3. Removing barriers and debating consequences

America emerged from World War II a more unified, confident society, experiencing dramatic economic expansion and exercising military and political supremecy as the world’s dominant superpower. Racism and restrictionism in immigration and refugee law and policy were a burden on claims to world leadership. Continuing economic expansion could be reinforced by immigrant labor. Support grew for more open immigration and refugee regimes without racial and nationality restrictions. A series of laws created foundations for an expansive refugee policy. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act ended restrictive quotas and racial deselections. The public was not overly enthusiastic about a re-inception of mass immigration, and was assured that this would not happen. However, when paired with unsettling political and economic change as modernization spread outside Europe, the unintended consequence of the 1965 law was intense controversy over unprecedented numbers of immigrants, both legal and illegal, principally from Asia and Latin America.

Introduction

The United States is a nation of diverse peoples, formed not through a common genealogy, as were its European counterparts among capitalist democracies. Instead, its people have been bound together through allegiance to a constitution, outlining the framework for the making of law and for governance, and a loosely defined, ever-contested creed. Americans are moved to love their country not by membership in an “American family,” but rather by the powerful rhetorical formulations of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence that establish the promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” What this inspiring language means in practice is an ongoing argument that holds Americans together....

5. Mass population movements and resettlement, 1965 to the present

After immigration law reform in 1965, vast numbers of immigrants, principally from Asia and Latin America, sought entry to the United States. Illegal immigration from Mexico increased dramatically after 1990. Conflicts across the globe increased the numbers of refugees and asylum seekers. This chapter compares and contrasts this wave of mass voluntary immigration with past waves. To the extent that mass migratory movements are the result of the spreading of modernizing processes across the globe, the purposes and structures of contemporary voluntary migrations are generally a variation on familiar historical themes, such as the network as the key to the organization of migration, now enhanced by new technologies, especially electronic media and jet air travel. With its laws encouraging family reconstitution, America remains an attractive destination in spite of the relative insecurity of contemporary job markets. To the extent destinations within the United States have proliferated, immigration has been nationalized.

1. Unregulated immigration and its opponents, from colonial America to the mid-nineteenth century

Colonial British North America was a melting pot for northern and western Europeans, with a majority white population from Great Britain. Colonial authorities encouraged immigration because of a need for labor. Immigration, both bonded and voluntary, supplemented the slave trade as a labor source. The same economic logic was present after the United States was founded in 1789, but, amid unregulated massive immigrations from northern and western Europe, suspicions based on race, nationality, and religion grew about the suitability of the immigrants for American citizenship, as did fears about their negative impact on American life. Thus, from the start, Americans looked in different directions when considering immigration. Immigrants were economically beneficial, yet too many of them were thought dangerous in variety of ways. In fear of immigrant political power, the American Party emerged in the 1850s, arguing unsuccessfully for extension of the period necessary for residence to become a citizen and vote.

4. Mass population movements and resettlement, 1820–1924

The examination of European immigration is centered on the crisis of peasant agriculture and the collapse of traditional rural society, beginning in western Europe in the eighteenth century and spreading eastward and southward by the late nineteenth century. Similar conditions are observed in Mexico, China, and Japan. Immigration is considered not from the standpoint of nations on the move, but of networks defined by family, kinship, friendship, and community, which give structure to migration and resettlement. International migration was facilitated by technological revolutions in postal and media communications, which spread information about travel and destinations, and transportation, which created safer, faster routinized oceanic passage. Seen from these perspectives, what appears to be the chaotic movement of inchoate masses takes on the form of a process guided by technology and linked personal experiences, while immigrants appear to be pragmatic conservatives guided by familiar relations and a willingness to test the continents in search of better lives.

Conclusion

Americans have built a global society whose peoples’ origins look much like the world. This is an observation made daily by international visitors for whom such symbolic locations at the crossroad of American diversity as New York City’s Times Square or the multicultural neighborhoods of big cities possess a cosmopolitan dynamism that seems uniquely American. At eye level these exciting manifestations of multicultural America are not easily forgotten, especially by those residing in more homogeneous societies....

6. The widening mainstream

A persistent theme in responding to mass immigration has been fears about immigrants’ perceived unwillingness to become Americans. Much of this anxiety has been a consequence of misperceptions of the meanings for immigrants of their ethnic group life and identity. Such anxieties have led to Americanization programs, sometimes beneficial and well-meaning and sometimes coercive and nativist. It also is a consequence of not understanding how the dynamic historical growth and development of the United States have continually worked to expand its societal mainstream to accommodate constant economic and technological change as well as the growing diversity of the population. American social forms and processes, as the examples of both the labor movement and electoral politics suggest, have consistently demonstrated considerable absorptive capacities, and they continue to do so. While Americans have not always welcomed immigrants enthusiastically, these homogenizing processes work, though not necessarily rapidly or evenly, toward civil and cultural unity.

2. Regulation and exclusion

The period from the end of the Civil War through the early 1920s is characterized by massive immigration, especially after the end of the depression of the 1890s, hostile reaction to large-scale immigration, and increasing centralized control of immigration by the state. The latter two trends were embedded in growing racial and nationality consciousness and the general trend toward the growth of the state and centralized bureaucracy. The results were efforts to tighten and systematize border controls and entrance procedures, exclusions of growing numbers of immigrants from Asia, beginning with most Chinese immigrants in 1882, and quota laws in the 1920s to severely restrict the entrance of southern, eastern, and central Europeans. The vast numbers of immigrants entering the country during this period of American modernization were central to the United States becoming the leading capitalist economy in the twentieth century.

7. The future of assimilation

Though American institutions and societal processes have been shaped historically around accommodating diversity, and have largely been successful in doing so, as in the past, some Americans believe that the economic circumstances and the racial and cultural character of today’s immigrants are making that increasingly difficult. Persistent questions have arisen about whether immigrants, especially Mexicans, are being propelled into the mainstream, and hence whether American institutions are equal to the task of assimilating immigrants into the civic culture on which democracy depends. This pessimism is deepened by the uncertain position of the United States in the contemporary global economy. Through comparisons with the successfully assimilated immigrants of the past, this chapter evaluates this contemporary pessimism, and concludes that it is, as in the past, overdrawn. On the other hand, optimism about immigrants should not blot out the need to address the socioeconomic crisis of poor and working-class African Americans.