Immigration and the Politics of American Sovereignty, 1890-1990

Immigration and the Politics of American Sovereignty, 1890–1990 Immigration and the Politics of American Sovereignty, ...

Author: Cheryl Lynne Shanks

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Immigration and the Politics of American Sovereignty, 1890–1990

Immigration and the Politics of American Sovereignty, 1890–1990

Cheryl Shanks

Ann Arbor

Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2001 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper 2004

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shanks, Cheryl, date Immigration and the politics of American sovereignty, 1890–1990 / Cheryl Shanks. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-472-11204-X (Cloth : alk. paper) 1. United States—Emigration and immigration—Government policy. 2. Emigration and immigration law—United States—History. I. Title. JV6483 .S536 2002 325.73'09'04—dc21 2001001223

Contents

Acknowledgments 1. Introduction

vii 1

2. Arguments about Immigrants

10

3. Whether to Exclude

31

4. Whom to Exclude: The Quota Acts

55

5. Whom to Exclude: The McCarran-Walter Act

96

6. Whom to Exclude, Whom to Prefer: The Immigration Reform Act of 1965

144

7. Whom to Exclude, Whom to Prefer: IRCA and the 1990 Reforms

187

8. Domestic Interests as Explanations

230

9. Structural Theories as Explanations

245

10. Conclusion: Sovereignty, Things, and People

268

Appendixes

285

Notes

295

Bibliography

339

Index

379

Acknowledgments

I have incurred debts, some quite great. I thank above all Ronnie Gruhn and Harold Jacobson. I am indebted as well to comments I received from Barbara Anderson, Lars-Erik Cederman, David L. Chappell, Matthew Evangelista, Eric Gampel, Ellen Gordon, James Holli‹eld, and A. F. K. Organski. My research was aided in various ways by the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Institute for the Study of World Politics, the National Archives, Rackham Graduate School, and colleagues at Williams College and the Oakley Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Contents

Acknowledgments 1. Introduction

vii 1

2. Arguments about Immigrants

10

3. Whether to Exclude

31

4. Whom to Exclude: The Quota Acts

55

5. Whom to Exclude: The McCarran-Walter Act

96

6. Whom to Exclude, Whom to Prefer: The Immigration Reform Act of 1965

144

7. Whom to Exclude, Whom to Prefer: IRCA and the 1990 Reforms

187

8. Domestic Interests as Explanations

230

9. Structural Theories as Explanations

245

10. Conclusion: Sovereignty, Things, and People

268

Appendixes

285

Notes

295

Bibliography

339

Index

379

Acknowledgments

I have incurred debts, some quite great. I thank above all Ronnie Gruhn and Harold Jacobson. I am indebted as well to comments I received from Barbara Anderson, Lars-Erik Cederman, David L. Chappell, Matthew Evangelista, Eric Gampel, Ellen Gordon, James Holli‹eld, and A. F. K. Organski. My research was aided in various ways by the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Institute for the Study of World Politics, the National Archives, Rackham Graduate School, and colleagues at Williams College and the Oakley Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Controlling access to citizenship helps states stay sovereign in the face of globalization. The transnational processes that governments support can also threaten governments’ power and their integrity. For example, economic interdependence allows extensive and rapid growth, upon which governments depend, yet it also subjects states to decisions made far away. One way that countries have chosen to adapt is to extend regulatory control over immigration and naturalization. In the United States, these are linked: legal immigrants may apply to become naturalized citizens. In most other advanced industrial states as well, full political membership has become harder to achieve, even as states have ceded control over the labor market, tourism and business travel, and goods, entertainment, services, and information.1 The United States has done so while easing visa restrictions for tourists and business travelers. Over the past century, the number of immigrants the United States will accept each year has steadily declined as a percentage of the U.S. population. When the numerical ceiling has gone up, it has done so by pulling previously unrestricted groups into the controlled category. By 1990 all immigrants were subject to a quota. Extending control over citizenship provides a counterbalance to the decontrolled economic realm. Sovereignty involves unique authority over a territory and what is on it, its population and its natural resources. As goods, lands, and resources are swept into the international market, governments have to de‹ne clearly who their citizens are lest they lose both of sovereignty’s de‹ning characteristics. Scholars and commentators on international politics often present sovereignty as a settled institution, a long-ago established fortress that globalization’s battering might or might not breach.2 The state, a passive rock, faces environmental assaults that threaten to erode it. Yet the state has taken steps to protect itself from outside forces, choosing when to cede, when to adapt, when to resist. Given the power of transnational trade and communications, and the desire of hundreds of millions of people to emigrate, inaction over the last century would have meant sovereignty’s end. Not only have governments pursued the various components

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Immigration and the Politics of American Sovereignty

of globalization, but they have also pursued ways to enhance sovereignty. Governments have worked to maintain one type of boundary, that between citizen and noncitizen, while energetically undermining others. Sovereignty is a policy choice, constructed in the most ordinary sense. Destruction and creation take work, but so do maintenance and adaptation. Most observers of international politics take stability for granted and try to explain change. This study does the opposite, taking change for granted and trying to explain continuity in the face of powerful transnational forces. Demonstrating that to preserve or enhance sovereignty is a policy choice, and that immigration control is a core aspect of this choice, involves three separate arguments. One is purely theoretical or logical, the other two empirical as well.

First Argument

Since sovereignty involves supreme authority over an exclusive territory and population, a state has to know over what domain its authority extends, where it begins and others end. Boundaries are not suf‹cient to create sovereignty, but they are necessary.3 International relations theories customarily date this form of social organization from the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.4 Before the Thirty Years War, which the treaty ended, who had supreme authority depended on the issue. Feudalism involved a web of obligations within overlapping hierarchies. The treaty codi‹ed a revolutionary change in this arrangement by granting to a single sovereign authority over all issues. The political domain was de‹ned by territory rather than issue. The sovereign could impose taxes, conscript anyone within the territory, dictate religion, and decide economic practices within set geographical boundaries. Modern sovereignty in this way rests on boundaries that de‹ne what is inside and what is outside. Both territory and population need to be known, and in theory, all territory belongs to one country, but only to one country. Alsace can be French or German but not both; Kashmir can be Indian or Pakistani but not both. The same is true of people. Dual citizenship is tolerated as long as its obligations are trivial and partial. For example, no state will tolerate a citizen ‹ghting for an enemy. International law and the highest domestic courts cement these practices as rights. Only the state can determine which people are its citizens. It does not even have to accept all of those born on its territory. When human and civil rights come into con›ict with sovereign rights, sovereign rights win. For this reason, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including his

Introduction

3

own, and return to his country” and “everyone has the right to a nationality”; ‹nally, “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”5 But sovereigns do not have the corresponding obligation to admit those exercising their right to leave. People have a right to leave but not a right to enter. Within a country, civil rights follow this pattern. Those in the United States illegally, for example, or those legal immigrants who violate a law, can be jailed inde‹nitely without a hearing. Advocacy groups repeatedly decry this “violation of their civil rights,” yet noncitizens have no civil rights, as the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled. In February 1999, it restated this stance with regard to the First Amendment when it ruled that “people [in the United States] unlawfully cannot shield themselves from deportation by claiming the government is trying to banish them simply because of their controversial political views.”6 The Court has not deviated from this position since it ‹rst stated it, after the Civil War. Law at all levels supports the theory of sovereignty’s absolute nature. Practice raises problems for theory. Territory and population are profoundly different aspects of sovereignty, in each of three respects. In practice, people move. Territory does not move. Boundaries might shift, even dramatically, but wherever they are, they signify the same thing. Parts of a territory cannot break off and start ›oating around, mixing with other territorial bits in a giant mosaic. This is, though, precisely what does happen with nationalities. Second, territory does not move itself; it has no agency. Individuals do have agency. If individuals rather than the state could decide who af‹liated where, the state would no longer be sovereign. States cannot always control a person’s physical location but a state can control a person’s political location, his or her political identity. A stowaway does not have to be given rights. It is in this way that control over naturalization is a sine qua non of sovereignty. Finally, people move as packages, taking with them their language, experience, skills, and politics. When territory transfers hands, the land itself does not need to be assimilated. Policies toward territory and population have also been sharply different. Territory has grown less important to state security over time.7 Territory matters largely in that it serves as a marker for citizenship. These are legal and symbolic values, having to do with the customs of sovereignty, rather than power. Territory is less relevant to the most powerful countries’ abilities to achieve their goals. In the past, the larger a territory, the better. Moscow’s distance from Paris was the most important defense Russia had against Napoleon. The Atlantic and Paci‹c Oceans have similarly protected the United States, and its size helped to make it economically self-suf‹cient. Technological changes have reduced territory’s value in attaining these goals. Markets transcend boundaries, are in fact

4


strongest when they do. Natural resources and agriculture are relatively less important in generating wealth than are manufacturing and services, which do not depend on land size. Japan, with no energy resources and little arable land, is a great power. Intercontinental missiles and airplanes have severed the link between size and safety. Indeed, the larger a country is, the bigger a target it is. Territory matters, but the amount a state controls does not determine its wealth or power. Population has meanwhile grown in importance. To mercantile states, more people meant more wealth.8 As welfare states developed, additional people meant additional costs, so their contribution had to be greater than the resources they could claim. In addition, people now evaluate their elected representatives in terms of the country’s per capita economic performance.9 Limiting the number of “capita” is easier than controlling the pace of economic growth. These technological, economic and political changes combined to make governments focus on their populations rather than on their territories.

Second Argument

Sovereigns control access to citizenship and in this way help maintain their sovereignty. That consequence might, however, not be the motivation for this practice. Governments might do this for other reasons; sovereignty could be an unintentional side effect. That governments deliberately control immigration in order to secure sovereignty is a second argument, an empirical one. Sovereignty does motivate governments—here, the United States—to extend regulatory control over immigration. Demonstrating this involves presenting evidence relevant to this contention and exploring the evidence in support of the most apparent alternative explanations. Most research on immigration policy views it as a domestic policy with domestic sources of change. In this view, it is a response either to unemployment and welfare cycles, or to lobbying by ethnic interest groups, or to parties’ desires to distinguish themselves from each other, or to changes in public opinion.10 Changes in federal immigration ceilings or preferences would, in this view, emerge in response to a rise in unemployment, a burst of ethnic lobbying, a change in the majority party, and/or a rash of popular xenophobia. All of these are plausible hypotheses and might account for legislative movement on immigration control. Many policymakers, however, cite the preservation of sovereignty as the motivation for their position. When legislators, the press, and the public argue about policy, they give reasons to support their proposals. When

Introduction

5

they want a policy because of its consequences for sovereignty, they say that. Because boundaries divide the inside world from that outside, their strength and location become a charged issue when international involvement threatens to blur the lines separating what is in from what is out. The major changes in American immigration policy have come during strong economic times, after a major change in the international system: the Chinese Exclusion Acts of 1882 were followed by the Quota Acts of 1921/24 (a response to World War I), McCarran-Walter of 1952 (a response to World War II and the cold war), Hart-Celler of 1965 (a response to decolonization during the cold war), and ‹nally the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986, which was paired with the revised Immigration and Nationality Act of 1990 and focused on foreign economic competition rather than military competition. In fact, the only time that immigration policy becomes a real issue at the national level, and Congress changes federal policy, is when there has been a major change in the international system. Domestic processes affect enforcement rather than overall policy. Any immigration policy has to answer two questions: how many people, and which ones. The ‹rst concerns numbers; the second, who will be excluded or preferred in making up those numbers. Restricting and extending regulatory control over the amount of immigration is an exercise of sovereignty, an enforcement of difference. Deciding which people can enter expresses in what way the country is different. Preferences and exclusions show how the country contrasts itself with those outside it. Reasons must be given for preferences and exclusions as well as for numbers. Evidence, then, comprises the reasons given by contestants in these policy debates, for and against controlling immigration. Combined with the evidence regarding the importance of unemployment and other in›uences that legislators face, reasons provide a clear picture of the dynamics driving policy change on this issue.

Third Argument

A third argument concerns the policy process itself. To have a chance of successfully becoming law, a proposal must be supported by arguments that conform to the particular demands of public interest debates.11 These arguments explain which values are at stake. They can become central to the debate, focusing attention on proposals that serve certain values rather than others. In this way, debate has the ability to transform policy outcomes. In a policy debate, contestants who do not attend to reasons cannot win. For example, say that two groups disagree about zoning policy regarding home of‹ces. One side argues in terms of traf‹c increasing in

6


residential neighborhoods. If the other side can show this to be false—say, by demonstrating that commuting drops, canceling the increase in commercial traf‹c—it can win. In fact, it can then use the opposition’s reason, traf‹c, to push through even broader changes in the law than it ‹rst thought possible or even wanted. The resulting policy will not be in the middle, nor will it be what one side initially advocated, as bargaining models would suggest. Instead, the result is a more extreme version of what one side wanted, a consequence of its ability to use its opponent’s reasons for its own purposes. Argumentation has a logic that can produce settlements wholly unanticipated by either side. National debates over American immigration policy follow this odd logic. What results is in fact never in the middle, but something off the charts. What provides a pattern to the policy processes is the set of arguments that tend to come up in discussions of immigration: the meaning of citizenship, consent, and national character, the importance of ethnic or ideological homogeneity, the message to allies. These all involve the country’s relation to the outside world.12 Each raises questions of identity and obligation, so the debates over immigration tend to involve the philosophical questions of duty to self and others, and what this says about the nature of self and others. Taken together, these arguments portray American debates over immigration as occasions when Americans renegotiate what sovereignty means to them.

The United States

The United States is at the center of this study, for methodological and practical reasons. Since the central questions involve change or continuity over time, evidence had to be gathered that covered as long a time as possible. Therefore, the study could focus on one country only. The United States should be the hardest case. American history and culture celebrate the immigrant. The Declaration of Independence complains about British colonial immigration policy. Stories of immigration are woven into national myth as well as history. American children learn of the Pilgrims, of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty; so powerful are these images that many educated adults are unaware that return migration to Europe at times exceeded immigration. Compared with others, the United States has always been an ethnically diverse society, with powerful norms in favor of pluralism, even when the reality has lagged behind the norm. In addition, compared with other industrial countries, the United States is underdeveloped as a welfare state. The average federal expenditure per capita on social services is thirteenth among the advanced industrial states,13 and a

Introduction

7

huge piece of this, social security, Medicare, and veterans’ bene‹ts, is devoted to the age group, or class, least likely to immigrate.14 Further, American hegemony has meant that the country sets the terms of its interaction with the outside and need not interpret investments or immigrants as invaders, as other countries would be quick to do.15 Finally, the United States accepts more immigrants annually than the next several countries put together. American myths, values, economic capacity, power, and policy history combine to create a presumption against protective immigration policies. American immigration policy has great practical signi‹cance as well, for those abroad as well as for American citizens. The number of immigrants annually admitted to the United States is at present equivalent to the population of entire countries. If the United States barred nonimmigrant visitors except from Sweden, Finland, and Norway, every citizen of all three countries could travel to the United States in the same year without disrupting the pattern. The sheer volume of this movement means that for millions of individuals, American immigration policy is of great importance.

Contributions of This Study

Analyzing immigration policy over the past century provides insight into a number of central theoretical questions. First, it shows how change in the international context can translate into change in a country’s sense of self, how the “us” changes in response to changes in “them.”16 Studies of foreign policy have long explored how one country’s behavior will affect another country’s behavior. Action-reaction models are aptly titled; they focus on what states do in response to each other’s actions. Some research has elaborated this model, exploring whether domestic institutions and cultures can shape a foreign policy response and whether a country’s foreign policy displays a unique personality.17 Immigration policy, unlike military or trade policy, tells us about a country’s identity as well as its interests. For this reason, it becomes possible to show how international action—changes in the distribution of power and nature of con›ict— shapes what a state thinks it is as well as what it does. Second, by following a policy that links identity and behavior, the study sheds light on theories that portray identity as well as behavior as a variable. Constructivist sociology and political science argue that policy and identity cannot be separated as easily as much international relations scholarship assumes.18 What people or institutions do affects what they are. Much constructivist work concerns itself with central philosophical

8


and theoretical issues, such as how this insight alters our notion of international structures. Applied work is sparse. This study describes how construction works at a practical level in one case. Because of experience, identity changes. This translates into policy governing admission and exclusion, and then into enforcement. Construction is, in this way, observable behavior. Third, viewing sovereignty as a policy choice makes it easier to address the otherwise vast question of “whither the state system.” Because sovereignty is a huge variable, observers have linked it to variables of comparable size, such as nationalism, the commons, multinational corporations, or international institutions. How these ought to be measured is unclear, what counts as change in one is unclear, and the scale overwhelms the consideration of human agency and choice. This leaves the impression that vast historical forces operate on their own, without human input. People do matter, as agents and not just objects of history. By linking sovereignty to legislative choice through immigration policy, this analysis shows one way to make sovereignty’s future approachable. Fourth, this study shows how participants in one of the most powerful democratic decision-making institutions in the world—the U.S. Congress—negotiated the relation between interests and values in determining the national interest. Often, foreign policy, like human agency, is portrayed as a compulsive search for material wealth and power. When values enter the discussion, they are dismissed as a cover for the real goals, which are allegedly material. That might be true for some issues, but for immigration policy, values trump interests every time. In fact, certain defeat awaits an immigration proposal that is framed in terms of money. Finally, these debates provide a rare window on what political membership means to Americans. In a world where states get citizens or subjects at birth, immigration policy provides the only place where it is acceptable to discriminate. Alternative policies that might achieve the same demographic result horrify publics and have high costs. Pervasive acceptance of jus soli and jus sanguinis—citizenship by place of birth or descent—means that countries get citizens at birth. People decry increasing the population’s size through compulsory fertility, as did Romania, or limiting it through government-enforced sterilization, as did India. Reducing it through discriminatory application of public health measures and selecting characteristics through eugenics shock the modern conscience on three grounds: their discriminatory nature, their reliance on ideas of biological superiority, and their suggestion of betrayal by one’s government. A prospective immigrant, on the other hand, is not “one of us,” and people do not consider selective immigration an ethical parallel to selective fertility or mortality policies. Immigration policy is the only place where a

Introduction

9

country can state baldly and illiberally whom it wants, whom it does not, and why. International law, domestic governments, and most people grant states authority to control immigration as a core right.

Organization

Policies, rather than the actual number of immigrants, are to be explained because policies establish boundaries and create political communities. The policies also articulate the value that a country places on the borders dividing its citizens from people elsewhere. In this way, statements about who may enter a political community describe how a society identi‹es the most important differences between itself and others. The number of immigrants actually arriving depends on millions of decisions made elsewhere, under a variety of conditions, and on the funding and politics of border patrols. Actual ›ows matter as a stimulus to later policy change. Policy toward immigrants—persons admitted for permanent residence and, eventually, citizenship—is the focus. The spotlight stays on potential citizens. The study starts by discussing the role that argumentation plays in shaping policy choice and describes the requirements that “the public interest” places on those advocating a position. Then, chapter 3 presents the arguments that legislators and others made for and against immigration restriction. Next, chapters 4 through 7 describe the ensuing sequence of debates over exactly how many and whom to exclude. These chapters are organized to provide evidence for and against the theses that sovereignty is a choice, that immigration policy is externally responsive, and that public interest requirements shape outcomes. Following these are two chapters considering alternative explanations. Chapter 8 evaluates the contention that material and domestic interests drive change; it analyzes the partisan content of congressional votes, variations in public opinion, and changes in the unemployment rate as correlates of immigration restriction. Chapter 9 evaluates the contention that broad analyses that ignore arguments do as well, or nearly as well, in explaining change in immigration policy as does the structure-argumentstructure model developed here. Finally, chapter 10 discusses the implications this study has for understanding structural change generally and for understanding policies regulating the mobility of people speci‹cally.

CHAPTER 2

Arguments about Immigrants

One sort of political negotiation best explains the direction of change in American immigration policy. Political negotiation can take several different forms. One involves the question of who gets what. Two or more sides can bargain over policy as a vendor and a buyer might haggle over a price until they reach a settlement somewhere between their starting points or, if each wants something different, they might agree to trade votes. This happens when the issue is how to distribute a measurable good: money, votes, personnel, the number of military bases. Power decides these issues. Many political problems correspond to this model of individuals with competing interests bargaining under scarcity, at least at one stage in a lengthier process. At other times, political negotiation involves the question of which values ought to guide policy. Disagreement can focus on whether a problem exists at all, or on which principle should be applied to solve it. A policy package—a goal plus a principle plus a solution—has a logical glue that makes compromise dif‹cult and, when it occurs, forces it to follow a different path than that which describes straight bargaining. At the heart of such policy packages are arguments, which connect problems and solutions with reasons. Success depends on persuasion rather than on material resources. Argumentation can produce policies that are fundamentally different from, and unpredictable from the standpoint of, simple material interests. In two circumstances, ignoring arguments is justi‹ed. Sometimes a choice does not exist, and to believe that one does is, in fact, to be deluded. For arguments to matter, choice has to be possible. If, for example, a country were to be annihilated unless it acted in a certain way, its “choice” to comply is forced and, because it was necessary, not a real choice. In circumstances of necessity, arguments are, paradoxically, irrelevant if actors are rational. This justi‹cation underlies structural theories of international relations as well as endgame analyses. In the long run, structural theorists contend, the broad forces that drive historical processes—movements of languages, religions and ideologies, technology, wealth, populations, knowledge—effectively eliminate choice. Structural transformations recon‹gure the incentives that actors face, making the rational choice 10


11

obvious, obvious at any rate over time to most people. Moreover, the momentum of broad changes is such that no one decision, or even series of decisions, will have much of an impact. Ignoring arguments makes sense as well when consensus, rather than necessity, has made discussion super›uous. This can be the case in studies of implementation or of instrumental rationality.1 If a group (or person) agrees on goals and on how to achieve them, the issue left is whether experience proved those expectations right. The systematic gaps between what a person or organization ought to do and what is actually done can then be described in terms of bureaucratic routine, or incomplete information, or misperception, or stupidity. In both types of case, arguments are irrelevant because goals—preferences—are clear, and what counts as a good reason for doing something is also clear. Much, however, lies between the extremes of necessity and instrumentality.2 Politics often, maybe usually, involves competition to de‹ne social goals, and necessity is more often a rhetorical device than a reality. How argumentation works in democratic politics has not been systematically investigated. One reason is that many policies do result from horse-trading, and powerful analytical techniques such as game theory can explain quite a variety of political outcomes. It has therefore been easy to neglect classes of problems that lie outside this set. Additionally, a long tradition of thought, from Machiavellians to Marxists, insists that material interest (presumably known and measurable) drives political struggle; by corollary, reasons contestants express are nothing more than a smoke screen (though whom they could fool, if everyone operated this way, is never made clear). Arguments are, in this view, post hoc rationalizations for an outcome effected by power, for power. Often this view is attacked on normative grounds as cynical, a charge that has not been particularly productive. Here, the view is criticized on empirical grounds. Many political problems do not correspond to the material interest model. The dynamics of argumentation provide a better explanation for the process and its result. American immigration politics have consistently been of this type. In an argument, a position is backed by a reason. Importantly, the reason refers to something other than simply the person offering it. For example, a missile is considered better when it is more accurate. Accuracy is a value the arguer holds, but it is also a value that the arguer thinks is independent of his own preferences. It is a shared value, social as well as personal, and hence more than a preference. In a completely material bargaining situation, what persuades are not reasons but resources: I want this missile. Whether you acquiesce depends on whether you want it independently, whether I can force you to agree to it, or whether I have enough wealth to buy your consent. In any case, the position is backed by power.

12


This cannot reside in anyone other than the person holding it. “If we term those considerations on which a person acts motives and those which may be used in interpersonal communication reasons,” says Giandomenico Majone, “then we may say that not all motives need be reasons and that not all reasons function as motives.”3 This simple distinction—arguments are backed by common or shared values while bargaining positions are backed by individual resources—has huge implications for the results of policy disputes, as well as their dynamics. Reasons, unlike resources, can be seized by an opponent and used for his or her purposes. Reasons are powerful because they refer to common values, but this also makes them vulnerable to capture. If I base my argument for one missile on its accuracy, I make myself vulnerable to an opponent’s ability to demonstrate the superior accuracy of his or her missile. If I had simply held that I wanted the missile because I wanted it, and I was powerful, the opponent could not have used my position to bene‹t his or her side. It would make no sense for the opponent to claim that I was wrong about my own preferences. Reasons that one side provides become a common resource. Fights over reasons can make reasons more important than the result to which they are initially attached. In this way, reasons can lead toward a result that was not anticipated and that lies beyond the terrain over which the sides were initially ‹ghting. This explains how the result of an argument between A and C can result not in B, nor in anything else between A and C, but instead in Q (or π or something equally odd). The person who introduces justi‹cation into debate gambles not only that his or her reasons will prevail, but that those reasons will lead to the preferred policy and not be seen to support something else entirely. This is a risk that legislative contestants often must take, but that they often lose. Debates are often about social values, and so they often involve argumentation like this. The deliberative ideal is normatively and institutionally central to democratic political systems. Theorists of democracy, most prominently John Dewey, have argued that extensive debate educates citizens about their own values, even as it informs representatives of their constituents’ wishes.4 Dictatorial as well as democratic systems can value argumentation as a means to an end. By helping to integrate new information and opposing viewpoints into a picture of what is at stake and what can be done, broad discussion promotes prudence; for this reason, institutions from government bureaucracies to private ‹rms periodically attempt to encourage dissent. Yet, as Talcott Parsons argues, “Rational action, in the sense of action guided by valid knowledge, is at the same time action which is normatively oriented.”5 Arguments help to determine what is best to do, unless reason has little to do with decisions.


13

There are two ways to resolve such disagreements over principle, one more like straight bargaining than like argumentation. Both show up in the politics surrounding American immigration control. One is procedural. If a majority of people take one side, it wins. If there is a tie, two philosophically incommensurate principles can coexist in practice. For example, a ‹ght between one group devoted to barring all immigration on the grounds that immigration destroyed community, and another group bent on eliminating national boundaries because they are arbitrary and hence unethical could compromise: an annual ceiling of, say, 150,000. Democracy provides a handy way to quantify, and thus speedily resolve, disputes about irreconcilable values. The other way to resolve disagreements is substantive and involves reframing the issue. Different principles attract, or require, different levels and types of support. If a dispute becomes “really about” one principle, participants will face pressure to support it. If settling land is in the national interest, those opposed to allowing immigrant settlers will have to provide an alternative way to serve the same national interest—keeping out rivals for land—or capitulate. Legislative and public struggles over immigration policy have taken both forms, but have been dominated by arguments about how to frame the national and public interests. In each era, immigration policy became “really about” a value seen to be newly primary. Through argument, one value emerged as central to the public interest, and immigration policy was redesigned to support it, in a way not predictable at the start of the debates. Before an argument can be determined to be in the public interest or not, or even to qualify as a “public interest type of argument,” it minimally has to be an argument, to contain a statement of cause and effect. This simple point is made (and then simple extensions detailed) because interest-based arguments imply that appeals to others are irrelevant, since the calculus of power alone decides who will prevail. The fact that an actor wants an outcome is suf‹cient argument, or rather, the force at that actor’s disposal alone decides how “persuasive” the argument is. But this only characterizes situations where reasons no longer matter, as when people ‹nally cast their ballots or troops head to the front. Before that point, when the action that the group will take is uncertain because the choices that people will make are still uncertain, arguments intervene to tilt the outcome in one direction. They do not replace calculations of interests; rather, they qualitatively affect the way that actors de‹ne or interpret their interests. One can do this by rede‹ning the nature of a situation, reorienting people by changing the way they locate themselves.6 For example, voters choose differently when the same referendum is “really about” taxes than

14


when it is “really about” recycling; the American public supported the Vietnam War when it was about containing communism and opposed it when it was about defeating nationalism. Reinterpreting a situation rede‹nes the sides in a con›ict and can affect choice by placing people on a side they do not want to be on. One can also change the way that actors de‹ne their interests by demonstrating the unintended consequences of a policy they advocate.7 For example, an advocate of sending food to famine victims might reverse his or her position if it were demonstrated that this would ›ood local markets with free products, discourage local farming, and result in even less food in the future. The value—helping victims—is upheld, but is more strongly attached to a new policy. In order to have a chance at persuading, an argument has to cite an effect that could realistically result from an action. For those arguments about the effects of an invasion to be plausible, the speci‹c consequences listed have to be reasonable expectations. What people see as reasonable depends at any point in time on their ideas about causation. Conceptual maps not only place an individual in a particular context, but also explain how that environment works.8 “Except in its crudest form,” argues Kathryn Sikkink, “the comprehension and formulation of facts and interests implies the existence of a conceptual apparatus [that helps] people grasp, formulate, and communicate social realities.”9 Plausible mechanisms of cause and effect that prevail at one time, or within one group, can be considered bizarre at another time. The convictions that witchcraft causes misfortune, that bloodletting cures disease, and that night air causes sickness are all arguments about cause and effect that have since been rejected, although for a long time each was plausible to a great number of people. Giandomenico Majone contends that “since policies exist for some time, their political support must be constantly renewed and new arguments are constantly needed to give the different policy components the greatest possible internal coherence and the closest ‹t to an everchanging environment.”10 Positions that succeed are held by those able to control the direction that an argument takes as it develops in a public arena, as well as to connect the argument convincingly to notions of the public interest.

Public Interest

The dynamics of justi‹cation can propel debate along a path. But not all paths are available; the requirement that policy be justi‹ed as in the public interest also limits debate. To be heard seriously, policies have to plausibly further the public interest, that which all members of a society share by


15

de‹nition: “those interests which people have in common qua members of the public.”11 C. W. Casinelli elaborates the de‹nition: The public interest applies to every member of the political community; it is a value to be distinguished from something advantageous to one person and disadvantageous to another. . . . To say that an action is in the public interest is to judge it consistent with a political situation that is bene‹cial to everyone, if not immediately at least in the long run, and whether or not everyone realizes it.12 The distinction between the private and public interests of individuals is illustrated by the possibility that a regulatory or licensing policy is against one’s interest as an aspiring architect but is in one’s interest as a member of the public, or that conservation is in one’s interest as a member of the public although it might be to no living person’s material bene‹t. As members of the public, people have an interest in common taxation or traf‹c policies, though as wage earners or speeders they might not want them. The public interest can be conceived of as an end or as a means, as an interest in a speci‹c outcome or an interest in following certain decisionmaking procedures, whatever end is reached. When social goals are agreed on, the question of what is in the public interest is settled, so debate can focus on how to achieve it.13 Some means are more ef‹cient, less expensive, more fair. In the United States, supporters and opponents of af‹rmative action both argue in terms of equality, supporters and opponents of nuclear weapons both argue in terms of prudence and morality, and supporters and opponents of foreign aid both argue in terms of duty to the foreign poor. When social goals are in dispute or appear to be in con›ict with each other as often happens, discussion revolves around the content of the public interest. Is freedom of speech more or less important than freedom from hate speech? Is safety more important than ef‹ciency? Framing an issue in terms of the public interest is not suf‹cient to win, but it is necessary if one is to have a chance at winning. To win, one must persuade others that a policy is in their interest as members of the public. The policy can be in everyone’s private interest or no one’s; whether private interests are also served is irrelevant, though whether private interests are instead served is crucial. As Friedrich Kratochwil argues, public interest claims have to be universalizable, consider consequences, and serve community values.14 Claimants phrase their arguments in these terms, while detractors either argue for competing public values or contend that the public interest is a thin disguise for private interests. For example, one might argue that building a highway through a

16


wilderness area is in the public interest because it would help communications and commerce and give more people access to the wild. This is a formally proper public interest argument; to succeed, it would have to convince others that the value of increased mobility was more important than that of, say, preserving this wilderness. It would also have to persuade others that society would bene‹t, that its values would be furthered, rather than that private interests would win at the public’s expense. That some companies or individuals would bene‹t is to be expected; that the bene‹ts would be unequally realized is also to be expected. Neither example of private gain undermines the public interest claim. That interested parties are motivated to argue for a policy in public interest terms has no effect on whether the policy is in the public interest. In fact, as much as possible public and private interests should coincide. What would undermine a public interest claim is the demonstration that private interests achieve their ends at the public’s expense. For example, the highway might increase only one ‹rm’s pro‹ts but result in higher taxes for all and thereby reduce trade and employment. To be heard, a public interest argument must plausibly further community values. To be thwarted, it must be shown either to fail—to be particular rather than universal, to have harmful consequences, and so on—that is, to serve private interest at public expense—or to succeed while harming a competing public value. Each public or legislative debate about social goals is choreographed using a different combination of these same dance steps. A policy is shown to be universalizable and to further public values. One set of detractors seeks to demonstrate that it harms a competing and more important public value. A second set claims that the policy serves a private interest, hinting or showing that private values would succeed at a greater expense to public values. John Kingdon argues that “the proposals that survive to the status of serious consideration meet several criteria, including their technical feasibility, their ‹t with dominant values and the current national mood, their budgetary workability, and the political support or opposition they might experience.”15 This dynamic restricts and propels debate whether or not every (or indeed any) participant truly believes what he or she argues. Everyone in a public debate has to argue in terms of the public interest; even materialists have to be this type of hypocrite, have to argue this way whether they believe it or not. The resulting policy will be the same whether its proponents were sincere in the reasons they gave or not. Hypocrisy matters, moreover, only when it makes a difference whether an individual’s motives match his or her public justi‹cations. Choosing hypocrisy is only rational when one lies about values (reasons, not


17

motives) that others share. Whether a given legislator is motivated by the values the public holds is immaterial; the arguments made speak to what the public believes or is thought to believe to be the social good (if not necessarily revealing what any single member of that public believes). The idea of the public interest shapes social policy. It structures how positions are de‹ned, places limits on the range of possible results, and affects how alternative outcomes are judged. Indeed it in›uences the way that claims are originally made and even conceived, as well as how competing claims are weighed or integrated. By allowing only some types of justi‹cation, public interest requirements weed out some possibilities and thereby help to determine which ‹nal decision will be taken. Within these limits, whether a speci‹c policy will be chosen depends on whether its advocates can control the dynamics of argumentation.

Arguments about Exclusion

“Whose interests ought to be taken into account?” is an ethical as well as political question. It should therefore be no surprise that the answers people give when questioned about immigrants will be, in a sense, ethical answers.16 Different ethical outlooks can lead to and justify different types of foreign policies. Legislators and citizens reach many of the same endpoints as those that international relations theories predict—exclusion, openness, selection by domestic similarities or geostrategic criteria—by debating ethically distinct positions. Such positions constrain arguments in much the same way that institutions constrain the political process. Argument types have a logic and dynamic that can in this way act as institutions. How people describe con›icts of value and interest regarding immigration depends on who is thought to have a legitimate interest and why it is thought legitimate. Ethical egoism is the perspective that one’s primary and sole obligation is to oneself. This is a moral position about obligations, but is not, strictly speaking, an ethical theory since it can provide no way to decide con›icts of interest.17 When claims compete, no principle intervenes to decide. What an egoist means to be persuasive about “I want something” is the “I.” “The Egoist is the man who holds that a tendency to promote his own interest is the sole possible, and suf‹cient, justi‹cation of all his actions”; alternately, “egoism holds that each individual’s reasons for acting and possible motivations for acting, must arise from his own interests and desires, however those interests may be de‹ned.”18 Attempts to defend egoism have relied on the notions that one has obligations to oneself, that

18


these are one’s highest obligations, and that in fact even if one tried to help others one would not do well because another’s true interests are unknowable. These can be extended to the duties of groups. National self-interest is understood to mean a state of affairs valued solely for its bene‹ts to the nation. The motive of national egoism, which leads men to seek this end, is marked by the disposition to concern oneself solely with the welfare of one’s own nation; it is self-love transferred to the national group.19 Realist arguments share the idea that the state should be given primacy of place in any con›ict of interest. Principled talk in world politics is, in this view, frivolous, and frivolity invites deception and attack. Henry Kissinger argues this. But the emphasis on principle has also produced a characteristic American ambivalence. Relations with a world of nations falling short of our ideal has always presented us with dilemmas. As a people, we have oscillated between insistence on our uniqueness and the quest for broad acceptance of our values, between trying to in›uence international developments and seeking to isolate ourselves from them, between expecting too much of our power and being ashamed of it, between optimistic exuberance and frustration with the constraints practicality imposes.20 If realism/egoism is accepted more widely in world politics than in civil society, this might be due to people’s perception of greater danger and higher stakes. Impending threats make arguments about the nature of the society one is defending super›uous. If immigrants are invaders, then little more need be said to those bent on protecting the state’s integrity. David Hendrickson argues, “There are instances in human history when the migration of peoples seems indistinguishable in its effects from conquest by an invading army.”21 Immigration can be even more dangerous than military invasion because it is less obvious and thus more insidious. A corollary to this view suggests sending emigrants to undermine enemies’ societies. Communitarian ideas also infuse justi‹cations by realists and are probably the most powerful and widespread of the reasons people give for believing that the government should always protect, preserve, or defend the country from foreigners.22 Not all realists are communitarians, or vice versa, but their arguments become fused especially in immigration debates because the issue is defending a particular, bounded, valued community.


19

The community and its unique way of life, goes the basic argument, have an intrinsic value that the state must at all costs preserve. David Hendrickson, for example, contends, “The preservation of the state’s security, well-being and institutional integrity is the condition for the realization of other values, without which no civilized existence is possible at all.”23 A we-feeling of some sort is necessary both as a component of individual identities and as a justi‹cation for state institutions’ legitimacy. When this culture coincides with state boundaries, it cements them by providing “a common identity that grounds citizenship.”24 E. H. Carr speculates about the connection. The good of the state comes more easily to be regarded as a moral end in itself. If we are asked to die for our country, we must at least be allowed to believe that our country’s good is the most important thing in the world. The state thus comes to be regarded as having a right of self-preservation which overrides moral obligation.25 A way of life has an intrinsic value, so cultural pluralism at the global level, if not at the domestic, also ought to be valued for its own sake. Michael Walzer applies the communitarian position to the issue of immigration, or (as he puts it) membership. “Men and women do indeed have rights beyond life and liberty, but these do not follow from our common humanity; they are local and particular in character”; therefore, “the restraint of entry serves to defend the liberty and welfare, the politics and culture of a group of people committed to one another and to their common life.” This enables people to choose “in accordance with our understanding of what membership means in our community and of what sort of community we want to have,” whatever that meaning is, for “the distribution of membership is not pervasively subject to the constraints of justice.”26 Walzer draws on a long tradition. For Rousseau and Montesquieu, “consent must be mutual, and members of an existing community could properly refuse consent to membership of those who would disrupt their necessary homogeneity.”27 The state’s highest duty is to protect and preserve this community in (homogeneous) character as well as in minimal material fact. In 1787, Thomas Jefferson worried that emigrants from absolutist Europe would act with “unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another” and “infuse into” legislation “their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.”28 Consequences for the political community decide how many, and which, immigrants are admissible. A third ethical position that can lead to a “realist” outcome draws on utilitarian arguments. The world threatens all, but it has a greater chance

20


of succeeding against liberal states because their democratic nature means that they can be “undermined from within.” Frederick Whelan characterizes one standard American argument as follows: In these circumstances, the citizens of liberal regimes must be on their guard; the preservation of liberal institutions where they exist must be the ‹rst priority, even if this means restricting some of the operations that liberal principles could have in a more ideal world. Liberal regimes must not only withstand aggression or deliberate subversion, on the part of competing types of regimes (such as monarchical ones) abroad; they must also avoid being “swamped” by immigrants in such numbers or at such a rate that the new residents cannot be assimilated into the liberal system, with the consequence that it is undermined from within.29 In this view, liberal institutions’ accessibility means that they are easily used by enemies. There is a ‹nal reason to advocate realist utilitarian understanding of the social good. Leaders’ duties are to work toward something like Pareto optimality, maximizing the good by promoting average happiness— within the borders. This imposes an unshirkable duty on a leader: “The individual may say to himself: ‘Fiat justitia, pereat mundus (Let justice be done, even if the world perish),’ but the state has no right to say so in the name of those who are in its care.”30 What distinguishes this use of utilitarian thought as realist in foreign policy is its insistence that the collective’s (state’s) interests should be de‹ned solely with reference to citizens’ interests—without reference to interests or (putative) rights of outsiders— however individual citizens de‹ne those interests; exclusion never need be justi‹ed with reference to the excluded. Notions of the social good get attached because how the (technical) exclusion question is answered in a particular instance depends on this calculus. If one believes that a state’s primary obligation, its justi‹cation for existing at all, is to preserve and promote a given community in the face of external encroachment, what one values about the borders it protects is what those divisions make possible: existence, or some civilized existence, or a uniquely civilized existence. Citizens live inside those borders; resources live outside, and that is how it should be. Immigration is judged in terms of its consequences for the state as sovereign. Almost every argument favoring or opposing immigration draws on this view or on its major competitors, a universalist egalitarianism or an internationalist particularism. Because liberal theories draw on ideas of individual liberty, equality, or rights, they can lead just as easily to an argument against state bound-


21

aries as to one in favor of them: these principles do not require boundaries, so boundaries should not be respected, though they should be acknowledged as facts. “If the ‘veil of ignorance’ approach to questions of social justice was an attempt to eliminate morally arbitrary factors from judgments about the justice of particular social arrangements, there could be nothing more arbitrary than the wealth of the society in which one happened to have been born.”31 The other six billion people in the world ought to be considered unless reasons are given otherwise. In the Kantian view, people have rights conferred on them by nature, God, or reason, so national borders are irrelevant to our respect for those rights. Rights-based ideas of obligation do not necessarily require people or governments to allow as just all claims of right. Even Kant makes this distinction: It is not a question of hospitality but of right. Hospitality means the right of a stranger not to be treated as an enemy when he arrives in the land of another. One may refuse to receive him when this can be done without causing his destruction; but, so long as he peacefully occupies his place, one may not treat him with hostility. It is not the right to be a permanent visitor that one may demand.32 Kant argues that the right to sojourn derives from one’s inhabitancy of Earth and should be recognized generously because of its consequences: wanderers help to establish peaceful relations among people through which “the human race can gradually be brought closer and closer to a constitution establishing world citizenship.” Kant demands that we consider travel a most basic right and thus acknowledge it in practice, but he does not demand that we recognize as a right someone’s desire to enter a territory and stay. In addition, the Doctrine of Double Effect, that one may knowingly act in a way that will produce an impermissible outcome if that evil is minimized and is not one’s real, disguised aim, underlies the view that a state must admit those who will die if excluded, regardless of the consequences for itself, but may (and should) consider consequences for its own interests when doing so will not result in evil. Because of who they are, boat people must be admitted, in this view, but foreign medical graduates need not be. To act otherwise, in this view, is wrongly to defend privilege. Roger Nett argues that rights aim at some kind of initial equality in human transactions so that people may not be categorically disadvantaged; so that, for example, the subjugation of others may not be too easy for the situa-

22


tionally fortunate. . . . If we can justify any basic human right, freedom of movement is probably in that category.33 To discriminate among individuals one needs good reasons, and birthplace is just not a good reason. Borders turn rich states into laager states defending arbitrary privilege. Boundaries serve only discriminatory purposes; to pretend otherwise is to be a hypocrite. If boundaries are unjusti‹able, so are immigration restriction and selection. Utilitarians, on the other hand, universalize or self-minimize for very different reasons. Individuals have interests (not rights), and to maximize the good is to promote the average interest. Strategies are judged in terms of their consequences for the (equal) interests of all affected. In John Stuart Mill’s formulation, “the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent’s own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.”34 Utilitarians focus on consequences for themselves and others, to honor human equality. Whether a utilitarian will suggest admitting or excluding foreigners depends on how the interest-maximizing calculus comes out. Locke, for example, contended that admitting people would be generally good: the more people, the more productive labor. Locke “says that ‘I have sometimes heard it objected that they eat the bread out of our own people’s mouths,’ but then turns this into an indictment of those who wish to be protected from competition.”35 One can, though, imagine an economy (of declining returns) in which admissions (more labor) would reduce the good of the already present and of the admitted; exclusion would then be correct. What distinguishes this use of utilitarian thought as idealist is its presumption in favor of including in its calculus the interests of all concerned regardless of national boundaries. Idealists do not always go this far. How extensive our obligations to others are depends on the limits we place on their interests or rights, or the way we de‹ne those interests or rights to indicate the circumstances under which they need not be consulted. The most extreme universalist views depend on people accepting that distance does not matter.36 A liberal understanding can also lead to a view of obligations lying between the full negative and positive of the realist and universalist views. If obligation follows action, in this view, international practices that multiply connections also establish patterns of obligation. If one creates disaster, one is obliged to right it. The French, in this view, have one type of obligation to Algerians because of what France did to Algeria; another to Ivoriens because of what France did to the Côte d’Ivoire. Since obligations


23

are determined by patterns of interaction, as interactions become more extensive and similar, so do obligations: If evidence of global economic and political interdependence shows the existence of a global scheme of social cooperation, we should not view national boundaries as having fundamental moral signi‹cance. Since boundaries are not coextensive with the scope of social cooperation, they do not mark the limits of social obligations.37 Interdependence is not, however, even and spontaneous, nor does it arise from a harmony of interests. In this view, people and countries owe and are owed by those they have harmed or helped in the past or those to whom they have extended promises. In this view, acts and promises have their own weight. A realist, for example, might think that acts such as breaking an alliance, unilaterally disengaging from an exchange rate mechanism, or failing to provide air cover to those whose invasion one has encouraged are bad because they reduce one’s power by damaging one’s credibility. A particularist would be more inclined to consider them bad in themselves, that is, would do so even if it could be known that the power bene‹ts outweighed the costs. As states and people have become more enmeshed, the particular has come to be more general; each country’s particular set of relationships, and hence of obligations, grows more to resemble that of other states. The broadest consensus on obligation arises in response to direct harm, for example, “if we caused a people to emigrate by actively eliminating their alternatives, then we are bound to admit them.” Less consensus surrounds obligations in response to the indirect effects of one’s actions, whether one has obligations to those emigrating as the eventual result of a process that one set in motion, either because the indirectness reduces responsibility or because even a real responsibility can be ful‹lled more effectively in other ways than accepting immigrants. Finally, if no special national obligations have been incurred, then the language of public debate can shift from national interest at the national level to social- or individual-level arguments about the public interest. Britain might not have obligations toward Peru, but many British might listen sympathetically to a few of their compatriots argue that they have attachments to some Peruvians that obligate Britain to act on their behalf. Others might be separately obliged because of their particular connections to you to aid your realization of your particular af‹liations. If one believes that people and communities create obligations whose principled ful‹llment can be validated by practice, one’s evaluation of state boundaries will be situation-speci‹c. They are good when they create

24


valued connections, bad when they deny them. Immigration is judged in terms of its consequences for ful‹lling or damaging those values that one has acquired.


As a topic of public debate, immigration policy belongs to a unique, limited class. Defense policy, immigration policy, and policy regarding territorial boundaries or property ownership all concern not just what the state does, but what constitutes it. Defense policy and rules about who may own land and infrastructure assure a country’s territorial integrity. Defense policy has traditionally been concerned with maintaining territorial boundaries, while policy toward foreign ownership decides whether those boundaries will distinguish the state from others in material terms. Immigration policy also determines boundaries, in this case those separating citizens from noncitizens. Because it does this, immigration policy is a foreign policy and hence raises questions about the national interest. Both defense and immigration policies also affect all citizens equally in theory, but their implementation can hurt or bene‹t some groups more than others, as, for example, when defense spending or “investor immigrants” head to one region and silos or emergency refugees to another. Because some citizens gain and some lose, immigration and defense policies can be debated in terms of the public as well as the national interest; the justice of their domestic consequences can be reason to accept or reject them. Each also changes as the world beyond the borders changes. They differ in that immigration policy creates borders while defense policy protects them. In non- or postimperial states, territorial limits exist separately from a given defense policy, but the line separating citizens from noncitizens does not exist separately from the prevailing immigration policy. For this reason, regardless of how narrow the topic ostensibly under debate, the issue of how to justify national divisions always lurks in arguments about immigrants, and even small alterations in immigration policy change the group whose interests are to be served by such policies. In its most stylized form, policy justi‹cation proceeds by connecting an argument about a problem’s causes and an argument about its solutions to an argument about the public interest. Figure 1 illustrates the logic of their connections. John Kingdon notes that crises, political processes, or periodic reviews of accumulated knowledge can place a problem on the national agenda.38 In the case of foreign policies, whose justi‹cation requires an argument about the relation between one country and others, agenda-setting should be more crisis-driven, more responsive to the events


25

External Change (Crisis of Context) ⇓ Causal Argument

Public Interest Argument

Policy Argument

Implementation

[X does/not produce Y]

[Y is/not in PI because]

[H should/not produce Y]

[H did/not produce Y]

X1 ⇒ Y1

Y1 ≠ PI

X2 ⇒ Y2

Y2 ⇒ PI

Policy A ⇒ Y2 & Y4


X3 ⇒ Y2

Y2 ⇒ PI

Policy B ⇒ Y2


X4 ⇒ Y4

Y4 ⇒ PI

Policy C ⇒ Y4 ↑ ↑ Efficiency

↑ ↑ Plausibility ↑

Ideas about Causation Perverse Effects Fig. 1.

↓

Justifying policy change

and processes beyond its borders that concern a country but over which it has little control. For this reason, ‹gure 1 includes crises of context as the dominant impetus to public debate on immigration policy. The rows in ‹gure 1 correspond to arguments. They show the way that causal arguments become linked to further arguments about whether the effect is, or is not, in the public interest, and whether policy should, or should not, seek to produce (or prevent) that effect. The ‹rst row displays the causal argument that “X causes Y,” which is then connected to a secondary argument that “Y is not in the public interest.” Depending on the nature of Y (the effect), one might argue further that public policy should ignore Y, or should seek to prevent Y. An example of the ‹rst would be “the shopping mall (X) causes smaller stores to shut down (Y)”; this is not in the public interest, either because the public should have no interest in which businesses survive in the marketplace (policy should ignore Y) or because the public has an af‹rmative interest in keeping small businesses open (policy should seek to prevent Y). The following rows illustrate similar arguments, this time linking the causes they cite positively to the public interest. These are in turn connected to arguments that speci‹c policies will create these desired effects or (at a later stage) that the policies have been implemented properly (or improperly). The second and third rows each represent arguments about how to achieve the same effect (Y2), while the

26


fourth row shows an argument about how to achieve a different effect (Y4). Each of these, it is argued, is in the public interest. After that process has selected the types of arguments that can be debated seriously, discussion turns to questions of ef‹ciency. Given that an effect is plausibly produced by a given cause and is in the public interest, how might it be produced most ef‹ciently? At this stage, discussion shifts toward consideration of a policy’s mechanics rather than its justi‹cation. Figure 1 outlines the skeleton of the policy process in a way that is applicable to debates that are quantitative and result in a middling compromise as well as to those that are qualitative and transformative. This schematic rendering implies an orderliness not present in public argumentation, but it clari‹es the connections that must be made in any public interest argument. It also highlights the points at which different standards come into play. Actual debates do not, of course, proceed from one box to the next; rather, they seem to be constructed piecemeal until they contain all that is required in some form, then to be re‹ned.39 An example will illustrate how the demands that this format makes on arguments in›uence those arguments and thus help to shape outcomes. Figure 2 presents a very simpli‹ed version of three arguments presented for and against immigration policy reform in the 1920s. In order to persuade legislators that a policy would solve a problem, individuals and representatives had to argue that (1) there was a problem, (2) it was a public interest problem rather than a private problem, and (3) its causes were both knowable and manipulable.40 They did this by linking an argument about a problem’s cause and an argument about its solution to values that were clearly in the public interest. In the early 1920s, for example, several arguments about the cause of social problems were considered true, proven by science or history or right reason. Each became linked to speci‹c public interest values. The claim that each civilization was a product of its founding race, and to endure could only be used by that race, seemed to many not only plausible but scienti‹cally demonstrable.41 The joint congressional immigration subcommittees retained a eugenicist; almost the entire biological faculties of the major American universities wrote joint letters urging Congress to attend to his and other scientists’ ‹ndings, and President Coolidge spoke in favor of this research pursuit. In this setting, opponents such as social reformer Jane Addams appeared to Congress to be stubbornly closing their eyes to scienti‹c evidence they did not wish to believe. What, asked Congress, should it believe: eminent American scientists who could demonstrate their ‹ndings, or nonscientists like Addams who were “morally certain” the scientists were wrong? Preserving and nurturing civil society made citizenship possible. Without it, the country would slide


27

Russo-Japanese War World War I ⇓ Causal Argument


Discriminating among citizens destroys democracy

Democracy must be preserved to guarantee a civic culture

We must avoid denying only some citizens' coethnics entrance

Heterogeneity causes civil and international war by creating an incoherent society

Preventing war is in the public interest because democracy is impossible without order and peace

Allowing in immigrants racially like Americans prevents war and preserves civilization

Class rifts cause civil war by stirring up hatred and inviting Bolsheviks to interfere in domestic affairs


Banning unions will prevent civil war

Only “the white race” produced a civilization

Democracy depends on the ability to be self-governing

Allowing only whites to immigrate will preserve civilization

↑

↑ plausibility

Policy Argument

Implementation

(Since there was no policy in place, no arguments about implementation failures were made in this early period)

↑ ↑ efficiency

↑

↓ Ideas about Causation: Racism Causes War Perverse Effects: War with Japan, Depression Fig. 2.

Arguments of the 1920s

into a miserable Hobbesian lawlessness. Because citizens were created by both order and Anglo-American laws, maintaining them was in the public interest. As well-established as the belief in eugenics was the conviction that cultural and racial diversity caused war. Many Americans at the turn of the century viewed the Civil War as the regrettable result of having allowed African and European descendants to mix in one country. The Civil War, in this view, sundered the natural bonds that whites shared, giving them different interests that led them into war. Europe provided a more powerful example. Every time Europeans bumped into each other,

28


they started wars. Half the time they tried to drag Americans into the con›ict; all the time the wars produced refugees who streamed from rural areas to Ellis Island. Americans wanted both to avoid helping Europe and to avoid becoming like Europe. Since the wars sparked on ethnic fault lines, to many Americans the logical preventive was ethnic homogeneity. As the most fundamental components of the public interest, preserving peace and life clearly ought to motivate the government. Leading in an opposite direction were the teachings of liberal philosophers and economists, whose ideas had become the foundation for American institutions and founding myths. The free ›ow of goods and labor bene‹ted all; only the most irrational would interfere with the market, because in doing so they harmed themselves. Liberals were supposed to value tolerance; if this were not suf‹cient, liberal institutions were designed to balance competing interests so that only good would come of their competition. Above all, democracy was premised upon equality among citizens. Discriminating among them by allowing some citizens’ coethnics preferred entrance would create second-class citizens and ultimately gut the liberal values that had been deduced from natural law and that it was government’s duty to uphold. The arguments that civilizations blossomed from particular races, that diversity sparked war, and that inequality would destroy civil society did not lead anywhere until they were linked successfully with arguments about how these consequences hurt or aided interests that all American citizens shared. War is always, of course, a concern, but in the early 1920s it was a particularly salient one, whose power was linked to the fear that natural selection could destroy the United States and that the country’s recent wars were evidence of this. Democracy and liberalism were good, but goodness did not guarantee survival, only toughness did. Halting immigration did violate maxims entrenched in American institutions and liberal ethics: it was ungenerous and economically irrational, it distinguished among people by birthplace rather than by merit, and it represented a mean-spirited turning-away of those who, like the Pilgrims, sought refuge from persecution. It also ran contrary to the interests of ‹rms, families, scienti‹c institutes, missions, and other organizations, such as universities, whose clientele and work regularly crossed borders. All of these the restrictionists admitted to be true. They argued, and argued successfully, that democracies were especially vulnerable to open borders and that continuing to indulge in a laissez-faire approach was suicidal. Groups presented a variety of reasons for and against immigration restriction. In some cases, the proposals were consistent with each other, but in many cases they were not. Rather than contradicting each other outright, each spoke to a different type of concern and so gave stress to a


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different aspect of restriction than did others. The requirement of a majority (and in the case of immigration policy, usually a majority large enough to override a veto) means that unless one argument clearly dominates, consensus-builders will have to co-opt the arguments of others. In order to get a majority to stand with a policy, that majority will have to be armed with justi‹cations that ring true, that are simultaneously in the private and public interests of constituents. Arguments cannot be added the way that votes can. Consensus-building by its nature transforms the general understanding of why some action is being undertaken. In the case of the early 1920s, the three inconsistent and competing arguments presented above merged into one persuasive enough to carry in the House by ‹ve to one. What was required was a policy that let only whites immigrate, but that did not “disparage the ancestors of millions of our fellow citizens.” A quota system that allocated places based on the proportion of recent immigrants coming from various regions only managed to irritate everyone. It angered the liberals, who argued that capping Slavic immigration, which had been on the increase, sent an anti-Slav message to Americans from Eastern Europe. It annoyed the restrictionists, who believed that freezing quotas at their 1890 levels, when the “new” (dark-skinned, southern) Europeans constituted the majority of immigrants, simply slowed the rate of social collapse. Almost magically, the restrictionists hit on a solution that was not a compromise. (It had been proposed before in hearings but had no legislative takers.) If quotas were assigned to countries according to the proportion of American citizens—not recent immigrants—who could trace their ancestry there, they could not be said to be discriminatory. In fact, the restrictionists argued, to do otherwise was to discriminate against the ancestors of Anglo-Americans. Immigrants, selected in a way consistent with democratic principles, would be from the whitest countries. National origins quotas passed in 1924 and were implemented fully a few years later after the Bureau of the Census ‹nished going through census records from the time of the founding to determine Americans’ national origins. Standards of public argumentation and the requirement of a majority might be expected to sift what could be argued in the ‹rst place and thereby limit the range of arguments within which a compromise would have to be reached. In this case, although the arguments did pass through ‹lters on their way to the ›oor, their fusion produced a policy far more restrictive than any restrictionist had hoped! In this case, a crisis (World War I) made an idea (eugenicists’ claims that ethnic heterogeneity would tear apart the country and eventually cost lives) seem plausible. In the ensuing debate, a proposal that was originally obscure because it was far more reactionary than that of even the most

30


conservative critics of immigration policy could be shown neatly to turn liberals’ arguments against them and give restrictionists the victory. The resolution to this debate was anything but a compromise. A perceived crisis in the country’s international position provoked a surge of protectionism that centered on “the nation.” Arguments about the nature of the threat, and hence the nature of the threatened, became enmeshed in immigration policy, codifying in quite practical terms the difference between citizens and noncitizens. This pattern was repeated in each of the subsequent revisions of American immigration policy.

CHAPTER 3

Whether to Exclude

From the founding of the United States through World War I, no numerical ceilings governed immigration to the United States. Immigrants were not recruited, but neither were they capped. States admitted and taxed new arrivals and reaped the bene‹ts of new immigrants’ votes. New arrivals could always head west, wrest land from the Indians, and keep it from the Europeans. The frontier made inattention possible. Indeed, not until 1876, well after the Civil War, did the U.S. Supreme Court decide that the federal government, rather than the separate states, should decide who became a citizen; this complemented the relatively recent Fourteenth Amendment, establishing citizenship by birth on American soil. The federal government after the Civil War consolidated the rights of sovereignty in Washington, DC, removing from the states any prerogatives associated with a national government. Uniform, centralized rules regarding entry to citizenship were at the core of this change. The government had the right to exclude immigrants, but it had no basis for deciding whether it should exercise this right. The ‹rst debates on the topic covered the issue of whether exclusion of immigrants was even justi‹able, that is, whether Americans had any right to refuse entry to someone willing to come to the United States and become a citizen. After this early period, when the right of the country to exclude immigrants had been settled, these arguments were ritually reprised, to reaf‹rm their central points, but subsequent philosophical debate did not add substantially to the points ‹rst raised. Later debates centered on the questions of how many and which immigrants to exclude, not on whether exclusion was itself justi‹able. In this earliest period, however, that basic question had not been settled. Debate on what eventually resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Acts and the Quota Acts therefore developed in two conceptually distinct stages. The ‹rst, covered in this chapter, dealt with the question of exclusion’s legitimacy. The second, discussed in the next, involved the desirability of excluding particular people. That chapter therefore parallels the subsequent ones, for all focus on whom and how and how many, not on whether, to exclude. The question of whether banning someone from a community is 31

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proper at all, or is proper for a democratic and liberal community, raises fundamental political and philosophical questions. Inescapably central is the problem of the extent and limits of social duties. Early arguments both against and in favor of capping immigration therefore drew directly on ethical arguments about individuals’ and societies’ duties to each other. This chapter ‹rst provides a brief overview of the historical context, outlining the history of immigration policy to the late nineteenth century when the topic of restriction found itself ‹rmly on the congressional agenda. The following section discusses in basic terms the ideal-typical ethical positions that underlie the positions articulated in the debates. Following these is an examination of the arguments made for and against imposing a numerical ceiling on immigration to the United States.

Early American Immigration Policy

Immigration up to the turn of the twentieth century was open in fact and principle, in spite of almost two centuries of periodic xenophobia. Not until 1868, with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, did the federal government de‹ne American citizenship; not until 1876 did it even claim its constitutional right to override state policies and establish a uniform rule of naturalization. Prior to this time, colonies, then states, pursued whatever course they wished.1 Some offered economic bonuses to settlers; others taxed them heavily to prompt them to move on. Some granted state citizenship instantly; others allowed it after a lengthy and rigorous trial. In spite of these variations, immigration remained numerically unrestricted for Europeans from the earliest colonial days in the 1600s through 1921. Although the American government never recruited immigrants,2 its stance toward immigration was neither accidental nor passive. Continued immigration served the government’s foreign and domestic purposes. The Declaration of Independence accused King George of “endeavor[ing] to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and the conditions for new appropriation of lands.” Homesteading helped to establish infrastructure, to develop the local treasury, to quell slave revolts, and to ‹ght American Indians;3 manifest destiny prevented European settlement. Since demand for immigration was high throughout many decades of this long period, the country had the luxury of getting what it wished without having to enact legislation. During periods of devastation in Europe, immigration soared. The Irish famine and the German revolution (1845–55), the 1880–90 European depression, and the beginning of World War I in 1914 saw the number of

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applications for admission rise dramatically, while during the American Civil War and economic depressions, immigration fell and was periodically exceeded by emigration. During these relatively rare fallow periods, the urban population on the East Coast pushed its way west. “Unregulated” westward expansion preempted the British, French, and Spanish and laid the groundwork for rebuf‹ng militarily any future claim they might make. American policies favoring immigration were consistent with those of the other mercantile powers of the day: the more wealth and the more people the better.4 At the same time, restrictionist sentiment was rarely dormant. Benjamin Franklin was neither ‹rst nor last to argue that “those who come hither are generally the most stupid of their own nation. . . . Not being used to liberty, they know not how to make a modest use of it. . . . even our government will become precarious.”5 The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, the ‹rst federal efforts at central immigration control, sought to exclude both revolutionaries and royalists ›eeing to the United States (and tilting the balance of the national political parties). At midcentury, the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party had gained enormous popular support, while nativist organizations rose to prominence with the waves of anti-Catholic and antiradical hysteria. By the late 1800s, they gave way to groups seeking to de‹ne in positive terms what it meant to be a “native American.”6 The Statue of Liberty, the country’s most famous symbol of its openness, was dedicated in 1886, ironically ending the long era of American consensus on immigration’s bene‹ts. America’s ‹rst codi‹cation of immigration policy—the Quota Acts— had its roots in the very late years of the nineteenth century. America had changed economically. Industrialism had altered its work-force requirements, and cycles of industrial depression and panic in 1870, 1907, and, later, in 1921 led many to conclude that the days of plenty had ended; immigrants could only displace Americans. New ideas also wielded a great deal of in›uence. Eugenics and vulgar Darwinism were in vogue, as were new ideas of hygiene and public health. Everywhere people saw scarcity and attendant con›ict. Contemporary events, both domestic and foreign, also in›uenced how people viewed problems and strategies for change. Of most importance, the Chinese Exclusion Acts of 1882 and 1892, sponsored by California’s nativist representatives, brought categorical exclusion into policy for the ‹rst time, while the Spanish-American War, whose result included colonial possessions, prompted a debate over America’s role in the world and potential status as a great imperial power.7 Although the country was becoming isolationist, pan-Americanism infused U.S. policy toward the Western Hemisphere. Meanwhile, congressional jurisdictional ‹ghts with the executive branch led a large faction in Congress to assert

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the fundamentally domestic nature of any topic that Congress (especially the House of Representatives, which lacked authority over treaties) wished to control. In this setting, Congress established the Immigration Commission, usually known as the Dillingham Commission after its chair, to survey the status of laws relating to immigration and to recommend changes. Its forty-two-volume report had two impacts. First, it framed the debate. Its characterization of recent immigrants as poor, illiterate, and racially distinct, in contrast to the “old” immigrants who were entrepreneurs and educated, religious refugees, made exclusion politically possible by salvaging the country’s immigrant past. Second, it did all of the groundwork for a streamlined, comprehensive policy. The ‹rst immigration act, passed in 1917, codi‹ed existing law into a single, omnibus package. Its two signi‹cant innovations were its incorporation of a literacy test, designed to exclude those who were not substantially literate in any language, and its delineation of a single geographic zone, covering most of Asia, from which nonwhite immigration was barred. The literacy test and the Asian barred zone, like the old/new distinction earlier, signaled a massive change in the way people thought about immigration restriction. Debate on this provision foreshadowed that to come with the Quota Acts.

Early Debates

Previously, numerical restrictions on Europeans had been the side effect of policies designed to exclude individuals on the basis of their (presumed) lack of personal merit. Laws barred prostitutes, paupers, vagrants and vagabonds, criminals and polygamists from entry. Literacy, too, was an individual-level restriction and so could be said to be based on a person’s capabilities and acts rather than on his or her ascriptive characteristics. John Burnett argued that the literacy test would select the best people, while ceilings based on country of origin would only cull those “most loosely tied” to their homelands.8 The test’s real purpose, however, was clearly to exclude “undesirables” emigrating from southeast Europe; the test’s proponents did not bother to pretend otherwise. Restrictionists’ two goals were to reduce immigration’s volume and to redirect its sources to draw almost entirely from northwestern Europe wherein lived “Nordics.” Representative Dillingham stated bluntly: We took the nations from which this immigration came so largely, the eastern and southern nations of Europe, and ascertained what the literacy percentage was among the people of those nations. We saw at once that if we adopted the educational test, it would substantially

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decrease the volume of that stream 30 percent, which was just about what we wanted to accomplish. On the other hand, the educational test would in no way affect England or Scotland or Ireland or the Scandinavian countries or Germany or France.9 The literacy test’s proponents, mainly members of Congress from everywhere but the East Coast and urban centers, were not committed to immigrant education; rather, they wanted the test as a covert means of numerical and racial restriction. Illiteracy, to them, stood as an administratively convenient way to mark racial undesirables. Fairness was not the issue. Social survival was. “No where else is there a better illustration of the axiom that the individual must often suffer that the community may benefit; that there must be temporary individual inconvenience in favor of the general permanent convenience.”10 Its opposition, the executive branch, urban Democrats, and ethnic and religious societies, focused their objections not on the bill’s real purpose, numerical restriction, but on its expressed content, a ban on illiterates. Their objections, therefore, centered on its unfairness to individuals and its damage to how others would see the country: the test did not capture what it claimed, it was unworthy of the country’s past, and its effects would contradict foreign policy goals. Every president from Grover Cleveland to Woodrow Wilson who had a chance vetoed this bill on the grounds that illiteracy did not indicate lack of individual merit.11 Cleveland pointed out that “violence and disorder do not originate with illiterate laborers. They are rather the victims of the educated agitator.”12 Wilson vetoed the measure repeatedly, denouncing it as a test of opportunity rather than of character:13 “A literacy test is not only undesirable, but is unfair, unreasonable, and un-American and violates our time-honored principles that this country shall be a refuge for the oppressed of other lands, an asylum where the persecuted may come and worship their God.”14 “A literacy test,” argued others, “provides for an aristocracy of immigrants, and is therefore discriminatory and un-American.”15 Liberal principle could not stretch as far as the literacy test demanded. Neither could anyone charged with handling the country’s foreign affairs face the charge of hypocrisy. The bill “proposes to reverse the order of history and tradition, destroy the universal belief in America as a haven for the oppressed or those seeking relief from persecution of political or religious views by writing over the portals the inscription, ‘all hope abandon, ye who cannot read.’ (Applause).”16 George Kennan argued that the literacy test “will be even more effective than the existing extradition treaty in enabling the Russian Government to lay its hands on Russian revolutionists who come to us for protection from tyranny.”17 Representatives pointed out that its results would contradict other American foreign poli-

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cies. “The Armenians, amongst whom there has been a massacre in the last eight months unparalleled in civilization . . . are to a large extent illiterate, and the survivor of a butchered Armenian family attempting to come to this country, where he or she would be cared for, would be barred out of it, because under Turkish misrule education has been denied.”18 While restrictionists used the language of competitive interest, drawing on images of self-preservation, and used the language of community instead of that of the individual, their opposition concentrated on principle, drawing on images of niceness. The sides talked past each other. Later debate largely echoed this dynamic. Restrictionists and liberals on the question of Asian immigration did not talk past each other; instead, they fought a head-on war of attrition that the restrictionists won. Congress had renewed the Chinese Exclusion Acts, then had banned Hindus and “oriental coolie labor” in separate acts. The Japanese alone had the dubious privilege of restricting emigration themselves, so that the embarrassment of their exclusion could be avoided. By 1917, all that was required for a comprehensive ban on Asians was to extend the ban outright to the Japanese and to codify all of the laws into a single package.19 The Asian Barred Zone had history, ef‹ciency, and popularity to recommend it. Its opponents concentrated on racial discrimination’s inequity. It is probably fair to say that they convinced none but the already converted. The Barred Zone then became the precedent used to restrict other groups by outlining geographical regions and setting targets for each sector, accomplished later during the Quota Acts. Restrictionist discussions such as these occupied, but did not dominate, the public agenda. Then came World War I. The prevailing image of the international environment as one of violent competition crystallized during World War I. Following the war, many claimed: There has never been a time when we could so well afford to ignore the rest of the world and devote ourselves to building up our own character and independence. . . . The world is in turmoil, and no one can foresee the conditions which will follow the treaty of peace. . . . It will not be a safe or fruitful time to preach or practice world philanthropy when all other nations are battling vehemently for their own interests. Why should we not then study our own interests, set our house in order, raise our standards of civilization, and for a period admit no dilution and cultivate a devotion to our own country?20 This world was cutthroat. “Nations and races have struggled for a place in which to exist and enlarge since before the years covered by human history. We are trying to maintain a place here for us and our children to

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which the crowded-out, hungry, unhappy millions of the Old World are struggling to come.”21 It was also zero-sum. “I am convinced that what is for the best interest of the United States on this immigration question may be diametrically opposed to the sel‹sh interest of other countries.”22 That war and its aftermath shaped America’s understanding of what sovereignty meant and what immigration restriction meant.23 The country’s new perception of itself as a creature struggling actively for self-preservation in a hostile, competitive world was only reinforced by its experience during World War I.

Arguments about Immigrants On the one hand, you will be told that the basic foundation of Government is practically lodged in four Hebrew words used by the Israelite in his Passover Services, meaning “all who are hungry may come and eat,” and that notwithstanding this ultra wide liberality, the country has grown from 4,000,000 to 110,000,000 population and has become the strongest Nation on the face of the globe. On the other hand, you will be told that all of this may have been true at one time, but now that we have more than 100,000,000 people of our own, we should keep our country to ourselves, for our own native population. Between these two extremes, you will ‹nd almost as many differences of opinion as Mr. Bok has found plans how to prevent war. —Abe Spring24

From 1890 to 1930, debate about immigration concentrated on four broad topics: restriction as a principle of policy, numerical restriction, the restriction of various subgroups, and, ‹nally, the policy intended as a compromise between the “fors” and the “againsts,” the national origins quota system.25 The following section traces arguments about immigration restriction in principle. At issue here are what reasons the policies’ proponents gave for championing them. The process of debating eventually created a consensus on how to describe immigration’s most important issues. This was not the result merely of one side dominating the other, nor was it a matter of compromise on negotiable points. Rather, the ‹nal consensus was new; it re›ected a social interpretation of the country’s goals that was created by the debate. Many in Congress, and many members of the public, saw the country’s recent involvement with Europe and its problems as an ominous sign

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of troubles to come. Immigration from Europe had doubled in a decade, the consequence of changes in passenger shipping and the mail as well as industrial and national upheavals. Global markets’ integration also posed a serious problem. “The time was when the Paci‹c Ocean was a barrier, in a sense a protection,” mourned one. “It is now an avenue of approach.”26 Its solution was not easy. On one hand, the country had a history of immigration; on the other, it feared new immigrants. On one hand, a capitalist country supported trade; on the other hand, an independent country wanted to remain that way. Many believed that prosperity and survival might, tragically, be incompatible; money could only be made at the cost of autonomy—which is exactly what immigration signaled. If that were the choice, legislators declared, their decision was clear. “It is better to have a shortage of labor, if needs be, in our mines and manufactories rather than have that people come in who are not in accord with our ideas and ideals. As some one has said, ‘Better smokeless chimneys than a degenerate people.’”27 Free trade and unrestricted immigration meant giving up control over borders. If self-abnegation were the price, the country would forgo both prosperity and goodwill. Certainly, as a general proposition, increased national production is of vital importance to the whole country, and increased production is of vital importance to your own district. But if increased production of goods could only be secured by reduction of Americanism, by lowering our standards of living, by replacing the English language with a medley of other tongues, by substituting for American communities polyglot colonies where our Constitution and laws are neither respected nor understood, by changing the character of our race— then production is bought at too great a cost. When the cost is in dollars and cents we feel it, but, after all, we can pay it. The other cost we could not pay, for in paying it the American Nation would lose its soul.28 Immigration restriction, declared Samuel Shortridge, might interfere with trade, “but if it did interfere with trade, let it be so. I put man above trade. I put the men and women of America above coupons or bonds. I put the permanent welfare of my country above the temporary pro‹ts of commerce.”29 Added another, “I would rather see American citizenship re‹ned to the last degree in all that makes America what we hope it will be than to develop the resources of America at the expenses of the citizenship of our country.”30 Interdependence not only was a threat to autonomy from other coun-

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tries, but it also promised social upheaval. “The theory that America is a melting pot becomes absurd in a time when population rolls hither and thither about the globe like particles of quicksilver.” Thomas Busby blamed lagging assimilation and “IWW-ism” on interdependence. Immigrants used to “burn bridges,” he said, because they had no choice. Modern telegraph and radio, fast mails and steamship travel meant that they no longer had to.31 “Wealth has accumulated under the stimulus of oriental labor, but if you go out there now and look for American communities, you will see wasted homes and dismantled dwellings—Wealth accumulates and men decay.”32 One asked, “Is it better to insure perpetuity of our institutions or to have laborers? Which is foremost in your mind—need for laborers, or to save the United States?”33 Another representative answered (if an answer was needed): “By our tariff laws we could preserve and assure to ourselves our own markets, even if we had to surrender our other markets to cheap labor. It is more important to me to Americanize and spiritualize our own population than to extract wealth from other nations.”34 For this reason, the restrictive law “was considered by practically all as a primary step in our after-war reconstruction program.”35 International involvement of any sort would destroy the country. Interdependence speci‹cally threatened sovereignty. At the turn of the twentieth century, the American public viewed the international environment—which meant, in essence, Europe—as hostile but actively dangerous only if engaged on purpose as in the Spanish-American War.36 The danger Europe threatened was that of territorial conquest; Americans did not simply fear competition, they feared conquest and the end of their civilization. What was at risk were the country’s borders, its integrity. What was to be defended was, therefore, its sovereignty. And virtually every legislator speaking for immigration restrictions chose at some point to base his appeal explicitly on American sovereignty. These arguments focused on principle. Sovereignty, in this view, was absolute and basic. If outsiders could claim anything at all, especially the right to enter, the country would no longer be sovereign. Exclusion was, therefore, a sine qua non of sovereignty. Declared legislators again, and again . . . and again: “I would not debate the right of our Nation to exclude immigration. That is the inherent right of every nation, even the weakest on this globe.”37 The U.S. Supreme Court ‹rst articulated this absolutist view of sovereignty in relation to immigrants, and it is this view that is most often quoted and paraphrased by the legislators. When they upheld the exclusion of a twenty‹ve-year-old Japanese woman married to a U.S. citizen, the justices did not argue for exclusion in terms of anything that she had herself done, nor

40


did they argue in terms of a public interest, such as wages or public health, or even a national interest, such as defense. Instead, they invoked “sovereignty,” the broadest possible principle. It is an accepted maxim of International Law, that every sovereign nation has the power as inherent in sovereignty, and essential to selfpreservation, to forbid the entrance of foreigners within its dominions, or to admit them only in such cases and upon such conditions as it may see ‹t to prescribe. In the United States, this power is vested in the government to which the Constitution has committed the entire control of international relations, in peace as well as in war. It belongs to the political department of the government, and may be exercised either through treaties made by the President and Senate or through statutes enacted by Congress.38 That the right was inherent meant to the Court that the government’s authority was absolute; that the procedures involved were those of foreign policy meant that the executive and legislature, not the judiciary, controlled admission. The judiciary ruled that nothing Congress did in this entire area of law could ever be unconstitutional; it was unchallengeable. Congress took the leeway that the Supreme Court granted it. Senators and representatives stressed that their right to exclude immigrants was basic and constitutive, and contended that all arguments in favor of allowing, through a standing law, any immigration signaled a willingness to betray the country. This they applied only to immigrants; that is, not to travelers (though to do so was their privilege) but to those who would become citizens.39 Representatives echoed the Court time after time. “In the exercise of our inherent powers of sovereignty we have the undoubted right to prohibit the entrance of any or all immigrants or prescribe the conditions under which they may enter. We also have the undoubted right to expel and deport those who are found undesirable.”40 Congressional discretion meant that “no foreigner or foreign nation has any right in this country except what we give him. It is a matter of privilege and not a matter of right.”41 John Miller of Washington elaborated this theme. The ‹rst and highest exercise of the inherent power of a sovereign state is the right of determination of citizenship. Dependent upon this national attribute is the equal sovereign right of the independent State to say under what condition and in what manner and to what extent nationals of other countries may come and remain and their civil status. These principles are basic. They are powers exercised by nations since national organizations have been known and recognized among

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the family of mankind. There are theorists, sensationalists, moralists, and romancers who argue patiently, sometimes persuasively, against this national prerogative, calling it by the mild and inoffensive name of ‘policy,’ but none can dispute the principle. National right is one thing; it is fundamental, inherent, and permanent; national policy is quite another. In its broad sense it is the conduct or manner in which the national right is exercised.42 Now, the dignity and honor and stability of our country demand that all other nations of the earth abide by our sovereignty as a Nation.43 In this way, legislators served notice that compromise with the demands or wishes of foreigners, whether presented by a foreign government or by U.S. citizens, was simply impossible—and was impossible in principle, for it meant self-abnegation. Henry Cabot Lodge declared that the question of immigration “is perhaps the greater of fundamental sovereign rights. If a country can not say who shall come into the country, it has ceased to be a sovereign country; it has become a subject country.”44 Sovereignty under siege required defense, and restrictionists viewed their efforts to exclude immigrants as one component of the national defense. “The struggle for self-preservation is not, as many appear to believe, con‹ned to aliens seeking to enter the country, nor to aliens who, having gained lodgement by unfair means, resist all efforts to dislodge them, but is shared by Americans and aliens alike who have a right to be and remain here in unimpaired enjoyment of the blessings which this country has to offer.”45 If immigration continued, the country would cease to be, for its borders would be meaningless and its identity no longer unique: “Our immigration laws are designed primarily for the welfare not only of our citizens but of those aliens who have lawfully taken up residence in our midst. Just as self-preservation is the ‹rst law of nature amongst individuals, so it is amongst nations. Our ‹rst concern, therefore, must be for those who are here; in short, for our own country.”46 The Supreme Court found that To preserve its independence, and give security against foreign aggression and encroachment, is the highest duty of every nation; and to obtain these ends nearly all other considerations are to be subordinated. It matters not in what form such aggression and encroachment come, whether from the foreign nation acting in its national character (as in time of war) or from vast hordes of its people coming in upon us.47

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Representatives reiterated this year after year, and the theme never varied. “Self-preservation is the ‹rst law of nature, and if we are to be a distinctive nation, as we always have been, we must act today, now, and not in the years that are to come”;48 “when it [a country] surrenders its will in this respect [immigration control] to the will of some other people or nation or any group of peoples or nations it surrenders its life”;49 “indeed, the right of a nation to perpetuate its existence presupposes the right of that nation to say what foreign peoples shall come into its territory and what shall not.”50 The struggle was the survival of the ‹ttest; selective immigration meant that “the weaklings are weeded out abroad.”51 Each of these statements drew upon the idea that the country could not accomplish anything if immigrants continued to come because it would cease to be a country. The process of immigration was a process of erosion, against which defense was required. Protection sometimes replaced “self-preservation,” although what threat policy was supposed to protect against was unclear. Generally, the implied threat was destruction in the web of foreign entanglements; protection, as a value, applied generally to the country, not only to immigration but to trade and defense as well. “I will say to you,” declared Representative Focht, “that I am a Republican protectionist, a real protectionist. I am not only for a tariff, but I am in favor of protecting American industry and American labor.”52 Europe, generally, was the threat’s source: “It is obligatory for every generation, and particularly upon this, in view of the tremendous conditions prevailing in Europe, to protect the citizenship of this country, to keep up the average standard of citizenship, that this great Republic of ours may rest in safety.”53 Immigrants were like guns or goods. “We exclude defective seeds, defective cattle, and horses, and will not permit shrubbery and other inanimate life to be imported. Can it be that this and future generations of Americans are less important?”54 Consequences of the failure to protect were no clearer than was the threat. “Either America is to be ruled by Americans, or it is to become the stamping ground of cheap labor, alienism, internationalism, and hyphenism.”55 The extent, as well as the depth, of protective policies enacted during this Republican period mark it as isolationist. The country shunned alliances, rejected the League of Nations, restricted immigration, and imposed tariff walls. Congress saw these as mutually reinforcing. Not only did the federal government have ‹nal say over immigration, in its view it had the only say: sovereignty meant authority not only complete and absolute, but indivisible and unquestioned as well. John Works denounced those who would restrict immigration rather than eliminate it altogether, arguing, “We boast lustily of our independence and American-

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ism and then propose to surrender to another nation the right to determine who shall come to this country and make their homes here.”56 All agreed that “control over immigration should not, must not, be dependent even in the slightest degree upon the wish or desire of another country.”57 Setting into law annual quotas as maxima was, to many representatives, the same as giving countries minima, which was to surrender control. “I do not,” said Riley Wilson, “like to assent even temporarily to the proposition that any foreign nation shall be given the right and privilege of having admitted to this country any ‹xed number of its population during any prescribed period.”58 To give up this right now was to undermine the country’s recent moves toward isolation. “It must be remembered that one of the most important reasons for the rejection of the Covenant of the League of Nations was the fear that the League would arrogate to itself a measure of control over immigration.”59 If either refugee admissions or country quotas were established, “it would mean that any foreign country could force a minority group upon us that they did not happen to like by persecuting or mistreating them.”60 Restrictionists additionally agreed that passports, opinions about American immigration policy expressed by any noncitizen, and foreign governments’ emigration controls also infringed on U.S. sovereignty; giving in to them would destroy it. Voices other than American legislators’, especially opposing voices, and particularly foreign voices in opposition, outraged legislators and the enforcement bureaucracy, who hoped that “the astonishing protests of other governments demanding the right that they may recuperate at the expense of the people of the United States . . . should result very soon in the passage of an immigration restriction bill that will really restrict.”61 In addition, “no Government and no group in or out of America has the right to question the exercise of America’s discretion in making such a [selective] choice (Applause).”62 Many argued that foreign government regulation of emigration violated U.S. sovereignty. “Foreign countries are to-day dictating the class of immigrants that the United States must accept.”63 Passports themselves infringed on U.S. sovereignty because they were issued at the home government’s discretion; “foreign governments choose for us our immigrants in the ‹rst instance, because no citizen or subject of a country can become an immigrant unless he receives from his government a passport.”64 Sovereignty was, of course, at stake: “It is not the province of those in foreign lands to say what quota each race or group shall have. To grant this privilege is to abandon our sovereignty.”65 Or, “in other words,” as said Representative Mason, “the King of the other country determines for us who is allowed to come here.”66

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Any effort to bargain with foreign powers about foreign inspection and selection, if inaugurated, would at once place them in a position to claim a voice in the making of our immigration regulations. . . . The permanent loss of that right would be an irreparable calamity to America. . . . We will thereby become helpless to prevent their hungry and wretched millions from coming to America at will. Our complete and overwhelming ruin would follow inevitably and soon.67 Still bothering legislators and, especially, the Commissioner-General of Immigration, was that fact that the United States could not go to Europe and pick the best to become citizens. Instead, it had to wait for people to choose it, which meant that other countries’ sovereignty got in the way of the United States having a truly selective immigration policy.68 As a compromise, though, the legislators noti‹ed the public not only that foreign interests would not be incorporated into policy, but that they would not even be heard. Citizens expressing views that took foreign governments’ interests into account or that even coincidentally agreed with them also sought to undermine the country’s sovereignty. “It makes no difference whether an attempt is made to decide American questions for foreign reasons in mass meetings, in the press, or at the ballot box. The man who attempts to shape American questions to foreign standards and to settle them upon the basis of bene‹cial results to some foreign country can not be a good American citizen.”69 “America must be kept American,” said Calvin Coolidge in a message to Congress.70 Legislators who could not quite agree that the United States ought to be the sole object of their attention could at least agree that it came ‹rst. “We have got to keep what we have for ourselves and restrict that immigration that wishes to come to our borders.”71 “He that provideth not for his own household is worse than an in‹del, and what shall it pro‹t America if she shall afford asylum to all the earth and lose her own soul (Applause)?”72 “America ‹rst” punctuated speeches against taking others’ interests into account—even as a prudential measure—and proclaimed American independence, political maturity, and power. “I think, Mr. President, it is more important that this country should be relieved from having an onrush of immigration than it is for us to be so very careful in regard to whether or not we will offend other nations upon this question. . . . America ‹rst.”73 Refusing to hear others signaled power, the ability to exercise sovereign prerogatives. Weak powers kowtowed to others, but strong powers need not pay attention; therefore, the reasoning went, the country ought to refuse to take others into account as a way to

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signal its strength. Listening to others showed weakness and invited attempts to violate one’s sovereignty, to turn a country into a vassal state.

Absolute Sovereignty and Foreign Governments: The Example of Japan

Congress defended this absolute authority against two foes, foreign governments and the executive branch. The two, to the congressional mind, were closely intertwined. The lightning rod in Congress’s struggle to establish itself as the keeper of American sovereignty was the Gentlemen’s Agreement between the United States and Japan, which consisted of an understanding between the two foreign secretaries, established through correspondence in 1908 but never formalized, that Japan would “voluntarily” limit emigration to the United States, keeping it below the point at which Charles Evans Hughes, the secretary of state, felt that American anti-Asian racism would become activated.74 The voluntary and unwritten nature of this agreement was meant to save both countries the embarrassment of statutes banning Japanese immigration while allowing immigration from European countries. The two countries’ executive branches were then attempting to accommodate each other diplomatically, to negotiate terms to regulate their common presence and rivalry in the Paci‹c. But both houses of Congress found outrageous the means by which this accommodation was achieved. Japan objected not to its exclusion, but to what it rightly perceived to be racial discrimination. Even supporters of Japanese exclusion noted that “we all know what the purpose of this clause is, although not disclosed on its face. . . . I suppose it does not make any change in actual name whether you say Hindus and persons who cannot become citizens [but] to combine them takes away a lot of the bitterness.”75 In an effort to defeat the provision banning Japanese, the Japanese government subsidized English-language newspapers to be distributed in the United States, each containing testimonials from Japanese and American citizens. Ambassador Hanihara wrote to Secretary Hughes at Hughes’s request, pointing out the “grave consequences” of damage to U.S.-Japanese relations should the antiJapanese provision be incorporated into law. Congress interpreted this not only as a veiled threat, but as an effort to infringe American sovereignty, and erupted. Our form of government is known to other nations. . . . They know that every independent nation has the right to admit or exclude

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whomsoever it wishes to admit or exclude. These are universally acknowledged rights of independent sovereign nations. . . . Who comes forward here now to object to this Nation exercising its universally acknowledged sovereign right and power? Who is it that intrudes into our councils? Who is it that insolently and impertinently demands that we abdicate, that we surrender our very independence of action as an independent Nation? Who is it that does this thing? The Senate knows; the country knows; it is Japan, whom we have befriended.76 William Borah was another among many constructing his argument from the same materials. It is dif‹cult for me to see how one nation can object to another nation determining who shall come to its borders to become citizens or inhabitants. It is one of the most fundamental things for which a nation contends; and the very fact that they assume to say that this Government shall not exercise the most fundamental right of sovereignty known to government itself is far more extraordinary than anything that we may do toward excluding them.77 The U.S. government shunned Japan, making it a pariah. The relationship was so damaged that many predicted the rise of anti-American militarism in Japan.78 In a similar vein, Italy protested, and Romania expressed its “painful surprise” and “disappointment” at the drastic reduction in the Romanian quota, noting in passing that halting remittances from workers back to Romania would slow the postwar economic recovery that America had pledged to assist.79 Again, Congress treated the foreign objection with outrage. Albert Johnson, head of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, said that “these astonishing protests of other governments demanding the right that they may recuperate at the expense of the people of the United States, together with the impudent threat of alien blocs here, should result very soon in the passage of an immigration restriction bill that will really restrict (Applause).”80 Once Italy, Romania, and Japan voiced objections, that fact alone became suf‹cient reason to exclude their nationals. The United States was not going to allow anyone to tell it what to do. John Phelan stated this position most bluntly when he argued, “A man who is able to enforce his will is much better entitled to a hearing in the court of nations than a man who is impotent and powerless, as the American people to a great extent believed themselves to be noncombatant before we demonstrated to the world our extraordinary ability in men and resources

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to ‹ght battles.”81 Later, when considering provisions that would give preference to British immigrants, German ethnics hit back using this same logic. They accused Congress of “trying to Anglicize America. You would ‹nally turn this country over to be a colony of Great Britain.”82 Foreign interest in American immigration policy meant to Congress foreign usurpation of American autonomy.

Absolute Sovereignty and Domestic Politics: Congress and the Executive

Congress fought many of its battles closer to home, with the executive branch. The rights “to regulate commerce with foreign nations” and to establish “a uniform rule of naturalization,” the Supreme Court reasoned, together implied a congressional right to control immigration. On the other hand, immigration was a matter of foreign relations, involving sovereignty, and so might belong to the executive branch. This indeterminacy haunted immigration battles. Through treaties, the executive had sought to regularize relations with other countries. John Box, an opponent of the executive branch, noted that “The President’s constant contact with delicate and dif‹cult questions of our foreign relations and the necessity of maintaining cordial diplomatic relations with other countries expose him and his advisors and agencies to the constant tendency toward too great liberality in immigration regulations.”83 Treaties of friendship and cooperation often expressly protected commerce and outlined reciprocal privileges of nationals, such as the right of each to travel and to own property in the other’s territory. Such had been true of the 1868 Burlingame Treaty between the United States and China, and such was true of the Gentlemen’s Agreement between the United States and Japan. But Congress abrogated the ‹rst in 1882, when it passed the ‹rst of the Chinese Exclusion Acts; it went on to abrogate the second in the Quota Acts. “Treaties . . . could only be made upon such conditions as were satisfactory to foreign Governments, so that the whole system of immigration control would pass to the treatymaking power. . . . Immigration regulation would pass to the President.”84 Congress painted the executive branch either as merely unconnected with the people or as positively in service of foreign governments and internationalist business agents. Just now there is a hidden, sinister plan to “dig under:” it is hoped, by a system of mining and sapping, to divert the control of this important question, this question of life and death, from the Halls of Con-

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gress elected by the people, and place it in the secret chambers of the treaty-making power, over which the will of the people has much less direct and effective control, and with the Shipping Board and steamship companies, whose only interest is to make money by bringing millions from the Old World to America.85 The executive branch was, to the congressional mind, in direct service of foreign governments as well as of black marketeers. In fact, legislators (even legislators of the same party as the executive) viewed the executive as representing foreign interests in the United States. “In the case of a treaty you have the Executive . . . meeting the chancelleries of the world and agreeing to let their surplus population come and stay here. Under such a system you, my colleagues, and your people at home are to be silent and helpless.”86 Like foreign lobbyists or ambassadors, the executive staff sought primarily to promote foreign interests and to encourage foreign demands on the American people. Therefore, “if we allow our country’s diplomats to determine who shall come into our country, every other country will demand the same right later on.”87 The executive branch not only acted in preference of foreign peoples, but ceded authority to them. For this reason, although “immigration may be regulated by treaty or by law, [legislators] prefer the latter, as the law may be altered at any time to suit the needs of this Nation without the consent of the other country.”88 Its plenary status arose from the fact of sovereignty. As a way to capture control and to highlight its differences with the executive branch, Congress chose to insist that immigration was not in fact foreign, but domestic, domestic meaning nonnegotiable and under congressional control, foreign meaning subject to the approval of other countries. “Immigration and naturalization are domestic questions, and no people can come to the United States except upon our own terms.”89 Actually, the House of Representatives declared immigration policy domestic; the Senate believed it to be foreign—because the Senate had authority over foreign policy matters. Senators declared themselves “tired of Executive control not only of domestic questions but of foreign questions de‹ning the foreign policy of America. America’s foreign policy is determined by treaties rati‹ed by the Senate and not by mutual understandings of our Secretary of State and the secretary of foreign affairs of some other country.”90 But whether the policy was called foreign or domestic, it was up to the Congress, not the executive, to shape. Congress had the national interest at heart. “The very fact that this country freed itself from foreign entanglements, declaring its independence, proves very clearly that the United States of America was from its very inception destined to be the one Nation in the world free from the dominating and contumacious

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in›uences of the ever narrow and greedy European rulers or those who would seek to propagate their doctrines.”91 Which enemy was worse, foreign governments or the executive branch, is never clear in the record. Both wanted to curtail Congress’s right to exclude at whim. As it was, congressional authority was unchallengeable. “If we were inclined to be so arbitrary,” one legislator pointed out, “we would be well within our rights to decide that no immigrant should be admitted unless he was 6 feet 2 inches tall and had red hair.”92 Congress could recognize legislation as unfair but ‹nd it necessary: “If it takes arbitrary, discriminatory, or even despotic legislation to protect America and American institutions, in the name of God, let us have them! (Applause).”93 This right was expressed most concisely by Raker: “If we have a right to write a law to exclude people, we can write any law we want.”94

Conclusion

Recent involvement with Europe, both indirect through trade and direct through immigration and the war, prompted legislative action. Those who supported restriction in principle valued sovereign autonomy over all else. They advocated restrictive measures to preserve and protect the country’s very being against foreign governments and the executive branch, which served foreign governments. Those who opposed restriction often used the same reasons the restrictionists gave. Interdependence was one example of such dual usage. International ties affected the liberals’ arguments as much as they did the restrictionists’ views. Whereas the restrictionists drew from recent increases in immigration and trade, and from the war experience, the lesson that Europe and Europeans were dangerous, liberals drew positive conclusions about human interdependence. Migration was natural. One representative observed, rather mystically, that “movement . . . is life.”95 In debate, the presumption should be in favor of the immigrant; human ties transcend sovereign dictates. “You have a right to declare war against all immigrants; in fact, Congress has the right to do almost anything it desires. But is it fair, is it American, to exercise a power merely because you have it?”96 Movement and the connections it created were also facts of the modern age. To reject migration was to reject modernity. Said Sidney Gulick, “It seems to me, in view of the world situation, in which oceans have become rivers and steamships have become bridges, we can not set up an absolute, ›at policy of complete exclusion of any particular people.”97 Progress, in fact, depended not on isolation but on openness and encour-

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agement of innovation. Turning around the restrictionists’ apocalyptic scenarios, James Gallivan remarked, “Let us not forget that history writes in large letters that the beginning of the decline and decadence of a nation starts when the bars are set against alien blood, and a doctrine of ‘self-centered complacency’ is established.”98 Whereas restrictionists learned from the war that ties among countries created avenues for harm, their opponents believed that borders created harm. Ties among people, if nurtured, could only lead to peace. This view rested on the notion of a fundamentally similar human race, arbitrarily divided into sovereign blocs. Sovereignty was not their friend. Restrictionists’ arguments centered on sovereign self-preservation. The arguments opposed, in principle, to restriction subtly challenged the assumption that borders de‹ned the limits of people’s obligations to each other. “I protest,” declared Walter Chandler, “against this outrage upon the elementary rights of human beings to live somewhere upon the earth in liberty, peace, and happiness.”99 Their advocates tended to be universalists, believing in the essential oneness of the “family of man,” or to adhere to what would later be known as a Rawlsian position. “I have always,” said Representative Hardy, “felt sympathy for the underdog, and tried to look at things from his eyes, to put myself in his place, to weigh justice and right with his scales.”100 Most objected to the arbitrariness of the quotas’ basis: birthplace. To the liberal mind, discrimination based on some chance circumstance not under any person’s control was irrational and unfair, hence loathsome. “All of the intelligence and all of the culture and all of the patriotism of the world is not gathered within the puny temples of our brains.”101 To underline their point, liberals (who, in this context, were those merely wishing to maintain the status quo) pointed to worthy heroes of Western history who had migrated and had certainly not been born in the United States. Representatives pointed out that “our ancestors came here from somewhere, and of course lots of good men are not born in this country. Jesus Christ, for instance.”102 Romulus and Remus founded Rome; Abraham was called from Ur.103 If the proposed restriction passed, “if a Moses attempted to come in, all his prescience and Godgiven prophecy would avail him nothing if there had already preceded him from the Nile to America 18 Egyptians.”104 Only one-third of the senators’, not to mention the Supreme Court justices’ and presidents’, names could be found on May›ower records.105 Harkening back to the recent war, one congressman “thought what a travesty on American ideals it would be if in passing this bill we would prevent coming to America the unknown mother of our revered unknown soldier.”106 Louis Marshall, then representing a Jewish organization, summed up this ethical stance.

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Nothing could be more arbitrary than such a regulation [as the quota law]. Our immigration laws would be based on a mere accident, not on the physical, moral, or intellectual qualities of him or her who now seeks admission but on the circumstance that others of the same nationality have in the past come in large or small numbers . . . whether such immigrants were individually good, bad, or indifferent.107 The Declaration of Independence “deduced the right to equality before the law, the right to participate in civil government, not from the accident of birth or condition, nor yet from race or color, but from the fact of manhood alone (Applause).”108 Acting against principle would poison the United States. “The person who attempts to raise religious and racial prejudice is unworthy of American citizenship. We are in grave danger of losing our sense of fair play and treating men according to their real worth.”109 Birthplace was arbitrary; discrimination based on arbitrary features was anathema to enlightened people. Selection based on birthplace was, therefore, unenlightened, illiberal, and un-American. Many saw in the restriction proposals a more nefarious discrimination than that based simply on birthplace. Birthplace was arbitrary, but it was also, in principle, random and applied equally to all non-Americans. But place of birth was chosen not only because it was administratively convenient but also because it stood for groups racially or politically distinctive. Sidney Gulick pointed out that if the legislators were sincerely concerned with reducing numbers while assuring a higher class of immigrant, they would have raised standards for individuals instead of excluded racial blocs; after all, he argued, this would have reduced the chance of Bolshevism and eliminated foreign policy problems. Race must, he reasoned, be the real focus of the legislators’ animosity.110 Quotas, in this view, were simple bigotry. “It is the narrowest policy that ever cursed the soul of man. It is the policy of the gentleman who says, ‘I am the elect of God. . . . This is a bill of proscription. . . . It belongs to the time of the rack and thumbscrew, when the argument was the scaffold and when philosophy found expression in the touch of persecution.”111 Others continued. The bill was “a monstrosity, the result of ignorance, of prejudice, of sectionalism, of that narrow sel‹shness which robs one of his sympathy for his fellow man.”112 Bigotry was an easy target for sarcasm. “Just now we hear nothing but hatred, nothing but the ravings of the exaggerated I—‘I am of the best stock; I do not want to be contaminated; I have produced the greatest literature; my intellect is the biggest; my heart is the noblest.’—and this is repeated in every parliament, in every country, by

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every fool all over the world.”113 No person, let alone any country, should view others in this way. Expounding racial criteria in immigration policy was expected to create practical problems as well as those of principle. Such rules would offend American citizens who were told that people of their type were undesirable.114 Recent immigrants were full of hope and beginning to assimilate when they would be told that the country needed far fewer of their type. Discriminatory laws would demoralize new immigrants.115 Discrimination would also encourage sectional bigotry, as it labeled in law different population subclasses. The law would destroy that which it was attempting to protect: American unity. Some went further. Not only were birthplace quotas arbitrary and unfair, but they were hypocritical. “Once we get in we close the gates behind us and keep out the struggling immigrant who springs from the same ancestors as we do.”116 The legislator who stated this position most clearly ultimately rejected it, considering it (as did others in favor of restriction) emotional rather than rational. If I were to follow the dictates of sentiment and of humanitarian considerations, I would vote for an open door, because our forefathers, yours and mine, came here and enjoyed all these blessings, material and political, such as no other nation on earth affords. Then after we have come in and enjoyed these things we shut the door and shut out all others, who in a moral and ethical way, it seems to me, have as much right as we have. Yet I know that we can not consult our hearts only, but that we must consult our reason as well, and that tells me that there must be a restriction.117 Because, the reasoning went, Americans had applied one standard to themselves, they could not apply another to those whom chance had settled differently. If people could not be convinced that discrimination was always, or inherently, bad, perhaps they could be convinced that it was unnecessary or unworthy or imprudent. It was unnecessary because the United States could afford to bear the burdens that immigrants asked of it. “The Great War fell like a blight, like a curse upon the earth. Thrones were overturned, nations vanished, emperors and czars were executed and exiled. . . . Our casualties were few compared with the frightful losses of the combatants of other countries. We are to-day the wealthiest and happiest people of the world”; hence, refusing to help is “mean and sordid sel‹shness.”118 Discrimination was also unworthy of the United States. Without provision for refugees, “you will have the world reduced to this

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condition, that however desperate might be the peril, however frightful the persecution to which people of another country might be subjected, a fugitive from those dreadful countries would be sent back by the hand of our of‹cers to expiate in his own person our renunciation of the principles of civilization which we were supposed to embody in the highest degree during all our existence (Applause).”119 Because of the country’s history as a proponent of freedom, it owed the world laws in support of its words. Yet “no provision has been made so that men escaping on account of oppression—that is, political—may be allowed to make this country their haven of refuge, as has been recommended not only by the commission, but which has been the policy of this government from the very day of its foundation.”120 Restriction’s opponents objected to the language of the restrictive clauses, desiring instead something that would “accomplish what we are after with more credit to ourselves, and in such a way as is not contrary to our basic principles.”121 Discrimination was, ‹nally, imprudent. Jane Addams and others argued in terms of hypocrisy’s practical consequences and America’s new global role. “At this time when we are hoping that the United States may take a leading part in a new internationalism which will mean such a world reorganization as will guarantee respect for the rights of different nationalities, the passage of this law would be peculiarly unfortunate. How can we urge Russia, Austria, and Germany to recognize the claims of people against whom we are, at the same time, discriminating?”122 U. G. Murphy also focused on foreign policy problems. “The Chinese are saying what the Japanese are saying that apparently the white man proposes to have association for himself and by himself, if you are to have equality applying to the white man only. Apparently our legal attitude at the present time supports that contention; it places us in a very embarrassing position, that is those of us who stand for the liberal element.”123 Even the normally insular commissioner-general of immigration voiced this concern. “It is a question of serious importance,” said the commissioner, “whether it is desirable to set aside the traditional policy of the Government concerning the admission of peoples from foreign countries at a time when world conditions are being reestablished on lines calculated to promote more friendly relations, and when the Government is endeavoring to increase its merchant marine and extend its foreign commerce.”124 And in a criticism that foreshadowed arguments after the next world war, one representative pointed out that the country was advocating a policy espoused by its recently defeated foe. “Probably it is one of the evil legacies of the late war. You know that during the struggle we had the fancy to denounce Germany for advancing the idea of the ‘superman’ and ‘supernation.’ Now that doctrine of superiority which was originally sponsored in this country by the Ku-Klux-Klan seems

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to have found expression in this proposed legislation.”125 Hypocrisy was not only wrong in itself but would hurt the country in its attempts to convince others to follow its lead internationally. “Have we come,” asked LeBaron Colt, “to that extreme view of isolation?”126 Interaction with Europeans and with the international trading system did not motivate the antirestriction arguments as they did the arguments in its favor; rather, antirestrictionists assumed their stance in opposition to the principles the restrictionists espoused, then used examples, such as the country’s history and recent experience in the war, to illustrate their points. They valued individuals rather than states, and neutrality rather than preference. Rejecting some immigrants was not new. What was new and emerged from this debate was the decision to protect sovereignty by controlling the border between citizen and noncitizen. Whom this sovereignty was supposed to protect became the topic of the ensuing, and partly simultaneous, debate on the nature of the threat that Americans faced. While arguments about limiting immigrant numbers were about having and protecting sovereignty, arguments about immigrant characteristics were about what was valuable about the inside and why it was worth protecting.

CHAPTER 4

Whom to Exclude: The Quota Acts

While arguments for restriction emphasize social separateness, arguments for selection by characteristic highlight what, exactly, the separateness is supposed to protect. Reasons that contestants in a debate supply regarding speci‹c groups’ desirability or dangerousness might not reveal the truth about their private motives for policy change, but they do reveal the sorts of reasons that the public ‹nds acceptable, useful, or laudable. Arguments that people make about immigration policy, as about other border control policies, reveal the ways in which people think about borders’ value and the value of what those borders create or maintain, differences between the society inside and all of those outside. Tracing the way that public reasons change over time can, then, show how sovereignty’s social value has changed. Of interest are two questions: what did legislators and members of the public think would be the consequences of immigration, in general and of various groups, and how did one viewpoint come to dominate? This chapter approaches the question ‹rst by laying forth arguments made for and against immigration restriction. Those arguments concerned proposals that either died, were adapted or fused with others, or became successful. This is the ‹rst of four chapters asking the same questions; when they are taken together, they provide evidence about the relationship between arguments and policy change in this area and about the role of choice in creating a sovereignty at the center of which is exclusive control over people. The ‹rst section considers arguments made for and against excluding speci‹c numbers of immigrants; following it is one that covers arguments made about certain types of immigrants.

The Public Interest in Numbers of Immigrants

Competing assertions of sovereign prerogative often consumed the congressional debate, but in spite of congressional hopes, such assertions alone were not suf‹cient to convince Americans to halt, then reverse, immigration.1 The country had, after all, remained open to white Euro55

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peans since their ‹rst settlement, and logically, the claim that the country should exclude merely because it could begged the question of why it had not done so before. Clearly, something had to have changed; some new threat had to justify predictions of impending disaster. The two possibilities, a change in who was coming and a change in how many were coming, each caused enormous alarm. Both assumed that immigration would destroy sovereignty, then went on to detail exactly how this would be accomplished. A majority of the arguments that legislators advanced in this period were arguments by analogy; the process of immigration was invasion, while its result was colonization. Fears about the numbers involved focused on two images of cultural destruction: that of invasion by multitudes intent on conquering and that of subversion by small cells or colonies loyal to foreign powers. Legislators considered them equally deadly. Reason (Metaphor): Armies and Armageddon

Americans opposed to immigration feared conquest. In the era around World War I, military analogies ran through discussion of immigration’s consequences. Martial imagery shaped how contestants framed the threat and responses to it. Immigration restriction was “a matter of national defense.”2 “During the decade immediately preceding the outbreak of the European war there came to our shores, with the momentum of an irresistible army, an average of over ten hundred thousand immigrants every year”;3 The commissioner-general in his 1928 retrospective on the Quota Acts pointed out that before restriction, “Ellis Island resounded for years to the tramp of an endless invading army.”4 As protectionism applied both to the economy and the polity, defense applied against both foreign soldiers and immigrants. “The duty of our Government to the people who compose it to meet and repel evils coming from other governments is absolute. It can make no difference whether these evil in›uences are war, destructive immigration, or whatever other thing it may be.”5 Thomas He›in compared open immigration to leaving the gates of Fort Mims open, which, he said, had led Indians to massacre its residents.6 Biblical prophecy also infused descriptions of immigration’s consequences. M. M. Neely, for example, declared: It is our duty to defend not only against enemies in arms but against the millions of physically, mentally, and morally inferior men and women scattered over Europe, Asia, Africa, Mexico, and the islands of the sea, who, as prospective immigrants, are awaiting their opportunity to rush to our shores. [If they are successful] we shall have


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justi‹ed the following words of Isaiah: ‘Your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate.’7 Yet more dramatically, Thomas He›in intoned, “Choose you this day whom you will serve, the god of good government in the United States or the mammon of immigration agents and steamship companies [bringing] an alien army with bombs and dangerous propaganda to come into our country, working injury to the institutions that our boys protected and defended with their blood and lives.”8 Apocalypse would follow invasion. “The foreign invader,” warned Thomas Lilly, “is not most dangerous when he comes as a hostile army, but when he comes into the ‹eld as an army of labor. So have all the nations of the past gone down.”9 Another, concerned about overstatement, observed that “though the steady stream of foreigners coming to our shores cannot be termed a ‘military’ invasion, as was the Hun invasion of the Roman Empire, it is an invasion which, if permitted to go unchecked, may have in the centuries to come the same fatal effect upon our country as did the Hun invasion of old.”10 In fact, “nations are destroyed by tides like this.”11 Jacob Milligan ampli‹ed this Lesson of History: “History teaches us that the downfall of the centers of civilization of the past has not been by armed invasion but by the bringing in of alien people as laborers or slaves.”12 Even actress Lillian Russell chimed in: “The higher civilizations of past ages, history teaches us, succumbed to such foreign invasions as now threaten us.”13 Reason (Metaphor): Virus and Poison

Viruses also invade. Another way to view the hazards immigrants posed was to view the American people as an organic whole and immigrants as a virus or poison. Much earlier, countries had undertaken to regulate the spread of disease through shipping restrictions and quarantine, but at the turn of the century, while infectious disease remained a problem, fears of contagion focused on political health rather than on physical health. “The body politic . . . is not unlike the human body. We are taught that germs of all diseases lie in the human system, and we are dependent upon the power of the system to generate enough combative force to destroy those germs.”14 Degeneracy and anarchism could infect, but so too could race itself be a virus. “I would quarantine this Nation against people of any government in Europe incapable of self-government for any reason, as I would against the bubonic plague. . . . I will admit the old immigration of the . . . light-haired, blue-eyed Anglo-Saxons or Celts”;15 “those who take this [melting pot] view forget that there is little or no similarity between the

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clear-thinking, self-governing stocks that sired the American people and this stream of irresponsible and broken wreckage that is pouring into the lifeblood of America the social and political disease of the Old World.”16 Walter Chandler argued that “the citizenship of a nation, like the morals of character or the blood of the body, should be kept free from poison, corruption, and contamination.”17 Consumption would otherwise be swift. “Within a few short years . . . the endless tide of immigration will have ‹lled our country with a foreign and unsympathetic element . . . and the true spirit of Americanism left us by our fathers will gradually become poisoned by this uncertain element.”18 The response to sickness was to isolate and purge the body. This is what restrictionists advocated. Reason (Metaphor): Tariff and Prohibition

Immigration restriction can stand alone as a logical extension of the impulse to protect, but it can also stand in support of other isolationist policies. Excluding labor supports a protective tariff, as excluding subversives and internationalists aids military and diplomatic isolation. Not surprisingly, these three pillars of isolation became interlinked. Sometimes the economic arguments were no more rational than the racial arguments; for example, Richard Austin complained that millions of “idle slackers” were coming to the United States—to take jobs from American men (!)19—but often legislators viewed immigration policy as one pillar of a coherent protective policy. “I voted last week for an anti-dumping bill,” one observed, typically, “to prevent the dumping of manufactured products into this country, and I will vote for any bill to prevent the dumping of undesirable aliens into this country.”20 Restrictionists drew a parallel. “I can see no difference between a provision of law providing for a differential in the admission of goods and a similar provision relating to immigrants—not the slightest difference.”21 Citizens, feared legislators, would see this parallel too and would take revenge on legislators who did not follow through on their restrictionist promises. “If we erect a tariff wall to keep the underpaid labor of foreign countries from competing in foreign factories and on foreign farms with well-paid and self-respecting American labor, and if at the same time we let the foreign labor in to compete with our people, in their own yard, the American workingman would have a perfect right to complain that our tariff was made to protect the employer and not the employee and that our platform promises were a fraud and a snare.”22 If they did not take revenge on legislators, they might target each other. “There can be no greater danger to the Republic than unemployment, low wages, and poverty among our own people.”23 “If any of our people prefer to live as Europeans, it would be better for them to go


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to Europe and live rather than jeopardize our Americanism and, through competition, destroy our prosperity by bringing Europe to America.”24 Immigration restriction was also bound up with another type of ban, that against alcohol. Again, the two policies were connected both symbolically and practically. At the symbolic level, each ban purported to steer the country back to wholesomeness, to protect the virtuous from the possibility of being overrun by the immoral. At a practical level, each ban required the same type of border control, which meant that someone intent on breaking the alcohol law could make some extra money breaking the immigration ban.25 Just as liquor smuggling shot up after Prohibition, and smuggling of goods shot up after Congress raised the tariff, immigrant smuggling shot up after Congress began to consider suspending immigration altogether. “Since the placing on the statute books of restrictive legislation and as a consequence more recent numerical limitation of immigration, the bootlegging of aliens—a lucratively attractive endeavor for the lawlessly inclined—has grown to be an industry second in importance only to the bootlegging of liquor.”26 Prohibition stood with the tariff and diplomatic isolation as a cornerstone of the country’s thoroughgoing attempt to close the borders and clean house.27 Immigration restriction was both an independent policy in support of this general goal and a supporting component of the other three policies. “Indeed, it seems strange that it should have taken so long for such a self-evident policy of fostering American institutions and protecting the welfare of the American public to have recommended itself to a people that has always prospered under a wise doctrine of tariff regulation and other measures designed to preserve American standards of living.”28 Reasoning by analogy guided visions of the result, as well as of the process, of immigration. Again, images of conquest and submission competed for primacy. Many feared that groups of foreigners would remain loyal to their country of origin, passively in time of peace but actively in time of war. They believed that other countries promoted this “internal colonization,” encouraging immigrants to maintain non-English newspapers, loan societies, remittances, and the like, in preparation for war or at least economic competition with the United States. In this view, immigrant groups were “indigestible lumps” at best and hostile colonies at worst, enervating the country, sickening it, and eventually destroying it altogether. Vying with this image was that of subversion or erosion, where the danger was not that of future trauma but of a slow wearing-away of the boundaries separating the United States from others. The country would simply cease to be. These two images focused on dangers emanating from without; the country’s purpose and value were, by implication, their opposites: wholeness and homogeneity, which were later extolled them-

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selves. Legislators’ understandings of what they were to protect in›uenced their de‹nition of threat, but outside threats also shaped their views of the America they were to protect. Reason (Metaphor): Internal Colonization

That America certainly did not tolerate enemy colonies in its midst. Immigrants outside were armies; immigrants inside were subversive colonies, and “in but a few years these aliens in very despair will be pounding heavily at the very pillars of our Government, while those who have come ahead of them a few years back with their socialism, their communism, their Bolshevism, have been merely gnawing like rats at our foundations.”29 The United States was losing its integrity. “Foreign colonies,” worried James Byrnes, “have been created in the large cities,”30 and “when we contemplate that more than 10 percent of our total population owe and acknowledge allegiance to foreign ›ags and foreign governments, and decline to become ‘part and parcel’ of us, my friends, we must . . . admit that the time has come for prompt and decisive action (Applause).”31 Some viewed such colonies as a necessary by-product of too-rapid immigration, others saw them as a necessary consequence of racial difference, and still others saw them as key to a foreign plot to undermine the country. First, the pace of entry could, alone, be a problem. Through too-rapid immigration, the country was turning into a Babel. “When we have foolishly listened to a suf‹cient number of such appeals to ‹ll America with the pandemonium and woe which now curse so many parts of the world, who will relieve our children from the distress which we are cooking up for them now?”32 Heterogeneity was tantamount to dissolution: “There will be hundreds of motley, mongrel, anarchistic, jabbering millions here; but with such a people in the ascendancy, the country will have ceased to be America.”33 The immigration committee’s chair, Albert Johnson, warned that “the U.S. must act and act very soon for its own protection and for the protection of those who would enter whom we can neither feed nor support nor assimilate.”34 Second, and more troublesome, racial difference could be the source of these “colonies.” In 1911, the commissioner-general of immigration warned, “Another fact which tends to accentuate the seriousness of this change in race is the habit of most of the new immigrants to colonize.”35 This is due to an abundance “of alien races naturalized or born here whose hearts, like the hearts of their fathers, still give paramount homage to the old countries and clans from which they sprang. If tempted to it, under cir-


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cumstances permitting it, they would side with alien races and foreign lands.”36 Race, not learning, made good citizens. Citizenship should be granted by ethnic descent, not any longer by place of birth. James Reed earnestly pointed out that just because “a cat has kittens in an oven, that does not make them biscuits.”37 If Asian immigration, for example, were allowed, “we would then become a Japanese and a Chinese colony.”38 In fact, “our failure to bar the Japanese has resulted in the development of alien colonies being entirely under the protection of a foreign government and amenable in only slight degree to American in›uence.”39 This situation was a consequence of the country’s failure to discriminate. “There are certain races that will not assimilate. They are foreign to each other. There are certain laws of Nature which man can not suspend, and there are certain laws of Nature which it is not desirable for man to undertake to suspend,” or the result will be “civil war.”40 Third, more ominously, other countries could and would, with hostile intent, purposely establish colonies within American borders. “It is well known that every nation in the world, except the United States and possibly a few others, encourages emigration of the least desirable of its citizens and subjects and strives to keep the most desirable within its own borders.”41 Starting before the war, “large numbers of undesirables from other countries have come here in such numbers as to suggest that some foreign countries are trying to unload on us not only their surplus but the most undesirable and most objectionable part of their surplus.”42 Such “alien colonies in the United States speaking foreign tongues, maintaining foreign community interests, reading only newspapers printed in their own languages, are un-American and a menace to the Republic.”43 A representative from California asked, “Are we to fall before the onslaught of peaceful invasion and look forward to the time that will surely come when the Japanese on the Paci‹c coast will hold the balance of power?”44 (Since Congress believed the norm to be Anglo-Saxon, by de‹nition immigrants from northwest Europe could not establish foreign colonies.) Pockets of non-Anglo immigrants would grow until they were the norm and the Anglos were a subject minority. Their threat could coalesce and become military. Immigration threatened international war, civil war, or at the very least, crime. “These foreign peoples who may not become citizens build up, as it were, an imperium in imperio—a state within a state, a country within a country. Is it necessary for me to argue that such a situation is charged with danger to America?”45 Countries within countries meant eventual war. The Japanese presented the most acute threat, for they were not only bellicose “by nature” but had developed an impressive navy. Further,

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there is unquestionable evidence that they have a racial loathing for the people of the United States, and it is not only an economic question, therefore, but a military question. In case of a con›ict with Japan we would have to meet, not only a frontal attack but a rear attack, and hence the necessity of keeping ourselves prepared where we have such a large body of aliens notoriously hostile and who are still controlled by their national of‹cers in the United States.46 Once more, if evidence were needed, the recent war provided it. The Great War had for its incipiency assassinations from one of the countries from which you cry discrimination; the people among whom there has thrived anarchy and blackhand assassins; nationalities among whom much hatred is fomented; overthrow governments in a night and destroy those in power. Many nations who rule by might rather than by right. Can people of this kind come to America, settle in groups of their own kind in large cities, have a change of heart, and a change of mind? . . . No one can serve two masters.47 Immigration also promised civil strife. “We wish to check the increase of a foreign, alien people, who can not become citizens of the United States, and whose presence provokes domestic trouble and may cause national estrangement.”48 All aliens do not commit crimes, announced the chair of the immigration committee, “but much crime of a non-American kind is committed by them.”49 Because of their inherent racial tendencies or their learned political spinelessness, immigrants destabilized society. Reason: Subversion

Fear about domestic colonization rested on the assumption that communities of immigrants threatened America; there was some critical mass, perhaps the size of a foreign-language newspaper’s circulation, at which immigrants’ degeneracy became actively threatening. Fear about subversion, on the other hand, rested on the assumption that each individual posed a threat. Some in this period concentrated on the entrants’ illegal status. Foreshadowing debate in the 1980s, some worried about the country’s future, “especially when it is considered that there is such a great percentage of our population who may not even seek naturalization; who, so long as they remain with us, must preserve an alien status because of their illegal entry; whose ‹rst act upon reaching our shores was to break our laws by entering in a clandestine manner—all of which serves to emphasize the potential source of trouble, not to say menace, that such a situation


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suggests.”50 Others were more upset that immigrants were in fact legal: “Is not this condition alarming, when such a great proportion of the voting strength of this country is in the hands of the foreign born?”51 Either way, immigrants would eat away the country’s core. Of particular concern to legislators was the possibility that government would be the immigrants’ target. These fears were closely tied to upheavals abroad. A century earlier, the federal government had been intent on keeping out the revolutionaries and royalists ›eeing the French Revolution; worries about anarchists reached their height after an anarchist immigrant assassinated President McKinley in 1901, while worries about Bolshevism intensi‹ed after the Russian revolution.52 “How can this Republic stand if we continue to permit all the scum of creation—the anarchists, the blackhand, and the bomb thrower—to come here from every portion of the world to undermine our institutions, destroy society, and overthrow the Government?”53 The problem with immigration was precisely that it muddied the difference between friend and enemy, and confused the country’s protectors. Subversion could be gradual. If immigration continues, “it is revolution from within, not danger from without, that will be the ever-present menace to the country (Applause).”54 The more immigration, the greater the threat. “Danger from within. How? you ask me. By people coming here who despise our form of government, who hate our institutions, and who spread the poisons of their dangerous propaganda.”55 Immigrant subversives, General Pershing warned, undermine morale.56 Even without evil intent, immigrants would eventually degrade the American way of life. “Americans should be grateful to the Providence that has guided them in protecting the American wage standard from the unfair, not to say impossible, standard that would be the outcome of the leveling process resulting from unrestricted introduction of foreign peoples.”57 If the country continued to accept immigrants fully, borders would become meaningless, and “we would sooner or later be no better off than the supplicants; in short, we would eventually have no need of immigration laws, since the inducements to come here would cease to exist.”58 Whether immigrants produced domestic colonies or wore away the social fabric, they would sicken and perhaps kill the country. The difference was only the rate and the obviousness of the country’s destruction. Reason: Good for the Rest of the World

Most restrictionists argued in terms of American self-interest, de‹ned narrowly and pursued competitively. Some, however, argued cleverly in terms of global welfare. “The world is upset and disturbed as never before. The

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Great War has left us an accumulation of problems that calls for all that is best in American statesmanship. We are burdened with a debt of more than twenty billions of dollars. Our international relationships involve dif‹culties and obligations never known before. . . . The preservation of the Republic is the greatest bene‹t we may hope to render humanity.”59 Immigration restriction was prudential; prudence bene‹ted all. “I believe in world cooperation and that we should assume our portion of responsibility to promote honest diplomacy, law, and order, and that peaceful methods may be substituted for hatred and war; but in order to faithfully serve the humanity of the world our country must keep her own household pure and uncorrupted.”60 Whether exclusion was justi‹able at all always lurked in the background; it was answered variously in different eras. A citizen working long in support of Asian immigration argued that “some say it is not fair to any nation to say ‘we are going to keep you out.’ My answer is that we can make our most important and our maximum contribution to the welfare of the world by making democracy here in America a success; and we can not make our democracy a success if we allow larger numbers continuously to come in than we can wholesomely transform into good and genuine American citizens.”61 The war made this necessary. With the poverty and dissatisfaction prevailing throughout the rest of the world at this time as an aftermath of the war, to permit them to come here without restriction, carrying the bitterness of heart and mingling with those of our citizens who are not entirely familiar with our country and its institutions, a poison may be spread to such an extent as to injure this Government, and in my opinion we must restrict the entrance of large groups at this time for the future welfare not only of our country but of all the peoples of the world. . . . I believe it [the bill] is necessary in order that a beacon shall be preserved on the face of this earth.62 In this view, America had value for all humanity, not just for Americans. To disable it by allowing immigration was to thwart a human dream. Finally, some argued in terms of global ef‹ciency. Excluding the illiterate would prompt more education in Europe, bene‹ting European peoples and governments.63 Moreover, helping people in Europe was a more ef‹cient use of the country’s, and the world’s, resources. “Oh, it would be better that we gave the half of all that we possess in means to help sustain them where they are than to bring them here. . . . Distress is here; discontent is here; world problems are here to make mischief right here.”64 Immigration would be a last resort. “By permitting the admission of some of


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these persons, they may enjoy the privileges of America, in spite of the failure of the administration to help improve conditions over there so that they may stay at home and live in decency.”65 Restriction, and some foreign aid, would better serve everyone, not just Americans. Analogies of conquest—invasion, subversion, colonization—dominate the arguments for numerical restriction. These arguments emerge directly from those opposing immigration in principle; large numbers simply decreased the time that would elapse before sovereignty was irretrievable. The perceived threat was, still, external in origin and military in process. Its result would be the end of the country. Most discussion centered on how horrible the threat was, but when legislators did describe the value they were protecting, they referred to sovereignty, meaning not only the country’s independence but its integrity. The legislators saw its defense as an almost personal battle. Raker: We have two risks, one to stand up and enforce laws that will protect our country. Jenks: Yes, that is one. Raker: And another one, to yield to outside in›uences as against our sovereignty, and permit their immigration and colonization which would, if continued twenty years, practically sap the existence of the western country. We ought to be manly enough to stand for our sovereignty, if we have got to, ought we not?66 In the global struggle for self-preservation, a country either was sovereign—integral, mature, autonomous—or was not, was waiting instead for a death blow. Prudent states used their foreign policies prophylactically, neither allowing themselves to become weak enough to be conquered nor consuming others and exchanging danger from without for danger from within. Immigration, like imperial control of foreign territories, brought enemies within, making them harder to combat. Protection became yet more dif‹cult because enemies were of every sort. “The question of immigration involves economics, ‹nances, social life, social order, the perpetuity of our institutions, the life of the nation itself. We should not have maudlin sympathy but practical patriotism.”67 Practicality meant, in the standard analogy, “shutting the gates” to protect “the very vitals, the very heart of the Nation.”68 Because immigration policy protected sovereignty, it was nonnegotiable. Practical proposals in support of this position include immigration restriction or suspension, careful screening of immigrants to select those least likely to engage in subversion, and education programs to assimilate immigrants effectively and to prevent colo-

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nization by way of ghettos. Each of these did become an element of an immigration bill. Those who supported immigration offered only one main argument—immigrants strengthen the country—with one main piece of evidence, American history. In a mercantile system, people are wealth. The United States was a settler country and had grown powerful by absorbing European human resources and exploiting American natural resources. “I believe that we do need more hands and more brains in this country and that a proper amount of development will come sooner if we will add to our population by immigration.”69 People are also power. It is interesting to learn what we have achieved since 1890. As a result of our entering the Cuban War and later acquiring the Virgin Islands, a new era has come in all the West Indies. We have become a power in the affairs of the Paci‹c, having taken Guam and the Hawaiian Islands. To-day we have under us the Philippines; we helped to bring to an end the con›ict between Russia and Japan, and by the holding of the recent conference in Washington have temporarily at least brought peace in the Paci‹c. We gave up the Chinese indemnity. We created the Panama Canal, and when the European Great World War seemed destined to terminate in favor of Germany, we went into the struggle with all of our resources of man power and material wealth and strength so that the Allies came out victorious. To-day we are the only power on the face of the earth which is not threatened by war and fears no one. Such is the story of the United States since 1890 with its increase of more than 35,000,000 of population.70 People were wealth. “I assert that every man of sound morals and sound health and good intelligence who comes to this country is an addition to the wealth and power of this country.”71 In the labor-intensive history of the country, the more people who settled the land, the greater the tax revenues, the more extensive the infrastructure, and the less likely that Europeans would invade the western territories. “America has been built up by immigration. Every immigrant that comes to our shores is both a producer and a consumer. Other countries go to war to acquire more territory and larger populations. We can easily absorb an additional hundred million men.”72 Glory came from size: the more, the better. Immigrants were especially helpful because they took work that Americans would not readily do. “To enact a bill at the present time containing a literacy test is to shut the doors of the United States to those who would come here, if come they do, to perform the rough manual labor which the average American has declined to do during the past 50


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years.”73 They were the economy’s backbone. “Suppose,” asked Emanuel Celler, “we awoke one ‹ne morning and found all our population of foreign origin had departed. There would, perhaps, be no rolls for breakfast, no sugar for the coffee, and no meat for dinner . . . no butchers, no bakers, or candlestick makers.”74 Immigrants created wealth in the United States, and if the country was lucky, they would keep their wealth there, too. The United States could promote this by accepting additional immigrants, for “with families reunited [in the United States] the money for their support would be retained in our country and not continue to swell the formidable total of remittances abroad, a large part of our invisible export of capital.”75 This constant addition of new men and new blood to the Republic is as necessary for the health and refreshment, the expansion and continuance of civilization and all it means today as always. Immigration, the advent of new men, new blood, new brains and brawn in our land, is not a question of philanthropy for America; it is a matter of life or death, for the nation that seeks to arrest or sti›e the natural laws of life and movement must eventually pay the penalty of lawlessness in stagnation and arrested growth. In my judgment, immigration is power and wealth for the land which draws it, and only natural perversity and legislative stupidity will deprive us of its blessings.76 Later in the century, immigrants would be condemned for their economic motives; political migrants and refugees were good, economic migrants were bad. At the turn of the century, however, the reverse values held sway. To argue that immigrants were a bane, one demonstrated their political backgrounds and motives. To argue that they were a bene‹t, one showed their economic origins. Political was bad; economic was good.77 Liberal and restrictionist arguments had much in common, although their conclusions differed. Nationalist, competitive goals motivated those arguing against numerical restriction as well as those arguing for it; both focused on its effect on American strength. Like the restrictionists, liberals saw immigration, trade, and diplomacy connected directly. One in›uenced the other; policies should go hand in hand. They, again like the restrictionists, drew evidence for this viewpoint from the country’s recent experience during the war: the United States, the least xenophobic and most accepting of diverse immigration, had conquered Europe’s decadent nationalist powers. It emerged from the war the strongest of the Atlantic powers. The two differed mainly in whether they believed that strength came from an organic socioracial integrity or from numbers. Practical

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proposals in support of this viewpoint include those to promote immigration for economic or political reasons. Immigration could, for them, either be entirely open or it could focus on sector-speci‹c recruitment campaigns. Allowing immigration to remain unrestricted numerically was implicitly on the table, for it meant preserving the status quo. Doing nothing would result in unrestricted immigration. Encouraging sector-speci‹c workers was also proposed, usually for the agricultural sector, which had seen its work force vanish as black labor moved northward.

The Public Interest in Certain Types of Immigrants

Although policies are framed in abstract principle, they always, in practice, apply to particular groups. Sometimes the abstraction is intended to hide that particularity. Even when it is not, interested parties do have particular constituencies. The American gate would not be shut on generic people, but on speci‹c, nameable people: business travelers with local ties, the relatives and compatriots of U.S. citizens or permanent residents. A large number of constituencies had an interest not only in whether restrictive policy became the law, but in whom it barred. Those in favor of numerical restriction had speci‹c groups in mind; those opposed did as well. Because restrictionists focused on the value of homogeneity, the cost of any involvement with Europe, and consistency of policy across hemispheres, those who favored immigration argued for the value of heterogeneity, the country’s cultural and geopolitical debt to Europe, and the uniqueness of the Western Hemisphere in U.S. history and policy. The reasons that restrictionists provided focused exclusively on the consequences for current American citizens. Those who opposed them claimed, besides such narrow bene‹ts, international obligations of cultural patrimony, of wartime alliance, of neighborliness; that is, they took other countries’ interests into account. Restrictionists, therefore, won. Reason: American Society—Homogeneity or Heterogeneity

Most arguing for restriction chose homogeneity as their goal, although a few restrictionists argued for racial selectivity on the grounds of fairness: Anglo-Europeans had settled the United States; it should therefore be preserved for their descendants. After all of the settlers’ hard work, the reasoning went, the bene‹ts should not go to latecomers. “We can contribute to people who are in dire need of our ‹nancial aid, but we can not conveniently give up to those people our homes and the homes that we and our


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forefathers have built for the future generations of this country, and we should not be expected to.”78 Others argued in terms of democracy. Most Americans were in favor of racial discrimination; therefore, it was the democrat’s choice. “I think most of us are reconciled to the idea of discrimination. I think the American people want us to discriminate; and I don’t think discrimination itself is unfair.”79 The commissioner-general of immigration defended Congress’s decision to exclude Hindus as public charges using the same reasoning: since Americans discriminated against Hindus, Hindus would not be able to ‹nd employment and therefore would be public charges.80 But people offered such reasons for racial restriction only rarely. Homogeneity made possible most of what many restrictionists valued about the United States. It mattered to some not so much that citizens were of a particular stock so much as that they were of the same stock. Restrictionist John Works said that he objected to the Japanese not because they were of an inferior race, but because they were a different race.81 The representative from Mississippi explained why he valued sameness: “There is nothing more important for any democracy than a homogeneous population, with like traditions, like ideals, like aspirations, like thoughts concerning what is best for mankind, like tokens of citizenship, like pride, homogeneity.”82 Homogeneity should be valued not just in itself but for what it makes possible. “You can not have untrammeled law and order and wise liberty unless you have equality, and you can not have equality unless you have fraternity and likeness of thought, if not an identity.”83 Homogeneity led to stability, which made possible “common belief, common aspirations, common devotion.”84 Sameness also laid the foundation for social constancy. “The stability of a country depends upon the homogeneity of its population—where ideals and aspirations go along the same lines; where the ideals in relation to government, in relation to social conditions, and as to guarantees of property and personal rights are in harmony.”85 Figure 3 reproduces a graphic demonstration of the relationship between us and them, old and new. Difference was a threat. The Japanese belief that their emperor was connected to God meant that they could never assimilate while retaining their faith.86 “We have admitted the dregs of Europe until America has been orientalized, Europeanized, Africanized, and mongrelized to that insidious degree that our genius, stability, greatness, and promise of advancement and achievement are actually menaced.”87 These qualities were not just good to have but were necessary for survival. The strength of a nation—not to speak of its progress, its honor, its glory—the very strength of a nation lies in the oneness of its people. I

Fig. 3. “Old” and “new” European immigration—United States. (From the Congressional Record 65, pt. 4 [68C\1S], 14 March 1924, 4172.)


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have only to invite the thoughts of men to travel over the earth and see those races which have maintained their nationality, their institutions, and it will be perceived that those nations which were uni‹ed, knit together have survived, while those made up of divergent interests, divergent races, hostile races, unsympathetic races have either fallen by virtue of dangers from within or have become easy prey to dangers from without.88 The country’s recent emergence as a world power brought attention to its faults. Still, “never anywhere in the history of all the world has there been a country with institutions as broad and great and liberal as this, and hence I believe it is time for us to look about and inquire whether at any time there is to be in this country such a thing as a distinctive nationality.”89 If the United States were to pursue international greatness, it must ‹rst clean house. Instability threatened the country because the pace of assimilation was too slow. “We already have as many foreigners here as the melting pot can melt, and, in my judgement, we have too many here already.”90 Foreign-language newspapers both signaled and created instability; they made obvious to English speakers how many preferred another language, but also how easy spreading foreign secrets in “code” would be. The English language divided “us” from “them.” The urban polyglot became the source of nervous joking, as well as army investigations. This is typical: “You know, a couple of fellows were walking along the streets of New York the other day when one stopped, and the other one said, grabbing him, ‘What’s wrong?’ The other said, ‘I thought I heard a couple of fellows talking English back there’ (Laughter).”91 Homogeneity’s most obvious advantages were those of culture. If everyone had been socialized into similar values and mores, communication was easier, and government was simpler. In this view, that those with similar backgrounds were of similar races was due to history, not inherence or destiny; “the desirability of an immigrant does not depend so much on his racial blood as it depends upon the moral standards of the country from which he comes.”92 Race was, then, simply an indirect indicator of political attitudes. The people coming to us from northern and western Europe readily assimilate and harmonize with our Government and our institutions. They have known freedom and have enjoyed freedom for more than a century. On the other hand, the people coming to us from eastern and southern Europe until recently were under the despotic Governments of Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Austria, Hungary, and so forth.

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. . . they nursed hate from their mother’s breast. . . . Government to them has meant slavery and oppression. Out of this condition naturally grows anarchy, bolshevism, communism, syndicalism, and other monstrous conceptions of law and government. This was their only way of expressing themselves against intolerable conditions.93 The war had made homogeneity’s value felt. America then had “too many voices, too many languages, and too many people who have never thought of the purposes or principles of this country.”94 To assure stability during the peace, the country would assimilate those who were there, then balance foreigners’ rates of immigration against their ignorance of AngloSaxon law. But for many, what mattered most was not just that Americans were similar to each other, but that they were racially identical. Asian exclusion and its arguments became the lever used to exclude other groups.95 The ‹rst Chinese Exclusion Act had become settled policy by the time Congress considered European restrictions. Restrictionists used it to cement the idea that restriction, even racially based restriction, was in principle acceptable. Anglo legislators and prominent members of the public might, in the 1920s, argue that Asians were more hardworking, honest, or Christian than most Americans, or even that one numbered them among one’s friends. By considering “Europeans” to be a category parallel to “Asians,” restrictionists drew on the precedent of Asian exclusion to justify “old” European restriction. Figure 4 shows how this was illustrated for Congress. But one could not argue that intermarriage was acceptable. Without intermarriage, restrictionists pointed out, there was segregation, which would of necessity prevent full assimilation. “A democracy is founded on equality, but there can be no equality when there can not be, ultimately, intermarriage among the people of a community. It goes to the very foundation of our American institutions, and in a country like ours, where the Government consists of the voice of the people, if we deteriorate the people by bringing them against impossible competition we destroy the factors for making the union great and strong.”96 Therefore, “because physical assimilation of oriental peoples is impossible, their incorporation into the body politic is impracticable and unwise.”97 Allowing in Asians would create yet another racial underclass, another group condemned by the dictates of their genes to the purgatory of second-class citizenship. “The policy of exclusion is an established American policy; it has already avoided and practically solved one race problem; it will, if continued and extended, solve all that may present themselves.”98 In any event, “if the onrushing horde continues in unabated numbers the dominance of the Anglo-Saxon is doomed on this continent.”99

Fig. 4. Immigration—United States. Territory covered by immigration laws. (From the Congressional Record 65, pt. 4 [68C/1S], 14 March 1924, 4173.)

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Exactly how Asians and members of other groups were supposed to be different from or inferior to northwestern Europeans was detailed by the joint immigration committee’s house eugenicist, Harry Laughlin. His ‹ndings about relative intelligence and social behavior grounded racial exclusion scienti‹cally.100 He found ethnic groups in varying degrees to be substandard as workers, employers, community members, marriage partners, soldiers, and citizens. According to one report, New York in the 1910s spent $4 million annually just on insane Austrians, while 50 percent of Italians went crazy in the United States.101 “The Japanese do not create,” stated V. S. McClatchy, a California newspaper baron. “They imitate, improve, appropriate.”102 Americans were white. “Who are they about whom all these tears are being shed? Three hundred and forty-three Turks—also some 70 Africans.”103 Racial similarity produced what citizens valued about the United States. The commissioner-general of immigration re›ected that the acid test of any civilization, nation, or system of government is the men and women it produces, and with equal truth it may be said that the acid test of men and women at any time is the nation and system of government they evolve, the conditions of living they develop. To say that good immigration means good citizenship, is to state a selfevident truth, a fact so obvious that its bare assertion seems super›uous; [since 1882] the major test of eligibility to citizenship has been racial.104 This was especially important for the United States, whose sovereign was its majority; “it therefore makes a vast difference to us what that majority is, both now and in the future, and it is for us to decide while we are still that majority.”105 For 300 years this country got along ‹ne without any citizenship standards. True; but it is also true that for 3,000 years the world muddled along somehow without either science or order; but, gentlemen, that time has passed. We live in another age, the age of science, the age of progress based on the test of experience. In every branch of our civilization except citizenship, the most vital of all, our progress rests on standardization.106 If science demonstrated racial hierarchy, then racial standardization was the obvious next step. Figure 5 reproduces one of the graphs that Laughlin had entered into the Record.

Fig. 5. Intelligence rating. This is one of several charts presented by eugenicist Harry Laughlin to the immigration committees. (From Europe as an Emigrant-Exporting Country and the United States as an Immigrant-Receiving Nation, Hearings before COIN, House of Representatives [68C/1S], 8 March 1927; between pages 1278 and 1279.)

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With nonwhite citizens, American democracy was doomed to collapse. “We in this country have been so imbued with the idea of democracy, or the equality of all men, that we have left out of consideration the matter of blood or natural inborn heredity mental and moral differences. No man who breeds pedigreed plants and animals can afford to neglect this thing.”107 Assimilation was a failed dream. “We are slowly awakening to the consciousness that education and environment do not fundamentally alter racial values.”108 Not only did America’s own experience bear this out, but so did the entire history of Europe. That the people of all that region [southeastern Europe] are mongrels, mixed and intermixed from invading and near-by races from the north, from the brown people of the east, and the black people of the south is well known to every student. That they are incapable of working out the problems of government and protecting themselves against the destructive forces moving among them is made plain by their present plight and by conditions prevailing among them since antiquity and promising to continue forever.109 Europe’s problems, the problems it had foisted on the United States, were racial in origin. For the United States to escape the same fate, it had to work for racial identity. Racialists were more pessimistic than assimilationists about America’s capacity to overcome Old World differences. Homogeneity, whether of race or background, stabilized society. At best, heterogeneity meant “racial indigestion.”110 Too large a ›ow led to “indigestible lumps in the national stomach and . . . insoluble blood clots in the national circulation.”111 At worst, it would lead to war. Whereas those focused on domestic colonization feared that foreign-sponsored cells would rise up to cripple the country, those focused on homogeneity were frightened of civil strife. The Civil War, then only ‹fty years past, served as their model. The lesson they drew from it in this context was that racial difference was a drag on local communities, leading to con›ict. “Internal disorders become the consequence of unassimilable racial groups”;112 speci‹cally, “there has also been a menace to our institutions in not trying vigorously to weld the 42 nationalities here into a united people with a common language rather than in a happy-go-lucky way allowing them to transplant and perpetuate on American soil Old World hatreds and bolshevistic ideas.”113 Europe was always the premier model. “I believe now more ‹rmly than ever that races will stick together. There must be some reason. In Europe, where there is so much trouble, often when you cross a river you step from one nation to another nation. You ‹nd the people not only


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speaking a different language but hating the people on the other side of the river with all their might . . . [just as is true of] the hyphenated American; we can see what we are breeding in the United States (Applause).”114 The American South was another model. Drawing an analogy to the southern Europeans and Asians, William Howard warned, “We have had a burden of a million and a half niggers in Georgia ever since the Civil War who were turned loose on us in their ignorance.”115 William Vaile, similarly, argued that “if we have to have another servient race brought into this country in order to promote production, then let us get along without the production, even if it hurts an industry of my own district (Applause).”116 Con›ict, which would likely be racial con›ict, could lead to all-out war. Restriction’s bottom line was to “prevent another race problem from arising up in this country”117 and leading again to war. Homogeneity became linked conceptually not only to American institutions’ stability but also to their quality. Good citizens (white citizens) made good government. President Coolidge in a message to Congress announced that “American institutions rest solely on good citizenship. They were created by people who had a background of self-government.”118 Representative Garber elaborated on this. “The strength of those institutions and of the Government does not lie in the area of our territory, our material resources, the number of our population, or our standing Army. It lies in the quality of our citizenship. . . . Lower the quality of citizenship and you decrease the quality of government. . . . What is the remedy? . . . Close the gates!”119 Importing bad people could corrupt citizens: “Importing cheap labor and people alien to our institutions, to our methods of government, is sti›ing unborn children and preventing them from having the privileges they ought to have in this country (Applause).”120 If immigrants were accepted, they would “reproduce here the conditions from which they ›ee.”121 Underlying the claim that the degree of the population’s whiteness created the strength of democratic institutions was the notion that institutions are themselves organic, a notion that also underlaid the idea that immigration was a virus or poison. Like children, institutions have a biological heritage that in›uences their strength. Republics are not exempt from mutability, or decay. Republics are no natural system. They are the highest form of civilized government where the rights of men are held of value. A republic is subject to internal dangers as well as foreign menaces. In order that it may live it is absolutely necessary that we maintain a certain type of citizenship. . . . But above all things, in order to assure the stability, in order to make certain the future strength and

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righteousness of this Nation, we must strive for homogeneity among the citizenship. Therein lies the strength of a republic. As nearly as we can, we should seek for and have racial homogeneity; but assuredly we should have homogeneity in the sense of common belief, common aspirations, common devotion.122 Democratic institutions were peculiarly vulnerable to abuse. “Under our form of Government there is necessity for the highest intelligence, and therefore we are concerned with the types of men or races that shall be permitted to enter the United States and permanently abide therein.”123 The New York Chamber of Commerce asserted that “of all forms of administration, democracy is particularly susceptible to the in‹ltration of foreign elements that do not understand or appreciate the customs and government of the new land in which they settle.”124 American institutions were the product of a peculiarly white culture. “But do we wish to surrender this country to them [the Japanese] or shall we insist that this country shall be preserved for the white race?”125 Encouraged by others’ examples, representatives decided that, too, “our business is to build up, as the Australians are trying to do, a white man’s country.”126 California and the western territories were on the frontier, not only geographically but politically. “We on the western borders are the defenders of our white civilization. Are we to fall before the onslaught of peaceful invasion and look forward to the time when the Japanese on the Paci‹c coast will hold the balance of power?”127 Heterogeneity, of race or political socialization, divided the American public, segregating segments and thereby retarding its growth. This weakness, stemming from division and apathy even if not the result of a purposeful foreign plot, would eventually sap democratic institutions’ strength. Sooner or later, the country would die. Homogeneity attracted those most concerned about the devastation that pluralism wrought on American society and its international position. Neither the country’s particular war experience nor recent effects of interdependence motivated their arguments; rather, “war” in the abstract repelled them. War, any war, was due to pluralism—racial pluralism. The country had changed in many ways since the time that restrictionists perceived as its golden age. Ethnic diversi‹cation preceded the SpanishAmerican War and World War I and, many restrictionists believed, had forced the country into both wars, just as the presence of Black Americans had inevitably led the country into its civil war. This idea led restrictionists to advocate at least ethnic, but preferably racial, homogeneity. Putting this idea into practice could involve moves to declare an ethnic norm, then to deport those who deviated from it and/or to exclude new immigrants from


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entry based on this classi‹cation. The main criterion for inclusion would be similarity to current Americans. Homogeneity, others argued, was not a worthwhile goal. At best, it was irrelevant to the country’s success. At worst, advertising America’s newfound commitment to homogeneity would antagonize foreigners and domestic minorities, leading to armed con›ict. World War I loomed here, too. Homogeneity’s sudden value confused many because during the war, “Such dangers as had threatened our government had been averted; such dangers as the world had never seen before had been suppressed. . . . We came forth a Nation of free men no longer recognizing any distinction of nationalities or creed. Our Republic had successfully ended the experiment of its existence and took its place, a full, round, high place—‹rst—among the powers of the earth.”128 The mixed country was the most successful. “We have recently emerged from the greatest war in history in which we may proudly say that our Nation reached spiritual heights never attained by any other nation.”129 The commissioner-general of immigration argued that to think otherwise was unpatriotic. “It is obvious that if the principles of our Government are sound they will stand the test of all conditions; and his con‹dence in and loyalty to them is of a wavering and conditional character who, either explicitly or by a necessary implication, discloses a belief that they require amendment in time of war. If they are not good in times of war, neither are they of value in times of peace.”130 Such worries were beneath the United States. “While this sort of national frailty is excusable in old nations, Asiatic or European, it is incomprehensible when found among the American people, full of the vigor of youth and absorbing unto itself all that is strong and virile in the human stock.”131 Homogeneity was simply not a relevant concern. Others argued that international problems or civil war would result not from too many groups, but from their forcible uni‹cation. It would be obvious to all that “we, in trying to restrict, in reality discriminate. We are now in the age of international amity. We are on friendly terms with all the great powers of the world. . . . The smoke of guns is hardly cleared away. The world still bleeds from the wounds of World War, and we in Congress are preparing to deal a blow to our friends and allies during this terrible con›ict waged so that the world might be safe for democracy.”132 The country itself would not be safe for democracy either, for “you are dividing your people into two classes, a superior class and an inferior class; and if anything can possibly bring Bolshevism in America it is class distinction, race hatred, and prejudice, which must cause discontent, which is unAmerican and undemocratic.”133 Acceptance of all citizens would assure peace; discrimination, even indirect discrimination through immigration policy, would assure bitterness.

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Whites were not better than others in any event. “If these ‘Nordics’ are God’s chosen people, why did they borrow their religion from the hills of Judea, their laws from the Roman forum, and their arts from the galleries of Athens?”134 Rather, “the belief in Nordic superiority has grown to large proportions mainly because people like to believe in such superiority and do not take the trouble to examine for the truth of such superiority.”135 Nordics were, in fact, worse behaved. “There is not a case on record where it can be said that the Italians have at any time . . . been so sel‹sh in their administration as to arrogate all the bene‹ts therefrom to themselves and their religious confreres. This has been done in many large cities and the culprits are by no means the immigrants from Southern Europe nor from Italy, but on the contrary they are Nordics and thoroughly Anglo-Saxon.”136 White supremacy was an ironic boast. Further reasons to oppose racial discrimination were the same as those given in opposition to the country’s general pursuit of homogeneity: it would cause embarrassment and lead to armed con›ict. Anti-Japanese laws would embarrass the administration.137 “We do contend that it [openness] is absolutely necessary at this time in order that the peaceful relations of the world shall continue, because as a matter of fact our relation to the Japanese immigrant is something more than that; it covers the broader relations of the Occident with the Orient.”138 Japan was, moreover, looking for an excuse for war: “With a danger I believe a serious one, with developments coming in the future that might lead to war, I think it is extremely important that we keep our skirts clear, and have nothing on this side that they can bring up as an excuse that there was discrimination against them, and things of that kind.”139 “Here we are, one on one side of the Paci‹c and the other on the other, and for the future peace of the world, for our own freedom from attack, and for the avoidance of friction, it is absolutely essential that we should maintain friendly relations with that country [Japan].”140 Domestic war could follow. Racial exclusion would “be the ‹rst instance in our modern legislation for writing into our laws the hateful doctrine of inequality between the various component parts of our population.”141 Discrimination would demoralize ethnic Americans.142 Liberals valued the principles upon which they believed the country had been founded and to which they believed it must remain true. Pluralism attracted those who believed that it created or re›ected strength. Decadent empires glori‹ed nativism. The United States was beyond such ideas. Individualism was also a founding liberal principle that could be honored only by assessing individuals on their merits, with merit understood to be calculated with regard only to a person’s acts. Liberals therefore desired a selection/restriction process based upon individual merit.


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Since current policy excluded only on the basis of individual merit, liberals could argue for the status quo. They would also favor including Asians in the applicant pool, eliminating bloc restrictions. Reasons: Europe as Contaminant or Heritage

The argument constructed originally to explain Asian exclusion applied by extension to southern Europeans who were also not white by current standards. The anti-Asian argument did most of the logical work promoting European restriction (though most of the arguments were not strictly logical, even by loose standards). Rather, the impetus for restricting Europeans came from Americans’ lessons from the war. The American experience demonstrated that neither Europe nor former Europeans in the United States were to be trusted. Their loyalties during the war, in American eyes, damned immigrants who fought for the cause as well as those who fought against it. “The war awoke the public to the situation as never before.”143 It did so by revealing the sickness at the country’s core. “We boasted of the ‘melting pot’ and of our ability to assimilate all races and colors and tongues and tribes. When the war broke out in 1914, it became manifest that we had not really assimilated these alien additions to our population in any appreciable degree”;144 in fact, “during the Great World War, . . . it looked as though we had allowed in›uences to enter our borders that were about to melt the pot in place of us being the melting pot.”145 If an immigrant fought for the Allied cause, it was simply luck that the United States was ‹ghting on the side of his homeland. If he did not, that treachery showed the thinness of his ties to the United States. “The Americanization of these thirty-six and a third million of our population is, in many cases, only skin deep and is merely a mask to be quickly thrown aside when the interests of their dear fatherland are involved, as has been abundantly shown by the conduct of the so-called German-Americans during and since the World War.”146 If he stayed behind to work in the war effort, he was taking advantage of Americans’ absence to buy up the country. “From all the country comes the cry of the rank injustice of forcing American citizens into the war, while alien slackers are here in vast numbers enjoying the peaceful privileges of our country and immunity from ‹ghting for the very integrity of their countries.”147 If he refused to ‹ght, he was truly loathsome. “Certainly an alien subject of a country at war with the central powers becomes most undesirable here when he is able-bodied, within military age, has no dependents, and yet refuses to ‹ght either for this or for his own country.”148 Even had Congress considered European immigrants to have acted nobly during the war, it might not have changed its anti-European views.

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Isolating America from war meant isolating it from European wars, and if wars were in the Europeans’ blood, preventing war meant keeping out Europeans. In the decade before the war started, immigration to the United States had been increasing steadily; European immigrants were ever more visible in urban areas. During the war, Americans were sent to Europe, to live with Europeans and be killed taking care of their troubles. By the time of the Armistice, they had had enough. “A short time since we looked upon Europe with comparative indifference as she grappled with her great social problems, as we felt her problems could never be ours. But to-day we are not only face-to-face with those social problems but are fast being carried into European militarism, from which God grant we may be spared (Applause).”149 Isolation was the obvious answer. “We do not intend to close the door because we were here ‹rst; we close it because it is our door. We are now under a reaction of the effects of the World War; we are sick and tired of Europe and all its works; we want to develop our character along our own lines.”150 Europe was poison. Others explained restriction in a way that salvaged the country’s immigrant past. Times change and men change with them. It was originally true that the people who left America and came to Europe were the boldest, the bravest, the most enterprising, and those who most sought freedom; but tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illio—those times have changed and people have changed with the times. . . . The man who comes to America to-day is the wage-earner or else the political nondescript, who has been cast out in his own country because of socialistic or anarchistic opinions of some description.151 A tract entitled “Immigration and the Three Percent Restrictive Law,” written by Robert DeC. Ward, argued that the quality of new immigration was inferior, echoing the “new/old” distinction articulated decades earlier by Chairman Dillingham.152 Europeans had also been enemies. Excluding them on those grounds as well was fair.153 Apart from their behavior during the war, Americans still found much to fault in Europeans’ political allegiances. It seemed that everyone in Europe who was not a monarchist was an anarchist or a bolshevik. “They have never drawn the breath of freedom, they have never lived under a republic; and it is the history of most Latin [European] countries that a republic can not prevail, that they live greatly in revolution and fomentation. Any judge can constitute an alien an American citizen, but it takes a change of heart and mind to make an American.”154 Subservient


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people could not last in a democracy, and “As you know, dictatorships are in existence in practically every country which claimed it was being discriminated against by the 1890 census date. However, we do not want that sort of government in this country. Mussolini has done marvels for Italy, but nobody here would want a government of that kind.”155 Neither did anyone want civil upheaval and revolution. “At the present time there is a good deal of turmoil in the various nations of the earth. There are certain places where one side gets into power to-day and another side tomorrow. The ‹rst side then takes to the woods, and they would all be political refugees. These seasons of turmoil reappear frequently, and this provision [for refugees] would send a ›ood tide to America.”156 War lurked everywhere. Civil wars turned into international wars, which bred revolutionary wars. Legislators especially feared a reenactment of the “Russian debacle ushering in the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.”157 To subvert the United States and strengthen themselves, moreover, “some of the foreign countries are preparing to dump on America ten, twelve, or ‹fteen million people.”158 Legislators feared that revolution could be contagious. Since the world’s Great War, many dangerous and deadly doctrines have sprung up throughout Europe; governments have been changed over night, and in many instances the rights of property and freedom of speech and action are unknown. These same dangerous and deadly doctrines have been spread throughout this country, to a great extent, by foreign propaganda and foreigners. . . . Not long since Lenin, the great leader of the Communist party, which controls Russia, died; and since that time over a thousand memorials have been held in this country for him. This shows the dangers which we face and that it is up to the American people to see that America is kept American (Applause).159 Suspension or vigilant immigration restriction was an obvious answer. Those unwilling to conclude that Europeans were all undesirable might still consider that the best Europeans would not emigrate; they would stay to rebuild. Those who immigrated, then, rather than Europeans in general, were policy’s targets.160 “The real workers, the men who would be economically useful, are remaining in their own countries assisting in their upbuilding and recuperation from the devastation of the war.”161 Emigrants could only be bad. “There are only two classes of immigrants who want to come to this country now, namely, the cowardly slacker who does not want to help rehabilitate the country in which he

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lives and which was devastated by the war, and the other one is the man who wants to come here to accumulate worldly goods and then go back to the country from which he came.”162 Before the war, those who favored European exclusion did so for racial reasons. Southern Europeans were non-Anglo and therefore undesirable. After the war, Europeans’ behavior during the war years provided an additional reason to refuse them entry. Restrictionists valued a patriotism that many believed pluralism only weakened; Europe’s particular problems created speci‹c threats to American unity and strength that could be addressed narrowly. Implementing this could be done by targeting all Europeans or by focusing on racially inferior (southern) Europeans. As proposals to exclude Europeans proliferated, those who opposed this exclusion scrambled to make opposite arguments. Heterogeneity was better than homogeneity; European ties were a bene‹t, not a drag. Restriction’s opponents claimed that restriction was nothing more than an irrational xenophobia. The war and the present postwar period, both redolent with hysteria, offer the worst possible background for reasoning out the immigration problem. As a result of the ordeal of the war we are still hysterical about immigration. The ultra restrictionist and those behind the Johnson bill [for national origins quotas] claim we are a disunited people. Nothing is further from the truth. The war proved that of all nations in the combat we were the most united. We were successful in welding our many peoples without the use of force or coercion. The methods embodied in the Johnson bill are the forceful methods used by Germany to assimilate her people.163 The war was to blame for this new wave of feeling. “After every foreign war comes a resurgence of chauvinism. It is the scum that boils up out of the cauldron of disorder, bloodshed, and national hatreds.”164 Europe was neither bad nor good. “The ‹eld of thought recognizes no barriers. . . . We brought over the idea of deportation of radicals from France, not from the France of Rousseau, Jaurès, and Victor Hugo but from the France of the Bourbons.”165 Anti-European feeling had no basis. World War I was also important to restriction’s opponents. Europeans were enemies, but they were allies too; some even fought with American forces. Not only should Americans not shun Europeans, they owed many of them a great deal. “The adult foreigner now has a just obligation due him from this Nation, because of his services and the services of his fellows during the World War.”166 Many of the restrictionists’ targets were from southern Europe, but “Croatia and Slovenia were part of Austria-


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Hungary, and every one of these Croatians and Slovenians knew that in case he became a prisoner of war, he would be shot as a traitor.”167 European countries would surely be confused. “At whom are you striking in this bill? Why, at the very people whom a short while ago you announced you were going to emancipate. We sent 2,000,000 men abroad to make the world ‘safe for democracy,’ to liberate these very people. Now you shut the door to them”;168 “It is curious to note that, taking the census of 1890 as a basis, Belgium, Bohemia, Italy, Yugoslavia, Poland, Rumania, and Russia, with whom we were associated as allies during the late con›ict, would be in the most unfavorable position.”169 If the recent alliance were insuf‹cient reason, current alliances surely must be. “We can not isolate ourselves, nor should we wound the sensibilities of our friends and allies.”170 Foreign relations were far too important to jeopardize in a ‹t of postwar prejudice. Restrictions would turn out to be super›uous anyway, making Europe’s inevitable retaliation ironic. “I believe that the economic rehabilitation of Europe has tended to check immigration and also has tended to increase the returning ›ow. I also believe that the destruction of autocracy and the establishment of new republics in Europe have tended to retard immigration and have also tended to increase the return movement.”171 Europe does not take protectionist legislation lightly, rewarding only openness. “But this [immigration] bill does not aim to open foreign markets. It aims to close them still further. It aims to anger many countries of Europe; its purpose will be to close European markets to American goods, agricultural, manufactured, and raw materials. . . . for the stigmatized nations of Europe will not take the insult lying down. They are going to bridle up, for all peoples have deep-seated national pride and national honor that must be satis‹ed.”172 The United States courted catastrophe in the interdependent world. “A discriminatory law may rebound to our embarrassment in the conduct of our foreign trade. . . . If these countries should choose to reciprocate by discriminating against American-made products, as is entirely within their rights, the effect of this law would be disastrous to our American industries.”173 Obligations underlined these interests: “We should not be so completely obsessed by nativism, by the shibboleth ‘America for Americans,’ as to forget that we belong to a family of nations with whom we desire to keep on friendly and cordial relations and to carry on international trade and commerce, [not] give affront to friendly nations and humiliate large numbers of our fellow citizens.”174 The Cuban ambassador warned that likely immigrants “will then select Europe in preference to the United States for traveling and for the purpose of education. As a result, the commercial and business relations of Cuba with the United States,

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which depends to a large extent on this intercourse, will suffer, while those with Europe will tend to increase proportionately by the transfer of interest from the United States to Europe.”175 Isolation would harm the country economically, politically, and culturally. Principle was, also, at stake. The United States had a hand in creating the European conditions from which people ›ed. It should therefore have a hand in remedying the upheaval. “The conditions existing in Europe today . . . were created by causes that we approved and in which we participated. These same conditions that have made the lot of the human race desperate and pathetic were of our will, our vote, our action in this House, and I wish to enter a solemn protest in the very beginning against the utter lack of sympathy, international comity, and international gratitude wrapped up in the proposed passage of the measure.”176 Internationalists favored immigration generally and European immigration speci‹cally. Europeans were trading partners, and relatives, and allies. The American people owed Europe a great deal, and at least ought to have no complaint against Europeans. Since European immigration was unrestricted during the debates, liberals could simply argue against change, if they wished. Most, however, argued for the status quo: individual-level screening with no numerical or categorical limits.

Reason: Geopolitics—Consistency across Hemispheres or Pan-Americanism

Restriction applied to all Asians, and to most Europeans, but to no Americans. Congress exempted the Western Hemisphere from the quotas. In fact, the possibility of including them was hardly discussed. Legislators on the fringes, those who believed in comprehensive openness or in immigration suspension, attempted to use open immigration from the Americas to demonstrate hypocrisy, to show that restrictionists did not really care for restricting numbers, protecting labor and social stability, but intended instead to exclude based on race or to include for base economic reasons. Each side believed that “this bill is the kind of bill that locks the front door and leaves all the back windows and all the back doors open.”177 Ultrarestrictionists argued that the American public wanted to extend restriction to the Western Hemisphere178 and opposed “exceptions which would ›ood the country with Mexican peons and other pauper laborers.”179 Mexicans they found distasteful. “On the basis of merit Mexico is the last country in the world to which we should grant a special favor or extend a peculiar privilege. . . . Henceforth let us meet Mexicans and all


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other immigrants in excess of the minimum quota at the international boundary line and the water’s edge with the stirring Garibaldian battle cry with which Pétain’s heroes turned the tide of victory at Verdun and proclaim to all the world ‘they shall not pass.’”180 Inconsistency and Mexicans’ undesirability were, however, the only reasons ultrarestrictionists gave. When staff pointed out that annual intra-American immigrants numbered only in the hundreds, the ultrarestrictionists abandoned this tack. Opponents of restriction, on the other hand, asserted that restriction threatened pan-American accord. The policy dictated by this amendment [to exclude Western Hemisphere migrants] is obviously unwise if we intend to attach any importance to the Pan-Americanism idea. We are alien to our neighbors in South and Central America by language. Their natural resort is to Paris and to Madrid. For every thing they buy and almost every thought they think they naturally refer to those two centers. If we want to hold them to us—and I think we do so long as we maintain the Monroe Doctrine—we have got to treat them differently from the rest of the world.181 Money was also at stake. “It is to Latin America, South America and Mexico, that this country must look for the promotion of trade, and, in large part, to increase our foreign commerce in order to build up and aid American industry.”182 Mexican laborers created prosperity for the United States and Mexico, and “trade and commerce mean peace.”183 Domestic peace would also be assured. “You speak about your socialism and everything like that, but whenever a man becomes a land owner that goes out the window and he becomes a different citizen.”184 Whereas European immigration promised nothing but social and political headaches, Mexican immigration had entirely economic consequences and would thereby maintain international accord. Because restriction’s opponents, largely northern and eastern legislators, had argued on principle, they would not reverse to support Western Hemisphere exclusion. Because restriction’s supporters, largely southern and western legislators, had not based their arguments on principle but on particular charges against Europeans, they could support continued openness without risking charges of hypocrisy. Because they represented large ranching states, they did so. The alliance of pan-Americanism and ranching interests, eased by a convenient lack of principled argument, exempted the Western Hemisphere from restriction with no ‹ght at all. This debate was entirely derivative of the main debate on European exclusion. Chang-

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ing European policy became the strongest reason given for changing policy toward the Western Hemisphere. The debate, for this reason, makes no sense apart from the larger context. Resolving the Public Interest: The Quota Acts

Restrictionists valued sovereignty, autonomy, plenary exclusion, vigilant defense against domestic and foreign enemies, homogeneity to ensure social and institutional stability, and high racial and political standards to assure that the un‹t could not enter. They assessed the country’s options as if the country were an egoist (though they themselves might not be): of most value were a strong, independent identity, corporal health, and the means to defend oneself and reproduce. Opponents of restriction stressed liberal values: neutrality, equity, wealth. They assessed the country’s options as if the country were a universalist (though they, too, might not be): of most value was treating individuals as they deserved to be treated based on their past acts, as well as shunning behavior that categorized people according to characteristics that they had no control over. Restrictionists’ weakest point politically was their advocacy of arbitrary (racial) discrimination against citizens, that is, the charge that they were degrading citizens by disparaging others of their ethnic groups. Americans were, after all, supposed to consider citizens equal before the law. Monarchies, not democracies, separated citizens by law into classes. Their opponents’ weakest point was their denial that instability was a valid fear. As Americans, they could not pretend indifference to subversion. Both groups selected the proposals that became the Quota Law and the National Origins Quota Law from many other proposals; these are themselves a subset of imagined alternatives. Coming out of this debate could have been any number of policy decisions, ranging from doing away with screening altogether to suspending all immigration permanently, with the decision simply to maintain the status quo far more toward the liberal than the restrictive side. Rarely did contestants discuss the policy’s effects on others, but when the issue of relative power did come up, no one offered evidence other than that which would suggest that Europe would in fact be worse off than the United States. Restriction was the most popular proposal, for all of the reasons outlined above, and restriction’s advocates were far more numerous than its opponents. Figure 6 outlines the arguments that were made during this debate. Massive numerical restriction therefore became the starting point from which the ‹nal policy would be constructed. Those arguing against restriction on the grounds that it was wrong in principle should have been


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Russo-Japanese War World War I ⇓ Causal Argument


Discriminating among citizens destroys democracy

Democracy must be preserved to guarantee a civic culture

We must avoid denying only some citizens’ coethnics entrance

Heterogeneity causes civil and international war by creating an incoherent society


Allowing in immigrants racially like Americans prevents war and preserves civilization

Class rifts cause civil war by stirring up hatred and inviting Bolsheviks to interfere in domestic affairs


Banning unions will prevent civil war

Only the white race produced a civilization

Democracy depends on the ability to be self-governing

Allowing only whites to immigrate will preserve civilization

↑ ↑ plausibility

↑

Policy Argument

Implementation

(Since there was no policy in place, no arguments about implementation failures were made in this early period)

↑ efficiency

↑


Arguments made preceding the Quota Acts

least in›uential in ‹nalizing policy. Few took their position at all seriously, and they never even made a counterproposal. An assumption underlying their view, that Americans should not ignore foreigners’ claims, was anathema to all but a handful of nationally elected of‹cials. Yet two elements of it, that discrimination was wrong and that a policy that favored some subgroups over others was an insult and an injustice to everyone, struck a chord. The legislators would not go so far as to accept that Americans should not be favored over others—that was too radical, and their jobs, after all, were premised on a discrete electorate—but they were deeply enough committed to the view that citizens should be treated

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equally to cringe at the accusation of favoritism. The proposal at the center of debate shifted from one outlining numerical restriction based on country of recent immigrants’ origin to one based on all (or rather almost all) Americans’ countries of origin. National origins quotas solved this dilemma. They did so, ironically for the liberals, by reducing even further the number of non-“Nordics”; the law’s amendment re›ected a move toward a more, not less, conservative policy than the one preceding it. Its amendment did, though, respond to the more resonant objections that the liberals brought. By basing the quotas on the national origins of the entire (Anglo-European—Africans and Asians were excluded from the assessment)185 population instead of the recent immigrants, no one could complain of discrimination. There were no longer second-class citizens. “Discrimination of citizens is unwise and improper. It is just and proper for a host to invite as his guests whomsoever he pleases, but having invited them it is unjust and improper to show any distinction among them.”186 Immigration would perfectly re›ect the citizens’ makeup. This justi‹cation persuaded not only most of those who had been restrictionist all along, but also most of the new members and most of those who had withheld their votes the ‹rst time. In 1921, the House chose, 276 to 33, with 120 not voting, to impose a ceiling of 150,000 immigrants per year, allocated by country according to the country’s contribution of immigrants in the recent past. Those who were strongly committed did not change their votes; only 18 of those who had voted de‹nitely yes or no changed their minds and voted the opposite way. Change came rather from two other directions, from selection through elections, which that year focused on the immigration question, and from the persuasion of those who had been teetering. Table 1 shows the actual immigration ›ows from the parts of the world discussed in the immigration debate, and then indicates the allotment given them by Congress. New members, who voted three to one for national origins quotas, replaced the old, and of those who had refrained from voting in the earlier period, twelve times as many chose restriction as chose to oppose it. In 1924, the House decided 308 to 62, with 63 not voting, to change the basis for distributing immigration slots: the national origins of the entire population, rather than of recent immigrants, was a more justi‹able basis for assigning quotas than were the alternatives. Although those opposed to restriction offered “national origins” as a way to free immigration, its logic meant a far more restrictive policy than restrictionists had ever advocated or even contemplated, and this is what the country got. Henry Cabot Lodge, a staunch restrictionist, was one of the ‹rst to propose national origins as a solution. “If such a basis is adopted, there


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can be no question then of discrimination, because it will treat all races alike on the basis of their actual proportion of the existing population.”187 Others repeated this argument almost verbatim, establishing consensus by repetition. If we divide up our immigrants exactly in accordance with the national origins of our whole population, there can be no charge of discrimination.188 The idea of the national origins amendment is that we will establish a method against which there can not be the slightest accusation of discrimination . . . We talk about the melting pot to-day, and what we mean by the melting pot is that a nation of one kind of people is getting an in›ow of different kinds of people; but we will not need any melting pot if our immigration is just a cross section of our present population.189 If Congress were to adopt that ‹gure, 300,000, it would apportion that quota exactly in accordance with the national origin of every man, woman, and child in America today according to the 1920 census. The trouble with the present system and with this 1910 suggestion is that it divides the quota according to the foreign born of 1910 . . . dividing the quotas 45 [northwestern European] and 55 percent [southeastern] in a country whose actual population has its origin as 74 is to 13.190 I do . . . insist that we are entitled to consider those of us who were born here as another element in determining the quotas. But no plan except the ‘national origins’ plan recognizes this elementary point. . . . there is not one word that anyone can say against the principle of dividing our immigrants according to the national or racial origins of those already here.191 The fairest basis would be one which would make our immigration from European countries most nearly approximate in racial qualities the present population of the United States.192 The national origins system would make immigration restriction fair to United States citizens. It would treat new and old immigrants equally when allocating quotas. Legislators valued the nondiscrimination aspects of the law for this reason, but they also valued them particularly because of their experiences

TABLE 1.

Immigration Patterns Preceding Quotas and the Quotas Actual 1898

1907

EUROPE 222,213 1,209,399 Albania Andorra Armenia German Empire 17,111 37,807 Austria 39,797 338,452 (or Austria-Hungary) Hungary Czechoslovakia Belgium 695 6,396 Danzig Free City Denmark 1,946 7,243 Estonia France 1,990 9,731 Great Britain 38,021 78,977 Ireland 34,530 Greece 2,339 36,580 Iceland Italy 58,613 285,731 Latvia Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Monaco Netherlands 767 6,637 Norway 4,938 22,133 Poland 4,726 Portugal 1,717 9,608 Romania 900 4,384 San Marino Spain 577 5,784 Sweden 12,398 20,589 Switzerland 1,246 3,748 Trieste Turkey (“Turkey in Europe” 4,451 28,820 plus “Turkey in Asia”) USSR/Russia 29,828 258,943 (and Finland 1898) Finland 1,898 1,907 Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro 11,359 Bulgaria Australia 153 1,947 (including New Zealand) New Zealand

Legal 1915

1922

1925

1930

192,268

355,929 288

7,799 9,215

67,607 7,342

341,770 100 100 124 51,227 785

150,815 100 100 124 27,370

869 2,874 1,304 100 1,181 116 3,086 65,721 17,853 307 100 5,802 236 100 386 100 100 3,153 2,377 6,524 440 295 100 252 3,314 1,707

4,907 481

3,607 12,202 30,977 2,465 7,419

2,762 6,585 1,742

912 20,042 3,752

473 3,073 512 228 2,789 124 3,954 34,007 28,567 100 100 3,845 145 100 344 100 100 1,648 6,453 5,982 503 603 100 131 9,561 2,081

4,551

2,654

100

226

26,187

24,405

2,248

2,784

3,921 1,922 6,426 302 121

471 1,925 671 100 121

569 1,930 845 100 100

100

100

100

2,399 3,312 4,811 27,237 14,185 12,592 49,688

5,747 14,357 1,563 301 5,619 1,348 5,729 77,342 3,063 42,057 1,540 2,629 92

3,144 7,986

1,915 1,403 1,282

Whom to Exclude: The Quota Acts Northwestern Europe Southeastern Europe

79,112 143,101

227,791 981,608

79,200 113,068

MIDDLE EAST AFRICA

93

197,776 158,153

141,220 20,550

127,466 23,349

800

800

800

48

1,486

934

1,000

1,000

1,000

8

42

117

400

400

400

ASIA Afghanistan Bhutan China India Japan Nepal Siam

4,301

32,085

11,434

2,071 2,230

961 898 30,226

2,660 161 8,613

700 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

700 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

700 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

WEST HEMISPHERE Unspecified or other

5,356 102

41,762 515

111,206 1,445

no limit

no limit

no limit

229,299 1,285,349

326,700

357,803

164,667

153,714

OCEANIA

Total

Source: All data taken from the Bureau of Immigration Annual Report, various years, table III. Note: Italics indicate Bureau of Immigration classification as Northwestern Europe.

during the war and because a national origins basis appeared to be scienti‹c. Many believed that heterogeneity had almost cost the country the war. Unity was especially important when Europe and others threatened the country. “If the war made for national unity in a larger sense than ever before, it seems to me that it would be wisest and best to base immigration not upon a percentage of foreign born in the country in any one year but upon all those who have come to our shores at any time since the foundation of the Government.”193 Unity would be little disturbed if the quotas were distributed fairly, and nothing was fairer than science.194 “I live in a sphere that is entirely above politics. . . . Congress shall ‹x the total of immigration to be permitted in any one year; that it shall then apportion that total to the various nations in exact accordance with their proportionate representation in the whole population of the United States at the present time.”195 Congress amended the Quota Act until it was less easily challenged on the grounds that it violated a universal principle on which public interest arguments in the United States were based: that abhorring legal distinctions among those given citizenship. The American people identi‹ed a threat from within. Believing that heterogeneity was permanent and must lead to political dissolution, they

TABLE 2.

The Quota Acts, 1921 and 1924

Act

Numerical Restrictions

Preference Categories

Unrestricted (Nonquota Immigrants)

Immigration Act of February 5, 1917

[none specified]

[none specified]

[none specified]

Quota Act (Burnett-Smith)

Overall ceiling: 356,995

•1st: Parents of citizens over the age of 21; persons with agricultural skills; some husbands •2d: Wives and unmarried children of resident aliens

•Those who had resided continuously for one year in an independent country of the Western Hemisphere •Domestic servants •Professional classes such as nurses and ministers

•Unmarried children under 21 •Parents •Spouses of U.S. citizens over age 21 •Skilled agricultural workers and their wives and children under 16

•U.S. citizens' wives and unmarried children under 18 •Western Hemisphere natives, or residents for at least 5 years

Act of May 19, 1921

National Origins Quota Act (Johnson-Reed) Immigration Act of May 26, 1924

Method of allocation: Each European country received a cap equal to 3 percent of the persons born there who were living in the U.S. in 1910 (the latest available census). To 1929 Overall ceiling: 164,667 Method of allocation: Each European country received a cap equal to 2 percent of the number of persons born there residing in the U.S. in 1890. After 1929 Overall ceiling: 153,714 Method of allocation: Each country received a cap based on the proportion of all U.S. residents, in 1920, of that nationality.

Exclusions •Illiterate aliens •Natives of Asian Barred Zone

•No one ineligible for citizenship


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created borders as a way to create an outside and an inside. This made it possible to externalize difference, the threat, and protect against it. Numerical restriction came in response to a fear that sovereignty was at stake; they framed qualitative restrictions in oppositional terms. National origins quotas were the product of a long process of debate, in which legislators revised their arguments until they more fully evoked the principles on which the idea of a public interest in the United States rested and formed an “identity response” to America’s changing involvement with the international environment. Or, as Woodrow Wilson described it, immigration policy was “a policy in which our people have conceived the very character of their Government to be expressed, the very mission and spirit of the Nation in respect of its relations to the people of the world outside their borders.”196 Table 2 summarizes the way in which the Quota Acts altered immigration policy. Whether this way of seeing policy change fares as well (or badly) in general can be seen through its performance throughout the next three periods during which Americans considered immigration policy.

CHAPTER 5

Whom to Exclude: The McCarran-Walter Act

Immigration policy remained essentially unaltered throughout the Great Depression, in spite of the doubling of tariffs, massive unemployment, western migration, and labor organizing. (The only major legislation of this period allocated special entry to a handful of Basque shepherds.) Instead, it was diplomatic imperatives that arose during World War II that forced attention to immigration policy. In many ways, the next debate reprised the earlier one, yet the earlier laws had established what were to become axioms of policy and in this way provided a context for subsequent arguments. By 1924, restrictionists had convinced Congress not only to limit the volume of annual immigration, but also to sift immigrants by ethnicity. Numerical restriction and racial-ethnic exclusion were not, in principle, subject to debate. They de‹ned the status quo, structuring the way that Americans understood immigration policy and the way it might change, and shaping the arguments that all, both conservatives and reformers, offered in the future. The restrictionists’ greatest victory was their ability to plant their understanding of absolute sovereignty in the public mind. Later groups had to accept that policy, with all of its assumptions, as their starting point. This bene‹ted those desiring retrenchment. But circumstances had changed. The United States was involved once again with Europe, but this time it would remain an internationalist and accept or seek hegemony. Restrictionists had either to make their old arguments convincing in new conditions or to fashion new arguments leading to the same policy outcome. Those trying to defend an idea already planted in the public mind, then, also had some dif‹culty. Continuity too would be an active political choice. The strategies, successes, and failures of those wishing to continue restriction, as well as those of their opponents who were trying energetically to overturn restrictive policy, cannot be explained by reference to inertia; rather, both must be explained with reference to contemporary efforts. Several domestic and international events in the period following the Quota Acts’ passage in 1924 might have provoked a restrictionist backlash: the Depression, the international and domestic spread of Bolshevism and fascism, war and upheaval abroad, direct involvement in war, the 96

The McCarran-Walter Act

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beginning of the cold war, and the creation of the United Nations, OECD, Marshall Plan, NATO, and other multilateral institutions. During this period, the United States repealed the Chinese Exclusion Acts (1943) and other Asian exclusions, enacted legislation to assist resettlement of displaced persons (1948), and overhauled basic immigration policy in what came to be known as the McCarran-Walter Act (1952). (Table 4 summarizes the ways in which McCarran-Walter departed from the Quota Acts.) It also, at times, did nothing: during the Depression, for example, there was no new general legislation: reasons proved unpersuasive.

Reason: Depression

In 1929, the same year that the Census Bureau ‹nished going back through its records to determine the population’s national origins, the stock market crashed. Unemployment rose from 3.2 to 23.6 percent in three years. It was at or above triple the 1929 value until 1942.1 If restrictive immigration policies are designed to shrink both the pool of competitors for jobs and the population for whose welfare the government is responsible, during the Depression legislators should further restrict, or even ban, immigration. They should also make efforts to target the immigrants most likely to compete with Americans economically. Yet they did nothing. During the decade following the stock market crash, legislators were indeed concerned about unemployment, banking, and investment. They were not any more concerned about immigrants in the 1930s than they had been in earlier decades; in fact, they rarely discussed immigration. When they did speak, legislators voiced the same types of convictions and worries in the 1930s that they had in the 1910s and 1920s. These included economic worries. They also included concern about race and protecting sovereignty more generally. Over eleven years of depression in the United States, 42 legislators, about a tenth of Congress, spoke at some point about immigration. This includes 3 defending it. Of these 42, only 10 at some point mentioned the economy when discussing immigration. Their purpose was to continue their old battle to ban immigration altogether. When they claimed the ›oor, they argued in terms indistinguishable from those they chose one and two decades earlier, such as race-based criminality: it “is quite singular that the assassins of Presidents and would-be assassins, many of them, have not been American citizens”;2 “For one, I am tired of seeing the name of Capone and other such names in every crime record that we read in our papers. I do not see the names of the Germans, the Swedes, of the English, of the Danes, the true American names, appearing in the crime records of

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the country, in the agitators of the country who are trying to overthrow our form of government and do away with our laws and our institutions.”3 Control of immigration was still control of sovereignty. “America has the absolute right not only to determine the number, but to exclude immigrants of occupations not needed here, just as every other nation has that unquestioned sovereign right and exercises it”;4 [so in] “1924 we . . . practically cut out foreign immigration. That (Quota) act is called the second Declaration of American Independence.”5 Sovereignty depended on control over citizenship. “Here we have a country, but if there is not a soul living in that country there is nothing to it. The same thing would apply to a State if there were no people living in the State. The same thing applies to a nation; unless there are people living in that nation, it is no nation. A nation is simply made up of individuals.”6 Control over citizenship, moreover, was unilateral and plenary. “This country has a right to do whatever it wants to do to protect itself. This country must have immigration laws looking to the good of this country without consulting any other country [or we are] undone as a nation, . . . we are lost.”7 “No people in the world have a right to come into our country unless they come by our invitation. There is no right for the peoples of any country to come into our country and seek the advantages of American citizenship. We have a right to, and we should designate, what peoples may come into our country, and under what conditions they may come.”8 Legislators were, however, barely disturbed by the prospect of immigrants worsening the Depression. The causal model implicit in Depression-era arguments is the same as that typical of the earlier period. Social friction, economic-racial in origin, would lead to war. Either civil war (with sides de‹ned ethnically) would engulf the country, or an alienated group would invite a foreign country to invade, or people would bicker so extensively that the country would be too weak to resist opportunistic invasion. Whatever the spark, racial division marked the route to disastrous loss of integrity and sovereignty. Economic isolation thus served defense. Some emphasized one stage of this chain, such as the link between immigration and unemployment. The legislators who had focused on unemployment after World War I blamed immigration for the Depression. One claimed that “if we should deport the aliens now in the United States, I do not believe we would have a single American citizen out of employment.”9 Notably, only legislators who already supported restriction—had supported the Quota Acts—used depression conditions as evidence for exclusion. In fact, John Robsion used consensus on immigration restriction as a lever to argue for economic protection, not the other way around as is implied by the notion that restriction has an economic motivation. “It will not do our working people much good to keep foreigners


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out of this country, and send aliens back to their home countries where they will produce shoes, clothing, pottery, machinery, and hundreds of other articles in industry and agriculture—working long hours with low wages and using the materials and products of their own country to produce these articles and then dump them into our own country. Restricted immigration and the protective tariff must go hand in hand.”10 Representatives declared that “it is primary that we protect our people and secondary that we solve our problems of trade and industry”11 because “the products of foreign labor coming into this country do more harm than the aliens we have coming here.”12 Economic competition in time of need raised issues of obligation. Why divide the starving world into blocs? Because that way, the government was responsible for a de‹nite number of people. The government had a good idea, too, about which persons it had most interest in protecting. “Let us feed and clothe those who pay taxes and ‹ght for us in preference to those who get our money and return to their own country and then ‹ght us.”13 Economic problems mattered to the government because they troubled the taxpayers, but also because they would, speci‹cally, invite communism or fascism. Foreign ideologies were a concern before the Depression, and they got attached to economic problems once it had set in. Just before the stock market crash, Thomas He›in argued that “foreign agents have intruded themselves into the very temple of American liberty and here at the altar place the Fascist agents of Mussolini are administering a foreign oath to the sons of American Italians and binding them in allegiance to Mussolini, the Catholic tyrant dictator of Rome.”14 During the Depression, communism could be imported and survive, or it could develop on its own. In 1932, legislators worried that Canada’s new anticommunist laws would provoke an in›ux to the United States;15 in 1935, a representative usually liberal on immigration questions worried that Boy Scouts coming to the United States for a jamboree would be able to bring in their communist parents.16 In hearings held during the Depression, legislators focused on communism as the outgrowth of industrial decadence.17 The outcome that legislators feared was the one that populists and leftists hoped for, though they could not agree on how to bring it about. J. Louis Engdahl, representing the National Council for the Protection of the Foreign Born, argued that immigration control “has but one object in view, to create deep-going divisions in the ranks of the working class, to destroy the solidarity of native and foreign-born workers through putting them in separate categories, which at the same time reacts against the unity of white and negro workers.”18 On the other hand, Hugo Black argued that open immigration hurt workers. “My own idea is that foreign immigration has been utilized by the big business interests of the country as a

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direct weapon to break down the price of wages of the people of the land.”19 Communists could not agree whether open or closed immigration hurt workers, but legislators could agree that closed immigration kept out communists. The economy, when it was discussed, was most often listed among several areas of concern. Economic troubles mattered not in themselves but because they could ignite race war, which would lead to the collapse of sovereignty. Belief and ability arose organically from race. “As a student of population and of heredity and of genetics, I know that if a man with a civilization standard, say, of 10 marries a woman who has advanced on civilization’s path to the point of only 4, you will not reach the standard of 10 again in the posterity of that family for 300 years. . . . Self-preservation is a law among nations as it is among men.”20 Heterogeneity led to degradation of the American way of life, then to crime, subversion, war, and ‹nally to dissolution. “We are face to face with unrest, social problems, race problems, crime waves, riots, anti-American propaganda, wage reduction and other evils which are largely brought about by the seething hordes of undesirable aliens in America.”21 Depression would accelerate this process. Albert Johnson, for example, made a point of objecting to communists not out of fear about their economic ends but out of concern for American sovereignty. “We are not going to attempt to prevent the arrival or cause the deportation of those who have sympathetic feelings for people generally as communists; we are aiming at the international political communist who believes in one big union of government and against individual government.”22 Sovereignty protected civilization. Economic shock threatened sovereignty because people’s reactions threatened social order. The dramatic rate of downward change was, in the short run, more worrisome than the low level of economic output. “We are in the midst of one of the most violent and sudden economic changes our country has ever experienced. To adjust ourselves to these changes a new social policy must be adopted. Drastic curtailment of immigration from all sources is one of the ‹rst steps necessary before we can put our own house in order.”23 The aliens did not want to come anyway. A depressed country was hardly a magnet, and those who wanted to move were likely to be too poor to do so, emigrating from a country hit just as hard. Immigration to the United States slowed to 13 percent of its 1930 level, 4.5 percent of its 1924 level.24 Moreover, net migration was negative. Table 3 shows unemployment, immigration, and emigration ‹gures for the period 1929 to 1945. Some of this was attributable to administrative efforts to control immigration, efforts that angered the Congress because they circumvented its


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authority. Consuls and immigration of‹cials relied on the public charge provision to bar a large proportion of applicants: Our Secretary of State, Mr. Stimson . . . said that his great of‹ce takes the credit for reducing immigration by 97 percent, without any law at all. . . . In each case the consul would ask the prospective immigrant whether he has a job awaiting him in the United States. If the answer is yes, then the immigrant is refused a visa because he is a contract laborer; if the answer is no, then the immigrant is refused a visa because he is likely to become a public charge.25 Stricter enforcement was easy in any case when the pool was small and self-selected. The self-regulating nature of economic migration, on one hand, and legislators’ identi‹cation of immigration with sovereignty, not with poverty, on the other, combine to explain legislators’ lack of interest in immigration during the Depression. Table 3 displays how immigration and unemployment covaried. Unemployment jumped up near 20 percent in the late 1930s when legislators began again to discuss restriction, but it was not unemployment that caught their attention. It was the prospect of war in Europe.

Reason: Isolation from Postwar Europe

Decades of debate about European wars, immigration, and sovereignty had sensitized Congress to changes in Europe that might force Americans face-to-face with Europeans, either as soldiers together in Europe or as neighbors in the United States. Involvement with Europe—including involvement with immigrants from Europe—was a slippery slope leading to war and undercutting democracy. Foremost in their minds in 1938 was the country’s experience during World War I. Explaining American Legion opposition to immigration, in 1929 a representative explained that “it was natural, I think, that those who had served abroad during the World War and had come into contact there with the elements of the French army which included the French territorial Asiatics and the French territorial Africans, and who had seen something else of the foreign element there, should look with alarm upon the idea of a great in›ux of those people or any of the foreign people to our shores.”26 Isolationism a decade later focused still on Europe and its wars. “Those who believe in reaching hands across the sea are in opposition to those with whom I ‹nd myself in accord, who stand for America ‹rst, and who are desirous ‹rst of keeping

TABLE 3.

Unemployment and Immigration during the Depression

Year

Unemployment Rate

Immigration

1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941

4.2 3.2 8.7 15.9 23.6 24.9 21.7 20.1 16.9 14.3 19.0 17.2 14.6 9.9

307,260 279,680 241,700 97,139 35,576 23,068 29,470 34,956 36,329 50,244 67,895 82,998 70,756 51,776

Emigration 77,457 69,203 50,661 61,882 103,300 80,081 39,771 38,834 35,817 26,736 25,210 26,651 21,461 17,115

Net Inflow or Outflow

Admissions

Departures

229,803 210,477 191,039 35,257 –67,719 –57,013 –10,301 –3,878 512 23,508 42,685 56,347 49,295 34,661

500,630 479,330 446,210 280,680 174,870 150,730 163,900 179,720 190,900 231,880 252,700 268,330 208,790 151,780

274,360 252,500 272,430 290,920 287,660 243,800 177,170 189,050 193,280 224,580 222,610 201,410 166,160 88,477

Source: Bureau of Immigration, Annual Report (Washington, DC: GPO, various years). Note: Immigrants are those admitted eligible to file for citizenship; emigrants are exiting citizens. Admissions includes both immigrants and “nonimmigrants,” those traveling to the country for business or pleasure. Similarly, departures includes emigrants and “nonemigrants,” temporary visitors on their way out.

Net Inflow or Outflow 226,280 226,830 173,790 –10,240 –112,790 –93,070 –13,270 –9,330 –2,380 7,300 30,090 66,920 42,630 63,303


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the United States out of war by staying clear of any foreign entanglements or embroilments.” Robert Reynolds wanted to ban immigration and thereby “ban all the isms.”27 Samuel Dickstein, a friend of immigrants, similarly explained, “Naturally we want no war. We want to keep peace with the world. We talk about neutrality. We want neutrality not only from the standpoint of what the term implies but also in order to keep out of any trouble, particularly European trouble. In these times we must keep our borders protected, and when I speak of borders I am referring to protecting against the entrance of people who have no right to come here.”28 Isolation was the country’s right. The Constitution forces us to confer certain rights upon people born within our territory—but I don’t see why anybody who does not live within the United States and who does not have the opportunity to take part in American institutions, who does not have opportunity to grow up to be what we look upon as an American and to speak the English language, who doesn’t have any contact with our form of government—I don’t see why that person, no matter what their birth, what their lineage, I don’t see why we should confer citizenship on them.29 Immigrants, as armies, threatened to gut the country. “It is my opinion that the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, when they have in their power such items as these, are just as much a line of defense as is our Army, our Navy, our airplane defense. If we are destroyed in this manner, we are just as surely destroyed as if our Army were defeated, our Navy sunk, and our air defense annihilated.”30 When Europe began its next war, Americans prepared to shield themselves from its fallout. The group over whom the public was later to feel such remorse, refugees from Nazi Germany, provoked the greatest amount of initial fear. In a Fortune poll conducted in 1938, 86 percent of respondents were against adding places for refugees.31 It was not that legislators were wholly ignorant of the conditions the refugees faced. “They are practically all Jews and will be sent back to a country where they are not wanted and will be subjected to hardship and persecution. On the other hand, I feel that we owe to the dignity and integrity of the citizenship of the United States a very strong duty. . . . I think too much of my own citizenship to degrade it in that way.”32 They believed that refugee immigration was no more than a “wedge” prying open the borders and enabling a ›ood of relatives to enter.33 If restriction had been based on claims about immigrants’ motives, then demonstrating that the new supplicants cared only for freedom would have changed legislators’ minds. But restriction

104


was not a response to arguments about motives. It was a response to arguments about Europeans’ essential Europeanness, their congenital inability to live democratically. For this reason, one group of Europeans persecuting another was to be expected; it was de‹nitely no reason to admit the persecuted. “Mr. Speaker, we have had enough experience with these European countries to know that we will get the worst of this deal. We always get the worst of it even when we are trying to save ourselves from them. In this new proposal we are attempting to save them from themselves.”34 Such was also true of Asians and Africans. Almost every disgruntled element that ever got into trouble in its own country had pleaded for admission into the United States on the ground that they were oppressed at home. . . . Suppose we should. . . . We would be inviting all the Communists in Germany and Italy and all the Fascists and Communists in Spain who are dissatis‹ed with their present regime. . . . then what about the oppressed of Ethiopia? Would we be expected to invite every Negro in Ethiopia who feels he is oppressed? Should we invite every Chinaman . . . ?35 “But the American people are not going to be deceived by this refugee bunk. This is just another scheme to bring additional thousands here who are not wanted in Europe.”36 Later representatives reviewed this period bitterly, using it as evidence to aid displaced persons. “There was no effort of any kind to save from death many of the refugees who could have been saved. . . . But the destructive policy of our organs of Government, particularly the State Department [by relying on the public charge provision during the Depression] brought about a condition so that not even the existing immigration quotas are ‹lled.”37 The regrets that some Americans felt were insuf‹cient to reopen the question of restriction. Aliens “have no rights to citizenship. They have the privilege of becoming citizens if they follow a path that we lay down to all of them alike. This is a straight and narrow path, which some do not like to take. Every country in the world guards its citizenship against people who are not in sympathy with their country and form of government.”38 Sovereignty was sovereignty. During the three years between the German annexation of Austria and American military engagement, the period when wars declared were not fought and adversaries were uncertain, American legislators lived in dread of being overrun by immigrants ›eeing Europe. Mr. Speaker, our President seems bound to embroil us in European entanglements. He is now asking the people of the United States to


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make a haven for those who are undesirable to European dictators. . . . The President has gone on a visionary excursion into the warm ‹elds of altruism. With actual death-dealing red warfare being carried on between two great nations off to the west of us, and with rumors of wars coming to us every day from Europe—a veritable powder keg—why should we project ourselves into this danger? . . . Why add to our troubles and threaten our very existence?39 That fascism might threaten American interests or values, and thereby be suf‹cient cause to join in the war, was implicitly rejected. Instead, “the restriction of immigration and the deportation of alien criminals is a subject in which the American people are more thoroughly interested at this hour than any other subject . . . because it unquestionably has a relation to the mammoth subject of adequate national defense. . . . Are we for the Americans, or are we for those who live beyond the lucid blue waters of the Atlantic or the briny waves of the Paci‹c?”40 Refugees’ potential admission was not, however, the greatest danger the country faced. More dreadful was the prospect of immigrants dragging the country into war, then assuring defeat once ‹ghting started. Immigrant subversion would be the key to defeat—but immigration was necessarily subversive. Safety did not depend on immigrants’ benign motives but their absence. Our defense, in a sense, lies within the con‹nes of the United States. We have made vast preparations against the forces which would be used against us in time of war. If war were declared against us, if an invasion were attempted or were made, our observers maneuvering and operating our great airplanes could easily locate the enemy forces without. That would not be dif‹cult. But, Mr. President, there are millions and millions of aliens in this country who have been here for years upon years.41 In this view, “‘all enemies’ includes both foreign and domestic enemies. . . . I say that if war were to be declared tomorrow against the United States, . . . we would have 7,000,000 potential enemies spying within our midst. Termites are more dangerous than enemies from without, because an enemy from without may be observed.”42 Believing that immigrants’ presence alone was subversive enough to assure defeat did not stop many from pointing out speci‹c groups’ nefarious motives. Echoing earlier fears about Japanese colonies, representatives declared that “frequently we have read that prior to the subjugation of countries by aggressor nations tourists in large numbers have been sent

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by the aggressor nations to the countries to be subdued and overrun. I am not at all sure that America and the West Hemisphere are not now being subjected in part to the same or a kindred procedure.”43 The danger grew both from Europe and from Japan. “I believe that ahead of America are perhaps some rather dark days. I think it is time we turned our attention de‹nitely toward the question of the presence in this country of 5,000,000 aliens. We have seen the map of Europe completely changed by the operations of a Nazi government which has boasted of the presence in each of the countries they have conquered of what is referred to as a ‘‹fth column.’”44 Speci‹cally, “no one knows how many agents of warring nations are posing as lecturers and journalists for the principal purpose of shaping American foreign policy.”45 Immigration and in‹ltration were indistinguishable, synonymous. This would be true, by de‹nition, of any country, but American democracy made the country particularly vulnerable to propaganda. The First Amendment and advanced technology combined to create particularly bad conditions. “Propaganda was one of the main avenues for developing a war attitude in the minds of the American people from 1914 to 1917. Today the masses are more subject to direct appeal than in 1914, because of the radio. . . . Foreign propaganda agents are using our freedom of the press and of speech for a purpose which may result in the destruction of our form of government.”46 Arguments about particular circumstances, such as American democracy, Nazi refugees, or Japanese intentions, though logically unnecessary, joined the main, principled claim—that any immigration destroyed sovereignty—to create a barrier of words protecting the country. Opposition to this renewed restrictionist wave also echoed that of earlier years, and liberals, too, rarely voiced opinions at all. Representatives noted that “in periods of war—and we are now in such a period—considerable hysteria develops and oftentimes injustice is done to very good people in our midst.”47 If democracy was right, it should be right in any circumstances. “In a period such as this period, the test of a democracy lies in the ability of that democracy to maintain its liberties, to preserve those liberties, and to have more freedom rather than less freedom during the period of crisis.”48 If citizens were free, they should be free in any circumstances. “Concentration camps, or their equivalent, should be kept beyond the pale of our democracy. They may prove to be a two-edged sword, cutting at our enemies today but striking at our patriots and defenders of democracy tomorrow.”49 Particular circumstances could not circumscribe the application of democratic principle. From the Depression’s beginning through its end and through the early war years in Europe, nothing changed. Neither the generally


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accepted, public characterization of immigration nor policy itself was altered. Immigrants remained a racially distinct army threatening to steal sovereignty by “eviscerating the body politic”; therefore, policy held to its 150,000 annual level, divided among the (white) world’s peoples according to the nationality of the U.S. population. The 1920 census on which the quotas were based, picked because it was most recent, was never even updated. Individual immigrants mattered because of their race, not their skills. Congress gauged immigrants’ effects on a depressed nation by measuring not wages, nor investment, savings, or public expenditures, but “race problems, crime waves, riots.” The only change that prospective immigrants faced was the State Department decision to enforce the public charge provision more rigorously. Isolationist policies had accomplished what they were intended to accomplish: the country had isolated itself so effectively that its image of immigrants and of the outer world they represented did not change in spite of massive changes at home and abroad. It was not until Americans again faced Europeans and Asians in war that they again considered whether and how to establish borders between themselves and those outside.

Reason: Internationalism and World War II

Americans ultimately drew lessons from the war different from those they had drawn from World War I. It was not that their experience was so different objectively. An isolationist country again waited while Europeans started attacking each other, an internationalist president again advocated alliance with England, France, and Russia against Germany, the country was again confused about the relationship it should have with China and Japan, U.S. troops again went overseas and provided decisive force, and the country subsequently worried about employing its veterans and establishing an organization that would prevent a recurrence of European war. Some saw repetition too clearly: “We again have hundreds of thousands of Europeans knocking at the doors of the paradise of their fondest dreams.”50 The war did prompt one new observation that affected immigration policy. Geopolitical lines cut across lines of race. The major racial categories embedded in American law were “oriental,” “Southern European,” and “Nordic,” but in World War II, the United States allied with China against Japan, while Indians and Burmese fought for the Allies; Germans, Austrians and many French joined with Italians as enemies of the United States, while Switzerland and Spain held a neutrality sympathetic to the Axis powers. Ideology appeared as a second confounding factor, determining both sides in World War II and cohesion within sides, as

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it had not done in the earlier war. What a nation racially was, what it believed, and what it did had no clear relationship to each other, though such a relationship had been assumed in the Quota Acts. Debate sought to reconcile these. Emerging from World War I had been a consensus about the war’s causes that had implications for immigration policy. Heterogeneity led to division; division led to domestic and foreign con›ict—and also negatively affected the country’s ability to ‹ght. This inability to ‹ght a clear external foe meant disintegration. Immigrants administered the fatal blow either through numbers, as armies, or by gradually eating away the country’s core, as subversive colonizers. Admitting immigrants from the belligerent countries would make the United States similar to them: racially confused and liable to slip into war at any time. It also rewarded the foreigners who had started the war, when they should in fairness be expected to stay and put right the damage. Continuity through 1943 is striking. The only pressing issue was what to do with enemy nationals stranded in the United States when war was declared. Once again the country had to externalize the threat if it were to ‹ght a war, and once again the threat was racial. Concentration camps were proposed to sequester German sailors in port and Japanese living on the West Coast. The camps were “partly for their own protection,” though primarily to isolate them from war operations because they “have highly developed espionage systems.”51 At least 6,000 native-born Japanese expatriated themselves by signing an agreement:52 “as a result of this evacuation or detention of the Japanese population a number of American citizens of Japanese ancestry, either because of political loyalty to Japan, or because of their reaction to the way they felt they were treated, expressed their desire to drop their United States citizenship.”53 Mandatory identi‹cation papers likewise, it was argued, protected good aliens and controlled bad ones. Administrators were especially sensitive to the possibility that Americans’ generalities about their enemies would alienate, if that were possible, friendly aliens in their midst. “We cannot, on one hand, revile the Nazi theories of racial supremacy, and, on the other, ignore the sinister implication of our immigration legislation that bars one people and not another, restrictions based on no moral or ethical ground save that of a man’s origin. We are paying a bitter price to learn the lesson of the interdependence of the world and its inhabitants. [Removing national origins quotas] will rob the Axis of their most telling barbed weapon on the battle of psychological warfare.”54 For instance, the problem they saw with deporting the expatriated Japanese was that “we are going to send back to Japan a group that knows us, knows our language, and feels very bitter toward us. We


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are going to create a great problem for the Allied military government of Japan.”55 For this reason, the attorney general called on Americans not to discriminate against German, Italian, or Japanese permanent residents.56 The war dragged only one other problem into view, but it was one whose solution had wide implications for immigration policy. The Chinese, invaded by Japan and keeping fascist troops pinned down over a wide area, had been barred since 1882. Some Americans viewed this as a moral problem. All viewed it as a practical problem when the Axis powers began reminding the Chinese of this in their broadcasts over the Paci‹c. Congress then entertained proposals to repeal the Chinese Exclusion Acts by adding a quota of 105 for Chinese. To this time, that country’s quota of 100 applied to whites, usually of British ancestry, born in China; Chinese were barred for racial reasons. President Roosevelt declared that he regarded “this legislation as important and desirable, and I believe that its enactment will help us to win the war and to establish a secure peace.”57 He received a great deal of support. “If legislation permitting 105 Chinese to come into this country annually for permanent residence will help in anywise in the prosecution of this war and save and protect the lives of American soldiers to any extent whatever I believe there will be no objection to it by the American people.”58 Roosevelt, with an eye to the future, argued for materiel: “But China’s resistance does not depend alone on guns and planes and on attacks on land, on the sea, and from the air. It is based as much in the spirit of her people and her faith in her allies. We owe it to the Chinese to strengthen that faith. . . . It would be additional proof that we regard China not only as a partner in waging war but that we shall regard her as a partner in days of peace.”59 Slowly, but surely, we forge ahead to the realization that no man, no government, no people are islands entirely unto themselves; that inasmuch as what happens in one corner of the earth reverberates throughout all corners, or, to change the ‹gure, like waves that wash one shore because [of] stones that had been cast into the waters from the opposite shore. We in the West can no longer remain indifferent to what happens in the East, especially as the world shrinks daily in size. Our good President has stated: The United Nations are ‹ghting to make a world in which tyranny and aggression cannot exist; a world based upon freedom, equality, and justice; a world in which all persons, regardless of race, color or creed, may live in peace, honor, and dignity. And in so saying, the President of the United States was delineating our war aims. That is a mighty large program. It means the lib-

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eration of oppressed peoples, as well as (and this I want to emphasize) the removal of discriminatory measures, not so thoroughly advertised, on the statute books of our own country.60 India, too, was an ally. “We are asking that the United States of America do not continue a discrimination against a people whom we want to have as our fellows in arms and to help us establish a peace in this world based on the good neighbor doctrine.”61 Legislators, however, continued to oppose admitting Chinese, for racial reasons. A quota “will not mislead anyone, even the Chinese whom it is intended to mislead, and go down in history as one more master stroke of meaningless diplomacy at the expense of a very important part of our immigration system.”62 Ironically, it was Japanese propaganda that ‹nally convinced Americans that the war was fundamentally not about race. China is being divided by Japan through propaganda which tells the Chinese that they should throw in their lot with the Asiatic race, that . . . the American people are not going to carry out the terms of its promises because they do not like the Chinese as shown by the Chinese Exclusion Acts. . . . Hitler could come in under a quota, Mussolini could come in under a quota, but Madame Chiang Kai-shek, or the ‹nest type of Chinese people, cannot. After the war it may be too late. China may not be in the war unless we give her some sort of moral support.63 This argument had power since many believed that Americans’ exclusion of the Japanese in the Quota Acts had led to Pearl Harbor. “In my opinion, that was what ‹nally brought on World War II.”64 “I could not help thinking of some Japanese who were saying, ‘What kind of people do you think we are? Do you think you could write into your statute books a law permanently branding us and stigmatizing us as inferior human beings because of the color of our skin without having us hate you and grit our teeth and strive until we could become strong enough to stick a knife between your ribs and twist it as we did at Pearl Harbor?”65 Pearl Buck, in 1943 testimony, remembered “the tremendous evil effect that our exclusion had on the Japanese navy, many years ago. . . . It was the death blow of liberalism; . . . had we been able to see what denial at that time meant, we probably would not have had this war. That has been the single thing that has made Japan regard us as an enemy.”66 Americans had to construe the con›ict as nonracial if they were to believe that they had a chance of winning.


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We could not win a race war, even though we won all the battles. The colored people are two-thirds of the world’s population, and they can outwork and undereat and outlast the white man. Fortunately this is not a war between races. . . . This is still a war between those who believe in human freedom and those who believe in human slavery. We must keep it so. There cannot be a great war between the white and colored races in the next 10 years, or the next 100 years, or the next 300 years, if we keep ourselves—the white people—and the Chinese, the largest and strongest of the colored peoples, on the same side.67 Separating social purpose from race affected how people thought about the war, their enemies, and themselves. They took this new understanding into their analysis of Nazism as well and thus transformed the image of America that they projected into postwar immigration policy.68 This position gained so much rhetorical power that the commission President Truman established to decry the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act after it did pass made the same link between Japanese exclusion and Pearl Harbor.69 Rescinding Chinese exclusion was the one issue where Congress systematically discussed immigrants during the war. At the time, it drew no general conclusions from this reversal, and emerging from the war was a consensus similar in many ways to that prevailing after World War I. Heterogeneity led to disintegration; armies and subversive colonies did the country in. Admitting immigrants from belligerent countries would make the United States resemble them. This was all the same, but the war experience made the “them” different. In World War I, the problem that Americans saw with allied as well as enemy countries was racial; innate differences explained the anarchism and czarism propelling Europeans into con›ict. In World War II, the problem was ideological. Fascism, and to a lesser degree communism, motivated European belligerence—but fascism could not be innate. If it were, Americans had to expect a fascist interlude as well: since 1929, they had protected a 17 percent quota for Germans and a 4 percent quota for Italians because the Census Bureau uncovered these proportions in the national origins of the whole (white) population. Ideological heterogeneity thus joined racial difference as suf‹cient spark for national implosion. Communism and fascism arose from a diseased institutional culture, so they could not attract Americans unless American society and institutions were wanting; therefore, ideological and ethnic demands came from immigrants and enemies. Heterogeneity was still the problem, but it was ideological diversity more than racial difference that triggered disaster.

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Consensus that ideology and ideological subversion should be the country’s focus arose slowly and vaguely during the war years, as a way to distinguish the country from the Axis powers. Fascism was not described in Congress as intrinsically or morally wrong: the problem was that fascist authoritarianism led to war. But fascism never threatened subversion. If the United States were to be overtaken by fascism, it would not rot from within. To the contrary, it would itself become militaristic, authoritarian, and expansionist, in a sense hypersovereign. Fascism was, in addition, not a transcontinental identity but an ideology that magni‹ed the state.70 There was no such thing as international fascism that would draw fascists around the world to surmount the state system. It was precisely such a trans-sovereign movement that legislators feared. During the era of World War I, Congress ‹xated on ethnic identity as a danger of this type. By the end of World War II, communism presented the menace. Truman declared that “Communist tyranny has taken up where Hitler’s brutality left off.”71 Congress did not react against movements simply because they were novel and un-American. Fascism was both. The war did not change enough about the country to change immigration policy, but it did leave a legacy that was to affect how policy would be changed when the time came. Race and ideology had to be separate. Both or neither could present a problem, but in any case, they were not necessarily coincident. When Americans did react, they did so against movements whose logic demanded an identity beyond American borders. “Hyphenism” following the ‹rst war, and communism following the second, each threatened just this. Legislators never worried simply that they would lose a war. They worried that they would lose their country. Communism, like ethnically based foreign-policy irredentism, could not be fought once it had taken hold. Subversion had to be prevented.

Reason: Reconstruction for Security against Fascism

Debate about immigration policy after the war focused on its role in assuring that fascist aggression would not recur, or if it did, it would not draw the United States into war. The two possibilities were to isolate the country more effectively or to use immigration policy to prevent the recurrence of the dynamics that led to war. A strategy to achieve the ‹rst was clear: isolation. A strategy to achieve the second would depend on a theory of what had caused the war. The possibilities offered were ‹nancial catastrophe, alliances made weak by racial insults, isolation, and lack


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of American credibility as either an opponent of eugenics or a user of force; the corrective was therefore money, deracialized policy, or an active internationalism. The debate’s boundaries, for both sides, were de‹ned by sovereignty. Immigration was, still, central to the country’s understanding of its sovereignty in relation to the rest of the world. “The subject matter is immigration, but the pending legislation involves far more than immigration. . . . The very meaning of the word ‘citizen’ is at issue. Fundamental problems of our foreign policy are involved. Our internal security is involved.”72 Because sovereignty underlay any discussion of immigration, legislators had to take care to separate policy concerning immigrants from that covering citizens. “The immigration law is different from any other law with which we have to deal. For instance, most of our laws deal with American citizens. An American citizen has rights under our law. He has recognizable rights, but an alien or a foreigner who has not yet arrived in our country has no such rights under our law. He must be here before he has any standing under our law. Then when we speak of the ‘rights of these people being invaded’ we are taking an untenable position.”73 It was also a tricky subject because it connected with so many other types of policies. In the light of our experience since World War I, there can hardly be a doubt that the regulation of immigration from foreign countries is a question pertaining to the ‹eld of international relations. It is true that, with a few outstanding exceptions, immigration has been regulated by domestic rather than international law, that is to say, by statute rather than by treaty. But so are tariffs or armaments. The domestic form of regulation should not obscure its international substance; immigration is a kind of human tariff and the liberal or restrictive immigration policy is as much a part of the foreign policy of a country as that of liberal or restrictive international trade. This has long been clear to every responsible statesman.74 The centrality of immigration policy was one powerful reason for letting it alone. Letting policy alone meant letting immigration policy secure an isolationist sovereignty. “What is the American doctrine, and what is the doctrine of every sovereign nation on the globe? It is that a country has a right to say who shall become one of its citizens. There is no right in any foreign person, whether he comes from the race from which I sprang or from any other race, to demand entrance here. The whole question is, What is a sound policy for America? That is all.”75

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Our problem in the future, until this superstate some people talk about or something else is devised, is to make America safe for the American people. We need to make up our minds that the period of idealistic preachings that has been going on for some years is at an end. We need to get back to the fundamentals and the bedrock idea that the highest type of political society that has yet been developed in this world and one which will at the same time work is the type known as a nation. The attribute of a nation is sovereignty. We have had immigration laws to protect our sovereignty and to protect the domestic economy of the Nation.76 Into the 1950s, congressional discussion of immigration meant discussion of sovereign isolation. “As a sovereign Nation we have a right to protect ourselves”77 because the Supreme Court has repeatedly and uniformly held that the right to exclude or to expel aliens, absolutely or under certain conditions, in war or in peace, is an inherent and inalienable right of every sovereign and independent nation. The exercise of that sovereign power by the United States of America should not be hampered, limited, nor thwarted by any other nation. If it be, by just so much has our Nation lost its sovereignty and independence.78 Sovereign isolation still prevented apocalypse. “The best proof that a nation can be ruined by unwise immigration policies is afforded by the history of Greece and Rome, which nations remained great and productive, and with a high state of civilization, so long as there were full-blooded Greeks and Romans to carry on their civilization. But they rapidly deteriorated when unwise immigration policies resulted in intermarriage with other races.”79 And internationalism still tempted fate. “I refuse to follow a leadership that is once again getting us dangerously involved in international affairs which might precipitate world war III.”80 Possible future economic troubles sometimes provided a rationale for restriction. Immigration could, for example, be banned for ‹ve years to help the postwar economy. “I think the time has arrived to close the gates, and not let anyone come into the United States until we have provided jobs for the citizens of our country, jobs for our men and women in uniform all over the world, jobs for our men and women who are now in war plants, and who will be unemployed, and who will have to be taken care of by the taxpayers when the war is over. When the war ends, the great ›ood of money will cease.”81 Too much Filipino labor, in another example,


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could justify granting the Philippines the independence prerequisite to being placed under a quota.82 Unemployment, real or possible, served as a symbol of the harm that international contact did to the country. Employing foreigners could be bad in principle or simply self-defeating. “We now have a country to which millions of people want to come from all over the world, and I do not blame them. But, if we let down the bars in a misguided spirit of humanitarianism and let them all come in or let groups of favorites come in based on political pressures here, we will dilute and ultimately destroy the thing they came for.”83 Either way, only isolation could protect those already in the United States. Ignoring Europe meant shunning recent allies, which might set a precedent that would later haunt the country. Many argued, however, that these allies should not be rewarded with an increased quota; after all, they fought for their own homelands.84 Of course, “allies” might not even have fought. “We speak frequently of our allies, the treatment that should be accorded them. I think technically we had 30 or 40 allies in the World War, when for a vast majority of them the extent of their participation was to go down to the dock and unload lend-lease merchandise.”85 Of the best Europeans the American Legion believed in 1946 what it had in 1920, “that it would be better for the nations that were our allies that that type of adult immigrant who would be good for admission to this country could better serve us and his own country by staying at home for awhile and helping in the rehabilitation of his country.”86 If good people stayed put, immigrants were by de‹nition bad people. “Is it too much to ask of Europe’s millions that all must share the burden of reconstruction, the burden of each contributing his share so that Europe can some day achieve the standard of living we enjoy?”87 The United States owed Europe nothing. “I cannot join with those who think we are indebted to all the world and are obligated to cure the ills of all peoples. On the contrary, the world will not stand long enough for these peoples to pay their moral and material debts to this country.”88 This view had its roots in a general isolationism, but it slowly became popular with those advocating isolation only in the ‹eld of citizenship. Europeans staying put in Europe would help a country generally isolationist but also helped a country beginning to expand overseas. Pat McCarran argued that “Europe is not likely ever to pay its own way if it rebuilds its economy along the nationalistic lines that prevailed before the war. The only way in which Europe can make the maximum use of its resources is to develop into one big market and concentrate its production in the most advantageous locations.”89 This required labor. “We are now preparing to spend billions abroad in our grandiose plan of rehabilitating Europe. Tens of thousands of our young men will be occupied with this

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task for years to come. In all fairness we should insist that for at least 10 years the citizens of France, England, Germany, Italy, and the other nations may not seek within our shores the civilization they could create in their own homelands.”90 Those who left had signaled by their leaving their unworthiness for American citizenship. “An adult male or an adult female wants to come to this country. If they are worth anything to this country they would be worth much more to the devastated countries in which they now live. . . . those who just want to run away from a problem would not, in my opinion, be very desirable to come here.”91 It also applied to the persecuted and uprooted. I notice in the State Department report on the Marshall plan the statement that there exists a shortage of labor in Europe, and that if the Marshall plan industries are set up as contemplated in the plan there will be a shortage of more than 600,000 workers. Is there any reason why displaced workers should not stay in Europe and become part of the life there and take their place in the economy which is being established there? . . . A great many persons entertain the opinion that the United States is a charity organization, that we are conducting an eleemosynary institution.92 If the displaced persons desire to work and better their condition, I want to know why they do not stay in Europe, cooperating under the Marshall plan.93 The ‹rst, isolationist view focused on keeping Europeans anywhere but in the United States; the second focused on keeping them in Europe. In spite of this change in reasons for restricting Europeans, those opposed to restriction used unchanged arguments, often those invoking universal principle. To exclude immigrants was to say that the country had “no room, Mr. President, even as there was no room at a certain inn at Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.”94 Since war’s horror was universal, compassion should be universal. There is a moral obligation that civilization and Christianity owe to their fellow man. It is not a legal obligation; it is not an obligation that can be enforced in any court of justice. But there is a moral and a humanitarian obligation that civilized Christian men owe to their less fortunate brothers, growing out of the great holocaust which has cost so much in treasure and in blood and in morale among the people of the world.95


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The state boundaries that caused so much pain deserved not to be honored. “I do not know who it was that divided the world geographically by sections, but it certainly was no divine power.”96 Restrictionists “cannot justify it from anything that has ever been written in Scripture or in Democratic philosophy, nor can they justify it on the basis of practical politics or practical human relations in the world in which we live. The day of materialism and discrimination is over . . . this is a debate about what the philosophy of the Government of the United States is going to be about people.”97 To recognize a universal humanity meant not only to refrain from harming others but also to help them. If principle were not suf‹cient, practical bene‹ts might be. As in the earlier era, restriction’s opponents connected migration to wealth and power. “If we are to view the present position of the United States in accordance with unbiased historical judgements, we must recognize that our rapid rise to world power during the past 175 years has been based upon an increase from 4,000,000 to over 150,000,000 people.”98 Rivalry with the Soviet Union meant total, global preparedness, and it required “additional skilled manpower to realize the American production potential, to staff defense mobilization, and to give us elbow room in our population considering the world responsibilities which we must carry for the foreseeable future; second, to maintain the strategic balance between our population and that of the USSR.”99 Immigration could produce population asymmetry, which would deter attack. “A country with a static population is a country of the middle-aged, without the vigor and inventiveness of a growing people. From a defense angle alone we have to consider increasing population needs of this country,”100 because “the population of the Soviet Union, which is our principal rival in the world, is gaining rapidly, while ours is not making the progress it should to keep pace.”101 Modernity implied movement. If the country wanted to keep up, it had to recognize that interconnections among countries fed liberal power. “I think it is about time we began to think in terms of one world; that humanity is international; that human misery, distress, chaos, disease, economic instability, anywhere in the world, leads to the instability of our own Nation, as well as to the Nations immediately affected.”102 Closed borders invoked images of the Depression but also fascist Europe. “You remember that when the Nazi drive to conquer the world began, a dramatic phrase was coined—‘the lights went out’ in country after country. Today the gates clang shut. . . . There is a problem, I grant you, because more and more gates clang shut, and more and more barriers rise in the path of free intercourse of people.”103 Internationalism was not “a visionary excursion into the warm ‹elds

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of altruism” but a practical, thrifty strategy for a new world power. In this way it differed from the universalism of the earlier era. “Our joining the United Nations Organization is an act of international cooperation that will save money for the United States, will carry out our agreed share of the support, repatriation, and resettlement of these victims of war and its aftermath, without change in our immigration laws or policies, and will terminate existing responsibilities for the displaced persons in the United States occupied zones.”104 The United States had to pay special attention to immigration because it had achieved global prominence in a time when all the world’s territory was claimed by some state. There was a time when a citizen who ›ed from persecution or tyranny in his own country could escape to a new world there to make valuable contributions to the welfare and history of a new democratic republic. That is the way we grew and became great. But today, in the year 1952, when travel is so swift and easy and when great governments are ostensibly and ostentatiously engaged in the work of international organization, a man who loses his country loses his place in the world too. As a stateless person he has no status in the world community.105 Liberals in the 1910s and 1920s argued that modern technology had at last reached a point where universal humanity’s fundamental equalities could be recognized, that generosity increased wealth and power, that internationalism bene‹ted America as well as others. Liberals in the 1940s and 1950s argued the same. In the 1950s, however, these same arguments began to be made with a subtle new twist. Ideology, not race, de‹ned the enemy. In fact, it was the enemies who were now racist. Allied unity and war propaganda depended on Americans eschewing racial grounds for exclusion. Actions, not characteristics, had to justify discrimination. “Any one of you who saw the picture Hitler Lives or any of the other authentic records of the master race philosophy and psychology, I think could not help be convinced that any adult who has ever felt or believed as these people feel and believe, cannot become a good American citizen.”106 Therefore, “no person who bore arms against us in World War II, no member of the Nazi party or of the Fascist Party, of the Gestapo, of the Storm Troopers, of the Schutz Staffel, of the Sturm Abteilung, or any organization or associations associated with or allied with the afore-mentioned parties or organizations can be admitted to this country.”107 As important as adding ideological categories was eliminating racial ones. “We should not give such great preference to the Nordic race, the


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person with the blond hair, the Nazi who was guilty of murder.”108 Restrictionists, bigots, and liberals all had to come to terms with the new situation. “Germany is the second preferred nation of the world, with 27,000 quota numbers. It would seem to me that you haven’t the same Germany now you had before, and that it would be dangerous to this country to use up those numbers on any Nazis or Fascists or storm troopers, as I do not believe they can be assimilated now or a century from now.”109 Eliminating these categories would have a symbolic, diplomatic bene‹t. “All I want to do is simple justice, take those wasted quota numbers and put them to good use by dividing them amongst the nations that have quotas of less than 7000. . . . we would do away with the theory that was promulgated with such tremendous havoc, loss, and sadism to the world, promulgated by the man who came to power on a cannon top in Germany, Hitler, who advocated that which is very much akin to the national origins theory, namely, the herrenvolk and scarbenvolk . . . slavenvolk.”110 Some tried to reconcile the new fact that Germans were enemies with old fact of their desirability by targeting the Volkdeutsche for preferential treatment.111 Allies as well as enemies appeared different in this light. Racially unacceptable India supported the Allied cause with the largest army ever raised, so Asian exclusions became “a continued affront to the pride and self-respect of a valuable ally.”112 Security suddenly depended on equitable treatment, which could only be assured if Americans judged allies in neutral terms. “There should be equity somewhere and we cannot isolate ourselves from the rest of the world and we cannot say ‘we will do this for you but we will not do that for you.’”113 Ideological struggles changed how the country began to think of its partners. “The good opinion of our neighbors abroad is not to be purchased by economic favors alone. Moreover, it is not important to us solely as a means of securing military alliances. If we cannot do more than talk,” then there was no way to assure the “voluntary cooperation in our aims which I believe essential to our survival in a threatening world.”114 American interests were not in con›ict with European interests, and the world, at least among the Allies, was not zero-sum. “The displaced persons now in European camps are a deterrent to our attempts to bring order out of economic chaos, and a drain on the resources we are able to devote to such attempts”;115 they were not seen as Europeans who deserved to be penned up in Europe. Labor unions for the ‹rst time adopted the same view. In an ideological battle, loyalty mattered, and loyalty, unlike race, could change. Enemies in the war could not change their race but they could change their minds. To prevent this, some costs had to be accepted. “The CIO believes that the only hope of future peace, stability, and an improved standard of

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living for workers everywhere in the world, lies in international cooperation and good will. A narrow isolationist position on immigration is contrary to current American foreign policy in regard to tariffs, relief, and other economic matters.”116 Immigration could even help labor. “We are assuming that all the people coming in under this quota are workers, and not possible employers of labor, and consumers”; moreover, if a quota of 153,000 damages the United States, “if that is so, gentlemen, then the faith in our economic system proclaimed to the world as the best, cannot be very strong.”117 Interests were served. “From a purely sel‹sh point of view, we can use these special skills, talents, and labor of these individuals in our expanding and dynamic economy.”118 The country should realize that “we need the rest of the world more than they need us. Our economic salvation depends upon the maintenance and extension of their good will won at such bitter cost. The potential market would keep our factories and wheels of industry at full peak.”119 Opening India, for example, would accomplish a dual purpose: “create a feeling of good will, that we will so need after the war [and] increase our exports—remember that.”120 Immigration would also help the cause. “Men and women who cannot be productively employed in the free countries of Europe are a net loss to the free world.”121 Attorney General Francis Biddle contended that “it is tremendously important in this coming world that we have friendly relations with these great nations. And I cannot believe that Americans, for instance, would be very eager to trade in the Orient if the orientals treated them as untouchables.”122 Unity was crucial. In several subtle but important ways, assumptions about other countries changed following World War II: global dynamics were not all zerosum, and alliance could bene‹t the United States; but allies could change their minds and slip away. The most impressive difference, however, was the awed self-consciousness that infused all arguments, all discussions, and all speeches. Legislators and interested parties never escaped the feeling that people around the world were listening to what they said, and, most surprisingly, that the country had a stake in how those people responded to even the most frivolous of American pronouncements. “Today the entire world is looking to America for human leadership, and it would seem inopportune at this postwar period to enact laws which might produce a bad effect upon peoples of our Allied Nations, and probably detrimental to our foreign policy.”123 Through its own actions, the country was thrust into the spotlight. “America formerly had a privileged position in the world. Other countries got into con›icts and we stood on the side and watched until we determined where our interests lay, and then we threw in our strength on this side or the other, and that usually tipped the scales. That fortunate day has gone. Today we are not an observer, we are one of


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the main contenders.”124 Preeminence was irreversible without enormous social cost because it was the necessary result both of the country’s domestic arrangements and of its defense choices. The country had not just chosen leadership once, it had to choose leadership continually. Since it had retreated into isolation following the last war, it was especially important that it make clear to others that this would not happen again. “The American Federation of Labor therefore feels that we should maintain our present immigration quotas as an indication to the world that we intend to remain an active participant in world affairs, believing that to do otherwise, and especially to reduce our immigration quotas, would indicate that we are not willing to accept the responsibility of leadership.”125 Immigration restriction would indicate “that we were really isolationist at heart,” but this the country should see as a “complete abrogation of its responsibilities.”126 Like the AFL, “the Congress of Industrial Organizations at this time unequivocally opposes the passage of discriminatory legislation which in any way encourages national isolationism and belies the principles of American democracy upon which this country has been built.”127 For some, internationalism should engulf the country and carry over into defense, trade, and cultural exchange, just as isolationism had become total. To them, the new self-perception mandated a reinterpretation of the restrictionist past. The 1924 act “was formulated as an expression of selfinterest, not necessity, at a time when this Nation had not assumed its position as one of two leading nations of the world. From policies undertaken during tranquil years of secure, isolated peace and plenty, we can draw no guidance now in making policies for an insecure peace, when the mantle of leadership rests uneasily on our unaccustomed shoulders.”128 John Foster Dulles re›ected that “it is ironic and wrong that we who believe in the boundless power of human freedom should so long have accepted a static political role. [The founders] were not content merely to build a snug haven but they sought to create a political system which would inspire just government throughout the world.”129 Power, for the ‹rst time, depended on reputation—not a reputation to be materially powerful, but one to be morally authoritative. “This nation has the greatest aggregation of power on the face of the earth. We like to say that we possess moral power as well as physical power. Unless the United States gives moral leadership to its physical power, physical power will not long remain in America.”130 Where liberals and restrictionists disagreed was on the issue of whether that authority carried with it a responsibility to others. Antirestrictionist Hubert Humphrey argued yes, that leadership meant setting an example, while restrictionist Pat McCarran claimed that it did not: “This Nation is the last hope of western civi-

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lization; and if this oasis of the world shall be overrun, perverted, contaminated, or destroyed, then the last ›ickering light of humanity will be extinguished.”131 Moral authority required the country to match its words and its actions. Sometimes this meant changing its words, but more often it meant changing its actions. Immigration policy, because it contained American foreign policy in micro form, became the most central but the toughest arena for working out the mandated changes. I pointed out that in the kind of world in which we live, we, as Americans, must recognize that as we legislate in the ‹eld of immigration we are not only legislating in the ‹eld of domestic policy, which some would like to separate neatly from foreign policy, but we are legislating in terms of our relationship to all the rest of the world. The philosophy which is embodied in this legislation may have a profound effect upon American policies and American relationships in areas of the world where today we stand very, very weak. I submit that there is nothing more important today than to remove from immigration policy the kind of slap-in-the-face which the present law gives, namely, racial discrimination, as it applies to those from the Asiatic area.132 Congress had to work out a consensus on what new circumstances meant for American policy. Clearly, the country was faced with a choice between suf‹cient allies—racially distinct allies—and immigration quotas not only based on race but excluding “bad” races. “In our so-called exclusion laws we had branded and stigmatized as inferior human beings the brown and yellow races, on the basis of the color of the pigment in their skin; something they were not responsible for and could not do anything about.”133 Following this, “the war in Europe was a war to decide which type of idea is to control the development of a billion people—the enormous resources and manpower and potential markets of Asia. Our democratic ideas have a better chance now than ever before to play that dominant role. But they cannot win if the democracies refuse to treat individual Asiatics as equal human beings.”134 It damaged morale during the war—“Is not such an exclusion an echo of the totalitarian ideas we seek to crush today?”135— and would damage alliance during the peace. Such morally appropriate measures bene‹ted the country materially and strategically. Indian good will, however, and our own moral satisfaction is not all we shall gain by the adoption of this resolution [to allow Indians to naturalize]. Our position at the San Francisco Conference will be


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greatly strengthened in regard to discussing colonial policies with our allies. The criticism voiced frequently and widely in the United States against the colonial policies and imperialism of other nations has a certain degree of hypocrisy so long as, in our immigration laws, we ourselves refuse to treat all our allies on a basis of equality. We cannot successfully deplore a policy we practice. The practical aspect likewise should be taken into consideration. Next to Russia and China, India offers us the greatest potentiality for foreign trade during the rest of this century.136 These measures also prevented harm. Retaliation lurked in the background. Emerging from the war was a sense of American dominance, but it was dominance in a world composed of huge powers much more likely actively to threaten the United States. If we persist in telling other peoples that they are inferior, and supporting such a declaration by public law, America may well be consigned to ashes and sackcloth under the ‹re of bombs and under the terrible atrocities of people who are furious because they have been denied status and stature in the eyes of the citizens of the United States and the laws of this country. . . . I shall not cast my vote in this body to antagonize, to irritate or to humiliate a billion and a half people in this world.137 “China will emerge from this war as one of the four major powers. She will be a sovereign and independent nation, enjoying all the sovereign rights of other independent nations. If we persist in maintaining a policy of exclusion, what is to hinder China, and who could criticize her, if she in retaliation exercised her sovereign right to exclude our nationals from China?”138 Robert Alexander, from the Visa Division at the State Department, argued that China was not the only country that would retaliate and harm business travel.139 “I foresee grave consequences both abroad and at home through this constant, year after year, agitation against the European immigrants and their children and these repeated voices of distrust, discrimination, and disdain. You will learn that the poverty-stricken, wardepleted nations of Europe will not allow your contemptuous attitude toward them and your repeated affronts to their racial values to pass forever without challenge.”140 Once initiated, retaliation would spiral, as it had during the Depression and during World War II. Europe and South America are not going to stand idly by and take that kind of punishment. In retaliation and revenge they do the self-

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same thing. We build high walls against France, against England, and against Canada, shutting out their persons and their goods. They build higher walls against us. We and these countries stand on top of those walls and thumb our noses at each other. Trade becomes stagnant and depression ensues.141 The executive branch and the Senate had become particularly sensitized to the negative as well as positive consequences of a tit-for-tat strategy. “We in this country, and particularly we in the Senate who deal with foreign relations, should realize that we should not throw brickbats at our neighbors across the sea by the passage of laws calculated to antagonize them.”142 Doing so in the nuclear age was especially dangerous. “Our scientists tell us that in this atomic age the only hope of the world is now to fracture the incrustations of the human heart and develop just a little good will.”143 The cold war changed the context within which risks were calculated.

Reason: Cold War—Consistency in Opposition to Communism

If leadership was the form, cold war was the substance of America’s place in the postwar world. Strangely, American leadership against an ideological foe during a real, tangible war had no effect on how legislators discussed immigrants or the country’s social goals, while American leadership against an ideological foe during an abstract, intangible war transformed perceptions of the enemy’s nature and the country’s purpose. The American people and the American government are learning today the moral equivalent of war. We are learning to do in peace what we did in war. The war has taught us that we cannot be happy all by ourselves. Our Government has recognized that the problems of food, labor, trade, security, and peace, in short everything which affects the national welfare, is international in scope. . . . Our immigration policies must be studied in the light of our present and future economic and foreign policies.144 Every move had signi‹cance. “In the war of ideas that is going on all over the world today, the ‹erce contest for people’s loyalties, this is a step of the utmost importance [against the] glacier of tyranny moving out of the Soviet Union over parts of Asia as well as Europe.”145 American society would have to change to meet the country’s new, self-declared international responsibilities. Believing that foreign policies


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had to combine in a single package, some argued that an internationalist superpower could not tolerate a xenophobic society. In this period of high emotional tensions in our Nation, a spirit of blind, biased, nationalism seems to be overcoming millions of our fellow citizens. We see such blind nationalism manifest itself in connection with a great many policies and issues, and most prominently in connection with issues affecting foreign policy. Of course, questions of immigration are directly connected with the entire foreign policy attitude of the American people. [If the United States abandons openness] we shall antagonize millions of persons the world around, whose support, cooperation, and alliance we shall sorely need in the century ahead, as we go forward in that troubled period, in the contest between the free way of life and the enslaved way of life, the latter represented by Russian communism.146 Just as Chinese exclusion and the U.S.-China alliance during World War II could not coexist, southern European (refugee) exclusion and the Atlantic alliance could not coexist during the cold war. The 1924 Quota Act had declared the “new” immigrants from the Balkans to be racially suspect, but these suspect people became allies against communism. “We must ask ourselves what effect restrictions have upon the people of Greece, of Yugoslavia, and of Turkey—those key countries in our stand against communist aggression.”147 When an internationalist foreign policy and an isolationist immigration policy con›icted, many argued that it was the immigration policy that had to change. As in the case of the Balkan exclusions, internationalists argued against expatriating naturalized Italians who had voted in Italy after the war. Because a communist government could result, the Italian-American had to be forgiven: “The ballot cast by the individual Italian was weighed with consequences not only for his nation, but for the future of Europe and the peace of the world.”148 Moral authority would cap American power to assure alliance stability. Strategic defense centered in Europe. “Thoughtful persons are becoming increasingly aware of the direct and important relationship between the immigration policy of the United States and our policy of joining with other nations of the world in defense of our way of life. However the restrictive features of this bill will work the greatest hardship against those countries on the continent of Europe which are joined with us in the North Atlantic Pact.”149 Defense also depended, as it had in the past, on keeping enemies out of the Western Hemisphere. “The Caribbean is right on our doorstep, as are the other countries of South and Central America. Those are important defenses at our door. This is the goodwill of people which

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we certainly want to keep. . . . I think it ought to be considered entirely in terms of American security, foreign policy, and friendship with our nextdoor neighbors.”150 Immigrants from western Europe as well as from the Americas should, therefore, be welcomed as a sign of American intent. Immigrants from Europe should be welcomed for practical reasons as well. Europe contained a population too large and too loosely tied to local community to remain politically stable. “In the past, what has happened when they have bulged to the seams? When their seams split, we had Mussolini, who tried to expand into Ethiopia.”151 Immigration to the United States would allow Europe to depressurize. One proposal, known as the Humphrey-Lehman bill, “would open our doors to limited numbers of otherwise quali‹ed aliens from the teeming and overcrowded cities and villages of Italy, Greece, Holland, Germany, and Austria—areas where surplus populations, indigenous and refugee, now strain the political stability and internal economy of the countries involved.”152 President Truman too argued that “one of the gravest problems arising from the present world crisis is created by the overpopulation in parts of Western Europe, aggravated by the ›ight and expulsion of people from the oppressed countries of Eastern Europe. The problem is of great practical importance to us because it affects the peace and security of the free world.”153 Overpopulation and immigration solutions affected other strategic areas. European overpopulation created problems in other areas. Truman argued that “overpopulation is one of the main factors preventing the fullest recovery of those countries where it exists. It is a serious drag on the economies of nations belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A solution to this problem, therefore, becomes vitally necessary to strengthen the defense of the North Atlantic Community.”154 Immigration would solve those problems and solve problems in other areas as well. The transplanted Europeans could bene‹t the United States. A sound national policy would make it practicable for us to admit larger numbers of worthy immigrants from the overcrowded countries of the Old World. Thus, we would contribute our share toward the relief of population pressures in war-torn countries abroad and we would, at the same time, add to our supply of manpower so urgently needed here in order to assure continued and expanded productivity on our farms and in our factories which is so vital to our national security.155 Postwar security concerns differed from those understood before the war. A totalizing bipolar ideological con›ict meant that for the ‹rst time great powers had to be concerned about the way they were viewed, not just


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by other great powers but by those in the periphery as well. Immigration policy’s symbolism gave it great weight. Owen Lattimore . . . suggests that after the war there is going to be a great deal of shopping around, so to speak, among the smaller Asiatic nations to see into whose orbit they would prefer to ‘cuddle,’ if I may use that phrase. . . . They are not so retarded in their thinking as we suppose. . . . They are adding up the political score, and certainly are going to try to veer in that direction which gives them the most advantage. . . . the three countries that have the most political attraction, or shall we call it ‘sex appeal’ toward the Asiatic people are America, Russia, and China. The other imperial nations are not in the picture.156 Not all of those concerned to ‹ght the ideological war drew the conclusion that internationalizing relations and liberalizing immigration were necessary to cement alliance. Pat McCarran, chair of the senate’s immigration committee, argued the opposite. Liberals and internationalists aided the communist cause. There is in custody of the subcommittee evidence which establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that there is extensive subversive activity being carried on in this country under the active direction and leadership of agents of foreign countries. . . . this situation has been vastly complicated by the growth of numerous international organizations and commissions with headquarters or of‹ces in this country, and the resultant groups of aliens that have been permitted to enter the United States. Our entire immigration system has been so weakened as to make it often impossible for our country to protect its security in this black era of ‹fth-column in‹ltration and Cold Warfare with the ruthless masters of the Kremlin.157 He continued: “The results of the war have placed the USSR in a position to take complete advantage of the facilities afforded by international bodies.”158 In an of‹cial Senate report, a committee under his supervision concluded that “Communist agents have used international organizations in this country as a vehicle for carrying on anti-American activity.”159 Communists worried about foreigners; therefore, “The communists are behind this so-called anti-genocide movement which they are trying to force onto this country through the so-called United Nations.”160 If internationalism aided communism, then the immigration guidelines that were to be liberalized in support of this internationalism also aided communism. Immi-

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gration guidelines in this way became the ‹rst line of defense against communism. Weapons could prevent threats by states, including the Soviet state, but only immigration restrictions could prevent threats by foreign ideologies. Even before the war, subversion was greatly feared. If we hope to preserve our free democracy as was handed down to us by an illustrious ancestry; if we mean to perpetuate our liberty, we must immediately take steps to rid our land of these enemy aliens who are busily engaged in spreading the doctrines of hate and discontent, and who are boring from within, with a view to the ‹nal overthrow of our Government. It may require some painful surgery to remove this suppurating cancer. Mr. Speaker, the greatest menace to this country today does not come from abroad. Our greatest danger lies in the activities of these subversive in›uences, and the sooner we suppress them the better for our country—the last pure democracy on the face of the earth (Applause).161 Communism had to be foreign in origin and thus arrived only as an import. It also threatened to rot the country, to tear it apart starting on the inside. “We have as much to fear from our enemies from within as from without.”162 An external threat could be seen and protected against, but such an internal threat to the country’s sovereign integrity, once it took hold, the country could do nothing about. “Mr. President, this is a time of world tension and climactic struggle, when we should labor unceasingly to make America strong. . . . Should a third world war occur, I feel that this Nation would be faced with sabotage of its industrial resources by Red agents already in our midst, who have come into the country in the past few years.”163 Communist subversion would have two devastating consequences: it would eliminate social consensus and result in domestic chaos, and it would establish groups in the United States that were ready to sell the country to a foreign power. Since the rise of Soviet Russia during the past three decades, the problem of subversives has become a vital consideration in any evaluation of our immigration and naturalization policies. The impact of world events on our immigration system can no longer be ignored. As an international conspiracy, communism has organized systematic in‹ltration of our borders for the purpose of overthrowing the democratic Government of the United States of America by force, violence, and subversion. . . . Communism is, of necessity, an alien force. It is


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inconceivable that the people of the United States would, of their own volition, organize or become part of a conspiracy to destroy the free institutions to which generations of Americans have devoted themselves.164 The Soviet state was communist and subversive, but it was also a state ready to conquer the United States. Communists necessarily immigrated, so protecting against communism meant excluding immigrants. Subversion “is not a home grown product [but] a ‹fth-column in‹ltration of an international conspiracy.”165 In fact, “nine out of every ten of the Communists that have been convicted of treason in this country were foreign born. If you want more of that element in here to wreck this country, ‹rst continue to tear down the gates of immigration. . . . We have a Cold War against these Reds here at home.”166 Communist versus anticommunist ‹ghts were not the only problems that communist subversion would precipitate. Racial strife, always imminent, would be touched off. “Communists are trying to force this so-called anti-segregation onto the people of the South, . . . try[ing] to force amalgamation of the whites and Negroes and in that way destroy the white race.”167 The Immigration and Naturalization Service prepared to guard against precisely this danger: “The guerrilla warfare of ideas is fought principally by in‹ltration into the body politic of those people whose political convictions and dogmas con›ict with those of this democracy. The uniform of communist ideology is not easy to identify—it may be a guise worn by a citizen or an alien. When worn by an alien or a naturalized citizen, it becomes the proper function of the Service, by every adjudicatory and enforcement means available, to subvert these ideological warriors.”168 At stake was internal cohesion. “America must have the power to expel these parasites who utilize our freedom as a cloak from which to slay free government.”169 It appears to me that the present world situation is being rather satisfactorily re›ected in this proposed legislation. While on the one hand we intend to correct certain shortcomings of our immigration and naturalization laws hampering the free and highly desirable international exchange of skills, scienti‹c experiences, and professional abilities by the free nations of the world, on the other hand we have taken notice of the activities of subversive elements inspired and directed by our enemies and we have tried to the best of our abilities to strengthen the safeguards protecting the internal security of the Nation.170

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The cold fact is that agents of international communism today move freely across our borders to engage in espionage and anti-American propaganda, to plot with impunity the destruction of our free institutions. . . . today we are spending much of the treasure of this Nation to maintain our military might. Our efforts will prove futile, however, if the gate is left open for the entry of Trojan horses.171 What was at stake was government, for communist “favors the abolition of individual sovereign governments and the establishment of a major government.”172 For this reason, “the time has long passed when we can afford to open our borders indiscriminately to give unstinting hospitality to any person whose purpose, whose ideologic goal, is to overthrow our institutions and replace them with the evil oppression of totalitarianism.”173 The country had to prepare, through immigration policies, to accelerate the “battle which we are waging for the hearts and minds of men, a battle which we are waging not for self-interest but in order to preserve the peace and security of the world.”174

Policy Proposals: Displaced Persons, HumphreyLehman, McCarran-Walter

These strands of argument came together somewhat differently in each of the debates over a speci‹c policy proposal. The debate about displaced persons contained in microcosm the ideas and fears embedded in postwar discussion of immigration. Humanitarian reasons combined with interest in rehabilitating Europe to suggest allowing the displaced to resettle in the United States. Even those generally opposed to lifting restrictions on immigration favored settling displaced persons, for they “were displaced, were they not, as a result partly of the connivance of our own Government at Potsdam?”175 Humanitarian considerations could be served while pursuing the country’s self-interest as well. “Not only would such action save untold human suffering. It will be one more step toward solving the problems of settling Europe, and of lessening the necessity for large forces of occupation. It will be proof to the world that we are more than willing to pay the price of peace, the price of tolerance, of humanitarian understanding, and of realistic use of our riches to the end of world-wide freedom, justice, and peace.”176 The United States not only had an interest in developing its credibility, but had a duty to ful‹ll: “The war placed upon our country a great moral obligation to see to it that justice was done at the close of the war to the thousands upon thousands of displaced persons


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who have, in fact, been placed in what amount to concentration camps.”177 Hegemonic leadership gave the country new tasks. Let us now consider the whole situation in the light of our foreign policy. The United States enjoys the highest moral credit of any nation in the world today. Any cause for which we plead had the sympathetic consideration of the majority of the nations of the United Nations. The maintenance of this position of leadership in the world gives us the opportunity of attaining a century of peace from today through the effectiveness of the United Nations, but it also involves the responsibility that we shall participate in the world’s problems and take our share of the world’s burdens. One of the most plaguing problems of the postwar era and constantly a stark reminder of the imprint of war are the refugees and displaced persons. We must take our share of this responsibility and in good season.178 But complicating this rather straightforward proposal to admit some refugees was the problem of the war. It was one thing to admit refugees from a war that had passed, another to admit refugees from a war just getting under way. With a war that was just starting, the refugees could be enemies. The stakes were higher for both sides, those for and those opposed to immigration. “After we have dealt with the problem of the displaced persons who were driven out by the Germans, we now have the problem of the displaced persons who were driven out by the communists.”179 President Truman pointed out that by de‹nition, displaced persons are neither communist nor fascist.180 “Is it likely that people who have been subjected to slave labor would try to bring the doctrine of communism into this country?”181 Meanwhile, Francis Bolton argued that displaced persons must go either to the United States or the Soviet Union, so the United States had better try to win.182 Those who disagreed viewed the displaced as they viewed all other Europeans: agitators. “There is certainly no good sense in any program that imports a great segment of European agitation into the American hemisphere.”183 Yet Truman had already set a policy in motion. Presidential Directive of 22 December 1945 had allotted 90 percent of the nonpreference portion of national quotas for displaced persons. It did not raise the numerical limit, but it did give displaced persons preference over the category remaining after all relatives and skilled persons had been admitted. The Displaced Persons Act, like immigration legislation before it and after it, passed by a large majority distinguished from its opposition not so

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much by party as by region and support for a particular justi‹cation for evaluating immigrants.184 Although immigrants in general were undesirable—and these same legislators were to reaf‹rm the 150,000 ceiling and the national origins system four years hence—those who were displaced by the war were seen as an unusual subset of the population of prospective immigrants. They were viewed as the victims, not the initiators, of war; those who were unable to return to their homes at the war’s conclusions slid directly from the role of World War II refugees into the role of cold war refugees. Also entering into this vote was commitment to the principle of non-refoulement. It was morally impossible for representatives to vote to repatriate refugees, by force, into the areas from which they ›ed, even while those same representatives would refuse to allow those who had never left in the ‹rst place to emigrate to the United States. Commitment to non-refoulement seems to have increased during the postwar period; its strength helps to explain what otherwise appears to be an anomaly, antiNazi, anticommunist and anti-European anti-immigrant legislators voting at the height of McCarthyism and postwar debates on internationalism to admit European refugees. It should be noted that those similarly displaced by the Americans, their allies and enemies—again, of World War II but also the cold war—in the Paci‹c were not covered by this legislation and were never seriously considered for assistance. Europe was not only the center of the “geo” in geopolitics; it was also the center of “human” in humanitarian. In June 1948, the Displaced Persons Act gave countries housing refugees an extra 205,000 over the next two years. As a way to admit refugees without admitting more people than the ceiling allowed—and without displacing relatives and others given preference within those limits—the act provided that any excess would be charged against the country’s quotas in future years. Many of the smaller countries found their quotas mortgaged into the twenty-‹rst century, but the settlers who would have come to the United States then were allowed entry immediately. After an amendment to reinstate the displaced persons mortgages was rejected,185 the act passed in the House 289 to 91, with 50 not voting; and in the Senate 58 to 15, with 23 not voting.186 Communism’s actual military threat remained hypothetical until the Korean invasion in 1950. That invasion gave anticommunist restrictionists the evidence that they needed to sway opinion. “We have seen in Korea and elsewhere that the threat is a serious one. It is not going to do us any good to have a powerful army in Japan or in Germany, or in Africa, if millions of potential subversives are here in the United States where they can destroy us without military invasion.”187 The war could escalate. “The gathering of war clouds resulting from the Communist aggression in


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Korea only serve to undermine [sic, underline] the threat to our national defense from the invasion of our borders by indeterminate numbers of illegal aliens.”188 The need for consistency reinforced the need for security. “Nothing can be more inconsistent than for us to pass the pending bill while at the same time we face growing casualty lists in the Korean war.”189 Similarly, “we are ‹ghting a war in Korea in the hope of checking world communism in that part of the world. The least we can do at home is to make sure that Communists do not take over our own part of the world.”190 The war in Korea presaged World War III and thereby showed legislators what American security demanded. Those opposed to restriction used the war to draw a very different lesson. Allies offended by racial exclusions were liable to become communist with enthusiasm. Restrictionists would erect an iron curtain around the United States—an iron curtain of arbitrary standards which would mark us for the rest of the world as a nation which declines to practice the principles which we preach. . . . What folly it is . . . to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on defense and to incur more than 100,000 casualties in Korea, and then to undercut this great investment of our boys’ blood and their parents’ money by passing a bill which turns the world against us, as the McCarran bill would do. . . . ‘We love you, but we love you from afar. We want you, but for God’s sake stay where you are.’191 Koreans would be offended, but Americans would also be handicapped. “As long as this needless insult, for example, to Koreans, remains on our statute books, we are sending our soldiers into that land to ‹ght with one hand tied behind their backs, or at least without the full moral armament they deserve and which it is our business to provide them.”192 Decisiveness was crucial to effective containment. Following the Displaced Persons Act, restrictionists and liberals each proposed a general law to overhaul general immigration policy. Table 4 summarizes the arguments made during this period for and against the restrictions that the McCarran-Walter Act eventually reaf‹rmed. The Humphrey-Lehman proposal liberalized both numbers and characteristics. While the legal ceiling would not rise, numbers actually admitted would increase because the slots that went unused each year, such as those for England, would be pooled and reallocated. The bill would abolish all discrimination on the bases of race and sex, instead establishing four equal preference categories: family members, refugees, “national need” (labor), and nonpreference. It was sold as anti-Nazi, for example, “This bill knocks in the head the

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theory of superior races. This bill is opposed to the theory advanced by Hitler’s Germany and the war lords of Japan, and accepts the American theory of equality.”193 The Humphrey-Lehman bill did not, however, survive in spite of its supporters’ attempt to ‹libuster. Because of its failure to protect the country against an “invasion” by communists and Europeans, a motion to recommit the bill was rejected 28 to 44, with 24 not voting; it was again rejected in the Senate 27 to 51, with 18 not voting. Figure 7 portrays the arguments about immigrants that followed World War II. World War II prompted the return of attention to immigration policy, and evidence culled from the country’s experience with the war helped to change the types of arguments that could be considered consistent with the public interest. The war was, like its predecessor, initiated by Europeans and fought primarily by them. It was also decided by the Americans, who had entered late and had, in their opinion, saved the Europeans from themselves again. The recent context was less conducive to trans-Atlantic cooperation than had been that following World War I; depression, protectionism, and isolationism had separated the countries for decades before World War II. Americans’ propensity to get involved with Europeans had not changed. What had changed was their perception of threat. Nazism was simultaneously bellicose and racist; Stalinism, like fascism, was an ideological rather than an ethnic threat. The McCarran-Walter proposal kept the national origins quota system intact, including its reliance on the 1920 census. Its innovations were two. First, it established a Chinese quota and a single Asian quota. For the ‹rst time, those of Asian ancestry were eligible to immigrate. Most controversial was its insistence that those of Asian ancestry, no matter where born, count against this quota. The Asia-Paci‹c Triangle ancestry provision held that residents of “every country wholly situated north of 25th parallel of South latitude and between 60 degrees east and 165 degrees west longitude” would be chargeable to the 100-person quota. This applied to persons descended from residents of this area, as well as the region’s current occupants, to anyone “born outside the Asia-Paci‹c triangle who is attributable by as much as one-half of his ancestry.”194 Whereas a white French citizen would count against the French quota, a French citizen of as little as half Chinese ancestry would count against the Chinese quota. The other innovation was its communist exclusion provisions. The bill speci‹ed organizations whose membership, past or suspected, was suf‹cient to ban any applicant. Opponents labeled it racist, xenophobic, inimical to the country’s foreign policy efforts, and destructive of civil liberties. Adam Clayton Powell declared that “the ancestry test smacks


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World War II European Aggression, but also Nazi Racism ⇓ Causal Argument


Policy Argument

Ethnic nationalism causes civil and international war by creating a toocoherent society subject to fanaticism

Preventing war is in the public interest because civil society is impossible without order and peace

Allowing in only immigrants racially like Americans will cause war either by angering others or by feeding fascism at home

Ideological unity won World War II

Winning war is in the public interest

Allowing in only those ideologically like Americans will assure that the U.S. will be able to prevail again

Involvement with Europeans leads to entanglement and, eventually, war

Preventing war is in the public interest because civil society is impossible without order and peace

Keeping distance from European people is necessary if the country is safely to become closer to European governments


↑

Implementation National Origins Quotas provoked war and threatened civilization

↑ efficiency

↑

↓ Ideas about Causation: Racism Causes War, Ideology Wins War Perverse Effects: Provoked Japan, Rather Than Isolated the U.S. From It Championed Eugenic Immigration Policies Too Similar to the Nazis’. Fig. 7.

Arguments offered after World War II

closely of the infamous Nuremberg laws of Hitler Germany. . . . This bill sets up a Cape Town–Washington DC axis. That is what it does. This bill makes this no longer a land of the free, but a place only for Anglo-Saxons.”195 Others argued that “the McCarran-Walter immigration bill is a step in the direction of dictatorship and police methods.”196 Further, “the bill . . . would jeopardize our international relations.”197 The bill’s two main sponsors rejected their opponents’ criticisms entirely. Francis Walter argued in favor of the bill that it contained no sex discrimination or racial limits, added twelve new quota areas in Southeast Asia and the Arab Gulf, promoted immigration of skilled laborers, and

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included an allowance for temporary labor while deporting “slackers” and tightening deportation, especially of communist in‹ltrators. He added that the bill continued to rely on the 1920 census because the 1940 and 1950 censuses were not yet ready.198 Pat McCarran, the bill’s cosponsor, argued that the law kept national origins quotas but did away with racial discrimination.199 McCarran-Walter passed the Senate by a voice vote on 22 May 1952. The conference report passed the House on 10 June 1952 by 203 to 53. One outcome of this bill was that the country excluded the same group of people for very different reasons. In some cases, the transition between justi‹cations was smooth. The Chinese had been racial outcasts until 1943; after 1949 they were ideological outcasts. In other cases, it was ‹lled with tension. Southern Europeans had been racially unsatisfactory, then were fascists or collaborators, but became refugees from communism. The old view and the new compromised uneasily by giving refugees preference within country limits that were no higher than before the war. Truman vetoed the act on 25 June 1952, arguing that What we do in the ‹eld of immigration and naturalization is vital to the continued growth and internal development of the United States—to the economic and social strength of our country—which is the core of the defense of the free world. Our immigration policy is equally, if not more, important to the conduct of our foreign relations and to our responsibilities of moral leadership in the struggle for world peace. . . . Today we have entered into an alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty, with Italy, Greece, and Turkey against one of the most terrible threats mankind has ever faced. We are asking them to join with us in protecting the peace of the world.200 Dean Acheson, of course, supported this position. “Immigration, like most important facets of our national life in these times, is closely linked with our foreign policy and objectives. Our immigration policy with respect to particular national or racial groups, will inevitably be taken as an indication of our general attitude toward them, especially as an indication of our appraisal of their standing in the world.”201 The executive branch, then and always more sensitive to the international implications of “national” policy, opposed the reaf‹rmation of restriction. Congress, however, supported it overwhelmingly, voting to override Truman’s veto. Those who had voted to welcome some displaced persons also voted to restrict their compatriots; in spite of turnover in the House, 117 representatives voted both for the Displaced Persons Act and for


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McCarran-Walter. Liberals did not change their minds. Victor Anfuso, Emanuel Celler, Jacob Javits, and Peter Rodino were among those who voted against McCarran-Walter, and they had argued others should. The 117 were, rather, those who had transferred their analysis of World War II onto the cold war: safety meant distance from Europe. They were prudent humanitarians, worried about American sovereignty and security, and not certain of how to handle the post–World War II era. They included, for example, Thomas Jenkins, who had argued that “we have had enough experience with these European countries. . . . We always get the worst of it even when we are trying to save ourselves from them. In this new proposal we are attempting to save them from themselves.”202 But they also included Edward Rees, who had declared in 1943 that “If legislation permitting 105 Chinese to come into this country . . . will help in anywise in prosecution of the war . . . there will be no objection to it by the American people.”203 The majority position could have been summed up by John Vorys, when he argued, “We now have a country to which millions of people want to come from all over the world, and I do not blame them. But, if we let down the bars in a misguided spirit of humanitarianism and let them all come in or let groups of favorites come in based on political pressures here, we will dilute and ultimately destroy the thing they came for.”204 The world was too uncertain, and sovereignty too fragile, to take a chance on opening the borders. The executive branch never wavered in its support for liberalizing immigration policy. After Truman, Eisenhower, a Republican, joined its opponents. “We say—and we know—that the Communists are on the side of slavery, the side of inhumanity. Yet to the Czech, the Pole, the Hungarian who takes his life in his hands and crosses the frontier tonight—or to the Italian who goes to some American consulate—this ideal that beckoned him can be a mirage because of the McCarran Act.”205 Table 4 outlines the changes that the McCarran-Walter Act made to the Quota Act legislation. The executive branch wanted to abolish national origins restrictions, establish an overall maximum of 250,000 (up from 150,000), make preferences ›exible to meet refugees’ needs, and do away with mortgages. This meant keeping the one-sixth of 1 percent formula, but using the whole U.S. population, rather than only that of white ancestry, and basing quotas on the 1950 census. The executive derived this from a population total of 150,697,361 (134,971,622 white; 15,042,692 Negro; 369,637 Asian; 343,410 American Indian). Nevertheless, the House overrode Truman’s veto 278 to 112, with 40 not voting; the Senate overrode it on 27 June 1952 by 57 to 26, with 13 not voting. “The history of immigration laws,”

TABLE 4.


Act



Unrestricted (Non-Quota) Immigrants •U.S. citizens' wives and unmarried children under 18 •Western Hemisphere natives, or residents for at least 5 years

National Origins Quota Act To 1929 (Johnson-Reed) Overall ceiling: 164,667 Method of allocation: Each Immigration Act of European country received May 26, 1924 a cap equal to 2 percent of the number of persons born there residing in the U.S. in 1890. After 1929 Overall ceiling: 153,714 Method of allocation: Each country received a cap based on the proportion of all U.S. residents, in 1920, of that nationality.

•Unmarried children under 21 •Parents •Spouses of U.S. citizens over age 21 •Skilled agricultural workers and their wives and children under 16

Immigration and Nationality Act (McCarran-Walter)

•Husbands of U.S. citizens •1st: Aliens with special skills, with their spouses and children, 50 percent •2d: Parents of U.S. citizens, 30 percent •3d: Spouses and children of resident aliens, 20 percent •4th: Other relatives of U.S. citizens, 25 percent culled from unused slots above •Nonpreference: Any remaining unused

Act of June 27, 1952

Overall ceiling: 154,657 Method of allocation: Each country given a cap equal to one-sixth of 1 percent of the persons in the U.S. in 1920 whose ancestry derived from that area. Established a minimum of 100, and granted Asian countries a general ceiling of 2000.

Exclusions •No one ineligible for citizenship

•Communists, as outlined in the Internal Security Act •Drug addicts •Anyone attempting fraud •Additionally established the alien address report system, which required aliens to report their addresses annually for inclusion in a central security file


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observed the Immigration Commissioner in 1950, “has been one of increasing restriction.”206 Table 4 summarizes the changes that the McCarran-Walter Act made to American immigration policy. Supporters and opponents of immigration restriction generally, and the McCarran-Walter Act speci‹cally, agreed about the facts. The United States’ power gave it global preeminence, while its democratic system made it a model for others to emulate. Trade with American allies bene‹ted all involved. The Soviet Union, a second of disturbingly uncertain distance, sought to impair the United States by underwriting American communist groups and eastern European military satellites. Refugees from communist countries begged entrance into the United States; how the country handled their widely publicized entreaty would affect America’s ability to counter the Soviet threat. What these facts meant, though, the two sides could not agree on. They drew different conclusions about relations among the NATO countries; American interest in Europe and the Third World; the relevance of American leadership to the cold war’s outcome; the importance of consistency between domestic and foreign policies; and refugees’ motives and effects on American society, the economy, and political life. In short, they disagreed about the boundaries of American attention and interests. This difference accounts for an acute divergence between the immigration policies each side recommended. Isolationists saw the United States as a pure, and necessarily lonely, exemplar. Foreign policy was designed to prevent the outside world from affecting the country; interdependence subverted sovereignty. The society that American boundaries sheltered was fragile, based upon the slowly acquired—and tenuous—assimilation of non-English to democratic institutions. Government’s ‹rst duty was to de›ect foreign in›uences, to allow social and political integration to continue to the bene‹t of citizens. This was also government’s only duty; the world beyond its borders was none of its concern. In fact, attention to foreign people and problems would precipitate the country’s downfall. Enlarging or complicating the direct, two-way link between government and people would undermine domestic sovereignty. The relationship between ruler and ruled had not only to be tight but mutually exclusive in order for the country really to be sovereign. Further, if government enacted policies based not just on citizens’ values and interests but also on those of foreigners, the country was no longer sovereign domestically and was therefore not sovereign in relation to others. Taking a speci‹ed group of people into account was the essence of a government’s claim to sovereignty. If the group that a government considered increased because people renounced a foreign membership in exchange for American citizenship, then the country was structurally sta-

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ble, sovereignty unthreatened. It was quantitatively but not qualitatively altered. If the group increased, however, because the government took into account views of people not citizens—or worse, took foreigners’ interests into account while ignoring segments of the local population—then the pact between citizen and government was broken. The boundaries separating those within and those outside the country were uncertain, sovereignty in jeopardy. Its citizens’ good, the value that a government must pursue, had nothing whatever to do with events or people or processes beyond the country’s borders. Internationalists conceived of America differently. Foreign policy should strengthen the United States; interdependence empowered the nation. Their image of the United States included American allies, so the boundary they thought crucial to the country’s survival, and sought to defend, was that between East and West, not that between the United States and others. They were as concerned as isolationists with separating “us” from “them,” but whereas isolationists de‹ned “us” as American citizens, internationalists included in the category other states and peoples, allies in the ‹ght against communism. American interests were tied up with Europe’s, and later the Southern Hemisphere states’, future. Taking potential allies’ views into account strengthened the United States. Enlarging the group of people that the country considered when evaluating policies that codi‹ed its relation with the rest of the world allowed the government to anticipate and control other countries’ concerns. Internationalism extended American power. To isolationists, internationalism eroded American sovereignty. This crucial difference underlies further distinctions between the points of view. To isolationists, what other countries thought of the United States mattered not at all. Foreign policy operated according to a logic unrelated to domestic values. For this reason, isolationists did not care whether others viewed American foreign policy, which might support ends at odds with domestic values, as hypocritical. Consistency between domestic and foreign policy, or among foreign policies, was valuable only if it strengthened policies’ mutual support in practical terms. Internationalists, in contrast, saw foreign policy as a sphere in which ties of interest and value bound others to the United States. Inconsistency meant hypocrisy, enough to turn potential allies away from the United States and toward its enemies. Internationalists believed that American power depended on leadership, leadership depended on credibility, and credibility depended on consistency. In this way only could norms and regimes of principle govern allies’ relations. Consistency of principle or value implied, as well, a consistent means of dividing citizens from aliens. To isolationists, immigrants were by


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de‹nition subversives in that they comprised a class to which the government owed protection but which had no historical or legal tie to the country. Immigrants were likely also subversive in practice, since they by de‹nition had to arrive from communities at odds with the United States—and, to isolationists, all countries were at odds with the United States. If they were damaging with benign intent, they were profoundly destructive with subversive intent. Their presence was logically troublesome, practically exasperating, or directly threatening. In all cases, they muddied the border between what was inside and what outside sovereign purview. Internationalists, on the other hand, saw strength in immigrants. Those emigrating from allied countries increased ties of affection between the United States and its allies, added to the American work force, and relieved population pressure overseas. Those emigrating from enemy countries added to anticommunist convictions at home, provided intelligence, weakened the communist countries that could no longer exploit the emigrant, and provided important propaganda material. Wherever immigrants came from, they helped to clarify the divisions between East and West upon which American security and identity had come to depend. The difference between setting boundaries of concern at the American border or at the frontier between East and West had enormous implications for policy in other areas. It complicated the familiar left/right split. Internationalism of this sort could lead to liberal foreign and humanitarian aid policies; it also could justify neoimperialism or hegemonic paternalism. Isolationism, similarly, could protect reactionary racism and paranoid conservatism, but could also support efforts to curb the effects that American businesses and international bureaucracies had on Europe and the Third World. What that difference did mean was that internationalists viewed change at home and abroad as relevant for American foreign and immigration policies (and saw the difference between “at home” and “abroad” shrinking), while isolationists insisted on its irrelevance. Developments within the United States, such as the Depression and labor socialism, internationalists asserted, had implications for foreign policies. So, they claimed, did processes beyond the country’s borders, such as war and European colonial expansion. Such events sparked debate about policy boundaries and hence about immigrants. This debate eventually created consensus on an image of the country different enough from that embedded in the McCarran-Walter Act to justify revamping immigration policy. McCarran-Walter served as a pillar of isolationism. McCarran-Walter was not, however, in support of an isolationist foreign policy since there was no isolationist foreign policy. The U.S. government had concurrently organized a multitude of institutions to tie its fate to that of Europe,

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Japan, and Canada. Its trade, weapons, and ‹scal policies integrated its future with that of other countries. Nor were the isolationist immigration policies outlined in McCarran-Walter merely a holdover from an earlier time. Believing that external change had forced a reconsideration of its immigration policies, Congress examined the immigration and naturalization laws, held extensive hearings, set up independent commissions, and debated possible revisions. They did not let policy slide; they chose change in response to altered circumstances. But although the new circumstances involved American dominance and international reach, as well as a set of policies institutionalizing the new order, the new immigration policy codi‹ed more rigid boundaries between American citizens and others. McCarran-Walter represented a new way of thinking about sovereignty. Different issues, in different realms, could have different borders. Economic boundaries encompassed all noncommunist areas. Tourists, business travelers, laborers, commodities, manufactured goods, capital and ‹nancial ›ows all traveled where private citizens wished them to go; moreover, others could buy and sell parcels of American territory as well as industries. Ideological boundaries extended through the Western Hemisphere to Europe and Japan. Primary military boundaries divided NATO allies from others; secondary military boundaries were just the other side of communist-controlled regions. Political boundaries, those separating citizens from noncitizens, were the only boundaries coincident with the forty-eight states’ common borders.207 The United States secured direct control over people while eroding its control over goods and territory. The country increased its power by eliminating earlier borders channeling territorial allocation and trade ›ows.208 It secured its sovereignty by creating borders that strengthened the division between citizens and aliens. Although the McCarran-Walter Act would be challenged and eventually overturned, this bifurcation between policies toward citizens and toward things was to become characteristic of policy throughout the West for the remainder of the century. Change was signi‹cant but subtle. Americans ascribed their dominance in the war in part to their vast industrial base, huge work force and consumer market, and technological edge; their victory they ascribed also to their willingness to lead. Europe especially needed American guidance to save itself and to realize its economic potential. This was a potential dilemma. To Americans, sovereignty still meant independence from others’ in›uence as well as control. But whereas true interdependence and absolute sovereignty could not coexist, an expansive, dominant internationalism preventing others from controlling the United States could protect American sovereignty. The country could adopt an outgoing eco-


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nomic internationalism without endangering its authority. Former congressman Nathan Perlman argued: Whether or not the policy of that time was wise, Congress could then have claimed for itself at least the virtue of consistency. The 1924 act was an integral part of the American attempt at international isolation. Since 1924 we have reversed our foreign policy and, in the interest of consistency, it is necessary that any immigration legislation now proposed likewise re›ect this reversal.209 Sovereignty depended not on complete control over resources, territory and people, but only over territory and people. Resources meant power; territory and population meant sovereignty. After both wars, Americans could reach back into their history and point to a tradition that was threatened by foreign involvements. The public culture was Anglo-Saxon, most people were of European descent, and American institutions had a republican basis. Americans did, in this sense, remain the same and judge immigrants’ threat to essential Americanness. But the “America” that immigration policy protected was plastic. There was by the 1950s no national identity that was de‹nite enough and excluded enough to provide a constant standard. It is not that the country went from thinking of itself as white to thinking that race did not matter; rather, it moved from thinking in racial terms to thinking in ideological terms. What was important changed; the context for American identity, and hence the standard to use in thinking about what to protect, changed with the external threat.

CHAPTER 6

Whom to Exclude, Whom to Prefer: The Immigration Reform Act of 1965

Often, the changes Congress made to the immigration act in 1965 are described as revolutionary. In one way, they are. Congress removed race from the categories governing immigration and naturalization exclusion. This was the ‹rst federal statement about access to citizenship that did not say “white,” “Negro,” “Oriental,” or something similar. It fundamentally and irrevocably altered the legal basis for choosing America’s citizen population. It allowed immigration from every country and gave each country the same numerical limit, which allowed signi‹cant Asian and African migration for the ‹rst time. The act did not, however, increase the number able to enter; in fact, it altered the legal ceiling by pulling under it a previously unlimited group, Western Hemisphere immigrants. In that way, Congress extended regulatory control over the number allowed to enter, a profoundly conservative act, at the same time that it liberalized categories describing the characteristics it desired in its immigrants. This shift was, as were previous revisions of immigration policy, precipitated by an external change that challenged an assumption about American identity and interests on which prevailing policy rested. Like World Wars I and II and the Korean War, decolonization changed the context in which the United States located itself. Immigration policy no longer meshed with, and in fact undermined, the country’s stance vis-à-vis the rest of the world. Reformers hashed out a response that redirected policy to protect against the threats or take advantage of the opportunities in this new world. This response was then adjusted— magni‹ed or modi‹ed—through debate, by pointing to an outcome that might exacerbate a current domestic con›ict. Recent strife over civil rights suggested to some in the early 1960s that American blacks would take unequal treatment of Africans and Asians as a denial of black equality with whites; this followed concerns in earlier decades that “ethnic” Americans would take immigration quotas that did not match Americans’ national origins as a statement that they were second-class citizens. As was true in earlier years, legislators believed that how immigration policy 144

The Immigration Reform Act of 1965

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treated foreigners revealed how Americans viewed their fellow citizens, their allies, and their enemies. Geostrategy had to be made consistent with domestic policies. Immigration policy made great propaganda, the currency of the cold war. From 1952 through 1965, as in earlier periods, immigration policy provided the arena for direct ‹ghts between two views of American boundaries, sovereignty, and citizenship. To the 1920s, nativists and universalists had struggled over whether to establish boundaries at all, then over whether those boundaries ought to create a citizen group protected from racially motivated wars and therefore de‹ned by race. To the 1950s, isolationists and idealists had argued over whether boundaries prevented or created war. Should the country enforce divisions assuming a racial threat against a white population, or an economic or ideological threat against a liberal population? From the mid-1950s to mid-1960s, proponents of autarky and internationalism clashed over whether, for practical and moral purposes, American principles and programs should stop at the ‹fty states’ edge or should extend throughout the West. To decide whether self-interest should include the interests of non-Americans was to determine whether the “self” included noncitizens, whether American identity had to be based on a potentially transnational principle. In each period two viewpoints dominated, one de‹ning the group to be taken into account narrowly, the other broadly. What changed were the reasons given to justify where the boundary should be drawn, because what changed by 1965 were legislators’ interpretations of what new events meant for sovereignty and power. The majority viewed American policies with bifocals for the ‹rst time, seeing distance and proximity with equal clarity. They worried about how foreigners as well as citizens would interpret what policy said about the desirability of people of their type. They worried about the symbolic and political effects of any group, internal or external, believing that the United States held them in secret contempt. The standard for measuring how much was too much was not the American citizen population but other potential immigrant populations. Early exclusionists had argued that the United States allowed too many Italians compared to native Americans; in 1965, reformers argued that it allowed too many Italians compared to Chinese. Global leadership, the legislators belatedly concluded, did matter. The United States was to remain as strict as ever when it came to numbers—it extended regulatory control over new groups, keeping the overall limit the same as it ever was—but it liberalized criteria governing those few who were allowed to enter. Communism abroad motivated both isolationists and internationalists, who lobbied for far-reaching measures to counter communist expan-

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sion. Some worried about the cold war at home while others worried about communism abroad; some groups stressed nonintervention and noninvolvement while others wrestled with the issue of how to develop and project American hegemony. The difference between them was not de‹ned by a left/right split, nor a pluralist/anticommunist split, nor an interventionist/noninterventionist split. Rather, one group fought the cold war at home; the other fought it abroad. One group adopted a strategy of nonintervention toward the outside world; the other adopted it toward American society. Why and how legislators became convinced that immigration policy needed to be overhauled can be seen in their discussions of who owed what to whom, whose interests ought to be taken into account, and what legitimate interests were. Possible catalysts to change during this period are lessening unemployment, which could reduce economic fears and perhaps encourage consideration of temporary laborers; domestic developments such as the civil rights movement and Great Society legislation promoting domestic equality and redistribution of opportunity—these could have encouraged change in desired immigrant characteristics by reforming the way that Americans thought about community; and external or foreign policy developments, such as the crises creating Hungarian and Cuban refugees, decolonization, the Kennedy assassination (by an expatriate), and the Vietnam War, which could have strengthened the country’s resolve to help allies and hurt enemies in the cold war. The events least controllable by the U.S. government—civil rights demands, decolonization, and refugees—in fact provided the greatest stimulus to change. The following sections outline the viewpoint prevailing as the debate started— the isolationist position—and the internationalist viewpoint challenging this, then consider possible stimuli to change. Arguments for change had to be tailored to contrast with current policy. McCarran-Walter drew the boundaries of American concern narrowly, focused attention on internal cohesion, and de‹ned American citizens in racial and ideological terms. McCarran-Walter’s champions were leaders in the domestic ‹ght against communism, not the international ‹ght. Indeed, Pat McCarran argued against creating international institutions to function as international outposts against Soviet expansion. “The foreign aid years” de‹ned by the Marshall Plan, he argued, “have also created another type—a companion type—the psychological warfare warrior; the man whose purpose in life is to listen to foreign voices, observe foreign reactions, assess overseas angers and overseas jubilance. This is the sort of man who is a doctor of philosophy of alien emotion.”1 The purpose of foreign policy was to ‹x things overseas so that Americans would not need to bother further. “Few, if any, will quarrel with the original basic


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objectives of this mutual security foreign aid program: to prevent Americans from again having to ‹ght and die on foreign battle‹elds.”2 Francis Walter, McCarran’s cosponsor, wanted American activity overseas to contract. Refugee slots were underused, he argued, because American reconstruction of Europe had been a success.3 Nothing more need be done. McCarran rejected an internationalist anticommunism. “If we do not reject the idea of immigration as an instrument of national policy, as a pawn in the game of power politics, then our country is certain to become little different from the countries which these people would like to leave.”4 Although he argued strenuously for anticommunist immigration provisions, McCarran opposed using immigration policy to ‹ght the cold war. But with the idea of using refugees as chips in an international poker game, to achieve some advantage for ourselves, I am not at all in sympathy. If we are going to help refugees because they are refugees, because they are homeless and hungry and ill-clothed, that is one thing; if we are going to make a show of helping refugees in order to win an election in some European country, or get an agreement out of some European government, or try to win the friendship of the people of some country of Europe, I say the objective is primarily a sel‹sh one, and unworthy of the traditions of the United States of America.5 The United States ought, in his view, to ignore the wishes of others. At stake was the absolute sovereignty developed at the turn of the century, an authority that had to remain unquestioned and unresponsive to foreign demands to survive. Francis Walter declared that “throughout all our history immigration laws have been based on the premise that one of the ‹rst functions of sovereignty is control of both quality and quantity of prospective new citizens. The only yardstick in arriving at this determination has been the interest and welfare of the American people.”6 Soliciting others’ views was wrongheaded and unproductive. “All other advanced countries in the world recognize their right to regulate immigration to correspond with the desires and welfare of their own citizens. The United States alone seeks world approval, and I might add to no avail.”7 Listening to others “would inevitably lead to the weakening of the institutions of this country; and if we do not remain strong, then immigration policy will become a moot question in any event.”8 Isolation secured defense. Restrictionists’ views echoed those of earlier years. Immigration meant invasion. To remain sovereign, the population had to remain ‹nite and controlled. “If we keep on adding to the number admitted into our country, eventually we shall ‹nd ourselves without a country, without lib-

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erty, without freedom, and without opportunity for veterans who return from Korea.”9 War was near suicide; immigration was in fact suicide. “The people of America do not want to turn their country over to the European hordes. . . . we have given them our boys, we have given them our blood; we have given them our substance; for God’s sake do not give them our country.”10 Sending money abroad for reconstruction siphoned off power, but allowing immigrants in was worse, for it eroded sovereignty. “American citizens have been taxed untold billions of dollars to support foreign governments and foreign peoples. Now we are being asked to surrender the country itself to the world’s hordes who are just waiting for the immigration barriers to be lowered.”11 International politics was a struggle to determine the ‹ttest. “Self-preservation, in my opinion, is the ‹rst law of nature.”12 Immigrants were nonentities in a world composed of one’s own citizens and other governments. “Immigration laws, like trade laws and the like, come under the normal exercise of sovereign power”; therefore, it is not logically possible to discriminate against immigrants.13 Moreover, “there has been some indication that we should not hurt the feelings of our friends, but America comes ‹rst.”14 If other countries’ policies affected the immigration stream, America was not sovereign. Russia expels people; “is Russia, in this manner, to establish our immigration policy by actually determining the exact individuals who are to make up the America of the future?”15 Isolationists viewed immigration policy as negotiating the country’s relationship to the rest of the world. In this prevailing view, domestic values were the only appropriate standards to use to judge acceptable immigration. Internal subversion presented the greatest threat to the country’s future. “If we bring in 200,000 aliens, and if our security of‹cers are 99 44100 percent perfect in their job, there would still be 1,120 subversives who would get into the United States. . . . Conquest of the United States of America at this period in world history would be the key to the conquest of the world, regardless of whether achieved by immigration, in‹ltration, ‹fth-column action, and economic warfare, or by military operations.”16 Only through immigration could the country be subverted. “Consistent with the Kremlin-centered nature of the world conspiracy is the fact that the communist apparatus in our country is not a homegrown product, but is a weed transported from abroad. . . . At this very hour, the Communist Party is organizing all over this Nation cells and fronts under the guise of study groups for the purpose of propagandizing and agitating for the repeal or emasculation of the Immigration and Nationality Act [McCarran-Walter].”17 For “too long traitors to this country have taken advantage of the many wonderful bene‹ts provided citizens of the United States at the same


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time they are plotting to destroy the country.”18 Lee Harvey Oswald might not have been able to enter the United States had Congress taken suf‹cient action earlier.19 To save the United States, Americans had the duty to preserve the status quo. From this standpoint, national origins quotas’ value was in their ability to guard stability. Strom Thurmond argued: The wish to preserve one’s identity and the identity of one’s nation requires no justi‹cation—and no belief in racial or national superiority—any more than the wish to have one’s own children, and to continue one’s family through them, need be justi‹ed or rationalized by a belief that they are superior to the children of others. There is no merit in the contention that the quota system is racist or morally wrong. Individuals, and groups, including nations, have an absolute and unchallenged right to have preferences for other individuals or groups, and nothing could be more natural than a preference based on a sense of identity.20 Isolationists argued for national origins policy using new reasons. They claimed to be democrats, not racists. “To the contrary, I assert that anyone who believes in the equality of man should share my views, because if men are truly equal, the people who constitute the most numerous part of the population of any nation are necessarily those who contribute most to that country and its development.”21 The national origins formula “treats persons differently because they are basically different.”22 Anglo-Americans might, for example, be better than others in their political habits. “If we transfer the pattern of our immigration to countries and people who have historically maintained a totalitarian concept of government, it will only be a matter of time until our Republic will veer from its traditions of freedom and democracy.”23 Although President Johnson argued that national origins quotas “disparage the ancestors of millions of our fellow Americans,”24 isolationists disagreed. “The national origins quota system is based on conditions existing in the United States, and for this reason, it is like a mirror re›ecting the United States.”25 What was most valuable was that which protected the status quo. Isolationists sought to conserve (or create) a particular version of the United States. The country they desired was the country they imagined existed in the 1870s or so, one in which English, Irish, and Germans dominated, in which democracy worked, people spoke English, and they cared about their neighbors rather than about foreigners. It was a world focused in on itself, protected through isolation and ignorance from the chaos abroad. The domestic and foreign spheres were to be kept separate; should

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they touch, the foreign would pollute the domestic, and the domestic would leak into the foreign. Complementing isolation was a policy promoting an internal purge. If the society could eliminate bad in›uences, it could close the borders con‹dent that it would not be harmed. Isolation, not alliance, protected it from communism. Internationalists, by contrast, viewed the United States not as a discrete sovereign unit but as the center of the West, a vast political realm whose borders were limited only by militarily forti‹ed East Bloc boundaries. Sovereignty in this realm still depended on authority, but since the struggle was global, authority had to be global. There were, therefore, no limits on territories or peoples whose welfare ought to be considered when weighing policies. Universalists before this period had denied borders’ relevance. Internationalists, though they shared universalists’ concern with events and people outside the country, departed from universalists by acknowledging borders’ importance. Boundaries mattered in the cold war. Internationalists were, also, forward-looking. Whereas isolationists valued the status quo and therefore sought to measure current policy by its deviation from past policy, internationalists left the past behind: “as far as ancestors are concerned, I will say they are like turnips—like turnips—nothing good of them but what is in the ground.”26 Relevant distinctions between citizen and noncitizen were no more nor less than those between West and East, friend and foe: loyalty to liberal principles of social distribution. The cold war demanded an internationalism that clari‹ed the differences between East and West. Immigration policy had to encourage integration within the West and to weaken the East. Whereas isolationists drew narrow boundaries and worried about subversion, internationalists drew wide boundaries and worried about pushing back the threat. Isolationists relied on forti‹cation; internationalists depended upon leadership and tipping dominoes in their direction. Isolationists guarded against an internal threat by purging the country and then quarantining it. Internationalists defended against an external threat by changing that outside world. Leadership became of value in itself. It became important that the United States simply reign. Immigration policy became to some a symbol of general leadership, a signal that the United States would enact laws consistent with its pronouncements and would act on principle, that petty calculations of minor interests were beneath it. Internationalists understood the country to be establishing an age of American leadership de‹ned by norms governing exchange and cooperation on various issues.27 The United States wished “to do justice in terms of an open world extending not only to goods, but to people. That, I feel, is the ultimate objective of freedom and the ultimate objective of the kind of world in which we in the United States wish to live and wish everybody else to live.”28 For example,


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“we have opened up a very important phase in which we have recognized that . . . there can be no free-trade doctrine worldwide unless there is free migration and free emigration of people. Without the free movement of people there cannot be a free movement of goods.”29 Immigration was one such issue, but was also an arena in which other issues intersected. “We can no longer avoid, as we did in that decade [1930s], the responsibilities that have been placed upon us as a leader of free nations. We must take care that our immigration policy, like every other aspect of our behavior toward foreign persons and states, re›ects the genuine and durable principles of our democracy.”30 Like isolationists, internationalists understood immigration policy as an important symbolic and practical statement about the country’s relationship to the rest of the world. American values were general, global principles for world emulation, not practical matters involving neatly de‹nable short-term interests. Constant, nagging awareness that military apocalypse might be imminent added to the burdens of leadership and to the stridency with which internationalists argued for gestures of goodwill. “In this challenging world, our country cannot stand still. It cannot isolate itself from the demands of our times that would destroy the fearful. . . . Mere material wealth is not total security in an atomic age. It takes moral courage to accept leadership and to make high decisions in keeping with the character of the growing, generous America that is the parent of us all.”31 The country could not shirk its responsibility. “At no time in the history of our Nation has there been a more desperate need, for the sake of preservation of civilization, to resolve misunderstandings, fears, and distrust among the peoples of the world. We are gripped by awareness that it is these tensions which have spurred nations in the race for military supremacy in atomic warfare.”32 Legislators saw U.S. immigration regulation as a key to the Western unity so crucial to defend the free world. For this reason, pronouncements of leadership during debates about immigration policy reform were far-reaching, oratorical, and vague, much more general than might be expected on a potentially narrow and technical topic of low politics: “For the sake of America’s greatness, its international prestige, and its position of moral leadership among the nations of the world, I urge this Congress to take swift action to undo the wrongs of the McCarran-Walter Act.”33 America had come of age. “The abolition of the national origins system would signify to all our maturity and the casting off of unreasoning fear.”34 Through reform, “we would once more prove that United States leadership of the free world in accordance with our policy declarations is not merely a ‹gure of speech but both effective and real.”35 Leadership was its fate. “We have been drawn inextricably into the affairs of the world, and on the security of America rests much of

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the security of the world.”36 The United States, through this step, took a decisive step toward asserting, or accepting, hegemony. Forty years ago, the national origins quotas was [sic] ‹rst enacted into law. It was a time of fright when Americans, having recently emerged from World War I, seemed uncertain of themselves. Their reaction was to isolate themselves from the world, close their gates to new blood and new ideas, withdraw to the humdrum and the conventional. The repeal of the national origins quotas is a reaf‹rmation of our sturdy faith in human equality, of our enthusiasm for setting democratic standards for the rest of the world, of our willingness to lead a global community of peoples toward universal recognition of human dignity.37 This belief also explains why representatives could care about how their policies compared to others’. “I believe that we mark ourselves as a nation which has not yet fully grasped the signi‹cance of our role in the world when we allow other small countries—for example, like Venezuela—to show a record very much better than our own in respect to the resettlement of refugees and escapees.”38 Reputation was power; image was everything. Legislators hoped for imitation. “What we are trying to do is not only to grant material help to these [displaced] people, but to create a psychological atmosphere which is absolutely necessary to demonstrate the duty of leadership that belongs to America in guiding the way, so that other countries will follow our example, and actually do something about overpopulation [which led to communism] in a very substantial manner.”39 If the United States successfully outlined an action plan and a rationale to justify it, other countries could shoulder some of the burden. “As leader of the free world and the nation most blessed with the resources for a solution of the escapee problem, can we create an impression of unwillingness to bear our fair share?”40 (One act to admit refugees was in fact known as the Fair Share Law.) The United States had to articulate its conception of world order carefully, for much was at stake. “I am deeply convinced that we are faced not only with the crisis of defense, in connection with which we must catch up in missiles and rocketry—and unquestionably we will— but that we are also faced with the crisis of our relations with the world. These relations not only go to weaponry, but also go to immigration. This depends very largely upon the direction the free world will take due to the leadership implications of the immigration policy of the United States.”41 The country sought to articulate norms and thereby establish patterns. Such patterns would govern the West’s policies in the cold war. Korea had taught the United States that the war was real. It developed into a war


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the United States could come to understand. Containing, and then rolling back, communism’s spread would reduce the military threat that the United States faced. Crucial to containment were secure alliances. Security depended on loyalty, loyalty depended on credibility, and credibility depended on consistency. How immigration changes affected allies’ perception of American commitment to the liberal, anticommunist principles on which alliances were (presumably) based would determine how ‹rmly they would be willing to stand with the North American alliance in the event of war. Isolationist and internationalist legislators believed that equalizing quotas sent a strong signal to allies about American intent. They disagreed about what that signal was. One dif‹culty they faced was uncertainty about exactly who those allies were. World War II had turned into the cold war so quickly that policies to take care of recent allies, current allies, and future allies piled on top of each other. Were ceilings to be equalized, World War II allies hurt would be England and Ireland. Dean Rusk wanted to save high quotas for these countries because “at a time when our national security rests in large part on a continual strengthening of our ties with these countries, it would be anomalous indeed to restrict opportunities for their nationals here.”42 Allies in the cold war were at least as important. “It is part and parcel of our foreign policy to make friends, particularly those of the NATO countries, where many of the refugees reside. . . . We have assumed world leadership and we must exercise world leadership.”43 But whereas World War II involved speci‹c allies in a de‹ned theater, the cold war involved all countries in a ›uid arena of battle. Could the United States give high quotas to all allies and potential allies in the cold war? Complicating this was the Quota Acts’ legacy of excluding southern Europeans. The very people about whose salvation presidents had declared foreign policy doctrines were denied immigration on ethnic grounds. “Only the communists pro‹t from the free world’s neglect of Italy, which is the source of Western civilization, culture, and religion.”44 The Truman and Eisenhower administrations were appalled; the Kennedy and Johnson administrations were outraged. “It is an affront not only to the extremely important emerging nations of Africa and Asia, but also to some of our closest allies, such as Greece and Italy.”45 Equalization would “contribute effectively to the strengthening of our allies in the Paci‹c and the development of our neighbors in South America.”46 Equalizing countries’ allotments within a de‹ned limit simultaneously solved the symbolic and practical problems involved in distributing numbers. Money as well as reputation was involved. Just as prisoners cost more per day in prison than they subsist on outside of it, refugees in Europe cost more to support than did displaced persons transferred to the United

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States. “It has been estimated that we could save $2 1/2 billion in foreign aid by allowing 240,000 special quota immigrants [from Europe] to enter the United States over the next 3 years.”47 Equalization would save money by convincing wavering populations that the United States was a credible ally. “We have poured out billions of dollars to shore up the economies of our allies. Yet I can only wonder whether much of this material aid may come to naught if we cannot, by this relatively small token, demonstrate that we practice what we preach by extending help to those who have bravely fought and who have somehow managed to escape totalitarian tyranny.”48 Policies in different spheres cost different amounts, but all had similar effects. “There is no yardstick with which to measure the impact of our immigration policy upon our foreign relations and the reputation abroad. But it would not seem outlandish to suggest that in the long run this impact may well equal that of our economic aid programs.”49 An effective immigration policy could minimize problems in other areas. Isolationists meanwhile rejected arguments about allies in or out of the cold war and did not contribute to a discussion in which each side accepted that others’ perceptions mattered. Isolationist Pat McCarran, in a rare comment, asked why if the “free world” included Europe, Europeans had to come to America to be free.50 By the mid-1950s, the cold war had become such an accepted standard for measuring policy that those opposed to admitting refugees sometimes also cited practical consequences related to global U.S.-Soviet rivalry. Those advocating restriction had earlier asserted that other countries should fend for themselves and not expect American handouts. By 1953, however, restrictionists asked who, if the United States admitted refugees, “will be left in the foreign countries to ‹ght communism? There will be none but weaklings, and soon the countries who will send us the immigrants will have to surrender to Communist forces.”51 Those who opposed refugee admissions also linked admissions and leadership, though they thought that leadership was not crucial. “The United States is not the only nation with a critical stake in problems of world security.”52 As the cold war became entrenched, legislators increasingly identi‹ed American interests with American hegemony. Internationalist language and terms came to dominate, and the debate slowly became an intra-internationalist debate. Cold war propaganda replaced World War II aircraft carriers as the decisive destructive weapon. Just as the Japanese during World War II broadcast to the Indians, Burmese, and Chinese news of America’s racial exclusion policies, so did communists after the war advertise the same thing. “There are many who feel that the McCarran-Walter Act has gratuitously placed a powerful propaganda weapon in the hands of the Rus-


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sians, and the Russians are making the most of it.”53 This could be turned around. Our country has arrived at a turning point in history—at a great moment when, through psychological warfare, we can press our advantage. One of the ‹nest means to do so is to send word behind the Iron Curtain that our doors are not closed to the refugees and escapees, but rather that we are willing to welcome reasonable numbers of those who we are sure are genuine partisans of the cause of freedom.54 This [McCarran-Walter] law is one of the greatest talking points against America which the Communist International has. We are held up to ridicule because of this law—a powerful country like ours—sound, prosperous, and stable— . . . We have lost more prestige abroad than we can compensate for with the Voice of America. This law, which the Daily Worker criticizes for its own purposes here, is priceless grist for the Communist propaganda mill abroad.55 I am deeply convinced that, in a package, they [immigration reforms] are as essential as is our massive effort to catch up in terms of the weapons race. If we do not expect—and certainly we do not—to resolve the con›ict in the world by world war III, then our other means—by economic and technical assistance; by recognition of human dignity, through enforcement of civil rights; and by immigration legislation which is just and fair, and takes account of what is taking place in the world, and takes account not only of our own strengths, but also of the weaknesses of our enemies, in terms of the things in which we believe and which we hold the most dear—that is the package—constituting, as I see it, the way by which we hope to avoid world war III.56 The United States has failed to take the initiative in the battle for the minds of men. Economic assistance is not alone the answer to the dilemma of our foreign policy. Men do not live by bread alone.57 Refugees, meanwhile, provided the best information that the allies could obtain on Soviet plans and operations.58 “We can advance the cause of world peace if we encourage the internal disintegration of the Red empire. One method to accomplish this is to aid Communist government of‹cials to abandon their positions of leadership, defect to the west, and provide us

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with valuable information.”59 What the USSR lost, the United States gained. Of course, propaganda worked both ways. Restrictionist declarations that immigrants were nothing more than slackers, spies, and criminals were used by the Soviets to their advantage: only criminals and other degenerates would want to leave the Soviet Union for the United States.60 Refugees to the United States could, in turn, redefect.61 And “Woe betide us if we ever go down the road in an effort to wipe out all the things that our enemies might use in their propaganda programs against us, for this would result eventually in the elimination of the free enterprise system.”62 The country’s anticommunist fervor could be manipulated to the Soviets’ advantage. According to internationalists, immigration restrictions were obviously hypocritical as well as counterproductive because they undergirded a Paper, or Red Tape, Curtain around the United States keeping people out, just as East Bloc countries’ Iron Curtain kept them in. “Thousands of these refugees have escaped from Communist-dominated areas behind the Iron Curtain only to be confronted by another kind of unfriendly barrier—rigid immigration laws which have prevented many of these freedom ‹ghters and freedom lovers from earning a living and raising their families in countries dedicated to democratic ideals and institutions.”63 Claiborne Pell called immigration barriers a “paper wall”;64 many representatives drew general conclusions similar to those that Fernand St. Germain outlined, that U.S. goals should be “the re-establishment of refugees who cannot return to their native countries for religious, racial, political, or other reasons [which] is closely connected with our objectives to continue the provision for asylum and assistance to the oppressed, to extend hope in the process of freedom to the victims of communism, and to exemplify the differences which exist between free and captive societies by our sacri‹ces and actions in behalf of the less fortunate members of humanity.”65 American policy should contrast, not imitate, Soviet policy. Since the cold war between U.S. and Soviet allies was zero-sum, what helped the United States would harm the Soviets. This help could also be an absolute gain. Besides propaganda effects, economic bene‹ts were an obvious example. “Indeed,” argued Jacob Javits, “we should adopt a policy that will attract to the free world as many as possible who are gifted and effective, who can make a major contribution to our society, and deprive the Communists of this bene‹t.”66 By legalizing such admissions, the country would “help ourselves abroad by raising our prestige, and can help ourselves at home by enriching our national blood with new and worthy citizens.”67 By equalizing quotas, “we would recognize the individual


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worth of each immigrant and his potential contribution to the development and growth of our national economy.”68 To others, military bene‹ts were more striking. “The people of the world are not blind to this sort of hypocrisy. We sometimes wonder why we do not enjoy everyone’s unbridled friendship. We ask why our embassies are picketed by those we believe we have helped.”69 Earlier, Pat Hillings had pointed out that “this is part of the new policy which will give the Russians such a bad time in their own back yard behind the Iron Curtain that they will not have a chance to start a third world war.”70 If it did the opposite of what the USSR did, the United States could not lose. In addition to stressing ways to win the zero-sum propaganda game between East and West, internationalists focused on ways to promote gains all around among the allies. Cooperation within the West was, in their view, positive-sum. This conviction underlaid proposals for cooperation in NATO as well as GATT, OECD, and regional international governmental organizations. One example of the win-win enthusiasm that permeated internationalist proposals about immigrants dealt with population size. While large populations in Europe were dangerous to Europe, a large population in the United States was bene‹cial, increasing American power. European overpopulation led to communist discontent. “Communism and totalitarianism thrive on unemployment, lack of housing, lack of food, and discontent.”71 This was true of Europe. “In many of these southern countries in Europe, for instance Italy and Greece, there is a national problem with communism because of the crowded conditions.”72 Once securely in the United States, however, immigrants lent their strength. “We have become a great nation. We have the greatest gross national product of any nation that ever existed. Our gross national product is approaching almost $700 billion. One of the reasons therefor, I think, is that we have siphoned off the best of the brain and brawn of nations all over the world, of all races and climes and origins.”73 The United States gained in absolute as well as relative terms. Central to the internationalists’ worldview was the conviction that international and domestic policies should at a minimum be consistent, and preferably be mutually reinforcing. This mattered at both the symbolic and practical levels. Domestic and foreign policy had to match if the country was to avoid the charge of hypocrisy. Domestic norms and behavior revealed to foreigners the country’s true beliefs; foreign policies told Americans how the government really thought of their concerns. In addition, domestic policy could support foreign policy, and vice versa, creating a synergy allowing American hegemony to burst forth. Domestic economic and trade policies should mesh, territorial defense and extended

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deterrence should be mutually supporting, civil rights should be consistent with human rights policies, and policies toward citizens and toward foreigners should be calculated according to the same principles. Party platforms illustrate the way that public of‹cials on both the left and the right saw domestic and foreign policies integrating. As early as 1956, both major American parties saw immigration policies as linking domestic and foreign policies. Both intended that the revisions they advocated would streamline the link between the domestic and the foreign sphere. For example, in 1956: The Republican Party supports an immigration policy which is in keeping with the traditions of America in providing a haven for oppressed peoples, and which is based on equality of treatment, freedom from implications of discrimination between racial, nationality, and religious groups, and ›exible enough to conform to changing needs and conditions. We believe that such a policy serves our self-interest, re›ects our responsibility for world leadership, and develops maximum cooperation with other nations in resolving problems in this area.74 While: The Democratic Party favors prompt revision of the immigration and nationality laws to eliminate unfair procedures under which this country depends on quotas based on accident of national origin. Proper safeguards against subversive elements should be provided. We favor the elimination of the provision of laws that charge all persons admitted to our shores against quotas for future years. We also favor more liberal admission of relatives to eliminate the unnecessary tragedy of broken families.75 By 1960, both parties again pushed for reform. The Republicans argued that “immigration has been reduced to a point where it does not provide the stimulus to growth that it should, nor are we ful‹lling our obligations as a haven for the oppressed. . . . The guidelines of our immigration policy be based upon judgement of the individual merit of each applicant for admission and citizenship.76 The Democrats echoed the substance of this position. Besides blaming the national origins system on the Republicans, the Democratic party platform argued that “the national-origins quota system of limiting immigration contradicts the founding principles of this Nation. It is inconsistent with our belief in the rights of man. . . . The revision of immigration and nationality laws we seek will implement our belief


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that enlightened immigration, naturalization, and refugee policies and humane administration of them are important aspects of our foreign policy.”77 Both parties intended immigration policy to provide a better link between the country’s domestic and foreign policy goals. Immigration guidelines linked domestic and foreign policies philosophically, for they spelled out how the country thought of itself, its purpose, and its relation to the rest of the world. In the context of the cold war, it articulated the gist of the difference between the United States and the Soviet Union. “The fundamental difference between us and the Communists is that we want an open world in which people can move from place to place, in order to give the greatest opportunities in life and in order to have the liberty of the world. The Communists want a society in which people cannot move. The Communists want a world which is restricted within compartments, controlled by the state. We want a world in which movement is easily possible.”78 Revising immigration policy to select on individual achievements rather than on group ascriptive traits would highlight that “the cornerstone of American political and social philosophy is built on the dignity of the individual, an individual to be evaluated as an individual.”79 Individuals, to internationalists, should be distinguished only horizontally, by location in sovereign space, not vertically according to an ethnic or even ideological hierarchy. Liberalism honors the individual, not the state, yet cold war ideology demanded that states secure their borders against individuals. “America’s struggle with totalitarianism is far more than a contest for dominance in world power politics. Above all, it is a struggle for the vindication of democracy’s belief in the individual worth of human beings as opposed to the totalitarian concept that individuals have no identity except as components in the political and economic structure of society.”80 Freedom of movement was a sine qua non of liberty. “There is probably no single matter of law or tradition that divides the free world from the Communist empire so dramatically as does the question of freedom of movement and migration. The Berlin Wall stands as a mute and monstrous testament to the power of the dictatorial state to curb the freedom of men to change their environment.”81 Liberalism demanded open borders; the cold war demanded realist politics, closed borders. What was a liberal country ‹ghting such a war to do? Treating all states equally, regardless of their varied population sizes, showed respect for sovereign equality and would ›atter newly independent states, encouraging them to ally with the United States. After numbers had been limited in this way, there was room for liberal principles. Individual equality could be respected within the con‹nes of sovereign equality. Altering immigration guidelines in a more cosmopolitan direction

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would, hopefully, change American society for the better too. By integrating foreigners with Americans, Americans could be taught to take advantage of world opportunities. Unfortunately, argued internationalists, American provincialism retarded its advance. Such views, if thought, had not before been expressed in public debate. It is a popular but erroneous belief that reform of the immigration laws would throw open the United States to a ›ood of slave traders, hashish chewers, coolies, witch doctors, mountain bandits, and camel drivers. This xenophobic concept envisions the typical immigrant as an illiterate, cholera-ridden pagan, who would either usurp the job of an American workingman or go on the relief rolls; who would subsist on ‹sh heads and rice, father 13 children, and refuse to learn to speak English; who would lower property values wherever he lived; who would vote against school bond issues, hoard his money in tin cans and, who, in his idle hours, would run numbers, smoke opium, and revive the Tong wars.82 American society had to become more cosmopolitan because international society had become interdependent; American policy was to push that interdependence yet further. In the light of interdependence, American immigration policy looked shabby and outdated, an embarrassment. “Interdependence among nations has become an essential to amiable and progressive international relations and the fostering of a lasting peace. . . . Yet we have an immigration policy which is in part isolationist and wholly iniquitous, and one which lags behind the demands and ignores the phenomena of a world in motion.”83 Inconsistency meant inef‹ciency. Our immigration policy has lagged behind the promises of our tradition and the progress of the world. Trade crosses borders ever more freely; capital ›ows by the mere entering of ‹gures on ledgers; ideas spirit from one country to another as fast as the printing press and the airplane can carry them; news, protests, approvals, anger and gratitude travel with the speed of light. But people—the people who make the goods, create the capital, think and live the ideas—move almost as slowly as if the airplane or even the railroad had never been invented. . . . Olivetti typewriters and Fellini movies come here more smoothly and easily than the gifted people who make them.84 Interdependence allowed loftier sentiments. “Let us keep to the heights where we shall be unafraid to welcome the worthy in a world which con-


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stantly grows smaller in size.”85 Interdependence also focused attention on individual rights and liberal norms, circumventing state boundaries. John Kennedy argued that “in an age of interdependence among nations, such a [national origins] system is an anachronism, for it discriminates among applicants for admission into the United States on the basis of accident of birth.”86 A liberal immigration policy had a central place in a world order dedicated to transnational cooperation. “The goal of world peace and brotherhood in this or any other generation can be furthered only in a climate of increasing understanding and good will among nations; important in the area of international relations are immigration policies and procedures. Inevitably a nation’s immigration laws re›ect its basic attitude toward nations and races.”87 Liberal neutrality suggested borders open at least to liberal people. Like isolationists, internationalists sought to create a particular version of the United States. The country they desired was the country they imagined could exist if the country chose to accept its responsibilities and to live up to its potential. It was a country that led the world out of the chaos abroad. Ignorance was dangerous. The domestic and foreign spheres should be integrated, because principle did not respect borders; furthermore, since other countries knew this, consistency would demonstrate American credibility. Complementing internationalism was a policy allowing domestic society to expand as it would according to its own impulses. If the country could eliminate bad foreign in›uences, it could open the borders con‹dent that it would not be harmed. Hegemony, not isolation, protected it from communism. A series of events provoked debate over immigration policy.

Reason: Duty to and Interest in Hungarian Refugees

In 1953, Peter Rodino pointed out that dramatic airplane escapes from the East Bloc were ‹ne in principle, but mortgaged quotas meant that only few could escape with U.S. approval unless the country wanted publicity about the fact that it would not offer escapees entry.88 Robert Hendrickson later argued that “the snarling little men of the Kremlin and the shivering puppets of their satellite empire are also looking on today. . . . For, in a very large measure, it [a bill to allow 209,000 refugees U.S. residence] represents a new blow at their recently demonstrated inability to keep their peoples in a slavish iron grasp growing rusty with the blood of their victims.”89 No serious action, however, was taken until early 1957. In late 1956, almost 200,000 Hungarians ›ed to the West after the Soviet military put an end to an anticommunist uprising in Hungary. Most

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sought temporary or permanent residence in the United States. This group of refugees from the cold war faced an American refugee policy developed to protect the country from those uprooted during World War II. Displaced persons were to be retained in their homelands, if possible, to help rebuild them. If this was not possible, they were allowed to emigrate to one of several Western countries. Those who entered the United States were charged against their country’s quota, based on the national origins of the U.S. population; if refugees exceeded spaces, immigrants mortgaged future quotas for their countries. In 1952, the Hungarian quota was 865 annually (0.56 percent of the total), already mortgaged until 1985.90 Internationalists argued that the country simply had to take in the Hungarians if it wanted to retain credibility in the ‹ght against the Soviets. Richard Nixon reported to President Eisenhower: The Communist leaders thought they were building a new order in Hungary. Instead, they erected a monument which will stand forever in history as proof of the ultimate failure of international communism. Those people, both inside and outside of Hungary, who had the courage to expose by their actions this evil ideology for what it is, deserve all the gratitude and support which we in the free world are so willingly giving today.91 For the ‹rst time, immigration policy allowed that some people, by virtue of their actions, had earned entry to the United States and that the United States’ position created a responsibility for its consequences. Recognizing this, internationalists argued, was not just morally appropriate but practically necessary to U.S. strength because it bolstered American credibility. Eisenhower noted that “our position of world leadership demands that, in partnership with the other nations of the free world, we be in a position to grant that asylum”;92 and John Dingell pointed out that “the ‹rst question we must face up to is whether, as a matter of policy, we want people in Eastern Europe to escape. If we do, then logically we have to shape our immigration policy to accept the consequences of this decision. . . . The problem this has created for us is affected by the fact that wealth has responsibilities. . . . they want to know what standards we will apply in admitting them.”93 (The same could have been true of Cuban refugees, but accepting Cubans was easy because they ›ed from the Western Hemisphere, which faced no numerical ceiling. Cuban refugees could be excluded only if they were personally un‹t, e.g., were lunatics, prostitutes, or polygamists.) “If these escapees, beginning to realize the futility of spending more years in a camp, returned by the thousands as they are sure to do, then the United States from a propaganda


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standpoint, will most certainly be discredited.”94 Immigration policy was one of many policies that together waged the cold war. Furthermore, since a global leader’s domestic and foreign policies merged into each other, domestic policy could send signals abroad and foreign policies could affect domestic loyalties. “We cannot afford to have a person risk ›ight from behind the Iron Curtain or other dictatorial government, only to ‹nd that the Free World will provide no haven for him. Such a situation would end in complete disillusionment with democracy, and would threaten the preservation of our democratic principles.”95 Overcrowding threatened the same result indirectly, although ironically the overcrowding was due in part to American encouragement of cold war refugees. “Population pressure” led to unrest, social explosion, and communism. “Our allies in Western Europe are overcrowded and they are burdened with refugees. Certainly, if we know anything about our foreign policy, we know that we are encouraging the people to ›ee the Iron Curtain in an attempt to break down the hold of the communists on the satellite countries.”96 The United States had already institutionalized an alliance with these countries. “Large numbers of nonproductive people undermine the basic security objectives of the North Atlantic community, objectives which are an essential part of the foreign policy of the United States. They reduce the capacity of the free world to establish an effective posture of defense against the threat of communist aggression.”97 German ethnics expelled from Eastern Europe threatened to destabilize Germany and hence NATO.98 Liberty abroad meant liberty at home, and vice versa. “The national origins formula of the 1924 law remained an unsurmountable obstacle to what the people of the United States wanted to do; namely, to accept the responsibility which the U.S. position of leadership in the world had imposed.”99 McCarran-Walter denied liberty to refugees. Therefore, McCarran-Walter was not the immigration policy of a liberal hegemon. What was good for the country internationally was good for it domestically. Eisenhower was only one of many who claimed no con›ict, in this area, between “our responsibility of world leadership and . . . our own self-interest.”100 For example, “it is sound policy to consider the needs of our own country ‹rst, and then to legislate in accordance with those needs. Those needs, of course, include the cooperation with free nations of the world, in order to help preserve our liberties.”101 International action was a no-lose proposition. A refugee admission bill, for example, “would contribute immeasurably to the economic and political stability of our allies. It would enhance our prestige throughout the world. It would encourage other nations to expand their resettlement programs. And it should strengthen our economy through the addition of productive

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and much-needed agricultural and other workers.”102 Every transaction among allies was, in this view, positive-sum.

Reason: Decolonization and Credibility

People in former colonies were also engaged in translating ideas about equality and self-determination into action. The postwar wave of independence began in India and Pakistan in 1947 and reached its zenith from 1957 to 1963 when thirty-two countries achieved independence. During the period from 1945 to 1960, relations between the United States and its allies in the cold war although imperfect had reached a stage of some familiarity and predictability. How the newly independent countries would affect the cold war, internationalists believed, depended a great deal on how the NATO countries treated them. “Many countries of Asia and the Paci‹c have traditionally sought more than a token of immigration to the United States. These are the countries that will play a large and vital role in determining the future course of world events.”103 Decolonization affected isolationists’ arguments only to the extent that one isolationist asserted that preventing emigration was in the newly independent countries’ best interests: “We have sent Peace Corps personnel to the four corners of the world to teach new skills and modern scienti‹c techniques in the underdeveloped nations which are literally starving for trained workers. Are we now to establish a program which will literally skim the cream off the very countries that desperately need new skills to emerge from the dark ages?”104 But since the new countries were not concerned about a brain drain, neither were the internationalists concerned. The tone that the United States set, they believed, would at least affect and perhaps determine the cold war’s outcome. During these times, when we are striving to win over and hold in our camp the peoples of the uncommitted and underdeveloped areas of the world, this problem assumes larger proportions. For these are the very people we are slapping in the face with our national origins selections. It is the people of the young burgeoning nations, the newly emancipated countries of Asia who bear the brunt of the most extreme discrimination in our present law—the Asia–Paci‹c Triangle restrictions.105 The Third World would turn away from the United States. “Everyone recognizes that the challenges of emerging nations are tremendous. Let us not be further hampered in our efforts to join with them in free world endeav-


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ors by the embarrassment of taking no action to move forcibly against the kind of national policy discrimination we know today under our immigration quota system.”106 Individuals, as well as governments, could become enemies. “It must be remembered that our immigration policies often make up the ‹rst and only personal contact that people of other countries have with the United States.”107 Decolonization provided an opportunity, and a risk. Doing other good works was a waste of time and money since immigration policy belied American motives. “We spend billions of dollars in foreign aid so that we can convince other nations that our democratic way of life is the best and then we say to the people of these countries when they wish to come into the United States, ‘sorry, you were born in the wrong country.’”108 Whereas military inferiority damaged the U.S. reputation, immigration policy directly affronted the newly independent. “If sputnik has caused us to lose face and threatens to drive noncommitted nations into the eastern camp, then how many years have we had of losing face among the noncommitted nations when America’s basic immigration law says that one group of people is more desirable than another?”109 McCarran-Walter “is very bad foreign policy in a day when the attitudes and actions of peoples other than northern and western Europeans are increasingly important to our future.”110 Retaliation was always possible. “If we are willing to continue laws discriminating against individuals because of race or national origin, what trust can we in turn expect from the emerging nations of Asia and Africa?”111 Retaliation would cause American losses to escalate. “Modernization of our immigration system will demonstrate to other nations, especially to the new and underdeveloped countries with whom we wish to maintain good relationships, our sincerity and responsibility. Failure to act would in the long run result in a weakening of our foreign relations and a decline in our domestic, economic, and social wellbeing.”112 If hegemony failed, the world would plunge again into a beggar-thy-neighbor nightmare. Finally, such policies would redound to the detriment of the United States population. “Such provisions are not only a diplomatic handicap in our relations with such pro-Western Asian nations as Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia, but they are also provisions which are morally indefensible to a nation committed to the proposition that all men are created equal.”113 As domestic ideals affected foreign perceptions, foreign policy standards affected the society that fashioned them. To a hegemon, domestic policy and foreign policy each grew from a continuum with a wide swath of overlap. Hegemony depended upon global reach, and decolonization extended sovereignty throughout the globe. Decolonization created a

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large untested population that could vote American power up or down. “The manner in which we conduct ourselves, the manner in which we treat our friends in Asia, will determine to a great extent what our position will be as world leader.”114 Sovereign equality, like equality among citizens, had to be recognized in principle before substantive cooperation could proceed. “This bill will also demonstrate to the nations of the world that we recognize each nation as sovereign, with its citizens entitled to equal standing before our laws. I believe this will greatly bene‹t our relations with our friends and allies, particularly those in the Orient.”115 Equalizing countries’ legal treatment would create bankable goodwill.

Reason: Proxy War and Credibility

South Vietnam demonstrated the costs associated with a lack of goodwill. No wonder, argued internationalists, that the Vietnamese doubted American commitment when Americans refused to accept Vietnamese as fellow citizens on racial grounds. In Vietnam, we are spending $1.5 million a day and have suffered more than 2,000 casualties in support of the Saigon Government. The annual quota for South Vietnamese is 100. The population of South Vietnam is approximately 15 million. Evidently we are willing to commit the full strength of this Nation’s resources to the defense of liberty in Vietnam. At the same time, our immigration law makes it abundantly clear that while we may risk war for the right of the Vietnamese people to live freely and independently, we do not want them to live with us.116 War in Vietnam showed clearly that American hegemony demanded consistency of principle. Inconsistency would, sooner or later—though de‹nitely at the most inopportune and costliest time—›y in the face of national policies that depended for their success on cooperation among allies the world over. We have committed our Nation to the preservation of freedom for all peoples of the world; not only those of Northern Europe. It seems quite inconsistent that we should be asking people throughout the world to join us—to ‹ght and die for the cause of freedom and at the same time deny them an equal opportunity to become American citizens. The current policy also presents the ironic situation in which we are willing to send our American youth to aid these people in their


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struggle against Communist aggression while at the same time, we are indicating that they are not good enough to be Americans.117 War did not fundamentally alter arguments people offered about international obligations and immigrants. Rather, internationalists took Vietnam as an example verifying their predictions about the likelihood of future military problems centering on regions that immigration policy slighted.118 Refugees who ›ed war, and those who stayed to ‹ght a war, as well as those to whom war might someday come—all would help the United States ‹ght the cold war if the United States formalized its belief in their equality by establishing an immigration policy honoring them. External events provided evidence to isolationists that reinforced their beliefs. Without a ban on immigration, other countries’ ‹ghts (Hungary, Vietnam) or decisions (decolonization) would generate exodus into the United States. The country would be accepting a passive role in determining its population. Since its population determined its destiny, to adopt a passive stance was to forgo its control over its own fate. Universalists, faced with the cold war, became internationalists: they worried about individuals in the context of states. They viewed these developments as evidence that American isolation gave the Soviet Union a propaganda advantage. The cold war internationalized the country’s defense, so it internationalized the basis for allocating immigration quotas. External developments changed the nature of the antirestrictionist argument. Domestic events had a reinforcing effect.

Reason: Unemployment

From 1952 through 1965, unemployment averaged 5.3 percent, up from 4.3 percent in the six years immediately following the war.119 Isolationists sometimes focused on potential job loss, raising questions of equity between citizens and aliens. Economic uncertainty could be suf‹cient reason to halt immigration. “It is exceedingly unwise to relax our immigration laws and increase the immigrants coming to the United States to any extent at a time when 7 million Americans are on public welfare, 3.8 million Americans are seeking in vain for jobs in which to earn daily bread for themselves and their families.”120 Americans owed the social surplus to other Americans. “‘Give me your jobless, your poor, your untrained masses yearning to draw unemployment checks. Send them to me, and I will register them to vote.’”121 Equity between the armed forces and civilians was also at stake. “Has anyone thought of the effect this additional 200,000 aliens will have on unemployment in our country, especially on

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our soldiers returning from Korea?”122 Increasing unemployment would, additionally, weaken the country, making it more susceptible to communist takeover. “I do not believe that America can be made more strong or resolute in its determination to stop Communist imperialism by weakening our security structure, nor by disrupting the domestic economy by preempting jobs otherwise available to unemployed Americans.”123 In this period with a basically unchanged unemployment level, increasing exports, and an expanding consumer market, the numbers did not support claims that immigrants demonstrably harmed the economy. For this reason, it was rarely raised. Rather, unemployment’s importance was largely symbolic, raising questions of fairness and just expectations. For this reason, when it was discussed, it was raised by isolationists.

Reason: Racial Equity and the Civil Rights Movement

If legislators thinking about immigration policy were primarily responsive to domestic change, nothing could have shaken them up more during this period than the civil rights movement. In 1955, Martin Luther King led the Montgomery boycott; in 1957, President Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock to defend desegregation. Internationalists drawing lessons for immigration policy from civil rights events claimed that morality demanded and American leadership required consistent treatment of individuals.124 The only isolationists to take civil rights developments into account when framing their arguments stated that “They [immigrants] will compete with the very class of American citizens our Federal Government is seeking to aid through its war on poverty. Unemployment among the Negro population of this country will not be eased regardless of the efforts of the administration to give them preferential treatment.”125 The other asked, similarly, whether immigrants did not worsen black opportunities. “Will the addition of still more minority groups from all parts of the world lessen or contribute to the increasing racial tensions and violence we are currently witnessing on the streets of our major cities?”126 Aiding immigrants raised the question of whether borders ought to extend responsibilities as well as to de‹ne the limits of obligation. Internationalists, however, felt that what was right for actual U.S. citizens was right for potential U.S. citizens. As the interface between the domestic and the international sphere, immigration policy could become the arena for demonstrating that one’s statements of principle were true and credible, statements made to American citizens as well as to friends and enemies abroad. “We must never forget that the world watches closely to see what this country does with regard to helping immigrants, just as it


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follows closely what we do in the ‹eld of civil rights. In our view, reform of the immigration laws is an integral part of our responsibility as leader of the free world.”127 The civil rights movement focused legislators’ attention on national origins quotas’ implicit designation of an ethnic hierarchy in the United States. Initially, some viewed immigration primarily in terms of domestic politics, while others viewed it mainly as a component of the cold war. Eventually, most legislators saw it as both. By 1965, after the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts had passed, consensus could be parlayed, by analogizing, into a consensus on immigration reform. “It seems strange to me that at a time when the Congress is taking vigorous action to insure that no American will be denied their full privilege of citizenship because of race, we still maintain an immigration policy which relegates millions of other Americans to second-class citizenship because of national origin.”128 Legislators made an effort to identify immigration reform with Great Society legislation. “Just as we sought to eliminate discrimination in our land through the Civil Rights Act, today we seek by phasing out the national origins quotas to eliminate discrimination in immigration to this Nation composed of the descendants of immigrants”;129 International equality logically followed from domestic equality. “The requirements of a nation which is reaching for the Great Society compel us to change our immigration laws”;130 “This year, 1965, is a year of progress, a year when we and other men are beginning to move toward the realization of a society in which all men are truly free and equal.”131 Adjusting immigration policy would ease tension at the interface between domestic and international spheres. If civil rights and immigration policies were connected, and immigration and cold war foreign policies were connected, then immigration policies linked civil rights to the cold war. John Kennedy argued, “Whether we identify immigration policy with foreign policy or not, our friends do— including some of our own partners in NATO, against whom we discriminate. And our enemies so identify it also.”132 What the country did domestically was viewed by allies as important information concerning its credibility in other areas. “We are moving to right racial wrongs at home. It would be foolish as well as unjust not to do the same in our dealings with foreign peoples who seek admission. Our discriminatory immigration laws delight our enemies and dismay our friends abroad.”133 What the country did in foreign policy, domestic groups took as a sign of intent. In both cases, the “practice” to con‹rm the “preaching” was immigration reform. Legislators argued that immigration policy and civil rights are “very much the same kind of issue,”134 implicitly denying the relevance of a distinction between the domestic and the international sphere.

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Civil rights legislation was, in its own way, foreign policy, just as cold war policy was, in a way, domestic. Immigration policy stood right at the interface. “This country is now involved in a great struggle against the forces of discrimination and the apostles of bigotry. Our national energy and conscience are committed to that ‹ght and its quest for equality.”135 In fact, the Judiciary Committees handled both civil rights and immigration matters. The same legislators sat on the subcommittees dealing with these two issues and listened to testimony about both. Not surprisingly, they reached the same conclusions about each. “The United States again demonstrates to the world its ‹rm conviction that there shall be no discrimination or prejudice in this country, that persons shall be judged upon the basis of their individual merit, and that liberty, equality, and freedom can be enduring realities in this country.”136 Hiram Fong demonstrated how policy levels should be integrated. At home we are now attempting to revise our laws and practices to wipe out the last vestiges of racial discrimination against our own citizens. As we reappraise the relationship of citizen to citizen, is it not also good for us to reexamine this same relationship of man’s equality to man with other peoples of the world? For as we move to erase racial discrimination against our own citizens, we should also move to erase racial barriers against citizens of other lands in our immigration policies and laws, which are replete with racially discriminatory provisions. . . . At home, we have wiped out racial barriers in our armed forces, in interstate transportation, in our institutions of higher learning, and in many areas of our economy. We are making signi‹cant progress in desegregating our public schools, housing, business, and public accommodations, and protecting the voting rights of all citizens. It is imperative that we, as a Nation, recognize this great upheaval throughout the world for equal status.137 White Americans “must open our doors wide” to black Americans and to Africans and Asians, “to let democracy in.”138 Faith in the universality of equality required a universal extension of principle. “The essence of our democratic credo is the dignity of man. Our constant effort to implement fully this credo, and our vigilant protection of America’s heritage, require that our immigration policy be brought in line with the moral and ethical principles upon which our democracy is based.”139 Immigration policy could support or undermine civil rights. “We must remember that any


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injustice in our immigration and naturalization law is a wedge which will weaken our political system and our long established, constitutionally guaranteed, doctrine that all men are created equal.”140 Policy had not only to be consistent, but to extend principle to its logical and practical limits. Comparing the in›uence that external and internal changes had on the pattern of arguments offered about immigration reform leads to one general conclusion about motives—or at least publicly acknowledged motives—for change. During this period, external events precipitated arguments for change. Domestic events were relevant when they provided additional evidence supporting reformers’ conclusions. The cold war’s emphasis on hearts and minds magni‹ed the importance of symbolic politics. America’s stance toward cold war refugees and newly independent peoples provided information that other countries could use to assess American reliability. Legislators in this debate played to an audience abroad, who wanted to know not how the United States treated its own citizens but how it would treat them. Domestic processes, on the other hand, did not impel discussion. Unemployment was not a real problem and was rarely raised; although unrest that led to the civil rights movement had begun a decade or two earlier, and had certainly been headline news, not until 1963 did legislators use the civil rights movement as evidence that their constituents’ values mattered one way or the other. Given representatives’ notorious weakness for pandering to their constituents, the centrality of domestic distributive concerns to this debate is therefore implausible. Providing additional evidence for externally locating the catalyst to change are representatives’ observations on this point. Francis Walter, cosponsor of McCarran-Walter, by 1961 observed, “It is not necessary, of course, to stress before this enlightened gathering that the economic, social, and political conditions of the world are not static. They change and therefore immigration laws and policies governing the admission of immigrants must change.”141 He said that “the time has come to analyze our immigration problems in depth. No such analytic study has been made since the economic, political, and social conditions of the entire world have undergone the most profound changes since the late 1940s.”142 These changes amounted to a revolution in America’s relationship with the rest of the world. “Much has changed during the past 40 years, at home and in the world around us, bearing upon a sound immigration policy which will serve the best interests of the United States and all our people.”143 Legislators considered McCarran-Walter almost immoral, but “even had this law been equitable and wise, it would be well to review whether changing requirements and times, and our changing role in the world community, have not made some of its provisions obsolete.”144 Too much had changed.

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Progressive as that 1952 law was, today it is very obsolete. More than 10 years have now passed since its enactment. Since then, our Nation and the world have witnessed revolutionary changes in almost every phase of life. Many areas emerged from colonial status to full nationhood. Many nations have challenged their form of government. There is greater clamor for freedom, liberty, and justice, and, worldwide, peoples are on the march seeking equality. Economic interdependence has shaken traditional economic, social, and political patterns.145 Revising foreign policies would ease America’s adjustment to its new role. “Just as world events of 25 years ago forced us to abandon splendid isolation the events of today must move us toward an immigration policy consistent with our philosophy as a free and democratic nation.”146 In 1952, many thought of the immigration problems and minor crises that the country faced as exceptional, as phenomena peculiar to the period immediately after the war. The majority not only voted for a policy loudly reiterating the 150,000 ceiling and national origins quotas, but voted for it by a margin large enough to overturn a presidential veto. For 1952 through 1965, however, many became convinced that the crises they faced were not aftershocks of World War II but early tremors of the cold war. The uprising in East Berlin, the Soviet invasion of Hungary, and the Berlin Wall crisis convinced Congress that Europe’s population remained far from settled; revolution in Cuba and decolonization convinced them that the world beyond Europe had to be taken on its own terms. By the early 1960s, so much ad hoc legislation had been passed that McCarran-Walter was having little practical effect on immigration ›ows, though still standing as a symbol of isolationist bigotry affecting the morale of allies in Vietnam and potential allies in Africa and Asia. Consensus about the necessity of institutional adaptation to the cold war developed slowly. John Kennedy introduced a bill to liberalize provisions regarding orphans and tuberculosis sufferers, stop mortgaging, and ease parole and asylum.147 In 1958, Congress voted to reinstate the mortgaged portions of country’s national quotas. As refugee crises multiplied, so did support for a more liberal refugee admissions policy. Problems in Berlin quickly followed invasion in Hungary and revolution in Cuba; the magnitude of the refugee ›ows that each generated was unprecedented, at least as a matter of which the United States might take control. Excluding refugees from enemy territory during a war, the cold war, was not at all the same as excluding persons displaced after a war. Jacob Javits observed that “in the last 24 hours, 1,741 East German refugees reached West Berlin. Since last Saturday noon alone over 5,000 have escaped to the free


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world in this way. Only 2 weeks ago the rate was about 1,100 per day, and the previous estimate of 300,000 for 1961 which was considered high, may have to be revised upward.” He argued that this revealed many problems with life under communist rule and concluded that American “preparation must at least be equal to the con‹dence of the refugees. The archaic and discriminatory immigration laws fall far short of the mark in this respect.”148 Ad hoc legislation would never be enough. “A bill to provide suitably for refugees and escapees needs to recognize also that the problem is recurrent—we have already had two previous Refugee Relief Acts—that it erupts out of major foreign policy issues, and that we have a considerable amount of un‹nished business on hand right now.”149 The cold war was there to stay, so immigration policy should adjust. “In view of the unrest and turmoil in the world, and the brutal policies of the Soviets, it is almost inevitable that more and more men, women, and children are going to be driven from their homes.”150 Crises had become the normal way of life. “The fact of the refugee is an inescapable fact of contemporary history. Geographical partition produces refugees. Political division produces refugees. Supernationalist movements produce refugees.”151 The cold war, Congress realized, was indeed a war, not a battle. It would be around for decades to come. In the context of an ongoing war with the Soviet Union, internationalists argued that McCarran-Walter presented an immoral or simply poor image of the United States, which redounded to American disadvantage internationally. Others focused on its practical inadequacy in controlling immigration ›ows. Either way, Congress viewed its effects as perverse. The act sorted people into sets based not just on their own acts or beliefs but also on the institutional ideology of their home country: criminals subject to automatic exclusion included anticommunists convicted by a communist court.152 On the other hand, “France, the western nation with the heaviest proportion of Communists, enjoys a fairly liberal immigration quota under the McCarran-Walter Act.”153 Moreover, its racism was so extensive that it had dif‹culty specifying any unifying rationale for its varied exclusions. “The code of racial prejudice twists like a cowpath. To keep out Italians, Greeks, Turks, and Slavs, the McCarran-Walter Act relies on place of birth, not the ancestry of the applicant. To keep out Asians, the law ignores place of birth and relies on ancestry. For both groups, however, the law consistently ignores individual worth.”154 McCarran-Walter had allocated colonies a separate quota of 100, removing them from eligibility for admission under their parent country’s usually large ceiling. The effect was to exclude Negroes and Asians. McCarran-Walter was also a failure on its own terms, “as much a fail-

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ure as a device as it is an embarrassment of a doctrine.”155 Actual immigration matched the American population’s national origins very loosely, as English and Germans did not care to emigrate.156 One could, further, measure its failure in the number of private bills (to allow an exception to the law) that legislators introduced annually. In the 79th Congress (1945–46), legislators introduced 14 bills; in the 80th (1947–48), 80; in the 81st (1949–50), 81; but in the 82nd (1951–52), 729.157 Besides private bills, Congress had enacted ad hoc legislation allowing for the relief of refugees and the entry of displaced persons, agricultural laborers, and Basque sheepherders.158 “The cumulative effect of this special legislation has so modi‹ed our immigration practice that the act of 1952 no longer represents our immigration quota policy. Of the 1 1/2 million quota immigrants authorized during the 1950s, only a million actually entered the United States. However, 1 1/2 million nonquota immigrants were admitted during the same period.”159 Streamlining legislation into a single, rationalized package would itself be of value, even without changing numbers or bases for exclusion.160 “I submit that when two-thirds of our immigrants come in outside the law, it is time to change the law.”161 McCarran-Walter’s insistence on channeling refugees through ‹xed country quotas, and on keeping those quotas at their 1924 levels, harmed executive branch efforts to ‹ght the cold war. The racially un‹t southern and eastern Europeans had become valuable prizes in the zero-sum ‹ght between the United States and the Soviet Union. Allowing escapees entry would give the United States material bene‹ts and relieve population pressures in NATO countries, but even altering the law to admit hypothetical refugees (since most could not escape) had great advantages in the war for hearts and minds. “Many of the people of East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and the Baltic States, have been forced to ›ee their homelands and break through the Iron Curtain because of the enslavement and terror visited on their homes by the Communists. Their case is an ever-increasing burden on our allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a burden on our own hearts.”162 President Eisenhower observed that “these refugees, escapees, and distressed peoples now constitute an economic and political threat of constantly growing magnitude. They look to traditional humanitarian American concern for the oppressed.”163 The executive branch took a stance against McCarranWalter on three grounds: it was inhumane, it denied the country needed workers, and it created a reputation unworthy of the country’s international position.164 McCarran-Walter was the policy of a post–World War I isolationist, not that of a post–World War II hegemon; it was not only irrelevant to the country’s goals but impeded its ability to reach them.


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Reason: Credibility Means Consistency

Hegemony implied global reach; American hegemony implied equal treatment of countries and equality among individuals. Reformists pursued two principles simultaneously: globalization and equalization. To globalize was to modernize. This, for example, underlaid Humphrey’s proposal that the United States have a quota equal to 1/6 of 1 percent (the McCarran-Walter formula) of the country’s 1950 population, divided equally among countries.165 This would set the new ceiling at 251,000. Eisenhower later advocated modernizing by doubling the 154,000 quota, including refugees but removing the Asia-Paci‹c Triangle and racial provisions, and basing the ceiling on the 1960 census.166 Equality could extend to all sovereign states or could apply to all the world’s individuals. Table 5 outlines the relationship between American quotas for regions and those regions’ populations of individuals and states.167 Consensus grew that immigration guidelines should cover all countries and all peoples equally. Since states’ populations differed greatly in size, Philip Hart proposed setting a cap of 250,000, of which 50,000 would be refugees (previously covered by ad hoc legislation), 120,000 divided among states according to the proportion of the last decade’s immigration they had supplied, and 80,000 to be allocated among states according to the proportion of the world’s population they contained.168 Asians and southern Europeans bene‹ted from this move toward equality, since their allotments had been negligible or low. Their welfare was the yardstick that internationalist reformers used to gauge suf‹ciency. Yet some areas would lose out. England and Ireland would have to see their quotas dropped, and the Western Hemisphere had never faced numerical restrictions. Legislators found themselves in a dilemma: the logic of their positions required consistency, yet few isolationists or restrictionists actually wanted a policy that treated all countries alike. The left/right split, or Democrat/Republican split, did not coincide with the isolationist/internationalist split. Table 6 shows how these categories divided opinion. Some restrictionists did want all areas closed for immigration; others wanted to retain preferences for England and Ireland (for reasons of race or alliance) and the Western Hemisphere (for reasons of cheap labor).169 Some internationalists wanted to retain the same preferences, arguing that these extra allotments were goals toward which further reforms could strive, much as GATT supporters justi‹ed EC preferences—“No one regards, for example, as discriminatory the special relationship existing between member countries of the Common Market which has manifested itself in many ways, including the free movement of natives among the Common Market member countries”170—while others

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argued that policy had to be consistent to be credible. Paul Findley argued that the Congress should equalize the hemispheres not by extending limits to the West but by removing them from the East.171 Cutting across the isolationist/internationalist divide was a schism dividing those advocating preferences from those demanding consistency. Table 6 outlines the differences between the left and right, and between the isolationists and internationalists. Internationalists who wanted to retain preferences implied that the larger the quota, the stronger the ally. “The absence of quotas within the Western Hemisphere is an invaluable adjunct to the good-neighbor policy.”172 The cold war again provided evi-

TABLE 5.

Regional Distribution of Quotas 1930 1950

1964

1970

1980

13 38 1.7

13 36 26b

15 40 40c

Africa, the Middle East, and the Philippines Percent of world’s populationa Percent of world’s countries in the region Percent of U.S. ceiling allotted

11 13 0.7

12 15 1.1

Asia: Barred Zone Area Percent of world’s population Percent of world’s countries in the region Percent of U.S. ceiling allotted

55 16 0.5

55 55 15 11 0.7d 1.1

57 20 14

58 20 20

Europe, Australia and New Zealand Percent of world’s population Percent of world’s countries in the region Percent of U.S. ceiling allotted

28 43 62

25 43 80

23 31 51

21 26 18

18 21 21

Western hemisphere (not including the U.S.)e Percent of world’s population Percent of world’s countries in the region Percent of U.S. ceiling allotted

6 28 36

8 27 18

9 20 46

9 18 41

9 19 19

Source: United Nations Demographic Yearbook, various years. aWorld population does not include that of the U.S. Percentages calculated from census data in the UN Demographic Yearbook, table 1 (various years). bStarting in 1969, each country in the Eastern Hemisphere was given a limit of 20,000 within a 170,000 maximum; the Western Hemisphere was given a 120,000 ceiling with no distribution by country. The allocation calculated in this column then is based on the number of countries among which a subquota is divided. It is the point at which countries equalize. cStarting in 1978, the hemisphere divisions were lifted but all countries were limited to the 20,000 ceiling. This means that the hypothetical distribution of immigration slots among regions just matches the proportion of the world’s countries in them. dUntil special legislation enacted from 1943 to 1952, the Asian quota was usable only by non-Asiatics, i.e., by those of European or African descent who happened to be born in Asia. Until this time, the quota for Asiatics was zero. eThe Western Hemisphere did not have a ceiling until 1965/1969. It is included through the whole period for the sake of consistency. “Ceiling allotted” for earlier years is the proportion of all legal immigrants coming from the Western Hemisphere.


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dence. “We need all the friends we can muster—particularly at this time. We cannot afford to have any nations turn against us, particularly our neighbors to the south of us.”173 World War II demonstrated that this evidence should be taken seriously. “It took President Roosevelt to establish the good neighbor policy and renew old friendships. And we all recall how important those friends were to us during World War II.”174 Cuban threats underlined its importance. “All this, too, at a time when the ugly head of communism has been raised on the island of Cuba and we have been joined with other nations on this hemisphere to keep this, our hemisphere, the land of freedom and of government of, for, and by the people.”175 During the last days of debate, American troops landed in the Dominican Republic. “I am deeply concerned about the strong propaganda tool which the limitation of 120,000 would give to demagogues, especially Communist demagogues, in Latin America, who may play this theme to a fare-theewell.”176 The Monroe doctrine, originally directed against European imperialism, did double duty as an anticommunist statement. If these internationalists were inductive, in that they fashioned their case from visible contemporary threats, other internationalists were deductive, arguing that hegemony demanded consistency, and therefore American power demanded Western Hemisphere restriction. Since logic demanded restriction that many restrictionists did not want, these internationalists demanded logic. They wanted to force isolationists’ hands, to show that isolationists were not for closing all borders to protect America, but for closing the borders against speci‹c groups. The Committee on the Judiciary is asking the House to place a numerical ceiling on immigrants from all countries outside the Western Hemisphere. Would it not also be fair and just to place Latin American and Caribbean area immigration under a reasonable ceiling? In our foreign relations, does America want to convey the

TABLE 6.

Factions in the Debate Left

Right

Internationalist

Equalize quotas in the East; keep Western Hemisphere open

Equalize quotas in both hemispheres at a higher numerical level

Isolationist

Equalize quotas in both hemispheres at a lower numerical level to protect labor

Leave national origins quotas; keep Western Hemisphere open to allow labor migration

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impression that the Scandinavians, the Germans, the Irish, the Italians, are less welcome here than someone else?177 Not extending the ceiling would put the Western Hemisphere in a “highly preferred position,” neither “fair, just and reasonable” nor “logical.”178 “To argue that the imposition of a numerical limitation is discriminatory to Latin American nations when we impose by this bill a numerical limitation against all the other nations in the world is not persuasive.”179 Legislators had to be able to justify their choices on some reasonable basis. Logical consistency did matter. Negotiated settlement on this issue was dif‹cult because the factions split across regions and parties. The split on the Western Hemisphere issue was decisive in the House, where the vote was 189 to 218, with 25 not voting, against limitation.180 The split on the issue of equalization was decisive in the Senate, and it is this issue that prevailed. The conference committee restored Western Hemisphere ceilings as a compromise because the Senate was worried about escalating Cuban refugees.181 Those advocating consistency won because the other arguments were internally contradictory, relying on assertions that a threat would obtain in one instance or region but not another. Restrictionists and internationalists desiring consistency noted that the cold war was not just in the Eastern Hemisphere. The Western Hemisphere provided a haven for those hoping to slip into the United States uncounted. “Certainly there is no reason in the world for Russia or her satellite countries to try to send subversive spies, saboteurs, and traitors into the United States through legal ports of entry, when all that is necessary for them to do is to place such persons on the border between the United States and Mexico and say, ‘Go to it, boys. No one will make any attempt to stop you.’”182 Both credibility and internal security suggested extending the ceiling west. “I am shocked beyond words that the Congress, which investigates practically everyone from a baby sitter to a kindergarten teacher, does not impose stringent controls in the case of immigration at the Mexican border.”183 Internationalists had gained support for their position by arguing for equality as a principle to help ‹ght the cold war. The cold war could not be both global and irrelevant in the Western Hemisphere.

Reason: Consistency

Isolationists’ assertions that immigration would increase irritated internationalists. Isolationist O. C. Fisher said that his “chief objection to this bill is that it very substantially increases the number of immigrants who will be


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admitted each year, and it shifts the mainstream of immigration from western and northern Europe—the principal source of our present population—to Africa, Asia, and the Orient.”184 Echoing earlier arguments, isolationists such as Fisher worried that there would be more—too many—unassimilable people. Internationalists insisted that their intent was to equalize opportunity to immigrate, not to increase the volume of immigration. Advocates of the immigration reforms pointed out that any seeming increase was really the result of changes in accounting. In theory, there would be an “approximate doubling,” but “in practice, this would not result in any marked increase in immigration, since in the last 10 years, there has been an average annual entry of 150,000 immigrants outside the quotas.”185 A prominent supporter of immigration reform, Edward Kennedy, delineated how skeptics might be mistaken. As I have previously stated, the number of quotas authorized each year will not be substantially increased. The world total—exclusive of Western Hemisphere—will be 170,000, an increase of approximately 11,500 over current authorization. But 10,200 of that increase is accounted for by the inclusion of refugees in our general law for the ‹rst time. There will be some increase in total immigration to the United States—about 50,000 to 60,000 per year. . . . These are the numbers that go unused each year. . . . the percentage increase that immigration will represent is in‹nitesimally small.186 The new law in fact extended regulatory control to an area previously unrestricted. In 1958, Emanuel Celler, reform’s main sponsor in the House, wanted an increase to 250,000 based “on the average number of immigrants actually admitted into the United States within the last decade.”187 He successfully steered through Congress a bill that liberalized the way that the country determined acceptable immigrant characteristics in the context of no change in numbers. In 1965 he asked, “Do we appreciably increase our population, as it were, by the passage of this bill? The answer is emphatically ‘No.’ The thrust of this bill is no appreciable increase in numbers.”188 Table 5 outlines the regional distribution of numerical ceilings. Publicly avowed intent stressed characteristics exclusively, in a departure from previous debates. In the discussions up to 1952, the core concern had been the numbers of immigrants with particular characteristics. In 1965, legislators focused only on characteristics, declaring an intention neither to increase nor to decrease the volume of immigration into the country. Reasons publicly acceptable and persuasive in this period dealt

180


with equity and leadership, rather than with military and economic security, which underlaid efforts to tighten or eliminate restrictions on numbers. Contemporary public debate allowed consensus on liberalizing preferences and exclusions, and demanded agreement on keeping the publicly declared limit the same. Given that the law’s public intent was liberal on characteristics and restrictive on numbers, it is noteworthy that its effect (rarely publicly discussed and never mentioned as a goal) was the opposite, to continue to select the same immigrant characteristics as before, but to allow more to immigrate. By setting 74 percent of the preferences for family members, legislators assured that the immigrant stream could not shift source too quickly. They replaced the national origins quota law by “brothers and sisters” preferences, which allowed immigrants closely related to, and therefore of the same race as, citizens. Prior to 1965, for example, if 20 percent of the U.S. population was of French ancestry, 20 percent of the immigration quotas would be allotted to French unrelated to U.S. citizens. After 1965, 20 percent of the people in the United States would be eligible to admit their relatives—who most likely lived in France. In practice, this system was biased toward recent immigrants—though there were not many because of the Quota Act and McCarran-Walter restrictions—because they were most likely to have relatives abroad; in the mid-1960s, few May›ower descendants had siblings in England. Another 6 percent of the preferences would be for refugees, who had been entering via another administrative category before. The reasons changed, but they were reasons for selecting the same groups of people. On the other hand, assuming greater demand for immigration than the supply of places, pooling unused quotas meant that immigration would increase. Those from, for example, Italy, instead of being placed on a waiting list, would enter using the places that the British did not want. Actual immigration would increase. In intent, the bill was liberal on characteristics but conservative on numbers; in effect it was conservative regarding characteristics but liberal on numbers. These effects of the 1965 act, not part of the public negotiations about boundaries leading up to it, would become relevant to discussion only in later decades. Public interest arguments that hoped to succeed did not and could not advocate increasing numbers of immigrants. Successful arguments tied change in immigration policy to the national interest in protecting against a threat. Credibility in the cold war could demand consistency, but it did not require any change in numbers. Lyndon Johnson and other proponents of reform supported this “no change” interpretation of Hart-Celler’s effect on numbers. “The total number of immigrants would not be sub-


181

stantially changed. Under this bill, authorized quota immigration, which now amounts to 158,361 per year, would be increased by less than 7,000.”189 Similarly, “it is important to note that this new law will not open the ›oodgates of immigration. . . . [There is an] increase of only about 2,000 persons over the presently authorized annual total”;190 “the annual in›ux of foreigners will continue to be barely perceptible in a population as large and as heterogeneous as our own.”191 In fact, “this bill is more restrictive than present law. It imposes even more rigid requirements, and it sets more speci‹c limitations than does present law.”192 Legislators were anxious to demonstrate that the changes they sought did not weaken the borders that guaranteed American distinctiveness and integrity. Characteristics, not quantity, were legislators’ avowed target. “The question posed by this bill is not whether quota immigration should be substantially increased, but simply how we are to choose those who are admitted.”193 The bill was equitable. “Total immigration will not increase substantially under the newly proposed policy, but it will be more fairly apportioned.”194 As important, the bill streamlined immigration policy and reduced the hodgepodge of laws into a single package. “When anyone in your constituency asks you about our immigration policies, about the number of immigrants that are coming into this country, I think for the ‹rst time you can honestly say what the number will be.”195 Gaining control was an end in itself, regardless of the sorts of changes made to the laws. Figure 8 illustrates the arguments made. Only thirteen years separated McCarran-Walter from its successor, yet the majority in favor of the 1965 liberalization was larger than that for the earlier restriction. The House of Representatives voted 318 to 95 (with 19 not voting) in favor of the package of reforms;196 the Senate voted 76 to 18 (6 not voting);197 and the House ‹nally approved the conference report, which added a Western Hemisphere ceiling, by 320 to 69, with 42 not voting, an even larger margin than that by which they passed McCarran-Walter over Truman’s veto thirteen years earlier.198 Many of the members of Congress present to vote in 1952 were no longer in of‹ce in 1965, but of the 320 who voted for Hart-Celler, 40 had voted for McCarran-Walter (and 39 had voted against it) in 1952. The new members, who had been elected during the period when the United States threw its energy into putting international institutions into operation and into ‹ghting the cold war, voted overwhelmingly in favor of eradicating the racial categories and agreed to include the Western Hemisphere under the immigration ceiling. Minds did not change; the population of legislators changed. None of the 40 who had reversed their position over the past decade spoke on the issue during the debates, though the adherence of new members demonstrated that the arguments that the

182

Immigration and the Politics of American Sovereignty Cold War ⇓ Public Interest Argument

Policy Argument

Implementation

Discriminating among citizens destroys American authority

Maintaining American credibility helps to secure and even to increase the country's power

The country must abolish racial discrimination in immigration policy if it is to retain credibility

Racial categories have offended old countries; offense to new countries will cost the country the cold war

Discriminating among citizens threatens civil tranquillity

Equality and civic peace are necessary for liberal democracy to maintain itself

The country must abolish racial discrimination in immigration policy if it is to attain social peace

Causal Argument


↑

↑ efficiency

↑

↓ Ideas about Causation: Racism Undermines Credibility; Credibility Creates Security Fig. 8.

Arguments made before Hart-Celler

minority had made during the early 1950s became more plausible as the decade progressed. Change developed within and across regions, and within and across across parties. Table 7 shows the changing balance among the yeas and nays across regions.199 Hart-Celler, or the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965 as the new provisions are formally known, has sometimes been interpreted as a breakthrough for liberalism, revolutionizing the way that the country thought of, and treated, potential immigrants. This is true and untrue. It is partially true not because the act took halfway measures in immigration reform, but because it took full measures in one direction, when considering immigrants’ characteristics, and full measures in the opposite direction when considering immigrants’ quantity. Hart-Celler eliminated exclusions based on race. For the ‹rst time since just after the Civil War, race was irrelevant to eligibility for admission. Countries, moreover, received equal ceilings. Not only could Portugal send as many immigrants as England, but so could


183

Pakistan or the Philippines. A country’s history as an embarkation point, or gene pool, for American citizens no longer mattered. Hart-Celler did not, however, increase the number of immigrants legally allowed to immigrate. The 1965 act raised the general ceiling from 150,000 to 270,000, but did so by bringing the previously unrestricted Western Hemisphere into the regulated group for the ‹rst time, allocating to immigrants from that region 120,000 places. For the decade 1955 to 1964, actual immigration from this region had averaged 109,000; during the early 1960s when debate about immigration was more intense, immigration from the Western Hemisphere jumped from 89,566 in 1960 to 110,140 in 1961; 130,740 in 1962; 144,680 in 1963; down to 135,820 in 1964 but then back up to 153,200 in 1965.200 Extending the legal ceiling to the Western Hemisphere primarily extended regulatory control and secondarily curtailed immigration from this region. Meanwhile, though, Congress’s having revised the categories covering immigrants’ characteristics—eliminating national origins quotas—had the consequence of increasing immigration from the Eastern Hemisphere, as the populous countries of Asia and Africa could for the ‹rst time send as many as 20,000 annually. Though the cap remained the same, the previously underused 150,000 for the Eastern Hemisphere was to be used fully after 1965. Legislators and those they invited to testify, however, mentioned neither of these effects on quantity. Several in fact took pains to point out that the law would have no effect on quantity at all, or else they provided volumes of numerical analyses demonstrating that actual immigration would decrease or increase by a couple of percentage points at most. What legislators stressed constantly was a move toward equity in the context of a ›ow numerically unchanged. Table 8 illustrates the ways in which Hart-Celler differed from its predecessor. For this reason, the 1965 immigration reforms are unique. Changes to

TABLE 7.

Regionalism in McCarran-Walter and Hart-Celler Northeast

South

Midwest

West

1952 Yes No Not voting

54 65 4

77 7 18

81 30 4

66 10 14

1965 Yes No Not voting

97 1 10

48 46 10

100 5 7

75 17 15

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immigration policy before and after the 1965 act also made signi‹cant alterations in some areas and blessed the status quo in others, but reformists in other periods argued their case with explicit reference to numbers. A model argument common to the Quota Acts, to McCarranWalter, and later to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was: We allow too many of these people. The central problem was a glut not just of generic immigrants but of particular immigrants; conversely, the problem was not “these people’s” mere presence, but their presence in numbers. Too many Chinese, too many Italians, too many anarchists or communists, too many illegal aliens undermined social integrity and would handicap the United States in its struggle against its enemies: racially and socially decadent European and Asian countries, crazy European anarchists, Soviet and Chinese communists, German and Japanese economic competition. Hart-Celler was an exception. Two changes led to McCarran-Walter’s eventual revision along the lines chosen. Decolonization convinced more legislators in 1965 than in 1952 that America had to lead and that its credibility affected the country’s security. The public interest had to be consistent with the national interest, and the cold war meant that national interest was international. Second, liberal internationalists accepted the bifurcation between economic and immigration policy initiated by isolationists in the early 1950s. Before McCarran-Walter, isolationists and internationalists had each argued for consistency among issue-areas: free trade in goods meant free trade in people; protectionism regarding defense and trade implied protection regarding people; and so on. McCarran-Walter’s advocates had managed to delink the issue-areas, achieving increased immigration restriction in a context of economic internationalism. Its 1965 reformers eventually accepted this split, targeting their proposals at content rather than form. Immigration policy could be formally, numerically restrictive while other policies were formally, numerically liberal—if they treated all countries alike. Peter Rodino, an internationalist, revealed that this choice was conscious when he declared, perfectly seriously, that “instead of logic and consistency [among issue-areas], I believe we must face reality and consider the national interest as being paramount.”201 Hart-Celler applied the most-favored-nation principle to an immigration policy that, unlike trade policy, sought to curtail volume. On one hand, policy in different issue areas could diverge. Trade policy, defense policy, human rights, immigration—each could follow its own logic. On the other, policy in domestic and foreign spheres could not diverge. Employment and trade policy, arms and alliances, civil rights and human rights, immigrants and citizens—all should be treated consistently. “Race and immigration, and how we resolve these problems may very well

TABLE 8.

Hart-Celler, the Immigration Reform Act of 1965

Act Immigration and Nationality Act (McCarran-Walter) Act of June 27, 1952

INA Amendments (Hart-Celler) Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of October 3, 1965



Unrestricted (Nonquota) Immigrants

Exclusions

Overall ceiling: 154,657 Method of allocation: Each country given a cap equal to one-sixth of 1 percent of the persons in the U.S. in 1920 whose ancestry derived from that area. Established a minimum of 100, and granted Asian countries a general ceiling of 2000.

•1st: Aliens with special skills, with their spouses and children, 50 percent •2d: Parents of U.S. citizens, 30 percent •3d: Spouses and children of resident aliens, 20 percent •4th: Other relatives of U.S. citizens, 25 percent culled from unused slots above •Nonpreference: Any remaining unused

•Husbands of U.S. citizens

•Communists, as outlined in the Internal Security Act •Drug addicts •Anyone attempting fraud •Additionally established the alien address report system, which required aliens to report their addresses annually for inclusion in a central security file

Overall ceiling: 290,000 Method of allocation: 120,000 general cap for the Western Hemisphere; 170,000 cap for the Eastern Hemisphere, with a limit of 20,000 per country per year.

•1st: Adult unmarried children of U.S. citizens, 20 percent •2d: Spouses and unmarried children of resident aliens, 20 percent •3d: Professionals, 10 percent •4th: Married children of U.S. citizens, 10 percent •5th: Brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens, 24 percent •6th: Other needed workers, 10 percent •7th: Conditional (refugees) •Nonpreference: Unused slots from above

•Spouses, children and parents of U.S. citizens •Ministers •Former employees of the U.S. government abroad •Foreign medical graduates

•Sexual deviation

186


be the key to America’s victory in the struggle for the moral leadership of the free world.”202 Inside or outside the country made no difference. Policy became integrated by topic, not by sphere; it became split between topics, not between spheres. Integrating domestic and international processes created the tensions that propelled debate. The set of tensions that the legislators faced all involved con›ict between sovereignty and global liberalism. One tension was between the domestic economy and international security. “The nub of the problem is how to protect the country against a great stream of immigrants who could have a dislocating effect on the economy, yet at the same time to ease the explosive effect of overpopulation in other countries and do our fair share in the refugee ‹eld.”203 Another tension was between traditional immigration and subversion, between democracy and treasonous speech. “We are a Nation dedicated to the idea of providing a land of opportunity for the oppressed of other lands. This has been one of the cornerstones of our democracy and it has helped to make us the great Nation that we are. Today, however, because of the Communist conspiracy, we must examine our immigration policies in the light of a serious security problem. The con›ict between our traditional desires and security has created the legislative impasse which now exists.”204 Autonomy and interdependence con›icted with each other, but each had advantages. One way to solve this dilemma was to choose an expansive sovereignty, one that allowed autonomy because it promoted asymmetrical interdependence. American hegemony erased the problem.

CHAPTER 7

Whom to Exclude, Whom to Prefer: IRCA and the 1990 Reforms

In 1965, American legislators weighed alternatives according to how they would play in the eyes of NATO allies, Eastern European citizens, and the uncommitted leaders of newly independent countries, as well as American citizens engaged in supporting the civil rights movement. The dominant reason for fashioning those reforms was concern about the lack of ‹t between the country’s claim to moral authority in the ‹ght against communism and its practice of racist exclusion mechanisms. Two decades later—paradoxically when the American administration was reviving cold war competition—what concerned representatives most about potential American citizens was not whether they were ideological exemplars but whether they could compete economically with the Germans and Japanese at an intensity suf‹cient to salvage American power and authority. As with the 1965 act, change in the country’s main international threat, rather than a profound or dramatic event such as a world war, prompted the reforms. This is particularly noteworthy since it is not as if the period from 1965 to 1990 was uneventful, in the American economy, in American domestic politics, or in the country’s relation to the rest of the world. During this period the war in Vietnam intensi‹ed and ended, as did public activism about the war; President Nixon removed the dollar from its role as linchpin of the international monetary system, normalized relations with China, negotiated détente with the Soviet Union, and resigned from of‹ce; the oil crisis destabilized Western economies and brought about a massive redistribution of wealth from the poorest and richest countries to the oil exporters; the Soviets asserted control in Poland and Afghanistan; and Iranian revolutionaries took Americans hostage in Tehran. During the 1980s, ongoing wars in Central America brought thousands of refugees to the country’s southern border and led to an ecumenical movement for sanctuary whose activities purposely transgressed American law. As Congress was ‹nalizing the 1990 act, the single most important circumstance controlling ideas about sovereignty and postwar immigration 187

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policy, the cold war, silently ended. It is certainly plausible that any of these events, let alone landing men on the moon, could change the way the country thought of itself in relation to its environment. Yet it was something much more diffuse, fear of hegemonic decline and loss of global competitiveness, that dominated the arguments that legislators made regarding immigration policy. What changed was what the legislators believed external events signi‹ed, why they were important. During the late 1960s, legislators and the public drew lessons about the country’s position as global leader in the ‹ght against communism. Cuban refugees, for example, provided the United States with ammunition in the cold war against the Soviets. By the late 1980s, in contrast, Congress drew lessons about America’s ability to dominate European and Japanese markets. Congress’s interpretation of Central American refugees’ signi‹cance is one indicator of its changing standards for judging immigrants. Nicaraguan refugees—from a war that the executive branch interpreted as it had interpreted that in Cuba two decades earlier, as a proxy war—were not seen to raise the American score in the country’s ongoing struggle with the Soviets. Rather, these maybe–cold war refugees were seen as important primarily for economic reasons, because they brought in capital and skills, or because they absorbed funds that could have gone to citizens dislocated by American economic upheavals. Although in 1979 and 1980 American politicians largely saw the Central American wars as ideologically signi‹cant to the U.S.-Soviet rivalry, by the mid-1980s they interpreted their consequences for the United States almost solely in economic terms. This shift in standpoint affected some immigrant groups more than others. Soviet Jews, for example, were welcome when they were not allowed to leave the Soviet Union, but not welcomed when they were granted permission to exit. Koreans, in contrast, were welcomed ‹rst because of their loyalties in the cold war and later because of their bene‹cial effect in marginal economic areas. The “why” changed more than the “who,” although the “why” changed gradually, as the currency in which costs and bene‹ts were calculated changed from that of ideological struggle to that of economic survival. Regardless of the facts concerning America’s ability to outcompete its main economic rivals, or any semiobjective assessment of economic risks versus military, cultural, or health risks to the country, over two decades legislators rebuilt the framework within which they judged threats and gauged the country’s response. How they changed immigration policy and why reveals how their perception of the most important difference between Americans and all others was transformed. Wars’ results and the spin that diplomats could place on them mat-

IRCA and the 1990 Reforms

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tered, still, because of their consequences for American reputation. That reputation, in turn, determined the country’s ability to lead the West and to win the cold war. Ed Koch of New York insisted that immigration policy continue to assist the country’s effort in the cold war: “Soviet leaders, and the Jews behind their guarded borders, must be told that Americans of all faiths, acting through their elected Congress, deplore Soviet treatment of a proud minority and will make them welcome here.”1 Democrat John Rarick argued that “History records that every country that the free world has abandoned has, upon being taken over by the Communists, suffered a blood-bath of its anti-communist and non-conforming citizen; witness Red China and Cuba . . . the militant collectivist state[s].”2 In 1973, immigration questions became linked to trade when the Jackson-Vanik amendment to the Trade Reform Act denied mostfavored-nation status to any country that did not allow emigration. Henry Kissinger, reported Senator Jesse Helms, explained that “the total thrust of these negotiations between American and Soviet of‹cials has been directed toward the problem of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union, and not toward the emigration of all citizens from all Communist countries.”3 John Brademas echoed this when he said that “The refugee issue is but another challenge to the efforts of the United States to provide leadership for the free world.”4 But as the debate shifted to a broad concern with American borders, the cold war disappeared as the central principle de‹ning arguments over immigration policy. The last time any legislator linked it to a central immigration issue was when Paul Simon in 1985—in the middle of the 1980s defense buildup—argued that proposals to deport illegal immigrants mimicked Soviet policy.5 American leadership in the Third World, another cold war issue, continued to arise in the context of the immigration debate. Edward Kennedy and others argued that immigration from underdeveloped areas was bad not because of its effects on the United States but because it harmed those areas. “The issue here is especially complicated and ›uid—involving our own national belief in the freedom of movement, and the collective responsibility of the advanced nations to assist the progress of the underdeveloped areas.”6 This also operated as a political safety valve, retarding political progress abroad. “By acting as a safety valve for the underdeveloped countries and by accepting their excess population,” argued B. F. Sisk, “we enable them to delay taking action on their own to deal with economic and population problems.”7 American leadership demanded a prudent application of liberal principles. In 1976, Leonard Chapman, the Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, justi‹ed restriction using military imagery:

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In this hostile world we must be vigilant and ever alert if we are to preserve the freedoms, and the way of life which so many of our veterans have fought to ensure, and for which many have laid down their lives. . . . I am concerned about another type of invasion of our country. It is ongoing now, and has been for several years—although it has gone largely unnoticed. For the perpetrators are not wearing uniforms, and are not carrying weapons. They are not storming our beaches under the cover of artillery. Rather their invasion is a silent one, occurring mainly at night across our unprotected borders.8 When the cold war did actually end, legislators saw it as having little signi‹cance for immigration policy. One, William Lipinski, argued that the United States should accept immigrants to assure its continued credibility. “Why did we do the Berlin airlift—or go to war in Korea? The list goes on. Did we do all this just so we could tell the people we were ‹ghting to protect and liberate? Well, we are glad you’re free—just don’t think about moving into my neighborhood.”9 The cold war vanished from the immigration debate at least six years before it ceased to dominate discussion of defense policy. If all possible causes had generated discussion, this chapter would be divided into at least eleven sections: the Vietnam War, détente, disengagement of the dollar, normalization with China, the oil crisis, Watergate, martial law in Poland, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian hostage crisis, Central American wars, and ‹nally the cold war. Since many of these were met with ringing silence, what follows is a review of the events that legislators did raise as evidence in debate—Vietnam, Iran, El Salvador/Nicaragua—followed by a review of those that they did not. Cold war reasons gave way to economic reasons in spite of objective similarities among circumstances the legislators discussed and in spite of the cold war’s intensi‹cation during this period.

Reason: Politics of Labeling Allies and Enemies— Vietnam, Iran, Central America

War in Vietnam, like the world wars, the Korean War and the cold war, highlighted the divergence between the principles for which America was willing to ‹ght and the principles by which it chose its citizens. After World War I, legislators argued that allies and enemies should be recognized as such in immigration policy; during World War II, Congress rescinded Chinese exclusion because of the Chinese effort against the Japanese; and in the late 1940s, a frustrated Truman found himself trying


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to establish an alliance against the Soviet Union with people whom the Quota Acts banned. He, like presidents before him, argued strenuously that immigration and foreign policies had to be mutually reinforcing. The pattern continued during and after the Vietnam War. Alien soldiers fought, as did citizen troops, for the United States. Convinced that aliens could provide no higher proof of commitment, legislators argued that aliens serving in Vietnam should be allowed to naturalize, regardless of whether they had completed their residency and other requirements. “It should be axiomatic,” declared Edna Kelly, “that those who risk their lives in the defense of freedom are entitled to all of the bene‹ts and privileges which we can bestow upon them.”10 Representatives especially welcomed such loyalty from aliens at a time when many citizens refused military service. In 1968 Bob Wilson observed that “amidst domestic turmoil, caused by a vocal minority of antiwar protesters who feel no necessity to serve the United States, it is most heartening to ‹nd those of other countries who value what we stand for enough to be willing to risk their own lives.”11 A bill to waive administrative requirements for soldiers who wanted to naturalize passed the House with no opposition. Both supporters and opponents of aid to Vietnamese refugees argued for their positions by invoking the necessity for consistency. Americans could not treat allies from one war in one way and treat those from another war differently. Americans went into Vietnam in support of the noncommunist southern Vietnamese, establishing a de facto alliance with the south. Allies in every earlier war had been acknowledged as eligible for citizenship; allies in Vietnam ought also to be accepted. No one had raised the issue until the early 1970s, by which time the prospect that the allies would be abandoned seemed real. Many worried about the responsibility that they had incurred to the Vietnamese. In case of defeat or overthrow, it must be obvious to all Americans that millions of South Vietnamese will be liquidated in the name of peace by the Communist conquerors. The American people as well as our leaders owe a responsibility to the people of South Vietnam. It was the Americans who made the assurances that we would make South Vietnam safe from Communist aggression and control.12 Republican Millicent Fenwick framed America’s obligation as one of justice. “It seems patently unfair,” she said, “that the same individuals who diligently served us in Vietnam should now receive less than sympathetic understanding from us here.”13 Times were hard economically. Both conservative and liberal Democrats argued along the same lines. George Hud-

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dleston contended that “it is up to our Nation, which bears a responsibility for the conditions which led the migrants here, to see that the assimilation is as easy as possible”;14 Edward Kennedy, who led the immigration debate in the Senate for most of this period, argued that “we have a special responsibility to help restore their lives, in part because we participated in a long war that helped to destroy the life they knew—and because our planes and ships helped many to reach our shores.”15 American policy had created the Vietnamese refugees; therefore, the country had an obligation to accept those that ›ed after Saigon fell. Others argued that immigration policy had to be consistent with the country’s historical traditions. The United States owed itself a policy of integrity, a policy in concert with American traditions. Peter Rodino, for example, argued that the refugees would provide many tangible advantages to the United States, but “ultimately, however, we must do this because it is the only right thing to do. We are a nation of immigrants, and when we reject our humble foreign origins, we will have ended our reason for being as a nation.”16 In fact, some argued, moral consistency overrode material interests. In 1975, unemployment was up to 8.9 percent. “However,” said Joshua Eilberg, “this does not change the fact that we have an obligation to welcome the refugees of the war in the best American tradition, as we welcomed the Hungarians and the Cubans before them.”17 America’s future policies were to be consistent with those of the present and those of the past. To share such a view was not necessarily to reach the same conclusions. Democrat James Abourezk decried what he saw as rank hypocrisy in the way the country had decided which groups would be accorded refugee status. Those ›eeing “fascism and barbarism in Chile” and those tortured “by several of our so-called allies” were ignored; meanwhile, Congress prepared to provide asylum for the Vietnamese, for “thousands of trained political assassins who operated the Phoenix program [reputed to be a CIA-sponsored program to train Vietnamese assassins], for Vietnamese who corrupted their own society using American money, food, and equipment; for prostitutes, bar girls, pimps and other undesirables.”18 In his view, Congress should grant refugee status regardless of ideology. Those opposed to allowing Vietnamese entry, however, typically framed their arguments in terms of the government’s primary obligation to American citizens. Race loomed obviously in the debate only once. The Senate ›atly rejected (6 to 74) Jesse Helms’s contention that aid to Vietnamese should be restricted to private charity because of “a growing belief that this Nation has experienced more and more social problems as a result of this melting-pot theory.”19 The House gave somewhat more sup-


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port to Democrat Donald Riegle’s proposal to provide to American citizens the same bene‹ts given to Vietnamese refugees (71 to 346).20 Most, though, shared Republican Jack Kemp’s contention that “if we do shut our doors to these individuals—for they are all individuals—we will have taken that ‹rst step into a dark chapter of sel‹shness and isolation.”21 In a debate that echoed those of earlier times, Congress voted to accept immigrants because they were allies, and because not to do so would be to diminish American moral credibility in the eyes of both American citizens and the outside world. Both sides argued not primarily against their congressional opponents but against American public opinion. Legislators were alarmed by polls taken following the fall of Saigon that showed 57 percent of Americans opposed to receiving those ›eeing, with only 32 percent in favor.22 “I was frankly ashamed,” admitted one, “of the antirefugee sentiment which surfaced just after the evacuation of Saigon.”23 Iranian students’ reaction to the hostage crisis of 1979 prompted congressional debate framed in term of “national security” versus “civil rights.” One measure of America’s integration with the rest of the world was the number of nonimmigrant visitors it received annually. Students, like tourists and business travelers, were not numerically restricted; many in fact had been recruited. Congress allowed the market to determine the number of nonimmigrant travelers because of its conviction that such visitors had only economic weight. They came, they spent or invested money, and they left. Those expected to make a political claim had to route themselves through the sluices providing entry to the American citizen population. The difference between immigrants and nonimmigrants was clear. Or it was clear until Iranian students in the United States demonstrated in favor of the Iranian takeover of the American embassy in Tehran. When Iranian students chained themselves to the Statue of Liberty alongside an anti-Shah banner, legislators demanded that they be expelled. They had, after all, violated the terms of their visas. “How can we command any respect in the world, or even of ourselves, if we do not begin again to act like the powerful and morally strong Nation we once were, and should be?” asked William Dickinson.24 Others sought solace in political fundamentalism. Larry MacDonald asserted that the incident challenged American sovereignty: “When a country ceases to defend its territory and the lives of its citizens without equivocation, it has ceased to exist as a sovereign power without identity or substance.”25 S. I. Hayakawa titled his bill, to consider all American embassies overseas U.S. territory, the “American Sovereignty Protection Act.”26 It would expand the de‹nition of war to include terrorism, thus allowing the United States to

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classify nationals of countries linked to terrorism as enemy aliens, subject to deportation.27 Outraged that the Immigration and Naturalization Service could not readily supply details about the number or location of Iranian students in the United States, legislators insisted that it reform its record keeping. It did not, however, pass or even propose legislation to alter the Immigration and Nationality Act. Wars in Central America also produced claimants for asylum, bringing immigration policy again to congressional attention. Congress was split on whether the refugees were ›eeing, or were themselves, allies or enemies. To call a person a refugee was to acknowledge that he or she had a well-founded fear of persecution, so to call someone ›eeing an ally a refugee was to admit that one’s ally was probably persecuting its citizens.28 Although in Central America the U.S. government trained and helped to supply troops engaged in a civil war against communists, as it did in Vietnam, this did not provide reason to accept refugees from the war—though it did in the case of Vietnam; although the government interpreted the war as a proxy war, as it did that in Cuba, this too did not provide a reason to accept refugees—though it did in the case of Cuba. Refugees from Vietnam in the 1970s ›ed an American enemy. Refugees from Central America in the 1980s largely ›ed an American ally. Unlike the debate about Vietnamese refugees, at stake in the debate over granting refugee status to Central Americans was the rightness of American policy. Those opposed to American support for the Nicaraguan Contras thus labeled the “feet people” refugees. “I believe,” said David Durenberger, “that the United States bears a certain responsibility for the noncombatant deaths because of our support for the Salvadoran government and the military.”29 Dennis DeConcini alleged that the State Department resisted accepting the refugees, since it “knew” that to do so “would re›ect adversely on our Nation’s policy of assisting the government in El Salvador.” Instead, he said, it demonstrated the State Department’s “guilty conscience.”30 Those in support of American policy declared that the migrants were ›eeing the communists, not American allies, or insisted that they were only economic refugees. Steven Symms cautioned that “if we ignore the implications of the extension of the evil empire of the Soviet Union into the Western Hemisphere, no piece of paper, no law is going to stem the tide of people voting with their feet, seeking freedom in the United States.”31 On the other hand, those escaping from the Contras were economic refugees with no real moral claim to asylum.32 Other events during the period from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s were largely ignored in legislative debates on immigration policy. Détente with the Soviet Union, opening of relations with China, the Bretton Woods


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crisis, the oil crisis, Watergate, martial law in Poland, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan all went unremarked in the world of immigration politics. The geostrategic events of this period, all cold war–related, provided reasons to preserve, rather than to corrode, prevailing immigration restrictions, which had after all been designed to handle just such crises that a cold war leader could expect to face. To administration eyes, the difference between Vietnam and Central America on the one hand, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on the other, was simply that Americans fought Soviet proxies in the former, while Soviets fought American proxies in the latter. This difference meant that the United States incurred a straightforward obligation to help its Vietnamese, Nicaraguan, and Honduran allies but was less obligated to those it helped in Afghanistan. Immigration policy already screened out communists, welcomed anticommunist refugees, and articulated a liberal standard for citizenship appropriate for a country claiming authoritative leadership of the West. None of these geostrategic events altered the nature of the world in which the United States existed, or the type of competition it faced, or the type of threat most dangerous to it. In fact, the big changes in the global distribution of power during this time, changes that the United States ignored when it re›ected on immigration policy, were those that it had sought and engineered. More cold war–related events were not going to motivate change in a policy already geared to deal with the fallout of the cold war. All they could do was provide more reasons to hold on to current policy. What ultimately did have a profound though indirect effect were the economic changes associated with the death of the dollar standard and the oil price shocks on the early 1970s. At the time, legislators perceived neither of these as signaling a structural change either in the American economy or in the country’s place in the international system. Immigrants were not discussed in 1971 because the dollar standard obviously had nothing to do with immigrants. Rejecting the dollar standard and accepting oil price hikes did, though, affect in›ation, the balance of manufacturing and service jobs, the U.S. balance of payments, and its ‹scal balance. While during the 1930s, the United States and its competitors both suffered greatly, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the United States suffered while some of its competitors did not. American scholars and policymakers turned their attention to Japan and Germany, said to be gaining in economic health and power as the United States sought a way to ease structural economic pains. The United States believed itself to be engaged in an ideological and military ‹ght for which it was prepared. Immigration policy took care of that threat.

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Reason: Economic Threat

It did not take care of the new economic threat. During the 1980s, two subjectively separate standards coexisted: the United States was primarily engaged in a struggle for military dominance with the Soviet Union; the United States was primarily engaged in a struggle for economic dominance with Japan, Germany, and others. The two standards con›icted only in the area in which there was overlap, the topics of military spending and export controls of strategic products. In the 1980s, legislators devoted their efforts to reforms bene‹ting the United States in both its competitions. In 1990, after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Congress comprehensively revised immigration policy to tailor it to a world whose threat to the United States was economic rather than military or ideological. The story of the 1960s and 1970s is one of continuing attention to alliance rivalries. The story of the 1980s is one of transition to a world in which economic competition mattered as much as did military hostility. Legislators and the public twice changed the standards by which they judged immigrants. Their starting point was ideological and military hegemony: the immigration that concerned the government had geopolitical causes and geopolitical consequences. The ‹rst shift was in the standards used to judge consequences. Causes remained the same—people whom Congress had seen as cold war refugees in 1965 they still viewed as such in 1975—but they judged the consequences of this immigration not in terms of the cold war but in economic terms. By the mid-1980s, there was another shift. Consensus was that the causes of immigrants’ desire to leave their homelands were a mixture of humanitarian, ideological, and economic problems, with the great majority of them economic. From political cause and political consequence, perception changed to political cause and economic consequence, and ‹nally to economic cause and economic consequence. These stages are most clearly visible examining changing American arguments about and policy toward speci‹c groups. In the 1960s, refugees from Cuba, for example, ›ed communism. Legislators measured their consequence for the United States in the propaganda and intelligence advantage that their ›ight gave the United States. A decade later, those who ›ed willingly or unwillingly left a communist enemy, but no longer carried much propaganda value with them. They did carry economic demands troubling to their new homeland. By the mid-1980s, Cuban refugees were seen primarily to ›ee economic distress in Cuba and to cause it in the United States. Economic considerations had always played some role, as had humanitarian and ideological considerations. What changed was the bal-


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ance among them and their political importance. Economic signi‹ed frivolous, unserious grounds for admission and was a label applied to groups that administrations did not want to accept. Good economic immigrants were necessary for the country to survive and indeed to dominate; bad economic immigrants would devastate the country’s chances to exceed Japan and Germany. By the 1980s, economic criteria came to be seen as necessary to assure American competitiveness. Good economic immigrants were “professionals” or “investors,” while bad economic immigrants were simply “economic.” This division did not pass unnoticed. The largely Democratic congressional Black Caucus, said Shirley Chisholm, “believes that the term ‘economic refugee’ was coined by the previous [Carter] administration to avoid this country’s obligations as a country of ‹rst asylum and because of racist presumptions about Haitians.”33 Similarly, Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter requested a report from the General Accounting Of‹ce on discriminatory application of asylum provisions. He, like the Black Caucus, was concerned that refugees were labeled bad/economic because they ›ed nonEuropean regions. The GAO reported to him that “those who described torture to support their asylum request had an approval rate of 4 percent in El Salvador cases, 15 percent in Nicaragua, 80 percent in Poland, and 64 percent in Iran.”34 In spite of such anger, policy began to adjust to the perception that the leadership other countries threatened most was not ideological or military, but economic. The adjustment began with new criteria to use in evaluating immigrants’ value. The cold war had provided a way to decide both legitimate reasons to immigrate and appropriate ways to understand immigrants’ value. This framework began to change with an awareness of immigrants’ economic costs. Conservative Jesse Helms argued that “Soviet expansion in Central America is causing havoc in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica. Nicaragua is a Soviet base.” Although he sympathized with those ›eeing, he argued that refusing them entry would force their home governments to take care of them. To accept them as refugees was to bail out the communist governments.35 Democrat Les Aspin agreed, observing that “for many decades it has been the policy of dictatorial regimes to hem in their people and prevent anyone from getting out. . . . But now there is a shift away from the Soviet approach. Cuba and Vietnam exemplify the growing attitude that it is easier to rule if you simply let those elements that might coalesce as an opposition leave the country.” He commented that an open-door policy had been “acceptable to almost all Americans because, quite frankly, few people had the chance to get near the open door.”36 Immigrants’ costs had long been raised as good reason to be sparing

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about admissions. From the nineteenth century immigrants had been charged with burdening the country racially, morally, and economically. They were educationally or genetically un‹t for democratic institutions and through some trick (that Americans never seemed to master) managed both to take jobs from Americans and to go on welfare. Some of these costs, to some degree and with some classes of immigrants, were likely correct. Determining which costs and how likely became the subject of government-sponsored, foundation-sponsored, and academic research. What was unique about this new cost-consciousness was that the arguments represented costs not as a forgone opportunity to aid citizens, but as an investment not made and workers not retrained, which were necessary to remain competitive with industrial economies overseas. What mattered was not immigrants’ domestic effects but their international effects. And the international effects that mattered were economic. In fact, the movement to excise the cold war from American immigration policy began much earlier than the cold war ended. Ironically, it was fading from importance as a determinant of immigrant characteristics as it was reaching its ‹nal crescendo under the Reagan administration. Early opponents of using ideology to exclude immigrants had framed their arguments in terms of ideology as a basis for American hegemony. A world leader should not be afraid to confront enemy ideas. In 1987, Daniel Moynihan contended that “by excluding aliens on ideological grounds, we behave as if we were afraid of their ideas, lending those ideas a credence that might evaporate under proper scrutiny.”37 As early as 1967, Edward Kennedy argued that “our de‹nition of refugees, still guided largely by a cold war framework, needs revision and reforms.”38 Barney Frank similarly connected American principles and international reputation: “It is truly inconsistent for this country to advocate the freedom of travel and the free ›ow of information and ideas, and at the same time to keep out individuals based on the content of speeches they intend to give in this country.”39 Other opponents argued that such restrictions harmed Americans’ and others’ enjoyment of their legal rights. Using these reasons to reverse the ban on ideological restrictions made it easier to argue that homosexuality as well should be removed from the list of exclusions. Although ideology was adopted and homosexuality was, arguably, not, opponents of using it as a basis for exclusion based their opposition on the same principles. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association deleted homosexuality from its inventory of disorders; the American Surgeon General agreed in 1979. In its 1980 Annual Report, even the Immigration and Naturalization Service reported that “the Justice Department supports pending legislation that would remove homo-


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sexuality as a ground for excludability.”40 Alan Cranston, introducing a bill for repeal in 1985, noted, “Adoption of this legislation will end a form of discrimination which has no valid scienti‹c or medical basis and which violates traditional American respect for the privacy and dignity of an individual.”41 Categorical bans of all types, including ideological ones, violated individual rights; therefore, the argument went, they were suspect. Cultural and scholarly groups, frustrated in their efforts to get eminent writers to conferences in the United States, periodically complained that both visitors and immigrants could be excluded for activities that were not only perfectly legal for American citizens, but were speci‹cally protected by the Constitution or by international agreements. Advocating nationalization of the banking industry or acknowledging homosexuality would guarantee refusal of entry. The standard response that foreigners were, by de‹nition, not protected by the Constitution was unsatisfactory to those who believed that the Bill of Rights articulated protections that ought to apply to all. George McGovern in 1977 similarly used the Helsinki Final Act as a basis for arguing that immigrants not be excluded on ideological grounds. “If the United States is to remain an effective spokesman for the principle of ‘freer movement and contacts’ among nations and individuals, we must demonstrate to the world our own commitment to these ideals.”42 As an experiment, in 1987—after a 70 percent increase in the defense budget over seven years—ideology was removed from the list of exclusion criteria.43 It then became law as part of a State Department authorization bill. The international causes that propelled immigrants began also to be seen in economic terms. While some examined the economic effect of cold war immigrants, others questioned whether the immigrants in fact ›ed cold war con›icts. Cubans for example, had, to William Clay’s mind, forsaken their claim to refugee status if they had hesitated to leave, deciding to do so only after a decade following the revolution. The real refugees of Cuba left in the early 1960s when they had to ›ee for sanctuary. They were the ones who opposed Castro politically and who faced oppression and mistreatment at the hands of the Castro regime. What we have now in our Cuban refugee policy is a direct subsidizing of the welfare program of an alien nation.44 Similarly, though with less support from his peers, George Huddleston argued that Vietnamese were no different from Haitian refugees, having left their home country primarily to seek economic opportunity.45 Giving economic aid to a country instead of refugee status to its citi-

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zens made sense if the underlying cause of their escape was economic. This strategy was proposed more often as the 1980s wore on. Early assertions that “we must therefore help to increase economic opportunities in other countries in order to reduce their out-migration”46 and observations such as “it costs far more to resettle a refugee in the United States or Europe than to give him hope in his own country”47 highlighted immigration policy’s economic inef‹ciency. No longer tied directly to nationalist-communist revolution, “the real problems,” said Ted Weiss, “are the factors which push refugees out of their own countries. Those problems are primarily explosive population increases in the Third World and the corresponding inability of Third World countries to provide adequate jobs for the millions of unemployed and underemployed who are already straining their economies.”48 Much of the ‹ght involved framing the issue. Aid to Mexico and plans for the North American Free Trade Agreement had one origin in concerns about immigration’s effect on American competitiveness. Edward Kennedy, for example, cautioned that “to deal effectively with this problem we are going to have to do what some of my other colleagues have stated, and that is to make Mexico the promised land so that people will want to go to Mexico, or stay in Mexico, because they realize there is real hope and opportunity, and that will be true in other problems of the ›ows of migration.”49 William Richardson, leader of the Hispanic Caucus, contended that the country should establish “‹rst, a free trade and coproduction zone along the United States–Mexican border; second, a United States–Mexican bilateral commission; third, a joint United States–Mexican development bank; and fourth, a multilateral commission on immigration.”50 Economic concerns overwhelmed marginal humanitarian considerations. “I feel very sorry for the many people in other parts of the world, especially Central America and Mexico,” declared James Tra‹cant. “But I think America must help them to ‹sh so they can feed themselves.”51 Opponents of this viewpoint took issue not with the underlying economic framework but with particular claims about the mechanism connecting foreign economic aid and emigration. Alan Simpson, cosponsor of reform legislation throughout the 1980s, argued that “if you increase the development assistance to Third World countries, you will ‹nd this phenomenon: That kind of activity will often increase emigration from that country. In other words, as they increase their productivity, their workability, their ability to earn—these same people who put together enough and then leave the country. They earn money suf‹cient to leave that country, whereas the poor person will stay there. He cannot move, he does not have any resources whatsoever.”52


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Reason: Sovereignty and Hegemony

Sovereignty, undiscussed for decades, once again became the locus of public concern. When Americans had considered their greatest threat ideological, their concerns had centered on the consequences that discriminatory immigration policies could have on American reputation and hence leadership. The country perceived itself to have, in effect, two borders. One described the limits of the world it aimed to protect, separating communist countries from those identi‹ed with the West. The other separated the United States proper from its allies, which together provided a protective belt. Sovereignty was not a central issue because the boundary separating the United States from its main threat was not the U.S. border but that between East and West. Bloc cohesion, rather than sovereignty narrowly de‹ned, had been the policy goal. American immigration policy throughout this period re›ected this, taking both the fact of allies and the fact of U.S. dominance within the alliance into account. The United States constructed a two-tier system in which immigration, more carefully controlled than before, could reinforce its ability to meet this threat. Intra-alliance immigration fostered Western cohesion and assured that the United States would be considered a credible liberal authority, just as migration within an empire had been encouraged by mercantilist governments. Interalliance immigration, that is, encouraging refugees and defectors from the East, demonstrated that the United States was, as it claimed, preferable to the Soviet Union. Sovereignty returned as a central concern when the Western alliance no longer protected the country from its most serious threat, economic competition from within the Western alliance. Soon after Congress began to judge immigrants’ bene‹ts and costs in economic terms, it began explicitly to discuss threats in economic terms as well. If what was most important about immigrants was their economic impact, it made more sense to screen immigrants using economic standards than to use ideological standards to admit them but economic standards to gauge their effect. During the 1980s, two related ideas gained ground. One held that ideological exclusion criteria were bad: immoral, inef‹cient, and counterproductive. Another maintained that economic standards were good, far more important in measuring threat than was ideological pedigree. Both convictions developed in two stages. Up to 1989, people who argued for attention to international economic competition generally advocated adding economic considerations to the old policy. After 1989, they argued for replacing the old policy with one geared toward a world in which economic ‹ghts were central. These three convic-

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tions—that ideological exclusions were misplaced, economic exclusions were wrongly ignored, and sovereignty was therefore being placed in jeopardy—came to undergird an increasingly popular alternative policy. Sovereignty resurfaced in the 1980s as a central concern partly because immigration policy had unintended consequences, but mainly because it was outmoded, its intended consequences irrelevant to the problems that the country faced. Edward Kennedy claimed that “there have been two unintended consequences of this [1965] revision: a few countries of the world have come to dominate the legal immigration system, and the level of immigration has risen dramatically. Neither result was intended, and both have occurred because of the emphasis on family connections.”53 While many agreed with Kennedy, this was not their main reason for advocating reform. Hart-Celler did in the main operate as intended. The problem was that one of the best immigration policies for a hegemon in an ideological battle was one of the worst immigration policies for an overextended ex-hegemon in an economic battle. Interest groups and legislators on both the left and the right during the 1980s turned their attention to discovering why the United States had ceased to be competitive economically. Although academics in various social sciences have examined this assertion on its merits as a description of observable structural change, few in Congress thought it necessary to assess whether this were true or to determine how to balance the ideological-military threat against the new economic threat in considering risk. Consensus on this new fact of life was in fact broad. Republicans and Democrats differed not in how they de‹ned the threat but in terms of which (American) policy they blamed for it. Republicans tended to blame unions’ and government’s protection of labor for pricing American goods out of the market, while Democrats pointed to defense spending. (Academics sometimes pointed to America’s overextension and subsidy of others’ military, but this was not a politically acceptable argument for either party.) People might disagree about whether Americans were overpaid or foreign workers were underpaid, but they agreed on the proximate cause of relative decline: American goods were overpriced. The belief took hold that immigration policy, as other policies, ought to be judged in terms of its effect on competitiveness. As Arlen Specter insisted, “the concern ought to be on productivity and competitiveness in the world market.”54 Immigrants became primarily factors of production. They could be separated into three categories: those who increased the country’s labor supply, those who improved labor quality, and those who contributed to the country’s capital base. While all of these had some constituency in theory, public interest arguments could be made only for the last two. Even were unemployment low, a general argument about increas-


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ing quantity could only be interpreted as a general argument in favor of reducing the level of wages across the board. Arguments about labor shortages had to target speci‹c sectors, demonstrably connected to those of high unemployment, if they were to appeal to the general social good. Two arguments involving the last two ways of thinking about immigrants’ economic effect met these criteria. First, skilled workers able to design products that the unemployed could then manufacture would help Americans without lowering their average standard of living. As Stanley Lundine argued, “Specialized technical skills such as engineering will be essential to maintaining and increasing the competitiveness of American industries in such a rapidly changing marketplace. We are in a time of economic transition, and this [preference for skilled workers] provision can help us to provide the talent necessary to keep American industry in the ballgame.”55 Jesse Helms was typical of those who agreed: “How do we expect America to remain competitive if our companies, who often face labor shortages in this country, can’t recruit the best talent and top notch researchers from abroad?”56 Also attractive was that this strategy would increase the population of skilled workers immediately, avoiding messy public policies. The alternatives, involving worker retraining, improving public education, and restructuring the connection between the manufacturing and service sectors, were every legislator’s nightmare. Second, many could and did argue that investors who became U.S. citizens would greatly bene‹t the American economic position. Tourists spent billions, but the problem with tourism as a solution was that it was two-way. Although “millions of visitors arrive every year from all over the world, [supplying] one of our largest sources of foreign trade revenue,”57 unfortunately “the U.S. runs a de‹cit on the tourism account of over $2 billion annually.”58 Immigrants, unlike tourists, would spend money for a lifetime. John LaFalce of New York ‹rst suggested, in 1979, preferring “entrepreneurs.”59 Say, the argument went, that an investor of $2 million could create ten jobs. Allowing him or her to acquire citizenship prevented repatriation of pro‹ts, and “this transfer of funds represents one more cash out›ow affecting adversely our balance-of-payments position.”60 Kept in, the wages and pro‹ts would both multiply through the economy. Moreover, since immigrants have a double effect, simultaneously increasing the population at their destination and decreasing that at their origin, the relative advantage to the United States would be double its absolute advantage; this money and these jobs were not only acquired by the United States but also denied to the investors’ homelands. Finally, an investor preference rewarded hard work. “Opening the gateway of opportunity to more of these deserving individuals,” said Alfonse D’Amato, “could only enhance our productivity and vitality as a culture.”61

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The most potent opposition to this change of standards for judging desirability came from those who argued that economic standards themselves were an offensive way to gauge who ought to belong to the community. Central to the debate about illegal aliens was the con›ict between thinking about illegal residents in utilitarian or absolutist terms, that is, in terms of their economic consequences or in terms of what they had earned morally and politically. Either they should be judged according to what they had done—entered illegally versus paid taxes and served the community—or according to what they could do—boost or drain the pool of jobs and social services. A similar con›ict shot through the parallel debate about immigrants. Should economic immigrants be preferred? Or should the country privilege those, perhaps poor, who shared some set of communal norms? Dale Bumpers, of Alabama, argued most passionately against economic preferences. “Nobody ought to be admitted into this country simply because he can produce $250,000 [later $2 million] . . . I do not think the United States ought to indicate by allowing this to stay on the books that we will sell the United States piece by piece to the wealthiest bidders, to those who may be seeking a safe haven in the United States.”62 If this were to happen, he charged, “the road to the United States today, if this bill becomes law, will be a toll road.”63 Ben Nighthorse Campbell objected on similar grounds. “It remains inescapable that America would, for the ‹rst time in its history, be granting a statutory preference for citizenship based on wealth.”64 In this view, economic consequences were irrelevant and objectionable as the basis for choosing citizens, not because such consequences were unimportant but because doing so threatened to undermine how Americans understood citizenship. Forced to acknowledge these objections, those who advocated preferences for investors had to demonstrate how those preferences recognized individual achievement. It was not the consequences, they argued, that really mattered. Preferring the rich recognized industry and American value. Phil Gramm made the argument: Let us say you have a father in Hong Kong who has two sons. His clever son he puts into business and the son who is not quite so clever he sends to graduate school and he gets a Ph.D. But Hong Kong’s lease is ending and the Communists are about to take over, so the two sons decide they want to come to America. The Senator from Arkansas [Bumpers] asks, well, the one who has the money, does he love freedom? He has this money but does he love freedom? He is not asking the guy who has the Ph.D., if he loves freedom.65


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Gramm’s approach was both to frame economic preferences in terms of desert, not consequence, and to question the justi‹cation for all preferences. Bumpers and those who agreed with him then framed their arguments in consequentialist terms. To rely on economic criteria for citizenship would be to accept market principles’ triumph over communitarian principles. Sovereignty would be empty as everything was for sale in the global market. “We are already being bought up,” he said. “Listen to this: the Japanese are ‹nancing 30 percent of our debt. There is over $1.5 trillion of foreign investment now. Every Governor I know is spending half his time in Europe and Japan trying to get people to come here and build plants. British investment in this country has gone up 192 percent since 1980. We are being bought out lock, stock, and barrel.”66 John Bryant of Texas charged that this bill is a culmination of the excesses of the 1980s, a period in which we tripled our national debt, a period in which we became the biggest debtor nation in the world, a period in which we became a country that no longer pay[s] its bills anymore without borrowing staggering sums of money, a period in which we sold off our most precious assets to the point that foreign ownership in our country has tripled in the last 7 years, and now we are selling our last and most precious possession, citizenship.67 Legislators agreed that economic competition challenged the United States and that it had to respond. They disagreed about whether to respond by trying to beat them or join them. Worries about competitiveness were not restricted to Republicans, or even to those in favor of immigration reform. Democrat Glenn Anderson echoed his colleagues’ analysis: “By letting in skilled workers and those who have special knowledge or technical ability, we improve the competitive structure of the U.S. economy, allowing us to better perform in the world marketplace. When we are under attack from nations like Japan, we must use all possible advantages of the brainpower and expertise that immigrants offer us.”68 Dale Bumpers, the most passionate opponent of preferences for investors, also framed his objections in these terms. “If we are going to talk about jobs,” he said, “let us talk about restoring the U.S. competitive edge.”69 Others such as Republican Harold Daub worried that increasing immigration would have the opposite of its intended effect. By encouraging immigration, the United States fostered dependence on labor-intensive production processes, giving businesses a disincentive

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to invest time in the technological breakthroughs necessary for long-term competitiveness. “Amnesty,” he argued, “could damage the U.S. economy. The United States is moving toward a high-technology, computerized, robotized kind of economy and absorbing those large numbers of skilled workers from abroad would require the United States to develop a very different kind of economy.”70 Although these detractors disagreed about whether the change should be initiated through immigration or industrial policy, they agreed that some “changes are vitally necessary if the U.S. is to remain competitive in a global economic climate.”71 Two aspects of this framework for interpreting American goals were new: (1) economic concerns’ centrality (2) in a context that remained essentially cooperative and global. Economic dif‹culties had been raised in the past, though never as the decisive evidence requiring exclusion and never as important because of foreign competition. For example, the United States at different times believed that it owed returning veterans jobs, or that it needed to encourage agricultural labor, both of which were justi‹ed in terms of domestic distributive values. And in the 1960s its immigration policies had adapted to its chosen role as global leader and regime-maker. In the 1980s, the country began to substitute “economic” for “ideological” without also substituting “protectionist” for “internationalist.” The commissioner of an immigration study ordered during the Carter administration, for instance, outlined his view of the United States as enmeshed in a constraining web and as dependent on other countries to ful‹ll its objectives. we live in a shrinking, interdependent world and that world[’s] economic and political forces result in the migration of peoples. . . . The widespread magnitude of actual migration and the fear of other potential large-scale movements between countries has led many governments to adopt ever more restrictive immigration policies in an effort to maintain national control over borders and shores. The world situation today, however, throws into serious question the assumption that international migration can be controlled by domestic policy.72 The United States was going to have to negotiate, rather than assert, its international primacy. Interdependence posed a philosophical problem for the United States. On one hand, the country stood for liberalism. Its institutions rested on liberal principles, its economy found justi‹cation in liberal analysis, and its international authority depended upon it behaving in a way consistent with liberal tenets. On the other hand, liberalism when fol-


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lowed to its logical conclusion tended to erode borders. Nothing in liberal philosophy provided good reason to segregate markets or to exclude people, and much in it provided good reason not to. In fact, classical liberals such as Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill took as their starting point the conviction that such boundaries were irrational, forcing a society to accept an outcome less than optimal. Liberalism in one country can be just as odd a concept as socialism in one country. The dilemma was not acute as long as the country was strong enough to export its sense of order and justice. Hegemony made the apparent contradiction moot. Declining hegemony created con›icts that had not existed before among American policies. Trade had produced absolute and relative gains; later it was seen to produce absolute gains and relative losses. Refugees and immigrants had helped the United States and hurt the Soviet Union in their ideological ‹ght; later Soviet immigrants hurt the United States and helped the Soviet Union as the United States accepted, and the Soviet Union shunned, responsibility for their training, welfare, and social integration. American hegemony and liberal values rested on, and had institutionalized, a level of openness that could not be maintained if the United States were to assume the position of one among equals. It needed asymmetry. Symmetry involved feedback, and feedback threatened sovereignty. Theodore Hesburgh, former president of Notre Dame and commissioner of the 1980 immigration study, described the con›ict in this way: Some among us, often moved by deeply religious values, ask the question: Why should immigration be a problem? Why shouldn’t people be free to move wherever they want to? We are all one species, all children of one God; and from the beginning of time, human beings have been a curious, migratory species. Why not let down the barriers of nation-states and permit people to move freely? The questions almost answer themselves. Immigration is a problem because nearly all peoples believe in nationalism and wish to maintain the integrity of national ideologies and institutions. We believe this in the U.S., too, but not for narrow, nationalistic, sel‹sh purposes only, but also because we believe that our nation has become a symbol of the possibilities of freedom and the potentiality for justice. The existence of our nation as a nation is tied to the realization of high goals for all of humanity. Our nationalism is not inconsistent with internationalism.73 The United States had to settle for in›uencing the world passively, by setting an example, if it wanted to maintain its integrity. When it came to foreign people, a restrictive sovereignty rather than an expansive hegemony began to de‹ne American interests and obliga-

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tions. What was once an interest, even a duty, became charity—and “as mortals, we live in a world of limits—and, tragically, that must include limits to our charity.”74 Accepting Cuban refugees, for example, was a luxury the United States could no longer afford. Robin Beard argued that “when Fidel Castro can decide to dump with impunity tens of thousands of undesirables on us, our national sovereignty is violated. Secure borders are an integral part of sovereignty.”75 Whereas the United States had looked on the world from a position of security, the world now seemed to loom up at it. “If the United States,” said Jennings Randolph, “is to continue to preserve a stable economic and political sovereignty in the face of the multitudes yearning for freedom and opportunity, we must temper our compassion and generosity.”76 Robert Garcia and Jesse Helms, very different men, agreed about the centrality of immigration control to the question of American sovereignty. While Garcia observed that “control over the entry of noncitizens is key to how we determine our national sovereignty,”77 Helms argued that “the fundamental question before us is the preservation and enforcement of our sovereignty.”78 Declining hegemony meant that the United States could no longer think only of what type of sovereignty it wanted, but had to consider how to preserve some type at all. Alan Simpson was the most blunt and speci‹c. Outraged about a Wall Street Journal editorial that claimed that he proposed to close the borders, Simpson outlined what open immigration would mean. “They [the Wall Street Journal] want a ‹ve-word constitutional amendment that says, ‘there shall be open borders.’ . . . Where that would lead us would be to a defenseless America without any security of its borders whatsoever. Absolutely stupid. . . . And the Civil War arose from the fact that some people wanted cheap, subservient labor.”79 When the United States could control the very geoeconomic and political structures that led immigrants to seek a place in the United States, explicit laws were important as symbolic statements revealing America’s sincere belief in the norms it espoused. When it thought it could no longer control them, laws became practically necessary. If sovereignty was the goal, lack of control was the problem. Legislators identi‹ed three problems that were logically, sequentially related. The ‹rst was de‹nitional. Regardless of how many immigrants admitted, or whom it admitted, the government must be in control of admissions. It, not the immigrants and certainly not foreign governments, had to dictate the who, when, and why of immigration. As Edward Kennedy argued, to consider only its citizens’ welfare was in fact the duty of every government: We are entitled as private individuals to make any sacri‹ces of our own interest that we may wish—for example out of compassion or in


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order to satisfy our own moral beliefs. However, the primary obligation of government, indeed the very reason for its existence—and justi‹cation for its power—is to promote the national interest; that is the long-term well-being of the majority of the nation’s citizens and their descendants.80 The second problem had to do with numbers. Beyond a certain point, American institutions would not be able to handle immigrants even if Congress did retain control over entry. Finally, there was a problem with who could enter. Control was crucial. Without it, even were there no immigration, the country could not be considered sovereign. Alan Simpson used this argument to whip up congressional enthusiasm and attention: “Immigration to the United States is out of control and it is so perceived at all levels of government by the American people—indeed by people all over this world. I deeply feel that uncontrolled immigration is one of the greatest threats to the future of this Nation, to American values, traditions, institutions, to our public culture, and to our way of life.”81 The fact of control, not policy speci‹cs, Simpson argued was the central issue. “Because of this bill, we will know for the ‹rst time exactly how many immigrants will arrive in the United States in the coming year.”82 Control de‹nitely involved assuring that the U.S. government and not other governments determined who could become a citizen. Even a standing refugee policy was insuf‹cient, since “‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier and Fidel Castro and all the other despots in the world . . . can send to our shores any number of people at any time and decide who they will be.”83 Control also meant assuring that the government, not individuals—even if those individuals were citizens—decided who was eligible. If Congress were truly to have control, everyone, including relatives, had to be subjected to government limits. “If this Nation is to achieve true control over its immigration,” argued Eldon Rudd, “all entrants should fall under the annual ceiling.”84 Together, this meant that the government would be in a “position in which we, not other governments, or the people of other nations, control immigration to this country.”85 Legislators were aware of what scholars would call the theoretical implications of their choice. To choose control was to choose sovereignty. Anything less meant its abandonment. Among others, George Huddleston re›ected: Immigration presents us with one of the most basic of all social and legal problems: Is the concept of the nation-state legitimate? Behind all of the debates over immigration, there is that basic philosophical

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and moral question. Is it legitimate for there to be a United States, for this country to have citizens and to de‹ne all other people in the world as noncitizens? Is it fair and right for the United States to prevent any person in the world from living here? [The country must say yes.] If we do not [agree], then we shall have to consider a revolution in the world order.86 Such a defense of particularism was necessary to justify sovereignty. The interdependence that the United States had helped to establish meant that sovereignty required more than a theoretical defense. The country had to construct the international-legal equivalent of a parachute. Immigrants presented two other closely related practical challenges to American sovereignty, one quantitative and the other qualitative. The ‹rst problem was too many people. The United States could not accept many people, in this view, even legal immigrants, without taking something away from citizens. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas noted that “we are the only nation that has virtually abdicated control of our borders and is unable to account for millions of aliens—legal and illegal—living, studying, and working in this country.”87 Similarly, Eldon Rudd of Arizona argued, “During the past two decades, immigration has increased to the point where we have lost virtually all control over our borders.”88 This was not a concern only in the Mexican border states. A Pennsylvanian contended in this context that “the Federal Government of the United States, or any Federal Government, any central government anywhere in the world, has as its primary responsibility the securing of its borders. . . . That just goes without saying, to preserve national unity, national identity, national cohesiveness, the borders must be secure.”89 And one of reform’s leading proponents, Romano Mazzoli, was from Kentucky: “The authority of Congress—indeed, its responsibility—to regulate immigration derives from a source even higher than the Constitution. . . . For Congress to ignore its responsibility in this area by failing to consider and enact immigration reform and control legislation is to ignore the very sovereignty upon which our Nation is based.”90 Sovereignty depended on control. The second problem involved the kind of people who had immigrated. Many immigrants were “immigrants” literally but not legally. Illegal immigration presented several problems. First, a sovereign country should at a minimum be able to stop persons from entering its territory without its consent. James Scheuer worried “that given the hemorrhaging that is occurring on our southern border, one could question our Nation’s sovereignty.”91 Second, numbers added up, and illegal immigrants’ numbers were especially hard to control. Like legal immigrants, illegal or


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undocumented aliens92 added to the population and therefore contributed to all of the problems as well as all of the bene‹ts of citizens. Third, illegals were particularly bad for communities precisely because they were illegal. Their presence demonstrated that they were willing to break the law; in fact, that had been their ‹rst act. Bob Graham of Florida declared that “we must meet ›agrant disregard for our laws and the integrity of our borders with all the power and purpose of a great nation. . . . Our national security is being challenged. It is time we take control of access to our own, sovereign territory.93 Finally, the government increasingly found itself evaluated—as functionalists and even T. H. Marshall had argued it would—in terms of how well it provided for its citizens’ material well-being. Mack Mattingly reminded representatives that “the United States as a sovereign nation must ensure the well-being of its people.”94 Americans simultaneously believed in the free market and held the government directly responsible for increases in unemployment, in›ation, mortgage rates, and food prices. To have a national interest, obviously one ‹rst had to have a nation. Such discussions of sovereignty helped legally to ground a formal consideration of American national interests, but they could not help in determining what the content of those interests should be. A new appreciation of foreign economic interests and economic threats began in the 1980s to infuse references to America’s national interest. “By placing more emphasis on the skills and qualities that independent immigrants possess, immigration policy will be more closely coordinated with the national interest,” which interest was, in Alan Simpson’s view, to improve the country’s relative place. Rather than explain the connection, legislators took it for granted. For example, “our legal immigration system is not now serving the national interest as well as it should or could. Today, more than 90 percent—this is a rather startling ‹gure—of all immigrants enter this country without any screening at all of their impact on the U.S. labor market and without any determination of what our labor needs are,”95 or “I strongly believe that one of the objectives of our immigration policy should be to increase the number of immigrants who would come into this country because of greater skills. This is in our national interest.”96 In no other context was the national interest regarding immigrants mentioned. It was no longer discussed in ideological or cultural or military terms. Economic competition de‹ned, by implication, America’s core national interest regarding foreigners. To strengthen and then protect Americans’ economic position became the government’s central purpose. Once the framework for assessing costs and bene‹ts was settled, the camps divided predictably and

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neatly. Those who believed that immigrants drained resources struggled against those who claimed that they contributed far more than they took. At one level, this was an empirical question. Presumably, it had a right answer that someone, possibly the Congressional Research Service or the General Accounting Of‹ce, could discover. At another level, the question was fundamental and philosophical—and the same. What legitimate value did borders serve? The ‹rst, cheap, answer was that always given, protecting Americans. The harder answer had to de‹ne both “American” and “protection.” Neither was easy. To this end, American society had to accomplish two things. First, it had to determine who Americans were, who was in the population for which the government was economically responsible. Next it had to assure that Americans were connected to international economic structures in which they could succeed, both in absolute and in relative terms. That speci‹cally meant encouraging employers and the highly skilled to immigrate. The ‹rst task, though, was to de‹ne the population that would serve as the denominator in calculations of gain and loss. Efforts to clarify the boundary separating citizen from noncitizen began ‹rst. They centered on the task of pushing the people who lived in a legal grey area either toward citizenship or toward deportation.

Reason: Helping or Eliminating the Underclass

Unlike many other countries, the United States never accorded legitimacy to a common class: persons who remained inde‹nitely in a political community, were subject to its laws and received its bene‹ts, but could not become citizens. Such a “second-class citizenry,”97 de‹ned variously as “alienated people who are neither ‹sh nor fowl,”98 as those “who are here under no particular identity,”99 and as “the Indian equivalent of the Untouchables,”100 was un-American. It was not the economic or demographic characteristics of this group but its indeterminate status that nagged at the legislators. A person either was a citizen—was born or naturalized in the United States, was protected by the U.S. Constitution, and was obligated to serve the government when it called—or was not. If not, constitutional protections did not apply. For the ‹rst time, American society grappled with applicants who ‹t neither of the traditional categories. Laws imagined two types of persons: citizens born on U.S. territory and aliens born elsewhere who lived in that same elsewhere while they applied for entry. In both cases, the government granted citizenship according to who a person was. In deciding what to do with the illegals, however, the government had


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to consider what a person had to do to earn citizenship. To this date, the only persons who had been given citizenship in exchange for their efforts were those who had fought with the U.S. military in its major wars. The only intermediate category that the government recognized was the one that described persons moving briskly between these two stations. Before applying to naturalize, an immigrant had to maintain residence in the United States for a period of years, most commonly ‹ve. During this time, he or she would be given permanent residence status. An alien could maintain this status inde‹nitely, but permanent residents, like Cub Scouts, probationers, and assistant professors, were expected to retain this status for only a few years. It was something one grew out of. The category was analytically temporary largely because it was morally suspect. The worst one could say about undocumented aliens was that they were illegal, unchosen, and hence prone to break other laws; the best one could say about them was that they constituted an underclass subject to economic and political exploitation without even recourse to the vote. Employers were alleged to use illegals’ fear to exploit them and to have them deported before they were paid.101 Labor leader Lane Kirkland argued that “unless that [amnesty] is done, we will as a society be contributing to the continuing victimization of an underclass, made up of those whose fear of deportation makes them vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous employers and who are unable to protect themselves or to call upon the government for protection.”102 No one did or could argue that retaining such a class was in the public interest. Efforts to clarify the citizenship status of America’s population therefore focused on eliminating this group. Debate centered on whether to legalize (technically termed “adjustment of status”) or to deport the undocumented. Those advocating legalization, popularly known as “amnesty,” argued that these residents had earned civic recognition by contributing their labor, taxes, and respect for many years to an unresponsive country. Those advocating deportation contended that the residents had earned nothing, since they were unwanted, and had devalued American citizenship by their very presence. Everyone agreed that social control over America’s political borders was at issue. They disagreed about who had been taking advantage of whom. Consensus about the moral impossibility of allowing the illegal population to maintain itself inde‹nitely laid dormant until concerns about declining hegemony, crystallized by ‹scal and balance of payments de‹cits, grabbed the national agenda. Germany, already a feared competitor, was having dif‹culty ridding itself of its guest workers; Japan, doing better than Germany, had wisely not recruited any. “We were stunned,” said Alan Simpson, “at the situation that has occurred in Germany and

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France with regard to temporary guest workers—the ‘Gastarbeiter’ program in Germany.”103 Americans viewed the underclass as a burden. Shedding it would free it to compete with more strength. But although economic change pushed the illegal immigration issue to the front of the congressional agenda, it was not simply in economic terms that Americans viewed the issue. Republicans and Democrats, Southerners, Midwesterners, and Easterners alike insisted that such an intermediate category was morally untenable. Lawton Chiles worried that “illegal aliens exist as a subclass in our society. They are beyond the obligations and protections of our laws,”104 while Charles Grassley viewed them as a “fugitive underclass, afraid to claim even the most basic of human rights.” The problem for them both was that “the existence of such a class of underground residents undermines the fabric of our democratic society.”105 The strength of the consensus against accepting an intermediate class can be measured by the anger that administration proposals of both parties elicited. As a step toward incorporating illegals into American political life, Carter suggested granting illegals permanent resident status. Shocked opponents declared that “for the ‹rst time in American history, an American President is attempting to create a new class of resident in this country.”106 A contrary proposal offered by the Reagan administration would have had these aliens pay taxes but receive no bene‹ts. This, too, was decried as the “establishment of an entire underclass.”107 Somehow, the country had to clarify who was in and who out without allowing a category in between. Reasons to incorporate the illegals into American political life drew on the belief that de jure membership ought to re›ect de facto membership. Participation in communal life, whether invited or not, created a presumption in favor of inclusion. This view drew, usually implicitly, on Locke’s suggestion that those subject to a country’s laws ought to have a voice in its affairs. Labor leaders such as Lane Kirkland argued for legalization’s practical and moral bene‹ts. By eliminating fear, amnesty would make exploiting undocumented workers harder. This would aid all workers.108 Others pointed out that legalization would produce taxpayers.109 Ron Dellums of California viewed the problem as both moral and practical: I would like to suggest that the legalization of the exploited subclass of undocumented workers is terribly important not only to those who would be allowed permanent residence, but for the Nation as a whole. We cannot, practically or morally, embark upon a massive and expensive effort to deport millions of people. We cannot continue to have an underground society whose people are forced to live in the


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shadow of the law. And we cannot afford to have our society continually polarized into ethnic groups who are continually harassed by ethnic groups who, on the one hand, resent them, and on the other hand exploit their underclass status.110 In his view, the moral problem was one of debt to the alien. Detractors took the opposite position. Amnesty would not solve the practical problem—“To say that we are solving the problem of illegal immigration by declaring illegals legal is the exact equivalent of curing poverty by declaring poor people rich”111—nor would it erase the moral debt, which was to American citizens. Attorney General William French Smith unsurprisingly viewed the country’s dilemma in law-and-order terms, asserting that “this great nation [cannot] long tolerate the existence of a hidden foreign people within our borders, living apart from American laws.”112 Jesse Helms argued that this practical problem had a moral spin. “Amnesty also creates a moral problem in that it rewards law-breakers.”113 Summing up this position, Harold Daub mentioned that “there are a lot of people in this country who feel that amnesty in blanket terms without some rule attached to it, carte blanche, cheapens or devalues or shrinks, somehow just erodes the value of American citizenship.”114 Logically, it seems that one should decide who is to be protected before determining what they are to be protected from, but in practice these decisions were made together. In the 1980s, citing the Japanese or Germans as the threat implied that workers in manufacturing were to be protected; citing illegals as the threat implied citizens were to be protected; citing resource depletion as the threat implied that the world’s people were all to be saved from themselves. These diagnoses shared a theme. The United States had entered what academic Wayne Cornelius called “an era of limits,” in which the bottom of every barrel seemed visible. Jobs, welfare, fresh air, and compassion were all in ‹nite supply. Jobs, supposed to be created, not removed, by increases in employment, seemed to disappear. Every job taken by an alien was not only lost to an American, many believed, but likely to an underprivileged American. John Conyers, representing industry-oriented and largely black Detroit, asked: “Should we spend them [dollars] on Vietnamese ‘refugees’ or should we spend them on Detroit ‘refugees’?”115 For this reason, since the secretary of labor had to certify job shortages before aliens could ‹ll them, Frank Lautenberg proposed giving American workers this information before approving immigration.116 Such unemployment alone was dif‹cult enough to eliminate, but compounding it were shrinking welfare reserves. Job loss and welfare costs interacted to amplify the effect of each, “adding to our tax burden and bleeding the Nation’s economy.”117 Jack

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McDonald argued, typically if contradictorily, that aliens “either create new ghettoes or go on welfare—when they are not taking jobs from needy citizens and driving them on welfare.”118 Aliens were even characterized as “preying on our schoolchildren by stealing their lunch money.”119 Proposals to con‹ne bene‹ts to legally admitted immigrants, though at least partly unconstitutional, were also popular.120 Entitlements were bad enough, warned George Huddleston, without setting up for illegal aliens “one of the greatest entitlement programs in the history of this country.”121 One could simply believe that aid would be useless. “Our country is full of people. If we bring in more, it will not so much improve the status of immigrants as it will lower the living standards of our own working people to the level of those in the world’s poor countries.”122 In a zero-sum world, trying to improve the lot of one group was impossible without harming that of another. “We cannot be so generous that we stretch our own scarce resources to the breaking point and diminish the quality of American life for all.”123 Many legislators looked back nostalgically on the days when, they imagined, such dif‹cult choices did not have to be made. Strom Thurmond, for example, looked back to “a time when this Nation could welcome millions of newcomers without jeopardizing the national interest.”124 America was once open to those with initiative, they said, but must now be shut. The country had recently been faced with vast numbers of such newcomers, which “are staggering and their economic consequences suffocating to what this goose that lays the golden egg must offer to those poor, those tired, those huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”125 America was also once geographically open, but must now be shut: “We are no longer the frontier America we once were, with vast undeveloped resources and wide open spaces.”126 In its ‹nal report, the commission charged by the Carter administration with a review of immigration policy concluded: If it is a truism to say that the United States is a nation of immigrants, it is also a truism that it is one no longer, nor can it become a land of unlimited immigration. As important as immigration has been and remains to our country, it is no longer possible to say as George Washington did that we welcome all of the oppressed of the world, or as did the poet, Emma Lazarus, that we should take all of the huddled masses yearning to be free.127 Scarcity explained the country’s impending break with what it viewed as its traditional generosity toward immigrants. Cosmopolitanism could lead to the same place as localism. In a zero-


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sum world, although Americans would be harmed, at least someone would be helped. Someone would ‹nd a job, get welfare, receive an education. To many, however, the world was even less benign. It was in America’s and the world’s interest, in fact, to reduce the American population. Americans consumed more resources and emitted more pollution than any other country. About 5 percent of the world’s population, Americans consumed a third of the world’s petroleum. In the 1970s, a movement for zero population growth had hoped to convince Americans that they must at a minimum halt population increases. By the 1980s, with fertility at below replacement levels, population control meant not fertility reduction but immigration restriction. “We have done a good job in birth control,” felt Lawton Chiles, “and in getting our population down. We are about a zero population. It is not going to mean anything if we take all of the problems of everybody else in the world on our shoulders, and that is the way it appears to be headed.”128 Americans, went a slightly different argument, were almost disgusting in their use of world resources. The least they could do was to prevent others from imitating their pattern, and the easiest way to do that was to keep them from entering the country. B. F. Sisk maintained: An additional 75 million people living in this country, using energy at an average U.S. consumption level (1972), is the equivalent of adding 4.65 billion people living at an Indian standard of living (expressed in terms of per capita energy consumption). This additional resource consumption—to say nothing of the needed timber, food, minerals, water, highways, homes, automobiles, employment, health care, et cetera, will dramatically increase pollution, deplete our forests, erode our soil and land, dwindle our fossil fuels, crowd our overburdened cities and escalate our taxes.129 Robert Dole, using the same strategy, reached complementary conclusions: “Assuming an immigrant on the average consumes as much energy as an American, the 4.5 million legal immigrants who came here in the 1970s require energy equivalent to half the oil production of the Alaska pipeline.”130 Environmentalists, often associated with left-liberal causes, ought in this view to shun proposals to liberalize immigration ceilings. “We will never have environmental stability in this country as long as our population grows that fast, because the demands on our dwindling supply of open land and natural resources are intensi‹ed.”131 Replying to critics, George Huddleston said, “As for the assertion that reasonable restraint would be a repudiation of the inscription on the Statue of Liberty—which, incidentally, were the words of a French poet and not a reasoned policy

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developed by the Congress or the people of the United States—I believe that reason must be applied here also.”132 In 1884, he said, there had been no energy crisis. Perhaps the strongest measure of the hold that this framework had on discussions of immigration policy is the extent to which opponents shared its assumptions and engaged in debate within its narrow terms. When one charged that illegal aliens received refunds without paying taxes in the ‹rst place,133 others responded that aliens paid more in taxes than they consumed.134 A proposal to give high-immigration areas more in federal dollars to help them pay for social programs was countered by the argument that the areas ought to be paying the federal government: immigrants gave these areas more than they took.135 A complementary indicator is the scarcity of arguments such as the following, offered by Missourian Durward Hall. Such a clear exposition of homogeneity’s value would have been the norm only a few decades earlier: I do not doubt that many of the new immigrants will make good citizens. Good citizenship does not necessarily depend upon the color of a man’s skin. But, there is no evidence to justify an optimistic conclusion that it will inevitably bene‹t this Nation for these people of alien cultures to come here. It is their ‘problems’ and ‘concepts,’ which have kept their nations of origin from being great countries, with bene‹ts of liberty and prosperity for their citizens. Speci‹cally, I wonder just how this Nation bene‹ts from a decline of 54.3 percent in immigration from Northern and Western Europe while we have an increase of 442.6 percent from Hong Kong, 247.4 percent from China, 1,637.8 percent from India, 896.9 percent from the Philippines, 718.3 percent from Jamaica, and 1,415.5 percent from Trinidad and Tobago?136 A third measure of the hold that economic standards had on interpretations of American public interest is the degree to which people wishing to rely on old arguments had to make explicit their rejection of the old symbolism and the adoption of the new. Preferences for those who had a facility with the English language are a case in point. A couple of times proponents of an English-language preference echoed earlier arguments, as did S. I. Hayakawa when he said, “Language is a unifying instrument which binds people together. When people speak one language they become as one, they become a society.”137 So unacceptable had an argument in favor of cultural homogeneity become, and so prevalent had become economic criteria, that Edward Kennedy and Alan Simpson, cosponsors of the 1980s immigration reforms, enacted on several occa-


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sions a stylized dialogue in which one would question preferences for English speakers and the other, usually Simpson, would explain that English was (1) a minor preference, that (2) had value because knowledge of the common language makes it easier to be a productive employee.138 They publicly shunned other reasons. Others went further, distancing themselves from old points of view by ridiculing arguments in their favor. Racial and cultural homogeneity were favorite targets. A few years after Congress rescinded the racial limits of McCarran-Walter, John Dow asserted that “having such a diversity assures that our country will consist of openminded people rather than those who are grounded in a narrow parochialism of centuries of living together without the introduction of new blood.”139 From multiculturalism came the country’s strength. Those who disagreed, ‹nally, took issue not with the measuring stick used but with the measure taken. Herman Badillo and others argued that “the problems of unemployment and economic dislocation will not be solved by pitting American-born workers against the foreign-born,” but by making hard choices about how opportunity and resources would be distributed within the American population.140 Patricia Schroeder similarly took issue with what she saw as scapegoating. Accepting that the severe economic competition the United States faced was its central challenge, she pointed out that the size of America’s foreign-born population was unlikely to matter one way or another. In the debate, contestants had taken for granted that the United States had the highest proportion of foreign-born compared to other countries because it had the highest number of immigrants annually. The United States also, though, had a population much higher than that of many host countries. According to a study Schroeder had requested, foreign-born accounted for a much higher proportion of populations elsewhere. While the United States was in the 5 to 9 percent range, many smaller countries contained as high as 70 percent aliens. Countries that the United States might consider peers were also higher, with Australia near 25 percent, Canada and Switzerland at 18 percent, and France at 13 percent. The list, she said, could go on.141 To be effective, decisions about who was out had to be complemented by decisions about who was in. Simply to clarify the citizen population would be to reassert sovereign control over borders without changing those borders’ purpose. Since expatriating and deporting deadwood citizens was unconstitutional, policy focusing only on American residents would not be suf‹cient. To make the borders effective in a struggle that was primarily economic, policy toward new immigrants also had to change. Immigration policy could help to improve America’s ability to export.

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At issue in this debate was how the government should think about the future of American leadership. If one took for granted that American competitiveness and the era of its hegemony were closing, as most but not all did, then the country had three options. It could ‹ght to maintain its position as world leader, not only aggressively championing the norms and institutions that had secured its lead, but also striving to reverse its balance of payments, manufacturing, and ‹scal problems. Or it could try to protect itself from these institutions. When the United States had bene‹ted from the openness that these institutions required more than had other countries, the institutions were useful to it, but once others’ gains and its own became equal, the openness only produced vulnerability. A third option lay between these. The country could strengthen the international institutions that served its interests but allow others to bene‹t relatively more from them. It could choose to use the postwar “regimes” as a parachute. Which type of immigration policy the government would choose depended on which image of its future it decided to pursue. Its past choices affected its current possibilities. Just as the beggarthy-neighbor policies of the 1930s haunted those charged with designing industrial and trade policies to boost the United States out of its economic doldrums, so did the Quota Acts haunt legislators trying to fashion an immigration policy capable of limiting the population to which the government was economically accountable. By institutionalizing the lessons they drew from the Depression, postwar economic policy advisers changed firms’ interests as well as their beliefs about effective and legitimate trade policy, thus making protectionism far less likely a solution when similar dif‹culties arose in the future.142 A parallel openness had not been institutionalized in American immigration policy; in fact, Congress had extended regulatory control steadily until the only group that remained numerically unrestricted was close relatives. The liberalism embedded in immigration policy was instead that of barring discrimination among persons on account of ascriptive characteristics such as race or sex, or, increasingly, homosexuality or ideology. Liberal trade policies encouraged the free ›ow of goods across boundaries, but expected that consumers could discriminate among the goods according to their tastes. Liberal immigration policies allowed regulation at the border but disallowed discrimination among the people who entered. Whereas debate from the turn of the century to the mid-1950s had pitted a closed, protectionist, and xenophobic nationalism against a universalistic, utopian internationalism, that in the 1980s had adapted to the realities and contradictions of policy practice. It then became possible, even common, to say that “our nationalism is not inconsistent with internationalism. . . . As a nation, we cannot survive without international cooperation.”143


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If the country’s national interest had become economic rather than ideological, this change had taken place within the context of a continuing commitment to liberal international institutions.144 These institutions had served American interests by securing agreement on a particular set of rules about conducting business and on a body of norms about legitimate and illegitimate goals and means of change.145 The American interest in these institutions had if anything grown stronger as the unilateral enforcement of its wishes became a less credible alternative. Regarding immigration policy, as well as other policies negotiating America’s foreign relationships, U.S. legislators judged their choice in terms of its consequences for American authority. For example, in 1970 Peter Rodino argued in terms of American ideological authority: “The position of the United States as a world leader demands that we, with other countries of the free world, be in a position to offer asylum to the oppressed.”146 But ‹ve years later, Jack Kemp warned that “few things, if any to me, could more dramatically illustrate the decline of a great nation and its people than the adoption of such a [restrictionist] point of view.”147 Later, Robert Garcia described what he considered an illiberal proposal as “an extraordinary program which gives the American public the impression that we are in a state of war with the rest of the world.”148 Charles Percy, equating an American-enforced liberal immigration regime with American hegemony, argued that “large refugee populations threaten the stability of countries of ‹rst asylum . . . [so an] amendment which combines immigrants and refugees under one ceiling would undermine our position of leadership in the international community.”149 By the late 1980s, a policy’s supposed effects on declining hegemony was commonly used as evidence in support of one or another position. In 1989, for example, Douglas Bereuter argued that preferences for investors were unfair and illiberal. “If the other body has its way, this Nation will clearly be forced to reconsider its status as leader of the free world.”150 Who quali‹ed as an American and what constituted legitimate protection could not be decided in the abstract. Exactly whom those decisions would affect, and how, in›uenced the determination. In the past, Congress had not had to consider the politics of enforcement as it did in the 1980s. Previous changes in immigration policy had altered the way that the government selected one set of foreigners, how it divided one alien from another alien. Proposals to grant amnesty to illegal aliens and then presumably to deport those unquali‹ed involved separating aliens from Americans inside the United States. This had been done once before, during World War II, when Japanese Americans, both citizens and noncitizens, had been interned. Although the government had reversed its order to incarcerate citizens, it had not offered those it released opportunities

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equivalent to those available to the white population. Japanese Americans, like black citizens, faced legal as well as extralegal discrimination. The obvious, ef‹cient way to distinguish among American residents, identity cards, was impossible because of privacy concerns. In response, George Mitchell asked whether “we are contemplating a pass card system similar to that as exists in South Africa?”151 The remaining option, one which made most legislators queasy, was demanding identi‹cation and proof of citizenship from those citizens who INS of‹cials had some reason to suspect were foreign. This meant, in effect, frisking farmworkers, those with an accent, and those who looked non-Anglo. Abraham Kazen of Texas spelled out what this meant: “No blond white American faces the requirement of proving his citizenship when he applies for work, but under this legislation the Latin, the Oriental, the black and brown people of the Mediterranean and Caribbean lands would have to be challenged by every potential employer.”152 If these were the means, then the end, separating citizen from noncitizen clearly, many considered not worth pursuing. For all the costs the legislators thought they faced from having “leaking borders,” they were small compared to those they would incur by rounding up Hispanics. In 1982, these fears seemed to be realized. During INS “Operation Jobs,” its term for anti-illegal alien raids in the Southwest, the Service detained citizens for being brown.153 Rumors ›ew that American citizens had been taken to Mexico and abandoned because they were unable immediately to prove that they were born in the United States. Patricia Schroeder charged that “During Operation Jobs, . . . they did not ‹nd any aliens at all. . . . 99.3 percent of the people they picked up were from Latin America or the Caribbean; that is black or Hispanic.”154 Not all of the uproar came from those representing southern and western states. Cardiss Collins of Illinois charged, as did others, that the checks were racially motivated. “I seriously doubt that such fervor against undocumented workers would be stirred if they were ›eeing dictatorships and failing economies in Western Europe rather than in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia.”155 Henry Gonzalez summed up this position by noting that “the Statue [of Liberty] never looks south.”156 Table 9 outlines the proposals that were made for revising immigration policy.

Immigration Reform and Control Act

The idea of sanctioning those who employed illegal aliens solved this dilemma by providing a way to determine legality without discriminating among citizens. Edward Kennedy wanted sanctions to fall on employers,

TABLE 9.

The Immigration Act of 1990 Compared to the Laws and Proposals It Replaced

Category National level Immigrant relatives Family preferences Preference 1b Preference 2 Preference 4 Preference 5 Total family Independent Special Preference 3 Preference 6 Employment investors Selected Total independent Diversity Total immigrants aThis

Current Law

Actual 1987

KennedySimpson 1988

SimonKennedy 1989

Helms Amendment

none no limit

500,000 218,500

590,000 220,500a

600,000 220,000

600,000 220,000

54,000 70,200 27,000 64,800 216,000

11,382 110,758 20,703 68,966 211,809

33,000 143,000 22,000 22,000 440,000

24,200 148,000 23,000 64,800 480,000

14,400 136,800 24,000 64,800 460,000

no limit 27,000 27,000 0 0 54,000

3646 26,921 26,952 35 n/a 57,554

6000 27,600 27,600 4,800 54,000 120,000

6,000 27,600 27,600 4,800 54,000 120,000

4,200 46,200 46,200 2,800 40,600 140,000

590,000

600,000

600,000

and the 220,000 in the next column are estimated annual levels of a still-unlimited category. 1: Unmarried adult sons and daughters of citizens; 2: spouses and children of permanent residents; 3: persons in the professions and those of exceptional ability; 4: married sons and daughters of citizens; 5: never-married brothers and sisters of citizens; 6: skilled workers for which there is a demonstrated need; special. bPreference

Immigration Act of 1990

480,000

140,000 55,000 675,000

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not on aliens, to prevent discrimination.157 As early as 1972, Peter Rodino offered a bill to ‹ne employers of illegal aliens $1,000,158 and in 1977 Don Bonker of Washington had suggested printing nonforgeable social security cards.159 He said that “rather than invest in costly and draconian measures to make a Berlin Wall out of our borders, as some suggest, or harass American citizens of foreign extraction, we must focus attention on the root cause of the illegal alien problem—the employment of illegal aliens in the United States.”160 Finally, an amendment to have all employers ‹ll out a two-identi‹cation af‹davit passed the House by 321 to 97, with 15 not voting.161 Peter Rodino, an advocate of reform, declared that “in my judgment, employer sanctions are essential if this country is to regain control of its borders. Indeed, it is our sovereign responsibility to do so.”162 It had to do this, but without violating citizens’ civil rights. Unlike those of earlier periods, votes on immigration reform in the late 1980s broke more along party lines than along regional lines, though this was only true for the House of Representatives. This was true both for the ‹rst votes on the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which instituted employer sanctions and amnesty, and for the immigration reform legislation of 1990, which uni‹ed the numerical ceiling and revamped exclusion provisions. Republicans were almost evenly split on IRCA, while Democrats favored it by two to one; by 1990, the divisions had grown, so that three times as many Republicans opposed as favored the legislation, while three times as many Democrats favored as opposed it. The arguments made for and against these pieces of legislation resonated more closely with those generally associated with one or another political party than had arguments forwarded in the past. Economic worries were central to the debate and are central to explaining why parties should suddenly matter. The legislators agreed that American power worldwide was in danger and that the threat could be met by manipulating immigration policy. When the threat had been racial or ideological, neither party had a prepackaged solution to the problem or was identi‹ed as being particularly strong on the issue. At the turn of the century, neither Republicans nor Democrats were “whiter” than the other; at midcentury, neither was more anticommunist than the other. Each had to create a response from fairly raw materials. Economic programs, though, both had in abundance. They were waiting for just such a crisis to be used. The Republicans advocated open migration of labor and capital to stimulate the economy; the Democrats sought retraining and investment garnered from the surplus that the wealthiest owned. More Democrats than Republicans, therefore, wished to halt the employment of illegal aliens and to cap the aggregate number of immigrants that the country would annually accept. Figure 9 outlines the arguments that were made preceding the 1980s reforms.


225

Economic Competition with Japan and Germany ⇓ Public Interest Argument

Causal Argument

Policy Argument

Identification passes violate citizens' rights to privacy and mimic totalitarian states

Liberal democracy demands respect for the individual

The country must not mandate an identification card

Without a universal system, enforcement will be racially discriminatory

Racial discrimination raises political, moral, and practical problems for social stability

Any system to sort illegal from legal immigrants must be universal

Without a more highly skilled work force, the country will lose its comparative advantage in skilled production and will hence decline in power

Maintaining a predominance in power benefits the United States by deterring attack and securing favorable terms of trade

Immigration policy should favor those who will boost productivity, such as investors and highly skilled workers

Without a culturally cohesive population, the country will cease to be a community

Fragmentation will prevent the country from achieving anything economically, politically or culturally

Immigrants must be culturally like Americans


↑

Implementation

Favoring relatives resulted in too large a population of unskilled dependents

↑ efficiency

↑


Arguments made preceding the reforms of the 1980s

Party divisions did not emerge as clearly in discussions that involved the goals the country should set as they did in the debate over means. Members of both parties argued against identi‹cation badges or “internal passes,” worried about discriminatory application of IRCA’s enforcement provisions, and believed that the American economy needed to become more competitive if the country was to retain its position of preeminence. Paradoxically, it is because consensus on ends was so extensive that party divisions emerged in these votes. The earlier roll calls had been referenda

226


on the goals the United States should pursue, or rather on what the United States should be, a question more fundamental than those for which party functionaries prepared answers. The 1980s votes were not about this because competitiveness was agreed; they were about the means to this end, for which the parties had prepared positions. Party matters in immigration politics to the extent that disagreement centers not on ultimate goals but on means. Party politics have become more important as consensus has grown on the importance to the United States of meeting the challenges the external world presents to American power. In legislators’ minds, two distinct though interrelated tasks faced the United States. First, it needed to clarify its population. Citizens should be inside the country, and aliens outside it. Proposals to sanction employers and others who helped illegal aliens complemented those to give amnesty to those illegally resident for a long enough period that they had become de facto citizens. Legislators did not disagree about the validity of this goal; debate centered on how to achieve it without discriminating against citizens, especially on the basis of race. The second task was to improve the country’s position in the world economy. Expelling illegals was a ‹rst step, as illegal aliens were seen to be taking jobs and welfare bene‹ts that could go to citizens, but it was insuf‹cient. Figure 9 outlines the arguments made about legalization. In need of a more highly skilled labor force, and domestic—not foreign—investment, the country had two broad choices. It could construct an industrial policy guiding labor education and retraining, and investment into manufacturing and basic research. This would involve extensive cooperation from the public sector, across the ideological spectrum. It also would be expensive. Or it could try to attract investors and the highly skilled from abroad, which had the advantage of avoiding all of the social and economic costs of imposing and implementing an industrial policy. Given that Congress came to agree that these were its options, it is unsurprising that it chose to alter immigration policy (table 9 lists the possibilities and the choice). More interesting and signi‹cant is that it arrived at this array of options; that when faced with an external threat to its relative power, it again turned to immigration policy as one attractive avenue of change. Table 10 outlines the changes that the Immigration and Control Act and its successor legislation in 1990 made to the Immigration and Nationality Act. The U.S. Congress passed twin immigration reforms in the late 1980s. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) focused solely on persons already resident on U.S. territory. Its purpose was to clarify residents’ legal status, dividing them clearly into


227

citizen and noncitizen categories. The act allowed an amnesty for undocumented resident aliens who had been continuously present in the United States for some period of years, allowing them to use their residency toward naturalization.163 As Congress saw it, “there are really two thrusts to this bill. . . . One of them is to regain control over those borders. The other one is to prepare expeditious means for handling the procedures for asylum and deportation.”164 While the Immigration and Naturalization Service cleaned house, Congress set about repairing the fence. Legislators envisioned these bills as two stages of the same process. As Theodore Hesburgh, in charge of the Carter administration’s commission on immigration reform, argued, “We had to close the back door on illegal immigration to keep the front door open for legal immigration.”165 The Immigration Act of 1990 thoroughly revised American laws governing criteria for entry and exclusion. For the ‹rst time, all immigrants, regardless of place of birth, reason for emigrating, or relation to a U.S. citizen, became subject to numerical restrictions. The twin reforms followed the pattern established in the ‹rst part of the century by simultaneously extending regulatory control and liberalizing the criteria for exclusion. Congress understood itself to be acting to support, or re-create, American sovereignty. While some viewed this task as straightforward and unproblematic, others saw it as tragic. A liberal state could continue only if it remained a state, remained sovereign, and yet could only remain liberal if it recognized human equality regardless of birthplace. Dale Bumpers worried that the bill “presents us with a con›ict between our normal commitment to human rights, our Judeo-Christian beliefs and ethics, on the one hand, and on the other hand our commitment to the ‹rst law of nature, which is self-preservation.”166 Those enmeshed in the immigration debate saw clearly the tension between the liberalism and the nationalism that they were seeking to forward. Gary Hart, like Bumpers, re›ected that immigration restriction “is an issue which forces us to balance our Nation’s sovereignty—and ability to control the borders—with the role America has played as a haven for the oppressed. It is an issue which forces us to reconcile law enforcement needs with our commitment to civil liberties and civil rights.”167 He saw the tension as between sovereignty and American domestic liberalism. How this tension would be resolved both revealed the country’s values and shaped the country’s future. Edward Kennedy argued this when he said that “what we do on the issue of immigration says a great deal about the kind of society that we are and that we want to become.”168 And opponent George Huddleston observed that “immigration, without ques-

TABLE 10.

Immigration Reform and Control Act and Immigration Act of 1990

Act INA Amendments (Hart-Celler) Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of October 3, 1965

IRCA Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 Immigration Act


Preferences Categories

Unrestricted (Non-quota) Immigrants

Overall ceiling: 290,000 Method of allocation: 120,000 general cap for the Western Hemisphere; 170,000 cap for the Eastern Hemisphere, with a limit of 20,000 per country per year

•1st: Adult unmarried children of U.S. citizens, 20% •2d: Spouses and unmarried children of resident aliens, 20 percent •3d: Professionals, 10 percent •4th: Married children of U.S. citizens, 10 percent •5th: Brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens, 24 percent •6th: Other needed workers, 10 percent •7th: Conditional (refugees) •Nonpreference: Unused slots from above

Increased from 600 to 5,000 the cap for immigrants from dependencies

•Retired employees of inter- • “Amnesty” for illegally national organizations present aliens resident in the •Countries adversely U.S. since January 1, 1982 affected by the 1965 act

To 1994 Overall ceiling: 700,000

•Family-sponsored immigrants, 71 percent •Employment-based immigrants, 21 percent •Diversity immigrants, 8 percent

Act of November 29, 1990 After 1994 Overall ceiling: 675,000

•Spouses, children, and parents of U.S. citizens •Ministers •Former employees of the U.S. government abroad •Foreign medical graduates

Exclusions •Sexual deviation

Reduced to 9 categories: •Health threats •Criminals •Security risks •Public charge risks •Labor competitors •Illegal entrants •Those without visas •Those ineligible for citizenship •Miscellaneous (polygamy)


229

tion, is one of those rare policies which ultimately impacts upon almost every aspect of our society and economy, and to a large degree determines what kind of country we are.”169 The balance that Congress struck in the late 1980s again sought to liberalize the criteria governing which types of persons might immigrate, while extending national control over not only who, but also how many people might become citizens. Like its legal predecessors, its liberalism was qualitative; its conservatism quantitative. In the decade following the 1990 reforms, Congress discussed, and approved, three dozen bills relating in some way to the Immigration and Nationality Act. Most dealt with a single, and minor, element of the law; for example, P.L. 105-73 was entitled “To Amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to exempt internationally adopted children 10 years of age or younger from the immunization requirement in section 212(a)(1)(A)(ii) of such Act.” Of these many bills, only one received political attention. The “Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act of 1996” (P.L. 104-208) asked the INS to gather data on visitor entries and exits, to better monitor visa overstays. Business people, customs, and the INS, however, argued that this would tie down resources and back up traffic at the border; in 2001 it was effectively abandoned. As the twentieth century ended, legislators and the American public were largely content with the single, comprehensive limit that had resulted from the century of debate.

CHAPTER 8

Domestic Interests as Explanations

Most explanations for immigration policy, for increasing restrictiveness or for relaxation, focus on the accessible and obvious material interests that legislators and business people hold. Economic interests, such as competition for jobs—presumably good for employers and bad for unions—or welfare bene‹ts, and legislative interests, such as capturing the votes of an ethnic constituency or voting with the party, have been mentioned often as the main, if not only, reasons for policy change. The business community is interested in pro‹ts; therefore, they must lobby for openness when pro‹ts fall. Labor is interested in wage levels; therefore, it must lobby for restriction when unemployment rises. Legislators are interested in reelection; therefore, they must respond primarily to party demands, public opinion about immigrants, or immigrant interest groups. This view pervades attention to immigration policy among journalists, scholars, and talk-show hosts. It is mistaken in the main, although it captures part of the truth. In fact, congressional votes on immigration policy have never divided along party lines or on regional lines, and the times of increasing restrictionism have been times of economic boom in the United States. An examination of the evidence shows that regional politics and economic forces have strongly in›uenced enforcement but have had little effect on policy. During periods of high unemployment, for example, apprehensions and deportations have increased, as have exclusions. Federal policy has not changed during these times. This shows that congressional and public arguments about perceived threat do not shield “real” electoral or economic motives; in fact, they do not even correlate with them. Public opinion is random or reactive, not causal. Domestic elections and economic ups and downs explain change in enforcement, while foreign threat perception explains change in policy.

Partisanship

That legislators usually vote with their party is no secret. Presumably, a representative elected on a particular ticket chose to join that party 230

Domestic Interests as Explanations

231

because he or she shared most of the party’s ideals and concerns, or at least shared them more than he or she shared those of the alternative parties. Legislators who side against their party risk losing general electoral support from the party as well as consideration on future votes. For these reasons, both the timing of immigration policy changes and the outcome of particular votes should be explainable with reference to party. When the party associated with isolationism or protectionism took power, efforts to restrict immigration would start; when the party associated with internationalism or laissez-faire took power, efforts to open immigration would begin. Since legislative agendas are crowded and respond to ad hoc crises, party divisions should be clearer on speci‹c votes than they are on the timing of change. Major efforts to revamp immigration policy began in 1908, 1919, 1941, 1946, 1962, 1978, and 1982.1 In 1908, Republicans had dominated both houses of Congress and had claimed the presidency for thirteen years, or ‹ve Congresses. From 1913 through 1919, this situation was reversed; Democrat Woodrow Wilson led a Democratic Congress. During his tenure in 1917, the ‹rst law to set a numerical limit on immigration passed, over his veto. The timing of neither lends support to the new-party hypothesis. Since Franklin Roosevelt led a Democratic Congress for eight years before restriction of Chinese immigrants became a sustained political (rather than a special administrative) issue, the new-party hypothesis is also uncon‹rmed in that case. Such is also true of the post–World War II debate over immigration, which eventually led to the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 and the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952. From 1947 to 1949, Republicans dominated both houses of Congress, but for sixteen years before this and four years after this, Democratic presidents had led Democratic Congresses. What to do about immigration policy became a central issue in 1946, immediately after World War II—indeed, debate about Europeans as well as Asians started during the war—and continued through the beginning of the Eisenhower presidency. Two episodes, close together in time, lend some support to this hypothesis. When President Carter was elected in 1976, he was able to facilitate legislation desired by the longtime Democratic majority. Whether he or the legislators set the agenda, the constellation of party votes was suddenly in their favor. Less clear but also tending to support this hypothesis is the legislative change following the Carter presidency. Ronald Reagan’s election left a Democratic majority in the House but carried a Republic majority into the Senate for the ‹rst time in three decades. In the case of the beginnings of both Reagan’s and Carter’s presidencies, immigration found its way to the agenda one year after the change of party. Two other episodes lend support to a related idea, though one that

232


does not further the null hypothesis. The fact that the ‹rst major changes in general immigration policy happened just after Wilson’s defeat appears to lend support to the idea that while discussion of restriction might be unrelated to partisan rivalries, perhaps action on it is. The discussion of immigration policy that started in 1961 essentially continued the earlier debate that had been abandoned after McCarran-Walter’s passage in 1952, but no action was taken on it until 1965, when the large Democratic majorities took responsibility for passing the major series of Great Society bills. Given the simple evidence presented, the strongest case that can be made for the new-party hypothesis about when immigration ‹nds its way to the legislative agenda is that it might hold from the late 1970s through the 1980s. Party divisions should, in this view, be clearer on individual votes. Once an issue got all the way to a roll call vote, party stands should be clear and party leaders should have made the stakes clear to their members. The evidence from roll call votes on bills to revise immigration policy is mixed. Partisan divisions are sometimes signi‹cant and sometimes not. When they are, however, regional bloc voting proves to be a better predictor than party. As with the new-party hypothesis, the degree to which this rule holds changes over time. Table 11 summarizes the degree to which party differences and regional differences show up in the seventeen major congressional roll call votes on immigration. The votes and descriptive statistics describing them are contained in appendix B. In summary, for each vote was calculated the deviation from what one would expect if region or party were to have no in›uence in determining how legislators voted. For the seventeen major votes on immigration policy, region was signi‹cant in thirteen, party in seven. In fact, region was a stronger predictor than party in every vote up to the three House votes of the 1980s: those to pass IRCA, to af‹rm the IRCA conference report, and to pass the 1990 legislation. Splits along party lines sometimes help to explain the passage of a particular bill. In the 1980s, legislators’ party af‹liations were good predictors of the way that they would vote on bills. Before then, however, region systematically does better at anticipating the way a representative would vote; it also produced a chi-square larger than that for party for all

TABLE 11.

Party and Region in Congressional Voting

Region significant (

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