bureaucracies flourished (Elias 1982, Bendix 1978). 5· Partes and Rumbaut (1990) discuss how different backgrounds and immigration experiences shape the values of various immigration enclaves. In south Florida, for example, Cubans and Salvadorians brought distinctively Latin conceptions of politics to the United States. Both groups' values contrast with those of natives, but they are as diverse as the social strata and experiences of these immigrant groups are. 6. New York Times, 31 August 1989, Midwest edition, p. 10. 7. Although this introduction stresses the contemporary impact of immigration policy, the study that follows focuses on the long-term development of a national immigration policy in the United States from the beginning until 1965. These were the crucial years when the policy legacies that shape the contours of policy choice in the contemporary era were formed. The next chapter provides full justification for concentrating the study on the long-term history of policy development. 8. These contrasting aspects of immigration policy are discussed in greater detail in Chapter 2.

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Notes to Pages 23-30

CHAPTER 2

I. Chapter 3 analyzes why none of these theories comprehensively explains immigration policy. There, I present "improvisational institutionalism" as a solution to these theories' limitations. 2. Recent reforms in immigration policy have addressed some of the criticism leveled in this section. Critics remain skeptical about the effectiveness of these reforms, which have not radically altered the legal principles of immigration policy. 3. The charge of inflexibility applies mainly to the flow of refugees. Unsanctioned workers tend to come in smaller numbers when jobs for them are scarce. The most recent popular rediscovery of illegal immigration in the mid- I \)\)OS suggests that this flexibility may be changing, although it is too early for authoritative analyses to corroborate such an impression. 4. It might be argued that lower wage rates increase international competitiveness, however. The authors cited here tend to make social welfare arguments against abundant cheap labor because it worsens work conditions and labor capital investment to the harm of the general good. 5. See also Chiswick I\)88. 6. Piore (I\)6\J) disagrees. He argues that American firms are reluctant to hire domestic unskilled workers because they perceive them to be difficult to control. He concludes that employers would be more inclined to relocate abroad than to hire domestic unskilled workers (I \)86). This logic does not work well for immobile concerns such as the small firms in the manufacturing sector, agriculture, and service industries, including hotels and restaurants, that employ a large proportion of illegal immigrants. (A Chicago hotel can hardly move to Mexico, for example.) From a more instrumental standpoint, even ifPiore were right, there is little advantage for Americans to have such workers in the United States consuming public services when they could as easily be employed abroad. 7. DeFreitas (I\J\JI) disputes this claim. 8. In fact, most of the evidence cited in the last few paragraphs came in the context of consideration of reforms. \). In an effort to wipe the slate clean so as to controlunsanctioned immigration, !RCA allowed undocumented aliens who had resided continuously in the United States since I January I \)82 to be eligible for temporary resident status. Those who filed before 6 November I \)\)0 would then become eligible for permanent resident status. While estimates of the size of the unsanctioned alien community in the United States in I 987 that met !RCA requirements ranged from I .8 million to 2.6 million (Meissner and Papademetriou I \)88), 3. I million applied before administrative deadlines in May and November of 1 \)88 (Rivera-Batiz, Sechzer, and Gang I\J\JI, 8). For an evaluation of the impact of!RCA, see ibid. I o. The estimates of undocumented aliens in the United States have ranged from one to twelve million. Estimates based on the I \)80 census placed the figure at about two million, but others have argued that this figure was too low by about half (Chiswick I\)\) I; Corwin I 984; Siegal, Passel, and Robinson I \)8 I). This assertion is supported by the fact that many more undocumented aliens applied for legalization under the !RCA provisions than were expected (I. 76 million) and these are only a portion of the unsanctioned immigrants in the United States (Hoefer I \)\J I).

Notes to Pages 3 I- 40

24 7

I I. There are exceptions, however. The State Department's administration of visa issuance has often been criticized for being too political. This is not a problem of efficiency. Recent legislation limits the discretion the State Department has wielded in issuing visas. In other words, Congress seemed to believe the State Department had too much capacity and autonomy, not too little. I2. The final chapter of the book discusses the concepts of purposive and practical rationality. I 3. These categories are used by the INS. I 4· It can be argued in response that controlling immigration across the border with Mexico is impractical. But the lack of a serious effort to do so, the existence of the "Texas proviso," which made hiring illegal immigrants legal (until IRCA), and the exceptions exempting farm workers from complete restriction under !RCA all suggest that the unsanctioned labor market is a de facto policy and has been all along. I 5. The size of the undocumented labor pool will vary, depending on how successful the recent !RCA is. I6. Indeed, the title of Loescher and Scanlan's criticism is Calculated Kindness (I986). The title underscores these authors' contention that the United States takes what appears to be a humane position toward refugees but in fact uses refugee policy as a tool to pursue its own ends. I7. Aggregation in this context means that competing preferences are worked out through a process of bargaining and trade-off under conditions of uncertainty and constraint. I 8. These characteristics apply to rational choice theories, too. For the sake of this discussion, one can consider rational choice theory as a special case of pluralism. The "new institutionalism" in the rational choice tradition, which includes the exploration of such institutional concepts as structure-induced equilibrium and transaction cost analysis, complicates this facile categorization, however. I do not analyze the relationship of such ideas to the new theories of institutions considered in Chapter 3, although such a project would be worthwhile. I 9· Civil servants may influence policy according to their own preferences. They behave, in other words, like any other interest group. 20. The interest group pluralist literature on immigration policy is small. There is a significant body of literature on the formation of immigration policy by legal scholars that often adapts a more or less pluralistic framework. See, e.g., Schander I978, II7-27; Hutchinson I98r; and Loescher and Scanlan I986. Other examples of immigration policy studies from an interest-group pluralist perspective include Riggs I950; Craig I97I; Fragomen I98o; Cornelius I98I; and Reimers I985. 21. Freeman also acknowledges the constraining role of foreign commitments on the actions of those whom he refers to as elites, such as those related to the process of decolonization. In this respect he goes much further than is typical of pluralists in recognizing the autonomous interests of the state. Despite this and his appeal to Habermasian notions of "legitimation crisis," I include him as a pluralist here because he uses a "pluralist overload" explanation of immigration policy. Too many elites linked to too many constituencies and pursuing too many cultural and economic ends lead to confused immigration policies. Unlike most pluralist-inspired authors, Freeman does not attribute more ratio-

248

Notes to Pages 41 -53

nality to immigration policy than can actually be found. He adapts Habermas\ theoretical insights about the relationship of rationality and le~:;-itimation deficits to immigration policy innovations. Similarly, he does acknowledge the importance of the goals of foreign policy makns without trying to reduce these to pure self-interest. Although there is much to commend in his analysis, I part company with Freeman by stressing the importance of the state per se, rather than elites. I will offer a different theoretical approach to Freeman's below. Mine differs by trying to disaggregate the interests of elites into the more specific interests of classes, class factions (groups), and the state. 22. Similarly, Freeman's account of British and French immigration policy acknowledges the definitive impact of foreign policy makers attempting to redeem their colonial and postcolonial obligations. This fact is not explained by these nations' open political processes. Bureaucrats' efforts to redeem commitments to former colonies are not explained by social or economic interests but are of a distinctly political nature (see Chapter 3). The significance of political structure is thus not exhausted by the acknowledgment of its openness to social groups. Neither power nor interests is solely social or economic. 23. Perhaps the most important exception is Antonio Gramsci (1971). 24. For an excellent review see Carnoy 1984. 25. An example of such a contradiction would be the tendency of wages to tall below the point at which workers can live on them. Marxists and class-conflict theorists have usually agreed that such contradictions eventually erupt into crises such as the Great Depression. In such crises, workers' protests might compel the state to invent unemployment insurance and other social welfare programs. These seeming victories for workers (and socialists) permit the most fundamental social practices in capitalism (for example, production organized on the basis of private property) to persist, or "reproduce" themselves (Offe I985). 20. A similar approach to the state is taken by Domhoff I 970, I t)HO, and 1 ')90, and O'Conner 1973. 27. Chapter 3 elaborates the relationship between roles and structures. 2H. Esping-Andersen also acknowledges that policies can change class structures. Such a contention departs from orthodoxy by recognizing that politics causes economic structure just as economics causes political structure. 2Tee on principle. Among pro-choice advocates are those who stress the preeminence of moral autonomy in matters of moral principle as grounds for women's right to choose. Those favoring "right to life" argue for the preeminence of individuals as moral ends (and claim that fetuses have the status of individuals). As bitter as

Notes to Pages 85- I ro

25 I

their disagreement is, both sides are fighting for the high ground in a shared conception of moral liberalism. 26. State capacity is an important theme in the work ofSkocpol and her collaborators. See Skocpol I 980. 27. This literature is both empirical and formal. See, e.g., Downs I972, Greenberg I977, Sinclair I977, Knoke and Laumann I982. 28. I have slightly altered their terminology in some instances. 29. Thus far, I have discussed social movements as the moving force in the creation of the state in the United States. The preceding discussion points to another route to the formation of national political institutions, one that is peripherally based but is rooted in the nationalization of patronage politics. CHAPTER

4

I. The emphasis on empiricism popular among the new social science professions was part of an effort to differentiate them from their European mentors (Manicas 1990). 2. Some states continued to maintain labor recruitment offices in Europe. Private labor recruiters increasingly collaborated with steamship companies to bring immigrants-often under contract-to the United States. 3. The absence of a state bureaucracy charged with immigration policy limited the articulation of state interests, as conventional state-centered explanations contend. Improvisational institutionalism generalizes the insight of state-centered explanations to underscore the significance of how established practices enable or constrain the identification and pursuit of interests. The absence of a policy network meant that there was no public forum for the articulation of immigration-related interests. Regime rules had their first effect on immigration policy in shaping the organization of interest articulation during this era. The prominence of state and local interests in the formative stages of immigration policy meant that a particular set of concerns took center stage. Neither a conventional state-centered approach (which usually stresses the significance of national bureaucracies) nor a pluralist approach (which usually stresses social and economic interest groups) accounts for the role these local political organizations played. Yet such prominence was typical of the "party and court" regime and thus could be expected to play an important role in the era's immigration policy nationalization. 4· The news reached Italy, and the Italians protested to the State Department, which put pressure on the governor of Louisiana to bring the leaders of the mob to justice. The governor refused, and relations with Italy suffered as a result. Though this lynching was perhaps the most notorious of the era in that several city leaders participated or tacitly approved, it was not unique (Oberholtzer 1937, I 5 I- 53). 5. Here, again, a conventional state-centered explanation is both crucial and limited. Local governments were in a better position than the national government to articulate their interests with respect to immigration policy. The makeup of political institutions' interests thus depended on the regimes' organization of power. The terms weak state and strong state are inadequate in capturing the various dimensions of regime rules. What is conventionally referred to as intergovernmental relations must be added to the dimensions of structured political interactions affecting policymaking.

252

Notes to P3ges 110-52

6. The point of the provision was to impede legislation prohibiting slave importation. 7. Whereas federalism generally operated as a barrier to local immigration control, in this case the same institutioml constraint worked against the federal control of policy formation. This is another example of the political order shaping the political field of struggle over policy formation. X. Of course, racial concepts were not tlw same as contemporary ones with respect to the categories in which people were placed. Many witnesses noted that "Degos," that is, southern Italians, were similarly deficient. The Swedes, Germans, and Irish were usually distinguished as assimilable, even if not initially sufficiently republican and Christian. 9. The way the commission organized the report makes counting the volumes confusing. The report was in two parts (which were called volumes). The first consisted of two book-sized reports (or volumes). The second had forty book-sized reports, or volumes. This explains the discrepancy between my description of the report as having forty-two volumes and the notations, which suggest that it had only two. 10. The process by which the nativist consensus was gradually pushed out of the policy network v.··ill be discussed in the following three chapters. I I. Until the I 92+ act, industry had always opposed any restriction. Although business still did not embrace limiting immigration, and therefore there is little record of its motives for inaction, the shift toward a less strident position can be viewed as part of a general attitudinal and even ideological change taking place in the corporate community at this time. Larger industrial employers began articulating a new concept of the relationship between employers and employees emphasizing mutual commitment and higher skills for workers (Schlichter I929; Mitchell 19X9). I 2. For a good discussion of the rhetorical distinction between "old" and "new" immigration at this time, see Mink 19X6. I 3. Perhaps such movements could have focused on Mexican border crossers, but because these groups formed locally in northeastern urban areas to fight immigration to the cities, such a mow was unlikely. CHAPTI'Il 5

1. Inside initiatives refer to episodes of agenda setting when members of the policy network place an issue on the public agenda. Insiders thus structure the terms of debate. For example, law enforcement agents can use their discretionary powers to highlight crime as a problem. They are on the front lines combating it, but they need more resources. Public dissatisfaction with crime could then be turned into support for a law enforcement "solution" to the "problem." Authorities cracked down on circulatory labor during the early phases of the depression in a similar move to initiate agenda setting. 2. The evidence for this is discussed below in this chapter. 3. For a discussion of the origins and history of the Department of labor, sec Grossman I 973 and DiTomaso 19X4. 4. For this reason, the law avoided insulting Latin Americans and American colonies by exempting them from regulation. 5. This had been an issue since the I 920s. There were many hearings on the topic of alien seamen throughout this era; for one example see U.S. Congress, House of Representatives 193 1. The issue was promoted by the International Seamen's Union, in part

Notes to Pages I53-88

253

because remedies would have made it more difficult for American shippers to hire aliens. Some alleged that shippers used foreigners, especially Asians, to work simply for the opportunity to immigrate illegally to the United States. 6. See the discussion ofWilburJ. Carr, below, and in Chapter 4· 7. Wilson explained that his organization, located in San Francisco, represented agricultural interests in California, Texas, and most of the Southwest. 8. Under Secretary ofState Cotton testified to the sensitivity of a contract labor scheme for foreign relations. Representatives of the American Farm Bureau, the National Grange, and the United States Beet Sugar Association also testified in favor of a commission to study the issue further. The AFL also appeared to oppose an exception for Mexican immigrants. 9. The California joint Committee on Immigration was an ad hoc committee consisting of the California American Legion, the state Federation ofLabor, and the Native Sons of the Golden West. IO. The I9I7 act did allow for a relaxation of the literacy requirement under special circumstances to facilitate the immigration of refugees; this provision, however, never played a significant role in the execution of immigration law. I I. The columnist Drew Pearson wrote that Hull was "easily boxed in by his career diplomats" (Stewart 1982, 36). I 2. Part of the sense of belonging to a bureaucratic corps is sharing social and cultural experiences. A common education and background ties one to one's peers. As a result, the State Department recruited men from certain schools and social backgrounds (Kennan I 967). It is not surprising, given discriminatory practices of the time, that some State Department employees were predisposed toward facile anti-Semitism, even in the face of the Nazis' illiberality (Stiller 1987). I 3. They were probably right because members of Congress were still submitting restrictive bills at this time. There was a noticeable rise in anti-Semitism in this period. I4. The I 9 I 7 Immigration Act empowered the Immigration Bureau to exclude visitors if they had subversive connections, but no such provision existed for visa issuance to those who sought to immigrate permanently. 15. This policy network expanded and contracted as the scope of the issue changed during the New Deal years. Hecla (I978) would portray this "issue network" as typical of national policymaking in the I970s. The pattern was firmly in place by the end of the New Deal (see also Hansen I99I). CHAPTER

6

r. Divine (I957, I07-9) notes the significance of the fact that for the first time the executive branch had the upper hand in immigration policy innovation and that issues of loyalty replaced racial and economic concerns as the preeminent concern in immigration matters. 2. See also U.S. Department ofjustice 1943. These security measures came from suggestions made by Flll director J. Edgar Hoover. 3. The State Department feared the damaging effects a failure in passing the bill would have on Chinese opinion. 4· As a result of the Chinese exclusion repeal and other calls for immigration liberal-

254

Notes to Pages

1SC)~2o2

ization and restriction, the Senate Immigration Committee initiated a general review of immigration policy during these years. This preoccupation prevented it from blocking this legislation. s. The state's role in developing the Southwest has been described as conquering the area, consolidating the land, and supporting the supply of cheap labor by failing to restrict its migration across the border (Barrera 1'J7'J). Yet, in light of the history of immigration policy, this last "accomplishment" cannot be honestly portrayed as an intentional outcome. Rather, societal interests in cheap labor foreclosed any empowerment of the state to stop it. In other words, the failure to restrict labor was not an act of the state. It came about because of the absence of state autonomy and capacity. 6. Among the groups calling for such measures were the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Grange, the Vegetable Growers Association of America, the National Council of Farm Cooperatives, the National Farm Labor Users Commission, the Amalgamated Sugar Company, the National Beet Growers Federation, the National Cotton Council, and various state growers' associations of which the Council of California Growers was prominent (Craig I'J71, 24). Atypically for an immigration-related matter, their lobbying efforts were focused on the Agriculture Department and the agriculture committees in Congress. with which they had established rdationships, as well as the Departments of State and Justice. Similarly, organized labor tried to oppose these programs through appeal to the Department of Labor (ibid.) 7. "We appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them," he said (Dinnerstein 1C)S2, 43). S. The State Department recommended that President Truman tread lightly with the Arabs in his consideration of this issue. To press the point, State brought four chiefs of U.S. missions in the Middle East to Washington to lobby Truman. David Niles, the White House adviser on minority issues and a correspondent with leading American Zionists, kept these officers at bay f()r four weeks. When Truman finally met with them, he is reported to have responded to their pleas by saying, "I am sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism; I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents" (Eddy 1'!54, 36). C). See, for example, his statement after the adjournment of the Palestine Conference in London in October 1!)46 (Truman 1!)46). 1o. The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1'!4 7 replaced the old immigration committees with subcommittees of the judiciary committees. Immigration was relegated to these subcommittees of the judiciary committees. Immigration was relegated to these subcommittees because they had oversight over the Justice Department, to which the INS had been switched for security purposes. 11. The McCarran Act of I'J50 was a comprehensive security act, not exclusive to immigration, although its provisions pertaining to immigration were significant. The State Department has used the McCarran Act over the years to prevent various controversial political figures from visiting the United States. 12. Of course, stingy quotas would still restrict members of these nationalities. Thus the effect was nominal and symbolic rather than substantive. 13. The history of sex discrimination in citizenship and immigration laws is documented and well analyzed in Sapiro 1!)84. 14. Walter was also chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

NotestoPages2n-22 CHAPTER

255

7

I. Nearly everyone on the commission was either a present or former employee of a government agency involved in immigration matters or a representative of an interest group that had been active in advocating a more liberal immigration policy or in refugee resettlement. 2. This effort was undertaken in part to avoid a backlash against the Hungarians. Both Congress and the public got over their initial enthusiasm when it became clear that several thousand were being allowed to immigrate during a fairly severe recession. 3. The Western Hemisphere had no quota limitations, yet administration of visa issuance was unusually liberal. In addition, the INS refrained from deporting the many refugees who entered illegally or overstayed their temporary visas. See Loescher and Scanlan, I986, 61-62; Fagen, Brody, and O'Leary I986, I02. 4. Legislation was introduced in I965 by the Johnson administration to allow the Cuban refugees to adjust their status in the United States without reimmigrating from a second country. Legislation to this effect was passed in I 966, allowing thousands of Cubans to become United States citizens. ). Abba Schwartz, administrator of the State Department's Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs and a participant in the drafting of the Kennedy administration bill, noted (I968, 127) that congressmen had always objected to the use of the parole procedure as a means for independently making immigration policy. Schwartz was a longtime member of the policy network for refugee policy and was instrumental in reorienting the direction of the Bureau of Consular Affairs from rabid anticommunism to a more liberal use of immigration as a device of foreign policy. 6. The law's seventh preference reserved 6 percent of visas available for refugees who were defined as "aliens who ... because offear of persecution on account of race, religion, or political opinion have fled ... from any Communist or Communist dominated country or area, or . . from any country within the general area of the Middle East ... or are persons uprooted by catastrophic calamities as defined by the President who are unable to return to their usual place of abode." 7. Although the State Department selectively insulated refugee policy from immigration policy in general, the events summarized in the preceding section constitute a part of the story of general reform especially insofar as they contributed to the subversion of the general framework of immigration law. 8. The bill's origins can be traced to President Eisenhower's message to Congress in the previous year calling for reform of the immigration law so that it would be more attuned to labor needs, family reunification, and foreign policy commitments. See Vialet I 979, I6- I7. 9· See U.S. Department of Labor I959· IO. The number of illegal aliens apprehended at the border in 1959 was 45,336. In I965, the number exceeded 10o,ooo for the first time. I I. Actually, the initiation of bracero program predates the time period set out above, but it is included in this chapter for the sake of symmetry. I2. Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D.-N.Y.) also provided lengthy testimony in support of the bill. The text of his testimony indicates that he was there in the role of the recently retired attorney general rather than as the junior senator from New York.

256 1 3.

Notes to Pages 226-42 To which Kennedy replied, "Thank you Senator."

14. See, for example, his colloquy with Senator Pell (U.S. Congress, Senate 1965,

pt. 2, 553 -65). CHAPTER

8

1. There is something ironic about such a result, however, because it undercuts a contention dear to many class-conflict perspectives that public policy functions to ameliorate rather than exacerbate capitalism's contradictory tendencies. 2. The distinction between these two senses of rationality is elaborated by Elster 1986. His evaluation of the merits of each sense for understanding politics, however, diametrically opposes those I lay out below. 3· The debate over refugee policy is well covered by Loescher and Scanlan 1\)86; for a review of the 1986 act see Glazer 1985 and Rivera-Batiz, Sechzer, and Gang 1\)\)1. 4· The Reagan administration and the INS invoked the old principle of excluding those transmitting communicable diseases to apply to legal immigrants. 5. It is significant though not surprising that the criticisms common to political researchers on immi!:,'Tation policy-oflabor exploitation and international dependencyhave made little impact on public discourse surrounding the illegal immigration issue. 6. The German and Israeli provisions to which Glazer refers arose in extraordinary circumstances. Both responded to discrimination against "their own kind" abroad at a time when each needed to populate its nation. Assuming that the British case was innocent of "dislike, hostility, [and] racial antagonism" hardly holds up upon examination of the history of the patrial category, as Freeman ( 1 978) shows. The patrial category carefully discriminated against nonwhite British subjects at a time of rising racist sentiments toward immigrants of color in Britain.

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