Bureaucratic and Organizational Amenability to Racial Diversification: How Points Systems Replaced White-Only Immigration Policies

Abstract

After Australia and Canada adopted policies to admit immigrants of any nationality or race, the racial composition of immigrants did not immediately diversify. It only diversified after their governments adopted points systems to recruit immigrants with the education, language ability, and skills that would increase the national income of the migrant-receiving country. Why? I draw on archival documents to reveal how the organization of consular institutions and practices of bureaucrats limited how much immigrant sources diversified. However, the more human capital-rich people in White-majority countries lost interest in immigrating and the more non-White people in migrant-sending societies increased their human capital, the more frequently bureaucrats became amenable to admitting more racially diverse immigrants who could contribute more to national income and productivity than human capital-poor White immigrants. This emerging preference later stimulated the immigration department to geographically expand their organizational infrastructure to facilitate further non-White immigration. This study illustrates how scholars through a more intersectional lens can better potentially understand changes in institutions and norms along one dimension of identity (race) due to policies to admit a minority of non-White immigrants along another dimension (human capital).