American Immigration Policy Research Articles

Latin American immigration and refugee policies: a critical literature review

Against the background of remarkable policy liberalization and the subsequent steep increase of forced displacement in Latin America, the literature on immigration and refugee policy in the region has gained momentum. Although largely overlooked, this literature has the potential to provide a corrective to political migration theory from the Global South. In this article we carry out a systematic, critical review of the regional literature along three thematic axes: legal analyses, normative and explanatory studies. Based on the review of 108 journal articles, we describe the characteristics, main contributions and research gaps of each thematic area. By analyzing legal norms and policy implementation gaps, existing studies on Latin America provide an understanding of migration policy over time and offer important empirical evidence for the advancement of political migration theory, challenging some of the main assumptions attributed to policies in the Global South. However, the lack of engagement with the broader literature and the absence of systematic analyses of its determinants and effects significantly limit the potential of this body of work. We close by making concrete suggestions of how future studies could fill existing gaps both in theoretical and empirical terms, and which methodological approach should be employed.

The US-Mexican Border and Contemporary American Immigration Policy

There have been several periods in American history that are referred to as turbulent times. They were characterized by a wide range of changes that happened to respond to issues that brought anxiety, threat, discontent, or trouble. Donald Trump’s presidency and the Covid‑19 pandemic significantly influenced American immigration policy and the lives of immigrants. The present article pays special attention to the Mexican‑American border. This area plays a crucial role in migration studies focusing on the Americas for at least two reasons: international relations between Mexico (and the Latin American region) and the United States, and homeland security issues related to irregular and regular migrant flows. This study aims to determine what changes have been implemented in border policy, investigate why they occurred, and finally, discuss their results. The article analyzes the most challenging issues characteristic of the situation of unaccompanied minor migrants, the concept of Trump’s wall or the ‘remain in Mexico’ program. The US‑Mexican border studies have played a crucial role in research dedicated to American immigration policy since its inception. Today, it is also an area of concern and special attention is paid to this region due to the dynamics of processes taking place at the border. The work presented here discusses and highlights the most turbulent issues that echoed not only in the United States but also worldwide.

Trump’s Immigration Legacy

AbstractFrom the moment that he first announced his presidential candidacy until his final days in office, Donald Trump’s signature personal political cause was the restriction of immigration. Media coverage and public debate often focused on Trump’s rhetorical invocation of this issue and emphasized his opposition to undocumented immigration in particular, as symbolized by his famous proposal to build a wall across the southern border of the United States. But while the wall itself was not completed, the Trump administration worked aggressively through the federal bureaucracy to reduce all forms of immigration. The Trump administration’s record on immigration should therefore be understood as extending far beyond charged presidential rhetoric and sporadic wall-building efforts, leaving a much more consequential substantive legacy in American immigration policy that will not be quickly or easily reversed by future presidents.

“Alone in a Crowd: Indigenous Migrants and Language Barriers in American Immigration”

Indigenous migrants in American custody often speak neither English nor Spanish. This leaves them at risk for family separation, deportation and due process violations. In this article, I discuss the challenges which indigenous migrants face in American immigration. Examining linguistic variations, this manuscript illustrates that American immigration policies have not adjusted to the linguistic diversity at the border—or in the immigration courts. Despite the growing number of indigenous migrants seeking asylum, most are assumed to speak only Spanish. This assumption neglects the wide linguistic diversity of immigrants and directly impacts their experience through the immigration bureaucracy. For indigenous migrants, linguicism or the exclusion of native languages can have life or death consequences—especially if they are unable to secure interpreters or relay crucial aspects of their case. As such, linguicism perpetuates an unequal justice system which fails to provide an understanding of the asylum process for those who speak indigenous languages.

ROLE OF IMMIGRATION IN AMERICAN SOCIETY’S WELL-BEING

ABSTRACT World immigration is on the rise and it has many economic and political ramifications. Since the last presidential campaign in the U.S., immigration has become one of the most debated issues in American politics. This paper analyzes the role of immigrants in American prosperity. First, the paper overviews both historic and current immigration statistics and compares immigration rates in the U.S. with such rates in other developed countries. The paper examines the role and importance of immigrants in different areas of the American economy from hi-tech and digital industries to construction, agriculture and accommodation services. The study also compares American immigration policy with such policies in other countries and argues in favor of the merit-based policy. The paper concludes by emphasizing the positive role of immigration on the American job market and especially the importance of attracting high-skilled specialists for keeping American leading positions in the global economy. Keywords the U.S. immigration, immigrants in the U.S. economy, immigration policy, immigration visas

The Preferences of Political Elites and Humanitarian Immigration to the United States

How do the preferences of political elites shape humanitarian immigration to the United States? Focusing on the asylum and refugee systems, we trace the ways that the preferences of political elites affect the number and characteristics of migrants who receive relief. Our findings suggest that presidential preferences remain crucial in determining who is admitted in the U.S. refugee system and that congressional preferences are important in determining the number admitted. The preferences of both appear to matter considerably less on asylum decisions. These results highlight the difficulty of eliminating or reducing the role of the executive branch in American immigration policy, and suggest the importance of the design of the immigration enforcement bureaucracy in limiting the role of elite preferences in determining humanitarian immigration outcomes.

Gangs, Labor Mobility and Development

We study how two of the world’s largest gangs—MS-13 and 18th Street—affect economic development in El Salvador. We exploit the fact that the emergence of these gangs was the consequence of an exogenous shift in American immigration policy that led to the deportation of gang leaders from the United States to El Salvador. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design, we find that individuals living under gang control have significantly less education, material wellbeing, and income than individuals living only 50 meters away but outside of gang territory. None of these discontinuities existed before the emergence of the gangs. The results are confirmed by a difference-in-differences analysis: after the gangs’ arrival, locations under their control started experiencing lower growth in nighttime light density compared to areas without gang presence. A key mechanism behind the results is that, in order to maintain territorial control, gangs restrict individuals’ freedom of movement, affecting their labor market options. The results are not determined by exposure to violence or selective migration from gang locations. We also find no differences in public goods provision.

Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy

Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy

Bifurcated immigration and the end of compassion

ABSTRACTImpressions to the contrary, the United States continue to be a country of immigration. I review recent statistics showing the size of the present migrant flow and its progressive bifurcation between a high human capital flow coming primarily from Asia and a manual labour flow originating mainly in Latin America. There are parallel splits between permanent migration and temporary labour flows, the latter becoming increasingly the preferred form of sourcing labour needs at both ends of the labour market. Combined the shift from permanent to temporary labour contract migration, the persecution of the unauthorized, and the closure of the country’s doors to asylum seekers have ushered a new era in American immigration policy marked by the end of compassion and the consequent loss of the country’s unique moral stature in the world. I sketch the evolution of international labour migration since the onset of the world capitalist system ushering the present situation in the United States.

Indexing Immigration and Integration Policy: Lessons from Europe

Immigrant‐related policy indexes have become popular in both U.S. and European contexts, yet these projects boast distinct and divergent trajectories. European indices are characterized by rigorous conceptualization, specificity in elements of policy design (e.g., settings like fees or appeal process), and a variety of measurement strategies. By contrast, U.S. state‐level policy indices exhibit a lack of differentiation between immigration and integration policy and excessive generality in measurement and representation of policy instruments and settings, exacerbated in presenting a policy index as an aggregate count. This paper argues U.S. policy indexing can benefit from the European indexing experience. Following an overview of the state of each field, assessing concept differentiation, specification, and measurement in each, the paper illustrates how even the well‐conceived and specified European integration policy indices run into problems at the analysis stage. It presents a replication‐replacement study to illustrate divergent performance of highly correlated and conceptually agreeing indices, as well as methodological issues inherent to indices of low‐N, including using a policy index as a dependent variable and index selection absenta prioritheorization. It concludes with suggestions for improving American immigration policy indices, as well as general observations on working with statistical power‐challenged indices and data limitations.

Ideological Exclusion of Foreigners in Israel: What could be Learnt from the American Experience?

This article explores the challenge which free speech poses to Israeli immigration policy. It does so, first, by looking into the American immigration policy regarding Ideological Exclusions, i.e. refusing entry of a foreigner to the U.S., or the deportation of one from it, solely for the foreigner's ideological belief. As discussed in this article, the U.S. Supreme Court has been reluctant to strike down laws and regulations barring entry of foreigners for their ideology throughout the years, from the beginning of the previous century, during the Cold-War era, and up until the recent upholding of President Trump’s Proclamation 9645. The article then turns to suggest that this doctrine of Ideological Exclusions is taking shape in the Israeli context too. Three case studies from the last decade are presented and analyzed: the deportation of a Messianic Jew; the Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families for Peace conference; and a recent amendment of the Entry into Israel Law allowing for the exclusion of BDS activists. The analysis of the said cases will revolve around two axes. The first one being the location of the foreigner, which leads to the suggestion that foreigners staying inside Israel are entitled to the protection of freedom of speech offered by Israeli Constitutional Law and international human rights law, while not necessarily entitled to extend their visa just for invoking their right for free speech. The second axis is the foreigner’s and the citizenry’s right to freedom of speech, which encompasses the right to listen, as recognized both by the American and the Israeli Supreme Courts. This analysis leads to the conclusion that although foreigners do not have a right to enter, the citizenry has a right that certain foreigners will enter, in the name of their freedom of speech as would-be listeners.

Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy, by Hidetaka Hirota

Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy, by Hidetaka Hirota

Immigrant Youth Have Significantly Lower Rates of Externalizing Behavior than Native-Born Americans: Differences by Region of Birth.

A large proportion of Americans have the opinion that immigrants increase crime. Although past research has not found immigrant status to be associated with criminal behavior, American immigration policy has historically discriminated against certain groups based on their region of birth due to safety concerns. The purpose of the present study was to examine differences in externalizing behavior by immigrant's region of birth. Data was used from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), a nationally representative and longitudinal study of 21,260 kindergarteners. A series of Poisson regression models were used to predict externalizing behavior of fifth grade students from immigrant status and parent's region of birth. Analyses controlled for demographic characteristics of the child and family and were adjusted by probability weights and primary sampling unit provided by the ECLS-K. After controlling for family income and parents' educational status, immigrant youth had 0.04 lower externalizing behavior scores compared to native-born American youth (B = - 0.04, 95% CI - 0.06 to - 0.01). When considering differences by region of origin, youth from Asia (B = - 0.12, 95% CI - 0.17 to - 0.07) and Central America (B = - 0.10, 95% CI - 0.14 to - 0.05) had significantly lower externalizing behavior compared to native-born American youth, after controlling for covariates. In fifth grade, immigrant youth have significantly lower rates of externalizing behavior than native-born Americans. In particular, immigrant youth from Asia and Central America engaged in significantly less externalizing behavior than native-born Americans. No region of origin engaged in significantly more externalizing behavior than native-born youth.

Hidetaka Hirota. Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy.

Hidetaka Hirota. Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy.

Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy

Book Review| April 01 2018 Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy. By Hidetaka Hirota. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. 301 pp. Figures, appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. $35 (cloth). Luke Ritter Luke Ritter Troy University Luke Ritter is a lecturer in history at Troy University and the author of several scholarly articles on nineteenth-century immigration, nativism, and religion. He is currently preparing a book manuscript on the origins of American nativism in the antebellum West. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2018) 37 (3): 116–117. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.37.3.0116 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Luke Ritter; Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy. Journal of American Ethnic History 1 January 2018; 37 (3): 116–117. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.37.3.0116 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Ethnic History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2018 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2018 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

"A Betrayal of Everything": The Law of the Family in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland

This article argues that Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland (2013) challenges a dominant narrative of Asian American family immigration and upward mobility through the disavowal of reproductive labor. Ratified by the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, the family unit has become a powerful nexus of domestic feeling and national assimilation in narratives about "good" immigrants, often functioning as a biopolitical imperative for hyperproductivity. In Lahiri's latest novel, the Mitra family's westward migration precipitates the replacement of reproductive labor with intellectual labor that irrevocably changes the immigrant family unit and renovates the heterofuturist directives of American immigration policy.

Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth Century Origins of American Immigration Policy by Hidetaka Hirota

Reviewed by: Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth Century Origins of American Immigration Policy by Hidetaka Hirota Francis M. Carroll Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth Century Origins of American Immigration Policy by Hidetaka Hirota. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 302. $34.95. Diaspora Studies and immigration are not neglected areas of Irish scholarship. Nevertheless, Hidetaka Hirota has opened up a fascinating discussion on a relatively unexplored element of the subject—the forced return of Irish paupers, vagrants, criminals, and lunatics. In doing so, Hirota has also revised the conventional wisdom about the impact of the so-called Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s and the origins of federal immigration legislation in the 1880s. The accelerating migration of Catholic Irish in the 1830s and 1840s is well understood. These were largely people a few steps up from the bottom rungs of the Irish social and economic ladder—people who chose to seek a better life in the United States or Canada, who could pay their own passage, and who may have had some contacts to help them get settled in the New World. Hirota focuses on assisted emigration arising out of the catastrophe of the Great Famine and continuing economic distress in Ireland. The crisis of the 1840s and 1850s drove large numbers of destitute people off the land and into workhouses, hospitals, prisons, and simply onto the roads. For simple economic reasons, it was more cost-effective for public authorities and large landowners to pay for the transatlantic passage of these people to get them out from under their responsibility. In the course of 1849–50, for example, the Cork workhouse sent almost 3,500 paupers to the United States. The following year the Kerry estates of Lord Lansdowne were cleared of some 1,500 distressed tenants who were sent to America. More were to follow. Drawing on the work of Kirby Miller and Gerard Moran, Hirota estimates that assisted emigration sent between 50,000 and 100,000 tenants and laborers to North America during the famine years. These people arrived destitute in the United States or [End Page 154] Canada. Many immediately went onto the streets begging, into almshouses, or into hospitals, becoming either a public nuisance or wards of the state. Not surprisingly, this situation inflamed the anti-Irish and anti-Catholic prejudices of the settled Protestant communities of the eastern seaboard, who believed that Ireland's and Britain's problems were being dumped on their communities. Hirota draws his evidence from several jurisdictions, but his focus is on Massachusetts and New York, the destination of the largest number of Irish immigrants. The response, of course, was the rise of anti-Catholic and anti-Irish nativism, taking its political form in the shape of the American Party, or the Know-Nothings, in the 1840s and 1850s. In these circumstances, Massachusetts and New York authorities turned back or deported immigrants on the strength of Poor Law legislation that had its origins in colonial times, when local authorities did not need to accept responsibility for people who were not natives of the locale. New York had legislation that simply authorized them to turn back arriving immigrants who were deemed likely to become a public charge. Massachusetts had similar powers but could also deport people who had lived and worked for some years before some personal or economic crisis drove them to seek public assistance. Injured workmen or widows or children born in the United States of Irish parents were no exceptions. Immigration authorities could order the deportation of these people, who had no recourse to appeal procedures or court intervention. By the 1880s, Massachusetts alone had deported as many as 50,000 people back to England or Ireland. (Hirota comments on the irony of the determination of the people of Massachusetts to deport hapless Irish immigrants while at the same time defying the federal Fugitive Slave Laws that required the return of runaway slaves to the southern states.) Assisted emigration was not discontinued by Irish and British authorities until the late 1880s. The Know-Nothing Party collapsed as a political movement in the mid-1850s, but the deportation policies of Massachusetts...

Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy

September 01 2017 Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy. By HidetakaHirota. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 320. $35.00.) Diane C. Vecchio Diane C. Vecchio Diane C. Vecchio is professor and chair of the history department at Furman University in Greenville, SC. An immigration historian, Vecchio has published several articles on Italian and Jewish immigration and is the author of Merchants, Midwives, and Laboring Women: Italian Migrants in Urban America. Her current work examines Jewish immigrants and their economic impact on the South Carolina Upcountry Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Diane C. Vecchio Diane C. Vecchio is professor and chair of the history department at Furman University in Greenville, SC. An immigration historian, Vecchio has published several articles on Italian and Jewish immigration and is the author of Merchants, Midwives, and Laboring Women: Italian Migrants in Urban America. Her current work examines Jewish immigrants and their economic impact on the South Carolina Upcountry Online Issn: 1937-2213 Print Issn: 0028-4866 © 2017 by The New England Quarterly2017The New England Quarterly The New England Quarterly (2017) 90 (3): 491–493. https://doi.org/10.1162/tneq_r_00635 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Diane C. Vecchio; Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy. The New England Quarterly 2017; 90 (3): 491–493. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/tneq_r_00635 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsThe New England Quarterly Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 2017 by The New England Quarterly2017The New England Quarterly Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Exclusion on the Ground: Racism, Official Discretion, and the Quotidian Enforcement of General Immigration Law in the Pacific Northwest Borderland

Exclusion on the Ground:Racism, Official Discretion, and the Quotidian Enforcement of General Immigration Law in the Pacific Northwest Borderland Hidetaka Hirota (bio) In the 1890s immigration officers in Washington State busily enforced federal immigration law against newcomers from Asia. The officials had been executing the Chinese exclusion law since the 1880s, but their principal duty shifted by the middle of the 1890s to excluding the Japanese deemed to belong to prohibited classes under general immigration law applicable to all non-Chinese foreigners, such as paupers, people likely to become public charges, and people migrating under contract to perform labor in the United States (contract laborers). Charged with guarding multiple points of entry with limited staff, Washington officers found themselves traveling all the time. An officer named William Archer in Tacoma was instructed by his supervisor to visit Seattle twice a week to examine Japanese passengers arriving there. Immediately after completing the inspection, Archer was told, he should return to Tacoma "with as little delay as possible." At the same time, he was instructed, "your examination of these immigrants must be thorough."1 What would constitute a "thorough" examination when a small group of inspecting officers operated on a tight schedule to process a large number of foreigners? The federal immigration bureau had established basic procedures for immigration regulation, but in reality these procedures were subject to enforcing officers' personal interpretations. And for local officials, the "thorough" implementation of the law did not necessarily mean strict adherence to those procedures. In their zealous effort to guard the border against undesirable foreigners, some inspectors used their own criteria, stricter than the official guidelines, and even adopted unlawful methods. The present essay examines the role of official discretion in immigration law enforcement in the Pacific Northwest borderland at the turn of the twentieth century. Immigration policy on the admission and removal of foreigners has recently emerged as a subject for particularly intensive scrutiny in American studies. [End Page 347] Building on earlier works examining the literary, cultural, and legal construction of race, scholars have investigated the myriad ways in which immigrants were categorized as excludable racialized others in American immigration policy.2 Nevertheless, the literature on the topic as it currently stands has some problems. First, while recognizing the importance of anti-Asian racism in the evolution of federal immigration policy, scholars have paid disproportionate attention to the Chinese, and our knowledge about the exclusion experiences of other Asian groups, such as the Japanese, is relatively limited. Another historiographical issue concerns methodology. American studies has produced fine works analyzing how racial ideology and ethnic prejudice guided the development of immigration law.3 Also, as part of the larger "transnational turn" in American studies, scholars have recently expanded the scope of their inquiry beyond the confines of the United States to situate American nativism in transnational contexts.4 At the same time, however, most studies tend to focus on a discursive analysis of anti-immigrant agitation, extralegal action against foreigners by nativist Americans, or the legislative process for the introduction of new regulatory policies. While the ideological, social, and political framework of restriction has been scrutinized, the question of how the general immigration law applied to non-Chinese Asians in practice awaits fuller exploration. In Japanese migration scholarship, American immigration policy is often explored in the context of its influence on the social and economic profiles of Japanese migrants, the formation of Japanese communities in America, and the identity of Japanese Americans. Some historians have recently investigated strategies Japanese migrants adopted to circumvent immigration laws and the roles of steamship companies in the Japanese attempts to secure admission into the United States.5 Nevertheless, the exact situation of law enforcement at the border, its impact on the lives of the Japanese who fell into the clutches of state power, and most importantly the implication of their experience with law enforcement for the development of American immigration policy remain unclear. Adopting a sociolegal method that pays equal attention to the legal and institutional aspects of immigration policy and its practical implementation, this essay examines local inspectors' quotidian enforcement of general immigration law against the Japanese at the Washington–British Columbia border, highlighting the centrality...

Executive Disorder: The Muslim Ban, Emergency Advocacy, and the Fires Next Time

On January 27, 2017, one week into his presidency, Donald Trump enacted Executive Order No. 13769, popularly known as the “Muslim Ban.” The Order named seven Muslim-majority nations and restricted, effective immediately, the reentry into the United States of visa and green card holders from these states. With the Muslim Ban, President Trump delivered on a central campaign promise, and as a result, injected Islamophobia into American immigration law and policy. The Muslim Ban had an immediate impact on tens of thousands of Muslims, directly affecting U.S. visa and green card holders currently outside of the country, while exacerbating fear and hysteria among immigrant and citizen Muslim populations within the country. This Essay memorializes the advocacy taken by the authors in the immediate wake of the Muslim Ban, highlighting the emergency legal and grassroots work done by the authors during a moment of national disorder and disarray, and within Muslim American communities, mass confusion and fear. This Essay highlights efforts, coalition building, and the necessary resources that contributed to the effective defense and education of impacted Muslim populations. It further examines the heightened vulnerabilities of and compounded injuries to often-overlooked Muslims at the intersection of race and poverty, as a consequence of Islamophobic policies such as the Muslim Ban.