Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States

by Hiroshi Motomura

Although America is unquestionably a nation of immigrants, its immigration policies have inspired more questions than consensus on who should be admitted and what the path to citizenship should be. In Americans in Waiting, Hiroshi Motomura looks to a forgotten part of our past to show how, for over 150 years, immigration was assumed to be a transition to citizenship, with immigrants essentially being treated as future citizens--Americans in waiting. Challenging current conceptions, the author deftly uncovers how this view, once so central to law and policy, has all but vanished. Motomura explains how America could create a more unified society by recovering this lost history and by giving immigrants more, but at the same time asking more of them. A timely, panoramic chronicle of immigration and citizenship in the United States, Americans in Waiting offers new ideas and a fresh perspective on current debates.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Law, Politics, Social Issues, The United States Of America

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Motomura considers the legal history of immigration as it falls into three primary forms of logic: immigration as contract (in which the act of migration carries within it implied contracts of behavior, treatment, and mutuality), immigration as affiliation (in which the ability to become a citizen is predicated on one's having social and affinal ties and connections within one's new country), and immigration as transition, in which each immigrant is presumed to be on the road to citizenship from the moment of arrival. Much of his argument, made through exploration of specific court cases in the history of immigration law, focuses on how we have overly emphasized the first two forms of immigration and have subsequently sorted immigrants into the statuses of citizen and non-citizen, a form that in turn does not treat all members of society equally (aka if we put so much emphasis on legal citizenship, then we inherently make those without it as fundamentally less equipped for just treatment). If we were to focus on immigration as transition instead, then everyone coming to the US would start on somewhat equal footing, making the path to citizenship more incorporative while also preserving a greater degree of choice and autonomy.

While Motomura's argument seems in many ways like a pipe dream--and puts an enormous onus on those who do not pursue routes to full legal citizenship--I was increasingly more persuaded than expected because of the evidence he provides from past court cases. Many of the legal decisions made around immigration implicitly or explicitly invoke ideas of participation and belonging that in turn emphasize a right kind of immigrant (over a wrong kind)--is there a way to resist this dichotomy by making the entire immigration-to-citizenship narrative more standard and coherent?

[Al Lock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book covering the history of immigration to the United States, the various legal approaches to immigration and the author's ideas on how immigration should be handled going forward. I disagree with a lot of the author's views, although I think his research into the issues is excellent for the most part, I think he has fundamentally failed to recognize the core liberty that is of concern with immigration, that migration is a natural right - something Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson pointed out very clearly.

[Sandra Riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough and complete history that provides so much necessary to an understanding of where our country is today with respect to immigration and citizenship.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Book was not exactly what I expected. The author created many redundant and overly wordy chapters that made it somewhat difficult to read. That being said, the research aspect of it was excellent and provided some great insights into the sorted history of America's immigration policy with a specific focus on the Asian American experience.

[Vincent Lombardozzi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad. It's a little repetitive, but it does a nice job of exploring developments in US immigration through the categories that the author has established. But there are almost certainly better history books out there than this one, which I feel unsuccessfully tries to convince the reader of the author's viewpoint that we should embrace "immigration as transition" once more.

[Sue Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learned a lot about the history of immigration in the country. We did it right once. Reform needed