The Walls Within: The Politics of Immigration in Modern America

Abstract

Though Donald Trump popularized the phrase “Build the Wall” during the 2016 presidential election, Sarah R. Coleman's The Walls Within: The Politics of Immigration in Modern America reminds us that immigration has historically taken the forefront of political campaigns, especially during the second half of the twentieth century. Asserting that immigration scholars have primarily focused on external (international) borders, Coleman turns to internal domestic borders to examine federal, state, and local policies that sought to restrict non-citizen rights. Coleman argues, “With the passage of the Hart-Celler Act in 1965 and the corresponding shifts in immigration patterns, efforts to restrict immigrants’ access to social welfare programs began to solidify during the 1970s” (p. 106). In this vein, the author sets out to trace the “struggle of politicians, interest groups, courts, activists, and communities to define the rights of immigrants in the United States after the passage of the historic Hart-Celler Act of 1965” (p. 2). Coleman focuses on immigrants’ access to education, employment, and welfare to examine the nation's internal borders.This political history is organized into an introduction, six chapters, and an epilogue. The first chapter, “The Rose's Sharp Thorn: Texas and the Rise of Unauthorized Immigrant Education,” traces the 1982 landmark Supreme court case Plyler v. Doe, which decided that a Texas statute that charged tuition to non-citizen students violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Chapter 2, “‘A Subclass of Illiterates’: The Presidential Politics of Unauthorized Immigrant Education,” successfully demonstrates how pressures of an impending presidential election influenced the Carter administration's lack of response to Plyler v. Doe and Governor Ronald Reagan's pressure to woo Texas voters.Coleman then examines employment issues in the third chapter, “‘Heading into Uncharted Waters’: Congress, Employer Sanctions, and Labor Rights,” through which she explores how political alliances and parties became divided over employer sanctions. Chapter 4, “‘A Riverboat Gamble’: The Passage of Employer Sanctions,” relies on the passage of employer sanctions to emphasize one of Coleman's core arguments: “policies emerged not out of clear, ideologically coherent policy positions, but instead through tangled political compromises, sometimes crafted to address complex policy questions and, at other times, merely for the sake of incremental political gains” (p. 82).Following conservative fears that immigrants would soon have access to all civic liberties, Coleman examines welfare rights in the fifth chapter, “‘To Reward the Wrong Way Is Not the American Way’: Welfare and the Battle Over Immigrants’ Benefits.” This chapter effectively demonstrates another central premise of the book: “the removal of authorized immigrants from welfare is significant as it highlights the hardening of citizenship as the essential element in determining the relationship between the individual and the welfare state” (p. 108). In this chapter, Coleman most clearly outlines the origins of present-day local and state immigration policy. In regard to the monumental transfer of immigration authority from federal to state, Coleman argues, “Beyond the immediate restrictions, the changes made in the 1990s established a new policy framework that would ultimately reshape immigration policy over the next two decades,” (p. 141). Further illuminating the origins of today's immigration restrictions, Chapter 6, “From the Border to the Heartland: Local Immigration Enforcement and Immigrants’ Rights,” relies on an Iowa court case and the implementation of the 287(g) program to demonstrate how “federal inability to address some of the complicated issues of immigration control opened the window for state efforts at policymaking” (p. 142).The book's strengths lie in effectively detailing how political figures, institutions, grassroots organizations, and federal and state governments treated each court case as a high-stakes entryway into allowing non-citizens access to other civil liberties. Coleman convincingly traces and demonstrates how landmark immigration court cases are never treated as stand-alone issues; politicians are particularly concerned about how one policy could affect others or how their approval for a policy could alienate key constituencies. Sources are another strength, as Coleman balances materials from the Carter, Reagan, and Clinton administrations, as well as immigration and civil rights organizations. Although the reliance on a wide array of polls is informative, Coleman does not address pollsters’ demographics. Details such as pollsters’ national origins and socio-economic statuses could strengthen Coleman's argument. The first and last chapters that rely primarily on one court case could be strengthened by further discussing other cases that are mentioned but not used to complicate the evidence.Coleman set out to accomplish the significant feat of detailing restrictions imposed on non-citizens in the United States. The book successfully contributes to the field of immigration studies through its focus on internal borders. Audiences that would benefit from The Walls Within include those seeking to learn about the legislative policy process through history. Coleman puts it best: “This study looks at the entire scale of policymaking that is pertinent to immigrants, showing how local, state, and federal actions shaped policy implementation and politics in distinct ways” (p. 5).