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Daniel J. Tichenor, Defining America through Immigration Policy, Journal of American History, Volume 92, Issue 2, September 2005, Page 635, https://doi.org/10.2307/3659347
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This book provides a provocative and timely analysis of how the evolution of U.S. immigration policy reflects an enduring struggle over who ought to be embraced into full membership in the social, economic, and political life of the nation. Bill Ong Hing argues that the history of American immigration policy formation and implementation exemplifies a tension between a broad vision of nationhood that welcomes diverse newcomers and a narrow vision that “idealized the true American as white, Anglo-Saxon, English-speaking, and Christian” (p. 5). However, it is the latter na-tivist tradition and its substantial impact on policy outcomes and on immigrant experiences that most animates Defining America through Immigration Policy.
This book contends that the white, Eurocentric conception of America not only shaped U.S. admissions policies for nearly a century but also continues to breathe life into a “de-Americanization process” that treats non-white immigrants and even their descendants born in the country as “perpetual foreigners” (p. 260). According to Hing, official and private assaults on the rights of Muslims, Middle Easterners, and South Asians after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, exemplify familiar processes of marginalization and exclusion experienced by Jews, Asians, Mexicans, and Haitians throughout the nation's history. This work is organized to highlight the power of ethnic, racial, religious, and linguistic hierarchies in shaping exclusionary immigration policies and the second-class status of particular immigrant groups. The first six chapters examine Asian exclusion, the literacy test law of 1917, the rise of the national origins quota system, the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, and more contemporary legislation. Hing concedes that much of this discussion relies heavily on existing works, although he offers some fresh insights about topics such as the exclusion of homosexuals and diversity visas. Subsequent chapters concentrate on how Mexicans have been treated as permanent foreigners in border and workplace enforcement programs and how deportation and asylum policies have developed. Hing's deft treatment of immigration policy enforcement is particularly valuable since immigration scholars too often focus their attention almost exclusively on the legislative realm.
