From Refugee Relief to Family Reunification

Abstract

This chapter examines ACIM’s attempts to continue to circumvent National Origins quotas through lobbying for further refugee legislation after the expiration of the Refugee Relief Act. The Refugee Relief Program proved to be a politically palatable way to both increase Italian immigration opportunities and to whittle away at the effectiveness of the National Origins System. This chapter looks at the varying degrees of success Italian Americans had with these campaigns, the eventual unsustainable nature of their arguments, and their turn toward advancing arguments to regulate immigration on the basis of family unification by the turn of the decade. That pivot was part of a broader shift among liberals who similarly had begun to advance family reunification legislation as a more egalitarian and moral way to regulate immigration than the National Origins System. This chapter shows that Italian American immigration reformers took part in this shift because of a combination of genuine ideological convictions but also did so opportunistically when previous strategies for achieving immigration opportunities via special legislation for Italians failed. It argues for the self-interested nature of Italian American lobbying and suggests the limitations of white ethnic liberalism.