Immigration in the 21st Century

The Comparative Politics of Immigration Policy

Terri Givens, Rachel Navarre, Pete Mohanty

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781317337423
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Immigration Law
• Index: Law

Immigration policy is one of the most contentious issues facing policy makers in the twenty-first century. Immigration in the Twenty-First Century provides students with an in-depth introduction to the politics that have led to the development of different approaches over time to immigration policy in North America, Europe, and Australia. The authors draw on the work of the most respected researchers in the field of immigration politics as well as providing insights from their own research.

The book begins by giving students an overview of the theoretical approaches used by political scientists and other social scientists to analyze immigration politics, as well as providing historical background to the policies that are affecting electoral politics. A comparative politics approach is used to develop the context that explains the ways that immigration has affected politics and how politics has affected immigration policy in migrant-receiving countries. Topics such as party politics, labor migration, and citizenship are examined to provide a broad basis for understanding policy changes over time.

Immigration remains a contentious issue, not only in American politics, but around the globe. The authors describe the way that immigrants are integrated, their ability to become citizens, and their role in democratic politics. This broad-ranging yet concise book allows students to gain a better understanding of the complexities of immigration politics and the political forces defining policy today.

Features of this Innovative Text

• Covers hot topics including party politics, labor migration, assimilation, and citizenship both in the United States as well as globally.

• Consistent chapter pedagogy includes chapter introductions, conclusions, key terms and references.

• An author-hosted Website is updated regularly: www.terrigivens.com/immigrationresources

1

Introduction

The Complex Landscape of Immigration Policy and Politics

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

(Emma Lazarus, 1883)

These words that grace the Statue of Liberty have animated the mythology of the United States, which prides itself on its history as a country of immigrants. Many Americans came to this country from other lands, but what is less well known are the complicated politics that determined the flows of people that came to this country since it became independent in the late 1700s.

Someone in the 1880s could hardly imagine that the U.S. would become a country mostly closed off to immigration within the next 40 years. Although many people in the United States are proud of the fact that we are a country of immigration, policy in the U.S. has not always been as welcoming to immigrants as our national understanding implies. Even as the words of Emma Lazarus were being written, politicians in California were concerned about the flow of immigrants from China and looking at ways to limit their entry. Soon, one of the first restrictions on immigration into the U.S., on immigrants from China, would be passed by Congress. The politics of immigration began with a focus on control that would continue through the 1920s.

In the 19th century, immigration was a critical component to the development of countries like the United States, Australia, and Canada. However, by the turn of the 21st century, these countries, and newer countries of immigration, like France, Germany, and Spain, were looking at ways to limit the immigration flows that had once been important to their economic development. Political parties on the left and right agreed on the need to control immigration, and some on the far right were arguing for complete halts to immigration and even the return of many who were living in their countries temporarily or as undocumented immigrants.

The United States became more open to immigration after the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, but the focus has been on more restrictive policy since a series of economic downturns in the 1980s, the 1990s, and in 2008, when the most recent fiscal crisis began. Perhaps more dramatically, the politics of immigration restriction came to the fore again in a string of elections in 2016. In both the U.S. and Europe, populist, anti-immigrant parties gained votes and seats, and in the U.S., a president was elected on a promise to restrict immigration, particularly for Muslim immigrants. Immigration policy varies tremendously over time and place. Nevertheless, there are key patterns in the politics of immigration that underpin the policymaking process examined in detail in this book.

Since immigration policy varies substantially between countries and changes dramatically over time, this book intends to provide an understanding of those differences. Specifically, this book focuses on the politics of immigration that underlie the policymaking process.

What Are the Politics of Immigration?

Immigration is complex. Immigration is a function of geography, economics, international pressures, and various factors like family connections that lead people to move from one place to another. The policies developed to regulate immigration are no simpler: They may be impacted by electoral politics, public opinion, and other factors like international law. The combination of these political and economic factors often leads to major policy shifts.¹ This book focuses on the politics and history of immigration control and management, with a focus on the ways that policies are impacted by immigration, and the way that politics impacts immigration. We do not focus directly on the issues of immigrant integration like immigrant rights, immigrant benefits, and immigrant responsibilities, although these issues are often intertwined with the politics of control. Our main focus is electoral politics and the way that policymakers have dealt with immigration, but we will also look at the way some interest groups and public opinion have impacted policy. Ultimately, the goal of this book is to provide students with an understanding of the complex factors behind immigration, how politicians make the decisions that can have an impact on immigration, and how immigrants themselves impact politics and policymaking.

Why Does Immigration Matter?

Human history is made up of the movements of peoples. In the last few centuries, as borders have been drawn and redrawn, some migrants have fled war and famine, while others have simply sought a better life. Immigration is important for four key reasons: (1) historical formation of nation-states, (2) economic development, (3) globalization, and (4) state sovereignty. In the U.S., Canada, and Australia, all originally British colonies, immigration was the main form of nation-building going back to the 18th and 19th centuries even though these countries had indigenous populations (which were often decimated when Europeans came along). Nonetheless, these countries encouraged immigration and celebrated the mythology around their beginnings as countries of immigration. The reality is much more complicated, as these countries went through periods of being more open, or less open, and although immigration continues in each of these countries, at rates much higher than most industrialized countries, anti-immigrant sentiment has often defined politics and policy.

Beyond nation-building, many other countries have also seen immigration as a source of labor. Labor migration, however, often impacts host populations and policies far beyond economic development. For countries like France and Germany, immigration became an important issue for policymakers after World War II. In order to rebuild after a devastating war, these countries had to import workers, initially from other parts of Europe, but eventually from places like Turkey and Northern Africa. Although they were considered temporary, in the end, many of these immigrants would stay and become residents and ultimately citizens of these countries, creating the need for new policies to recognize new issues like discrimination.

More recently, countries that had been more likely to send emigrants to other countries until recent years have become the “newer” countries of immigration. Countries like Spain, South Korea, and South Africa have more recently begun to deal with significant in-flows of migrants wanting to take advantage of economic opportunities. As these countries have developed economically and politically, they have become more attractive, but these countries have also been caught up in the wave of globalization.

In this era of globalization, people are on the move. The percentage of foreigners in the U.S. at the beginning of the 21st century is as high now as it was at the beginning of the 20th century. The percentage of foreign born in the U.S. hit close to 15 per cent in the first decade of the 21st century – very similar to the percentages at the beginning of the 20th century, a time when nativists and progressives were pushing for restrictions on immigration. Since at least the 1600s, the part of the world that would become the United States developed as a country of immigration. Migrants from Spain, Portugal, France, Britain, and many other countries sought refuge and/or their fortune in what was seen as a new land, with little regard for those who already lived there.

The history of immigration is often forgotten even though many countries owe their growth and development to various influxes of people over the years. Today when you turn on the news, you often hear reports talking about a “flood” of immigrants heading to a county. Politicians speak about the need to reinforce borders and to provide resources to support refugees feeling wars or political persecution. The politics of asylum depends not just on whether refugees meet the legal criteria ensuring refugee status but on who is meant to provide safe haven.

The ability to control a country’s borders is at the heart of sovereignty. The nation-state is defined by its borders and the people who live within those borders. This makes immigration a potentially serious challenge to a country, particularly in homogenous countries or if immigrants are perceived not to fit the national mold. As noted by Castles, de Haas, and Miller (2014), “[i]n this sense international migration is intrinsically political and is almost inevitably an imagined or real challenge to the state sovereignty” (p. 313). Although the main focus of the study of immigration is often around the reasons that people may migrate to another country, the policy and politics of the receiving states have received less attention. In an era of globalization, the politics of immigration are highly salient and relevant to domestic and international politics.

Immigration from a Comparative Perspective

The politics of immigration has become a very salient issue since the end of World War II. Though there may be a tendency to focus on the U.S., the politics of immigration in one country are intrinsically intertwined with politics in others. Immigration policy often has an impact far beyond the borders of the country that makes it. This book takes a comparative approach to the study of the politics of immigration in order to understand the broader context of immigration, how different countries have addressed and been impacted by these issues, and to examine the impact of different institutions. There are four main questions central to the study of comparative politics:

• How do countries vary in their political institutions?
• What is the relationship between political development and economic development?
• How do countries vary in the outputs of government, that is, in their public policies?
• How do policies impact outcomes and behavior?

Comparative politics focuses on the domestic policy level and policymaking in a country, using a variety of approaches to understand differences across countries. Although we will also touch on relationships between countries, for the most part, this book examines internal politics and policies that have been impacted by immigration. When comparing policy, it is useful to understand historical differences, governmental structures, geographical issues, and other factors that will impact policymaking and the outcomes that we see over time.

As an example, the discourses around immigration policy in the U.S. have had a tendency to alternate between strict control at particular junctures, to more open policies over our long history of being a country of immigration (Tichenor 2002). Although the Democratic party is currently seen as the proponent of policies that would potentially lead to legalization (often referred to as “amnesty”), it was often Republican presidents who were champions of more open policies.

Scholars take different approaches to understanding how immigration policy is made, as we describe in Chapter 2. It is important to keep in mind that there are contending theories for explaining the development and outcomes of immigration policy, particularly when comparing countries. As noted by Rosenblum and Tichenor (2012), international migration “has ebbed and flowed with shifting economic forces, new social and cultural linkages that transcend borders, innovations in communication and transportation, warfare, natural disasters, and numerous other sources of dislocation” (p.1). For our purposes, immigration flows are also impacted by policy, which in turn are impacted by politics, such as ideological competition between political parties. Policies range from Germany’s claim that it not a country of immigration (at least up through the late 1990s) to those of the U.S., Canada, and Australia, which use visa preference systems to try to control the f...