Huddled Masses, Muddled Laws - Why Contemporary Immigration Policy Fails to Reflect Public Opinion

In 1997 the United States accepted more legal immigrants than all other countries combined. This large influx of newcomers, however, has alarmed many Americans. Immigration is a controversial issue because it intersects with the most contentious issues of our time: multiculturalism, bilingualism, unemployment, crime, etc. Opinion polls since 1965 show that a strong majority want to reduce immigration. Yet our government has refused to respond to the public's wish. In 1996, Congress scuttled a proposal to reduce immigration by a third. (Earlier, in 1990, Congress voted to increase immigration by a whopping 40 percent.) This is all the more surprising because the United States has had no qualms about severely restricting immigration in the past.

Kenneth Lee explains why recent immigration policy has failed to reflect the public opinion by approaching the question from a broad, historical outlook, and from a focused, contemporary perspective. He traces several momentous historical changes that have abetted the pro-immigration block and weakened the restrictionists' clout (mainly, the rise of conservative economics in the 1970s and the growing racial liberalism in America). He also examines immigration policy on a micro-level: detailing the intense lobbying that went on for the 1990 and 1996 immigration bills, and he also shows how unlikely players as, for example, Christian Coalition's Ralph Reed, helped defeat the restrictionist bill in 1996.

List of contents

Preface
Introduction: The Immigration Puzzle
Public Opinion: What Americans Think about Immigration
A History of Ambivalence
How Illegal Immigration Dwarfed Legal Immigration
The Elite and the State: Common Explanations for the Immigration Puzzle
Left-Right Alliance
Insulation from Public Opinion: The Politics of Family
Prospects for the Future
Selected Bibliography
Index

About the author

KENNETH K. LEE, a free-lance writer, has written on immigration and other issues for various publications, including The New Republic, Orange County Register, The American Enterprise, Heterodoxy, Liberty, and The Los Angeles Times.

Product details

• Authors: Kenneth Lee, Lee Kenneth
• Publisher: Praeger
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 17.09.1998
• EAN: 9780275962722
• ISBN: 978-0-275-96272-2
• No. of pages: 184
• Dimensions: 161 mm x 240 mm x 15 mm
• Weight: 446 g
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; USA, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Emigration & Immigration, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Civics & Citizenship, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Immigration, POLITICAL SCIENCE / American Government / National, Migration, immigration & emigration, United States of America, USA, Migration, immigration and emigration, Civil rights & citizenship, Central / national / federal government policies, Civics and citizenship, Central government policies, Public Opinion & Polls, Public opinion and polls, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Activism & Social Justice, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Opinion Polling, Relating to migrant groups / diaspora communities or peoples