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American immigrants are often considered symbols of hope and promise. Presidential candidates point to their immigrant roots, Ellis Island is celebrated as a national monument, and the melting pot remains a popular, if somewhat tarnished, American analogy. At the same time, images of impoverished Mexicans swarming across the Mexican-American border and boatloads of desperate Haitian and Cuban refugees depict America as a nation under siege. While governments and business interests generally welcome aliens for the economic benefits they generate, the success of these groups paradoxically stirs distrust and envy, leading to discrimination, oppression, and, in some cases, eviction. Surveying the political and economic history of American immigration, Thomas Muller compellingly argues that the clamor at America's gate should be a cause of pride, not anxiety; a sign of vigor, not an omen of decline. Illustrating that recent waves of immigration have facilitated urban renewal, Muller emphasizes the many ways in which aliens have lessened our cities' social problems rather than contributing to them. Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and San Francisco, traditional gateways to other continents, have all benefited from the contributions of immigrants. To assess perceived and actual costs of absorbing the new immigrants, Muller examines their impact on city income, housing, minority jobs, public services, and wages. But Muller argues that noneconomic concerns (such as recent attempts to formalize English as the country's official language) frequently mirror deeply-rooted fears that could explain the cyclical pattern of American attitudes toward immigrants over the last three centuries. The nation, he contends, may again be turning inward, initiating a period of growing hostility toward the foreign-born. Nonetheless, higher entry levels for skilled immigrants would improve the technological standing of the U.S., increase the standard of living for the middle class, and facilitate the resurgence of our inner cities.
According to the national mythology, the United States has long opened its doors to people from across the globe, providing a port in a storm and opportunity for any who seek it. Yet the history of immigration to the United States is far different. Even before the xenophobic reaction against European and Asian immigrants in the late nineteenth century, social and economic interest groups worked to manipulate immigration policy to serve their needs. In A Nation by Design, Aristide Zolberg explores American immigration policy from the colonial period to the present, discussing how it has been used as a tool of nation building. A Nation by Design argues that the engineering of immigration policy has been prevalent since early American history. However, it has gone largely unnoticed since it took place primarily on the local and state levels, owing to constitutional limits on federal power during the slavery era. Zolberg profiles the vacillating currents of opinion on immigration throughout American history, examining separately the roles played by business interests, labor unions, ethnic lobbies, and nativist ideologues in shaping policy. He then examines how three different types of migration--legal migration, illegal migration to fill low-wage jobs, and asylum-seeking--are shaping contemporary arguments over immigration to the United States. A Nation by Design is a thorough, authoritative account of American immigration history and the political and social factors that brought it about. With rich detail and impeccable scholarship, Zolberg's book shows how America has struggled to shape the immigration process to construct the kind of population it desires.
This book sheds a disconcerting light on a familiar history, contending that ethnoracial considerations and especially British-American ethnocentrism have often taken priority over morality, ideology, and other factors in determining U.S. foreign policy.
Reveals a number of significant and interesting insights into Irish immigrant history in America
From acclaimed Abraham Lincoln historian Harold Holzer, a groundbreaking account of Lincoln’s grappling with the politics of immigration against the backdrop of the Civil War. In the three decades before the Civil War, some ten million foreign-born people settled in the United States, forever altering the nation’s demographics, culture, and—perhaps most significantly—voting patterns. America’s newest residents fueled the national economy, but they also wrought enormous changes in the political landscape and exposed an ugly, at times violent, vein of nativist bigotry. Abraham Lincoln’s rise ran parallel to this turmoil; even Lincoln himself did not always rise above it. Tensions over immigration would split and ultimately destroy Lincoln’s Whig Party years before the Civil War. Yet the war made clear just how important immigrants were, and how interwoven they had become in American society. Harold Holzer, winner of the Lincoln Prize, charts Lincoln’s political career through the lens of immigration, from his role as a member of an increasingly nativist political party to his evolution into an immigration champion, a progression that would come at the same time as he refined his views on abolition and Black citizenship. As Holzer writes, “The Civil War could not have been won without Lincoln’s leadership; but it could not have been fought without the immigrant soldiers who served and, by the tens of thousands, died that the ‘nation might live.’” An utterly captivating and illuminating work, Brought Forth on This Continent assesses Lincoln's life and legacy in a wholly original way, unveiling remarkable similarities between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first.
Ethnic associations were once vibrant features of societies, such as the United States and Canada, which attracted large numbers of immigrants. While the transplanted cultural lives of the Irish, Scots and continental Europeans have received much attention, the English are far less widely explored. It is assumed the English were not an ethnic community, that they lacked the alienating experiences associated with immigration and thus possessed few elements of diasporas. This deeply researched new book questions this assumption. It shows that English associations once were widespread, taking hold in colonial America, spreading to Canada and then encompassing all of the empire. Celebrating saints days, expressing pride in the monarch and national heroes, providing charity to the national poor, and forging mutual aid societies mutual, were all features of English life overseas. In fact, the English simply resembled other immigrant groups too much to be dismissed as the unproblematic, invisible immigrants.
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The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred practically all Chinese from American shores for ten years, was the first federal law that banned a group of immigrants solely on the basis of race or nationality. By changing America's traditional policy of open immigration, this landmark legislation set a precedent for future restrictions against Asian immigrants in the early 1900s and against Europeans in the 1920s. Tracing the origins of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Andrew Gyory presents a bold new interpretation of American politics during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. Rather than directly confront such divisive problems as class conflict, economic depression, and rising unemployment, he contends, politicians sought a safe, nonideological solution to the nation's industrial crisis--and latched onto Chinese exclusion. Ignoring workers' demands for an end simply to imported contract labor, they claimed instead that working people would be better off if there were no Chinese immigrants. By playing the race card, Gyory argues, national politicians--not California, not organized labor, and not a general racist atmosphere--provided the motive force behind the era's most racist legislation.
Details the history of the iron-hulled war steamer USS "Michigan"