Help (Not) Wanted: Immigration Politics in Japan by Michael Strausz

Reviewed by: The Walls Within: The Politics of Immigration in Modern America by Sarah Coleman Kathryn Schumaker (bio) The Walls Within: The Politics of Immigration in Modern America. By Sarah Coleman. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. Pp. 272. $35.00 cloth; $35.00 ebook) Historians of immigration in the twentieth-century United States have long noted how restrictive policies created a class of unauthorized people who lived in the shadow of the law. At the same time, the 1960s spurred a revolution in individual rights, expanding the scope of claims all persons—including noncitizens—could make through the Fourteenth Amendment. Sarah Coleman's The Walls Within: The Politics of Immigration in Modern America examines the people caught in between these two important developments, exploring the battles over the rights of unauthorized immigrants. This well-written and thoroughly researched book tells an often-surprising story that reveals how the states—and not the federal government—were frequently the laboratories of restrictive immigration policies in the late twentieth century. Coleman begins with Plyler v. Doe (1982), a landmark United States Supreme Court case that questioned the constitutionality of a Texas state law that allowed school districts to charge tuition to students who could not prove their legal status. The Supreme Court had ruled a decade earlier that the Fourteenth Amendment did not include a constitutional right to education. Could Texas charge tuition to unauthorized families or exclude them from public schools entirely? The first two chapters examine how these questions vexed the Carter and Reagan administrations, where officials saw unauthorized children as sympathetic figures, but also recognized that immigration [End Page 449] was a hot-button issue with voters. Though unauthorized immigrants were a convenient political target for members of state legislatures—especially in their inability to respond at the ballot box—officials were wary of punishing children. The Supreme Court eventually ruled the law unconstitutional in 1982. But the concerns about childhood that restrained some policymakers and judges in Plyler did little to deter efforts by state legislatures to target adults. Amid press warnings that linked rising unemployment rates to unauthorized workers, states passed laws criminalizing the employers who hired them. The next two chapters examine how this issue scrambled traditional partisan divides. The Chamber of Commerce and many Republicans opposed a federal law because it targeted business owners. Latino advocacy groups recognized that the law risked the possibility that, fearful of prosecution, employers could refuse to hire any identifiably Latino person. Ultimately, these concerns contributed to the passage of the 1986 federal immigration law that included (largely unenforceable) sanctions for employers, but also prohibited discrimination on the basis of alienage and national origin in hiring. The final chapters focus on the 1990s, when both political parties lurched rightward on immigration. The fifth chapter examines how immigration again came to the fore amid an economic downturn, culminating in Clinton-era welfare reform that ended the ability of noncitizens to access public benefits, including cash assistance and food stamps, regardless of their legal status. The final chapter explains how states paved the way for new restrictive immigration policies, leading Congress to ultimately buttress the authority of state and local officials to carry out immigration enforcement in the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. The Walls Within is a story of lawyers, judges, policy advisers, senators, and other elites as they made immigration law and policy in courtrooms and offices. Unauthorized immigrants existed abstractly for these people, especially for politicians who sought to use [End Page 450] immigration policy to woo conservative white voters (in the case of Clinton) or appeal to Latino voters (as Reagan did). The book, therefore, has less to say about how these legal and policy changes affected immigrants' everyday lives. Nonetheless it offers a clear policy and legal history of the fraught issue of immigrants' rights in the modern United States, especially in its contributions to the growing scholarship on federalism and immigration. [End Page 451] Kathryn Schumaker KATHRYN SCHUMAKER is a historian at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of Troublemakers: Students' Rights and Racial Justice in the Long 1960s and is at work on a new book project about interracial families in...

Abstract: Russia's choice to pursue restrictive immigration policies is counterintuitive, given the acute need for labor migrants. This analysis argues that in response to pervasive xenophobia, the state has embarked on a labor migration policy agenda that does not reflect the demographic reality of Russia's rapidly declining working age population. Institutional and societal manifestations of xenophobia work together to demand and justify restrictive immigration policies. The state provokes and reinforces these nationalist attitudes through the media and discriminatory policies and practices such as ethnic profiling and allowing extremist groups to operate with impunity. The literature on migration policy systematically neglects illiberal polities, making this discussion linking the policy input of xenophobia to restrictive policy outputs a unique contribution to the ongoing study of how states respond to immigration. (1) Keywords: demographic crisis, immigration policy, labor migration, nationalism, Russia, xenophobia ********** New migration rules in Russia, enacted on January 15, 2007, are part of an ongoing effort to address the current demographic crisis. In a period of massive population decline, the state has made policy efforts to create balanced immigration by enticing Russian compatriots while limiting migrants from the former Soviet countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). While CIS citizens are not required to have visas to travel to the Russian Federation, the 2007 legislation introduced a quota system limiting the number of work permits available to these migrants. (2) Quota levels have decreased every year since their institution, shrinking incrementally from 6 million in 2007 to 1.3 million in 2010. Furthermore, in the sector of retail trade (almost exclusively manned by immigrants), foreign workers were banned altogether as of April 2007. Why would Russia, whose population is decreasing by 700,000 per year, institute restrictive immigration policies? (3) In fact, many believe immigration is the only source of population growth in Russia. (4) This article argues that in response to growing xenophobia in society, the state has embarked on a labor migration policy agenda that does not reflect the demographic realities present in Russia. Nationalism and xenophobia have a number of manifestations in both the state and society. The state continually reinforces nationalist attitudes through the media and discriminatory policies. These efforts resonate with the public, which passively supports xenophobia, and with nationalist actors who actively promote anti-migrant agendas. Pervasive institutional and societal manifestations of xenophobia work together to both demand and justify restrictive immigration policies. By setting forth the Russian case as an example of a state that uses restrictive policies and nationalist discourse as key components of its immigration strategy, this article contributes to an understanding of how law is affected by the ideological constructs dominant in a state. Toward this goal, the article proceeds in two sections. First, a review of the literature creates a theoretical context for Russia as an immigrant receiving country. Second, an analysis of Russia's current policies and the xenophobia that demands them shows how nationalist sentiment trumps demographic realities in the process of policy formation. Nationalism and Immigration A look at current migration literature justifies the importance of the Russian case. Even though it is the second largest immigrant-receiving country after the United States, Russia does not fall neatly into the parameters of the existing literature. There is, therefore, an opportunity to advance the discourse by identifying gaps that the Russian case can fill. The literature relevant to immigration policy, especially that regulating labor migration, can be broadly categorized into inputs (factors that influence what types of policies will be chosen) and outputs (the policies themselves). …

Since 2005, local governments in southern California’s Inland Empire region have attempted to pass various types of immigration regulation. I examine several cases from this region that symbolize the contemporary national debate on immigration in the U.S. Using a conceptual framework derived from a body of work by critical geographers on immigration, I argue that geography is integral to the construction of immigration politics and policy. Specifically, I use the concepts of spatial targeting and discursive production of scale to understand how local and national immigration politics and policies fit together. Thus, I compare the local case studies from the Inland Empire to national immigration politics and policies. I discuss the Bush administration immigration policies, immigration bills passed in the U.S. Congress since 2005, and their constitutive arguments. I conclude that the contradiction between liberal trade and restrictive immigration policy, which has frustrated the implementation of immigration reform at the national level and has opened the floodgate to local immigration reform initiatives, is creating a complex topography of regulations and enforcement. This new geography of rights and citizenship is a process of spatial targeting whereby local immigration regulations have taken the place of national immigration reform. Like other critical geographers, I argue that these local resolutions to the contradictions of the U.S. neoliberal state allow for the continuation of the current status quo of a flexible labor market made up of undocumented workers with contingent rights.

In this issue of Pediatrics , Cholera et a1 used a controlled interrupted time series design to examine differences in health care use of Latinx children as it relates to federal immigration policy enacted in 2017. Electronic medical record data from four major health care systems in North Carolina were analyzed before and after restrictive immigration policy was enacted after the 2016 election. Among Latinx children in the outpatient setting, they found a sustained increase in visit cancellation for the uninsured subgroup, a proxy for undocumented immigrant children in North Carolina.1 One aim of the study was to explore whether restrictive immigration policy resulted in a “chilling effect” for all Latino children. A chilling effect is defined as a deterring effect on the behavior of an individual or group through fear of legal action.2 Widely used during the 1996 welfare reform, today, like then, it refers to immigrant families’ decision not to participate in the use of public benefits and services out of fear, confusion, or perceived threat. This phenomenon is of particular concern for the public charge rule changes that were enacted in 2019 (but leaked to the public … Address correspondence to J. Raul Gutierrez, MD, Children’s Health Center, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, 1001 Potrero Ave, Floor 06, Room 6E07, San Francisco, CA 94110. E-mail: juan.gutierrez{at}ucsf.edu

BackgroundA growing literature has documented the social, economic, and health impacts of exclusionary immigration and immigrant policies in the early 21st century for Latiné communities in the US, pointing to immigration and immigrant policies as forms of structural racism that affect individual, family, and community health and well-being. Furthermore, the past decade has seen an increase in bi-partisan exclusionary immigration and immigrant policies. Immigration enforcement has been a major topic during the 2024 Presidential election cycle, portending an augmentation of exclusionary policies towards immigrants. Within this context, scholars have called for research that highlights the ways in which Latiné communities navigate exclusionary immigration and immigrant policies, and implications for health. This study examines ways in which Mexican-origin women in a midwestern northern border community navigate restrictive immigration and immigrant policies to access health-promoting resources and care for their well-being.MethodsWe conducted a grounded theory analysis drawing on interviews with 48 Mexican-origin women in Detroit, Michigan, who identified as being in the first, 1.5, or second immigrant generation. Interviews were conducted in English or Spanish, depending on participants’ preferences, and were conducted at community-based organizations or other locations convenient to participants in 2013–2014.ResultsWomen reported encountering an interconnected web of institutional processes that used racializing markers to infer legal status and eligibility to access health-promoting resources. Our findings highlight women’s use of both individual and collective action to navigate exclusionary policies and processes, working to: (1) maintain access to health-promoting resources; (2) limit labeling and stigmatization; and (3) mitigate adverse impacts of immigrant policing on health and well-being. The strategies women engaged were shaped by both the immigration processes and structures they confronted, and the resources to which they had access to within their social network.ConclusionsOur findings suggest a complex interplay of immigration-related policies and processes, social networks, and health-relevant resources. They highlight the importance of inclusive policies to promote health for immigrant communities. These findings illuminate women’s agency in the context of structural violence facing immigrant women and are particularly salient in the face of anti-immigrant rhetoric and exclusionary immigration and immigrant policies.

Denmark upholds high standards of human rights as long as the interests of its citizens are concerned but erects barriers for migrants with a dissimilar cultural background who might threaten the security of the national community. The Danish tradition of liberalism, humanism and the welfare state coexists with one of Europe’s most restrictive policies towards third-country immigrants. This article traces the evolution of management approaches to developing the immigration policy and integrating foreign cultural migrants in Denmark; the value determinants of these changes are described. Using the neo-institutional methodology, the authors analyse how the value determinants of Denmark’s immigration policy evolved and look at the national norms and practices of integrating migrants having a different cultural background. A restrictive immigration policy was made possible by a consensus between the main political forces — the left Social Democratic Party and the right Liberal Party Venstre, both willing to keep in check electoral support for the radical right-wing parties (the effect of ‘contagion from the right’ in Maurice Duverger’s terms). The object of Denmark’s restrictive integration policy is migrants with a different cultural background (mainly from Muslim countries). The government takes systematic measures to restrict their access to the country. As to migrant integration, the focus has shifted to ‘hard’ assimilation of civiс democratic values, benefits linked to employment, and deportation of migrants who have committed crimes.

We investigate the relationship between transnational terrorism and the restrictiveness of immigration policies. We argue that transnational terrorism may create incentives for governments to implement more restrictive migration policies. First, more restrictive policies may make terrorism a more costly endeavor, discouraging future terrorist activity. Second, voters may hold the government accountable for the increased insecurity and economic instability terrorism produces; more restrictive migration policies may signal political resolve and meet public demand for security-providing policies, consequently reducing the government’s chances of electoral defeat. We provide an empirical analysis of the effect of transnational terrorism on migration policy restrictiveness for a sample of 30 OECD countries between 1980 and 2010. We find that a greater exposure to transnational terrorism is associated with stricter migration controls, but not stricter migration regulations regarding eligibility criteria and conditions. This finding is robust to different model specifications, estimation methods, operationalizations of terrorism, and instrumental-variable approaches. It points to the securitization of immigration, providing partial support for the notion that transnational terrorism incentivizes migration policy change towards greater restrictiveness. However, the policy response appears to be surgical (affecting only migration controls) rather than sweeping (and thus not influencing broader migration regulations) for the countries in our sample.

While clear evidence indicates that restrictive immigration policies are motivated by fears of potential support for anti-immigration movements, there is also evidence from Austria and Switzerland showing that such policies fail to diminish opposition to immigration. This chapter analyses the seemingly inconsistent relationship between changes in immigration policy and the level of politicization of immigration. Using political claims data from seven Western European countries between 199 S and 2010, the chapter concludes that, whereas the politicization of immigration policies is somewhat responsive to changes in immigration policy, the politicization of integration policies is significantly more responsive to changes in integration policy. The chapter also indicates that these effects are conditional on the perceived position of the party implementing the policy change.

Keywords: immigration, labor migration, Estonia, 1920s. This article studies the Estonian immigration policy of the 1920s in comparison with immigration policies implemented in other European states at that time. The aim of the article is to determine the principles influencing decisions made regarding the immigration of foreigners – that is, citizens of other states as well as persons without citizenship as a result of the First World War. In brief, the implementation of immigration controls in Europe after the end of the First World War can be explained both by economic and political factors. First, most European countries faced an economic breakdown leading to increasing unemployment rates and shortages of consumables. Thus European authorities did not welcome newcomers, who would most likely face unemployment in the receiving countries and become an additional burden to already overloaded welfare systems. However, the introduction of strict immigration restrictions for foreigners searching for jobs or residence after the end of the war has also been associated with the Great War itself, in that it inflamed nationalistic hatred among belligerents and thus had an influence on the general rise of nationalism and xenophobia in the post-war years. As this study has shown, the Estonian immigration policy did not differ much from the practice implemented in other European nation-states at that time. Like the majority of other “new” states that were established in Europe as a result of the First World War, Estonia was heavily suffering from economic breakdown in the early 1920s. The influence of rising unemployment and food shortages can be seen in the restrictive immigration policy. The desire of the Estonian authorities to control and stop the inflow of foreign citizens seeking jobs in Estonia can be seen both in limitations set for the issuance of entry permits as well as permissions to reside within the state’s territory. A direct correlation between the worsening of the economic situation and the introduction of restrictions on the immigration of foreigners can be distinguished. The most strenuous attempts to restrict the immigration of foreign citizens to Estonia were made during the years directly following the proclamation of independence, and again in 1923 when the economy was hit with a new depression. However, the influence of ethnic relations in Estonia on the formation of the immigration policy cannot be neglected. Although Estonia is known for its liberal minority policy, the loyalty of minorities – and especially of those who had belonged to the former power elites – was doubted in Estonian administrative circles in the early 1920s. Thus, the restrictions set on the immigration of persons belonging to certain ethnic groups (i.e. Russians or Germans) could also be associated with the unwillingness of the Estonian authorities to increase their numbers in Estonia. However, the restrictive policy could also be explained by attempts to stand against “nepotism” in the industrial and banking sectors (e.g., to avoid the recruitment of German rather than Estonian citizens to businesses run by the local Baltic-Germans). Several problems were also associated with the immigration of Russian refugees, whose number in Estonia has been estimated to exceed 20,000 in the early 1920s. Similarly to loyalty risks associated with the influx of communists, the loyalty of White Russians who had fought for the re-establishment of the Russian empire was seriously doubted in Estonian political circles, leading to strict surveillance of their activities in Estonia by the local police authorities as well as to restrictions set for their entry. Although refugees already residing in the state’s territory were treated differently from other persons who were not holding Estonian citizenship (e.g., they were not expelled from Estonia and were given limited unemployment benefits), their further influx was nearly banned in 1923. In all, it can be said that Estonia, similarly to other “new” European states, was suffering immense economic hardships after the end of the First World War, and the economic and security interests of the state were kept in mind by the Estonian political circles when forming the immigration policy in the 1920s. As a result, restrictions on the immigration of foreigners were introduced in order to favor the recruitment of Estonian citizens in the local labor market. Helen Rohtmets (b. 1977) is a Ph.D. student at the Institute of History and Archaeology, University of Tartu.

How the Hart–Celler Act Changed America Ruth Milkman (bio) The Walls Within: The Politics of Immigration in Modern America by Sarah R. Coleman Princeton University Press, 2021, 272 pp. I vividly remember a conversation I had about fifteen years ago with a first-generation Mexican-American student at UCLA. I was stunned when she mentioned that her parents’ favorite U.S. president, hands down, was Ronald Reagan. Before she was born, she explained, her parents had crossed the border without authorization; they then lived as undocumented immigrants for years, until they got amnesty under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which Reagan signed into law. Later on, they became naturalized U.S. citizens. Despite their nostalgia for the party of Reagan, by the aughts my student had persuaded her parents to switch their political allegiance to the Democrats. This was a decade before Donald Trump’s fiery anti-immigrant rhetoric propelled him into the White House, but already the Republican brand was tethered to restrictive immigration policies, especially in California, home [End Page 141] to the nation’s largest undocumented population. Agricultural and business interests that depended on a steady supply of low-wage immigrant labor were still influential in the California GOP, but their relatively liberal immigration views were increasingly marginalized by other Republicans riding the wave of popular backlash against “illegal aliens.” That backlash was fueled by what political scientists Marisa Abrajano and Zoltan L. Hajnal have called the “immigrant threat narrative”: blaming the growing immigrant population, especially its undocumented segment, for many of the nation’s social and economic woes. In this view, immigrants were “taking jobs” away from American workers. They were overburdening publicly funded healthcare and social services. And they were contributing to rising crime rates. As I argued in Dissent in 2019, however, immigrants very rarely “take jobs” from U.S.-born workers; more often, employers transform once-desirable jobs into problematic ones by eliminating unions, cutting pay, or degrading working conditions, leading U.S.-born workers to reject those jobs and immigrants to be hired in their place. The other claims in the immigrant threat narrative are also inconsistent with the available facts. Yet that narrative steadily gained public traction in the late twentieth century, repeatedly articulated by conservative political voices and amplified in mass media outlets like Fox News. Historian Sarah R. Coleman’s careful study of the dynamics of immigration politics, The Walls Within, exposes both the forces driving the immigrant threat narrative and the shifting political alignments shaping immigration policy in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. Coleman argues that alongside better-known controversies over policing the U.S. border, a crucial debate raged about the extent to which noncitizens (whether undocumented or legal immigrants) should be entitled to access the public benefits—healthcare, education, and food stamps—that were available to the U.S.-born population. The Walls Within also highlights the growing involvement of state and local governments in regulating what had long been an exclusively federal domain. Coleman’s account begins with the passage of the 1965 Hart–Celler Act, which defined the fundamental structure of employment- and family-reunification-based immigrant admissions that exists to this day. (She does not explore refugee admissions or the diversity visa program that began in 1990.) Hart–Celler was among the “Great Society” reforms enacted under the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. Because it eliminated the restrictive nationality-based immigration quotas that had prevailed since 1924, the law was widely heralded as an anti-discrimination measure. Yet as Coleman notes, “few of the bill’s supporters or opponents anticipated that the legislation would result in . . . a transformed population of unprecedented diversity.” Indeed, upon signing the bill into law, Johnson confidently declared, “It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives.” He was soon proven wrong. Starting in the 1970s, legal immigration from Asia and Latin America spiked upward, as did unauthorized entries across the U.S.–Mexico border. Indeed, Hart–Celler was the start of what would later be called the “browning” of America, and it quickly sparked a nativist reaction. Alongside the rising anti-immigrant movement, which was bolstered by what Coleman calls an “invasion narrative,” a...

The role of state discourses in the construction of ‘otherness’ and in the production of inequality has become a major issue during a time of increasing changes in migration flows, of an increased presence of nationalist parties, and of increasingly restrictive immigration policies in Europe. In this paper we examine historical shifts in the representation of foreigners within Swiss state discourses and the effects of these shifts on the integration of immigrants into Swiss society. As state discourses regarding foreigners significantly changed after the First World War, the emphasis of immigration policies shifted from a facilitating to a constraining approach. Überfremdung, the notion that excessive numbers of foreigners can threaten Swiss identity, emerged as one of the most influential discourses in Switzerland and provided the foundation for a quantitative and qualitative strategy of defence against the immigration, settlement, and naturalisation of foreigners. In recent years, however, an agreement on freedom of movement between Switzerland and the European Union has been struck, and immigration policies have once again adopted a facilitating stance. As this applies only to citizens of the European Union, a stratified system of immigrant rights has been continued and perpetuated. At the same time, right-wing parties, which have recently risen to power, have successfully used Überfremdung propaganda to persuade Swiss populations to vote against the relaxation of conditions for the naturalisation of foreigners, thus ensuring that immigrants will be excluded from access to citizenship rights over generations. The politics of immigration in Switzerland is above all a politics of national identity.

This chapter examines the politics of immigration in Japan. It begins with an overview of the foreign community in Japan today in comparative perspective, focusing on several competing explanations for why Japan is such an outlier when compared with other advanced industrialized countries. It also examines the new visa categories that were formalized by the 1989 and 2018 revisions to the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act, including visas for those with Japanese ancestry and “trainees” (in the case of the 1989 revision), and visas for laborers who had previously been excluded, including agricultural workers and construction workers (in the case of the 2018 revision). Additionally, this chapter discusses Japan’s famously restrictive refugee admission policy as well as the relationship between public opinion, civil society, and immigration policy in Japan. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the ways that Japan’s immigration policy and policymaking might impact the future of Japan’s democracy. Ultimately, the chapter argues that the way that Japan deals with both the admission and treatment of foreign laborers will help shape the nature of Japan’s democracy going forward.

This paper examines Japan's immigration policies during the Abe government. Japan has maintained its very restrictive immigration policies, especially for unskilled foreign workers, since the early 1990s. But despite Japan's reluctance to open its doors to unskilled foreign workers, the Abe government drastically shifted its policy position toward expanding the employment of unskilled foreign workers through the revision of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law in 2018. This paper argues that while Japan's demographic crisis and the strong business demand for the foreign workforce are important in explaining this change, Prime Minister Abe's political leadership is another key factor accounting for Japan's recent policy choice.

Attempting to reconcile the diverse immigration policy demands of the ‘old’ working class and the ‘new’ middle class, social democratic parties struggle to take a clear position on immigration policy. Adopting more restrictive policies is a possible way forward, but this is likely to lead to electorally costly intra-party conflict. This article illuminates the conditions under which social democratic parties can unite behind more restrictive immigration policies and promote them consistently. Employing a most-similar systems design, it presents a comparative case study of the Austrian and Danish social democrats, from the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’ to 2020. The article argues that low levels of territorial decentralisation enabled the Danish social democrats to promote a restrictive stance on immigration top-down, while the Austrian social democrats’ federal party structure exacerbated internal disagreements between urban and rural leaders. These findings highlight the importance of internal party characteristics in explaining how parties respond to strategic trade-offs. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1975211 .

Why do some authoritarian states adopt more restrictive immigration policies than others? Much of the existing literature focuses on the politics of immigration in democracies, despite the presence of large-scale immigration to autocracies. In this article, I argue that the level of electoral competition can be a key factor in immigration policymaking in electoral autocracies. Autocrats who face high levels of electoral competition tend to impose immigration restrictions as a way of mobilizing anti-outgroup sentiment and boosting their own popularity. I test this hypothesis by conducting comparative case studies on Russia and Kazakhstan, both of which are major immigrant-receiving autocracies. Based on the analysis of original data gathered from 11 months of fieldwork in the two countries, I find that the relatively high level of electoral competition in Russia in the 2010s facilitated increased immigration restrictions, while Kazakhstan depoliticized labour immigrants and enacted a de facto open immigration policy in the absence of electoral competition.