Inventing the Immigration Problem: The Dillingham Commission and Its Legacy

Abstract

Government commissions are usually not sexy topics, but Katherine Benton-Cohen's vividly written book about the Dillingham Commission brings to life the characters central to this pivotal report and reveals their lasting legacy on U.S. immigration policy. The massive forty-one volume report was published in 1911 after four years of investigation, and although no politician probably ever read it in its entirety, its recommendations were almost universally adopted in the next decade. The evidence in the report showed that immigration was neither a drain on the economy nor a social “problem,” but the recommendations pushed for dramatic restrictions on immigration that would employ a literacy test, a quota system based on nationality, and the continued exclusion of Asians. Digging beneath the recommendations, Benton-Cohen finds debates among commission members and concludes that their evidence contradicted their recommendations. Taking a step back and thinking about the meaning of such a report, Benton-Cohen argues that the commission represented “Progressive Era confidence in nonpartisan expertise” (p. 3). Her most far-reaching conclusion is that the idea of objective social science is itself deeply problematic.