Making Americans, Remaking America


Book Description

In a historical overview of U.S. immigration, the authors examine legislative and legal battles being waged over immigration policy, whether minority issues can be resolved by developing a more explicit settlement policy, and whether the contract between state and immigrant would change if we fully understood the immigrant's legitimate needs.




U.S. Immigration in the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

Immigration in the Twenty-First Century is a comprehensive examination of the enduring issues surrounding immigration and immigrants in the United States, beginning with a look at the history of immigration policy, followed by an examination of the legislative and legal debates waged over immigration and settlement policies today and concluding with a consideration of the continuing challenges of achieving immigration reform in the United States. The authors also discuss the issues facing immigrants in the United States, from the reception of immigrants within the native population to the relationship between minorities and immigrants. Immigration and immigration policy continues to be a hot topic on the campaign trail, and in all branches of federal and state government. U.S. Immigrants and Immigration Policies in the Twenty-First Century provides students with the tools and context they need to understand these complex issues.




Immigration and the Remaking of Black America


Book Description

Winner of the 2020 Otis Dudley Duncan Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Social Demography Honorable Mention for the 2020 Thomas and Znaniecki Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association​​​​​​​ Over the last four decades, immigration from the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa to the U. S. has increased rapidly. In several states, African immigrants are now major drivers of growth in the black population. While social scientists and commentators have noted that these black immigrants’ social and economic outcomes often differ from those of their native-born counterparts, few studies have carefully analyzed the mechanisms that produce these disparities. In Immigration and the Remaking of Black America, sociologist and demographer Tod Hamilton shows how immigration is reshaping black America. He weaves together interdisciplinary scholarship with new data to enhance our understanding of the causes of socioeconomic stratification among both the native-born and newcomers. Hamilton demonstrates that immigration from the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa is driven by selective migration, meaning that newcomers from these countries tend to have higher educational attainment than those who stay behind. As a result, they arrive in the U.S. with some advantages over native-born blacks, and, in some cases, over whites. He also shows the importance of historical context: prior to the Civil Rights Movement, black immigrants’ socioeconomic outcomes resembled native-born blacks’ much more closely, regardless of their educational attainment in their country of origin. Today, however, certain groups of black immigrants have better outcomes than native-born black Americans—such as lower unemployment rates and higher rates of homeownership—in part because they immigrated at a time of expanding opportunities for minorities and women in general. Hamilton further finds that rates of marriage and labor force participation among native-born blacks that move away from their birth states resemble those of many black immigrants, suggesting that some disparities within the black population stem from processes associated with migration, rather than from nativity alone. Hamilton argues that failing to account for this diversity among the black population can lead to incorrect estimates of the social progress made by black Americans and the persistence of racism and discrimination. He calls for future research on racial inequality to disaggregate different black populations. By richly detailing the changing nature of black America, Immigration and the Remaking of Black America helps scholars and policymakers to better understand the complexity of racial disparities in the twenty-first century.




Making and Remaking America: Immigration into the United States


Book Description

"During the 1980s and 1990s, the U.S. Congress responded to growing gaps between immigration policy and immigration reality by making major changes in immigration laws and their administration. In 1986, the United States enacted the world's largest legalization program for unauthorized foreigners and introduced sanctions on employers who knowingly hired illegal foreign workers. Instead of slowing illegal immigration, however, this program allowed more foreigners to arrive legally and illegally, which prompted another round of reforms in 1996 aimed at ensuring that new arrivals would not receive welfare payments." "On September 11, 2001, foreigners in the United States hijacked four commercial planes. Two were flown into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, bringing them down and killing 3,000 people. President George W. Bush declared war on terrorists and the countries that harbor them, and Congress enacted legislation to fight terrorism. This includes new measures for tightening procedures for issuing visas to foreign visitors, tracking foreign students and visitors while they are in the United States, and giving immigration authorities new power to arrest and detain foreigners suspected of ties to terrorism. The Immigration and Naturalization Service was abolished, and its functions of preventing illegal immigration and providing services to foreign visitors and immigrants were separated in the new Department of Homeland Security." "However, anti-terrorism measures have not slowed immigration to the United States. America is poised to remain the world's major destination for immigrants, and as patterns in U.S. history suggest, most of the newcomers will soon become Americans. However, past success in integrating immigrants does not guarantee that integrating newcomers will be easy or automatic. As immigrants continue to make and remake the country, the United States must develop an immigration policy for the twenty-first century."--BOOK JACKET.




Remaking the American Mainstream


Book Description

In this age of multicultural democracy, the idea of assimilation--that the social distance separating immigrants and their children from the mainstream of American society closes over time--seems outdated and, in some forms, even offensive. But as Richard Alba and Victor Nee show in the first systematic treatment of assimilation since the mid-1960s, it continues to shape the immigrant experience, even though the geography of immigration has shifted from Europe to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Institutional changes, from civil rights legislation to immigration law, have provided a more favorable environment for nonwhite immigrants and their children than in the past. Assimilation is still driven, in claim, by the decisions of immigrants and the second generation to improve their social and material circumstances in America. But they also show that immigrants, historically and today, have profoundly changed our mainstream society and culture in the process of becoming Americans. Surveying a variety of domains--language, socioeconomic attachments, residential patterns, and intermarriage--they demonstrate the continuing importance of assimilation in American life. And they predict that it will blur the boundaries among the major, racially defined populations, as nonwhites and Hispanics are increasingly incorporated into the mainstream.




Americans in Waiting


Book Description

Although America is unquestionably a nation of immigrants, its immigration policies have inspired more questions than consensus on who should be admitted and what the path to citizenship should be. In Americans in Waiting, Hiroshi Motomura looks to a forgotten part of our past to show how, for over 150 years, immigration was assumed to be a transition to citizenship, with immigrants essentially being treated as future citizens--Americans in waiting. Challenging current conceptions, the author deftly uncovers how this view, once so central to law and policy, has all but vanished. Motomura explains how America could create a more unified society by recovering this lost history and by giving immigrants more, but at the same time asking more of them. A timely, panoramic chronicle of immigration and citizenship in the United States, Americans in Waiting offers new ideas and a fresh perspective on current debates.




Immigrants and the American Dream


Book Description

The United States has absorbed nearly 10 million immigrants in the past decade. This book examines who the new immigrants are, where they live, and who among them are gaining entry into the American middle class. Discussed are the complex factors that promote or hinder immigrant success, as well as the varying opportunities and constraints met by those living in particular regions. Extensive data are synthesized on key dimensions of immigrant achievement: income level, professional status, and rates of homeownership and political participation. Also provided is a balanced analysis of the effects of immigration on broader socioeconomic, geographic, and political trends. Examining the extent to which contemporary immigrants are realizing the American dream, this book explores crucial policy questions and challenges that face our diversifying society.




One Quarter of the Nation


Book Description

An in-depth look at the many ways immigration has redefined modern America The impact of immigrants over the past half century has become so much a part of everyday life in the United States that we sometimes fail to see it. This deeply researched book by one of America’s leading immigration scholars tells the story of how immigrants are fundamentally changing this country. An astonishing number of immigrants and their children—nearly eighty-six million people—now live in the United States. Together, they have transformed the American experience in profound and far-reaching ways that go to the heart of the country’s identity and institutions. Unprecedented in scope, One Quarter of the Nation traces how immigration has reconfigured America’s racial order—and, importantly, how Americans perceive race—and played a pivotal role in reshaping electoral politics and party alignments. It discusses how immigrants have rejuvenated our urban centers as well as some far-flung rural communities, and examines how they have strengthened the economy, fueling the growth of old industries and spurring the formation of new ones. This wide-ranging book demonstrates how immigration has touched virtually every facet of American culture, from the music we dance to and the food we eat to the films we watch and books we read. One Quarter of the Nation opens a new chapter in our understanding of immigration. While many books look at how America changed immigrants, this one examines how they changed America. It reminds us that immigration has long been a part of American society, and shows how immigrants and their families continue to redefine who we are as a nation.




Making and Remaking Asian America Through Immigration Policy, 1850-1990


Book Description

In 1882, Congress enacted immigration legislation excluding "idiots," "lunatics," and "Chinese laborers." Eventually, a series of laws restricted the entry of every Asian group, though over a period of decades these laws were repealed one by one. The most dramatic change in immigration law came in 1965. Though designed to encourage European immigration, the unintended result of changes in the selection system was that the Asian immigrant population jumped from one million in 1965 to seven million in 1990. This is the first comprehensive study of how U.S. immigration policies have shaped - demographically, economically, and socially - the six largest Asian American communities: Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Asian Indian. For each group, the book offers detailed information, much of it previously unknown or too scattered to be useful, on gender ratios, age distributions, foreign- versus American-born ratios, geographic settlement, employment profiles, income, and poverty. The author also focuses on the impact immigration policies have had on three important areas of Asian American life experience - educational performance, political participation, and self-identity. He simply questions the validity of the images of Asian Americans as academic "whiz kids," their communities as relatively lacking in strong political interests, and the presence of a unified Asian American identity. Throughout, the author counters the frequent lumping together of Asian Americans by demonstrating their tremendous diversity of background, history, motivation, and achievement. As their numbers have grown, the visibility of Asian Americans has prompted policymakers, scholars, journalists, community organizers, activists, and, of course, restrictionists to take Asian Americans more seriously. At the same time, they have sometimes become the target of racist hostility, which is occasionally physical but more often sociopolitical and economic, such as the recent concerns over the disproportionate number of Asian Americans admitted to prestigious colleges and universities. Serious gaps in fundamental information about Asian America persist, leading to serious distortions. This pioneering work of research and analysis is intended as a step toward a better understanding of relationships and experiences that few have bothered to study.




Remaking America


Book Description

Over the past three decades, the contours of American social, economic, and political life have changed dramatically. The post-war patterns of broadly distributed economic growth have given way to stark inequalities of income and wealth, the GOP and its allies have gained power and shifted U.S. politics rightward, and the role of government in the lives of Americans has changed fundamentally. Remaking America explores how these trends are related, investigating the complex interactions of economics, politics, and public policy. Remaking America explains how the broad restructuring of government policy has both reflected and propelled major shifts in the character of inequality and democracy in the United States. The contributors explore how recent political and policy changes affect not just the social standing of Americans but also the character of democratic citizenship in the United States today. Lawrence Jacobs shows how partisan politics, public opinion, and interest groups have shaped the evolution of Medicare, but also how Medicare itself restructured health politics in America. Kimberly Morgan explains how highly visible tax policies created an opportunity for conservatives to lead a grassroots tax revolt that ultimately eroded of the revenues needed for social-welfare programs. Deborah Stone explores how new policies have redefined participation in the labor force—as opposed to fulfilling family or civic obligations—as the central criterion of citizenship. Frances Fox Piven explains how low-income women remain creative and vital political actors in an era in which welfare programs increasingly subject them to stringent behavioral requirements and monitoring. Joshua Guetzkow and Bruce Western document the rise of mass incarceration in America and illuminate its unhealthy effects on state social-policy efforts and the civic status of African-American men. For many disadvantaged Americans who used to look to government as a source of opportunity and security, the state has become increasingly paternalistic and punitive. Far from standing alone, their experience reflects a broader set of political victories and policy revolutions that have fundamentally altered American democracy and society. Empirically grounded and theoretically informed, Remaking America connects the dots to provide insight into the remarkable social and political changes of the last three decades.