Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America

by Daniel J. Tichenor

Immigration is perhaps the most enduring and elemental leitmotif of America. This book is the most powerful study to date of the politics and policies it has inspired, from the founders' earliest efforts to shape American identity to today's revealing struggles over Third World immigration, noncitizen rights, and illegal aliens. Weaving a robust new theoretical approach into a sweeping history, Daniel Tichenor ties together previous studies' idiosyncratic explanations for particular, pivotal twists and turns of immigration policy. He tells the story of lively political battles between immigration defenders and doubters over time and of the transformative policy regimes they built.


Tichenor takes us from vibrant nineteenth-century politics that propelled expansive European admissions and Chinese exclusion to the draconian restrictions that had taken hold by the 1920s, including racist quotas that later hampered the rescue of Jews from the Holocaust. American global leadership and interest group politics in the decades after World War II, he argues, led to a surprising expansion of immigration opportunities. In the 1990s, a surge of restrictionist fervor spurred the political mobilization of recent immigrants. Richly documented, this pathbreaking work shows that a small number of interlocking temporal processes, not least changing institutional opportunities and constraints, underlie the turning tides of immigration sentiments and policy regimes. Complementing a dynamic narrative with a host of helpful tables and timelines, Dividing Lines is the definitive treatment of a phenomenon that has profoundly shaped the character of American nationhood.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Academic, Race

392 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2001

Reviews

[John DiPietro · Rating 3 out of 5]

While it claims to be an historical-institutional view of immigration reform, it is far more historical and far less institutional. It's a useful text, but it is far more descriptive than explanatory.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very thorough, a little bit drab.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Few subjects are more likely to generate strident argument in contemporary American politics than immigration. It strikes at the core of American identity, history, economics, and the future of our country. And it turns out, it has always been that way.

Tichenor has compiled here a comprehensive review of immigration policy in the United States, highlighting just how messy democratic decision-making really is. With its qualitative focus, the book emphasizes institutions, veto-points, and shifting coalitions as the primary explanatory causes of our historical policies. The history is solid, though I found some of the political science jargon off-putting. The book is at its best as it shifts to more contemporary accounts, drawing upon hundreds of in-person interviews and discussions with the actual decisionmakers.

Read more at https://znovels.blogspot.com/2023/03/...

[Matthias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative book documenting historically the relationship of the US with immigration, and when, how and why its border policies drastically changed.
- Until the 1800s, the US policy is nearly open borders; the Declaration of Independence explicitly endorses universalism
- Early 1800s: the parties start to use immigration as a way to buy votes (via encouraging specific groups to come, persuading them to change party, etc., but without pushing policies to keep them out); the Irish, French and German immigration is sought after by the Jeffersonians, as they tend to reliably vote for them, but the opposition constantly make efforts to swing such voters, competing on regular political grounds
- Mid to late 1800s: nativist ideas start to gain power; for decades, anti-immigration waves explode and then get sedated by politicians of both factions (both don't want to lose immigrants' votes); the Radical Republicans are the most vocal political faction opposing nativists on legal, moral, religious and philosophical grounds; the years after the end of the hellish Civil War see a widespread acceptance of universalist ideals
- 1870s-1880s: after the Reconstruction, universalism starts to fall out of favor; here's when nativists start to win, and the first laws limiting immigration from specific countries pass; the Chinese are the first group being targeted
- Early 1900s: nativist ideas spread like fire; the target now extends to Italians, Greeks, Russians, Poles, Bohemians, Hungarians; academics and official "experts" embrace racial pseudoscience, eugenics and the Teutonic theory to support the view that Southern and Eastern Europeans are racially inferior and their immigration has to be stopped; quote by General F.A. Walker, President of MIT: "They are beaten men from beaten races, representing the worst failures in the struggle for existence"; anti-immigration sentiments extend from Chinese to Japanese and then all Asians as well; interestingly, the debate against Mexican immigration is centered on economic arguments instead; Latin Americans are chronologically the last group to be limited; the two major turning points are the laws passed in 1921 and 1924
- From the 1920s up to 1965, large ethnically-based border restrictions remain in place; after WW2, elites start to see an incompatibility between such policies and anti-Nazism; this is also the turning point for the Democratic Party, as its elites start to embrace universalist positions; but not until the 1960s the public opinion shifts enough to make institutions pass an immigration reform
- US border policies remain very strict to this day, quite a significant shift from their pre-1870s openness and the Founding Fathers' ideals

[Alyce]

Very useful...two thumbs up so far!!