Conclusion

The conclusion focuses on the long-term ramifications of immigration reform activists’ limitations in 1965. Bringing the history of immigration reform to the present, the conclusion also reflects on the similarities and differences between immigration reform activists discussed in the book and those pushing for immigration reform during the Trump administration. Even during the most challenging times for restrictionists during the 20th Century, reformers could always count on family reunification as a priority for critics and supporters of immigration alike. That option is no longer available today. Nor can activists count on the executive office as a mitigating institution seeking common ground between the two poles. They face instead a president who uses anti-immigrant rhetoric to retain power and who bypasses Congress to change the country’s immigration and refugee policy dramatically.

The Doors of America Are Worse Than Shut When They Are Half-Way Open

Chapter 2 offers an account of how Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates, sensing the inevitability of further restriction, pragmatically decided to work with legislators in the early 1920s to mitigate some of the more punitive features of the national origins quota system. When the literacy test passed in 1917 failed to halt immigration from eastern and southern Europe significantly, restrictionists in and outside of Congress began pushing for quantitative immigration restriction. In 1924, Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act, which imposed the national origins quota system for immigration from the Eastern Hemisphere and a near ban on immigration from Asia. The only issue on which restrictionist legislators and Italian and Jewish anti-restrictionists could find common ground when it came to immigration reform was family reunification, but legislators refused to budge on the discriminatory national quotas imposed on European immigration. Although scholars usually present the 1920s and 1930s as the height of immigration restriction, these negotiations over family reunification, along with the exemption of the Western Hemisphere from the quota system, allowed for exclusion and inclusion to continue to coexist in U.S. immigration policy.

Almost as Inaccessible as Tibet

Chapter 3 examines how Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates adjusted to the new restrictive immigration regime that followed the passage of the 1924 act and how they worked to build political clout to push for reform under the aegis of Roosevelt’s New Deal. During this period, family reunification remained the only argument that helped them gain some traction with legislators as both groups gained more political visibility with representation at every level of government. Despite the pervasive isolationism, push for assimilation, and the strain from the Great Depression, Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates successfully used family reunification to help more migrants enter the United States as the 1930s came to an end. Those who could not enter often resorted to illegal immigration. The Anti-Semitism that animated many officers in the U.S. State Department, however, made sure that the very generous annual quota for Germany went mostly unfilled for the entire decade even as thousands of German Jews continued to apply for visas for the United States to flee Nazi Germany.

International Migration and One World

Chapter 4 chronicles how Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates appealed to internationalism, humanitarianism, and civil rights rhetoric to fight for refugee legislation first and comprehensive immigration reform later. Unlike World War I, World War II represented an opportunity for reform for many groups who had long fought for less discriminatory immigration laws because of the new geopolitical position of the United States. The Cold War also provided an opening for a broad coalition of ethnic, religious, and civic organizations to come together during the debate over the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952. Although the most diverse interethnic alliance fighting for immigration reform to date fell apart over ideological disagreements and under pressure from entrenched restrictionist politicians, the experience of the early 1950s left a mark for the rest of the decade and shaped their approach to immigration reform until the early 1960s.

The Battle Begins

The first chapter examines Italian and Jewish immigrants’ efforts to oppose proposed restrictions on new immigrants from eastern and southern Europe from the passage of the 1882 Immigration Act to the adoption of a literacy test in 1917. During this critical period in the rise of the antirestrictionist movement, both groups created national advocacy organizations (American Jewish Committee and the Order Sons of Italy) to negotiate with legislators in hopes of achieving more political influence. These organizations successfully opposed the passage of a literacy test for arriving immigrants older than 16 until World War I, when organizations like the Immigration Restriction League successfully used the war to mobilize labor unions, reformers, regular Americans, and politicians from the South eager to preserve their political influence to push for the test, which Congress passed over President Wilson’s veto. War and immigration emerge as linked processes in U.S. history. Amid rampant anti-immigrant rhetoric and violence during WWI, the debate over immigration policy pitted advocates for qualitative restriction against those who advocated for quantitative restriction as the best approach to curtail immigration from eastern and southern Europe. Supporters of the literacy test won a temporary battle.

Reform at Last

Chapter 6 analyzes Italian and Jewish reform advocates’ final efforts to abolish the national origins quota system but also sheds light on the constraints they faced in seeking reform. After pushing for immigration reform for over forty years, many of them, sensing that the window for reform was closing, realized that they had to compromise to accomplish their goal. Although Lyndon B. Johnson and his administration marginalized the voices of Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates who had long fought for immigration reform, many of these activists remained quiet as the negotiations over the final bill hinged on the imposition of a cap on immigration from the Western Hemisphere. For many of them, in the end, their priority remained the abolition of the national origins quota system, which they regarded as marking them as undesirable, second-class citizens. As many of them had hoped, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act abolished the national origins quota system and prioritized immigrants with family ties and skills, but it also imposed global quotas, including on immigration from the Western Hemisphere, which created new barriers for migrants from the Americas and exacerbated the debate over illegal immigration.

A Thing of Shreds and Patches

Chapter 5 shows that, after the debacle of 1952, Italian and Jewish reformers, along with other advocacy groups, pragmatically focused on pushing for ad hoc legislation and piecemeal immigration reform to undermine the very premise of the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952. Contrary to what the sponsors and supporters of the 1952 immigration law had envisioned, the number of immigrants entering the United States steadily went up during the rest of the decade in part thanks to many of the small legislative changes pushed by Italian and Jewish immigration reform activists. Many immigrants from Asia took advantage of the preference for family reunification and skill-based immigration and began to change the migratory flows to the United States, thus paving the way for the diversification of U.S. society usually associated with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Nonetheless, while these changes helped immigrants with family ties and desirable skills, they did little to help unskilled temporary migrants or to address the racialization of and violence against immigrants illegally in the country.

Introduction

The introduction looks at the broader efforts of many Americans, animated by nativism and xenophobia, to cast so called “new immigrants” from Asia and Europe as undesirable. At the end of the nineteenth century, immigration laws emerged as a tool of social engineering and nation building. At first, legislators passed immigration laws that focused heavily on qualitative restriction to determine who could enter the country. Later they moved on to quantitative restriction, imposing numbers on how many immigrants could arrive. The only issues on which restrictionist legislators and Italian and Jewish anti-restrictionists could find common ground when it came to immigration reform were family reunification and skill-based immigration, which opened up opportunities for some immigrants but heavily penalized others thus contributing to create the uneven and unfair immigration system still in existence today.