Immigration Policy from 1970 to the Present

Rachel Stevens

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317284499
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia dell'Australia e dell'Oceania

This book examines national debates on immigration, asylum seekers and guest worker programs from 1970 to the present. Over the past 45 years, contemporary immigration has had a profound impact throughout North America, Europe and Australasia, yet the admission of ethnically diverse immigrants was far from inevitable. In the midst of significant social change, policymakers grappled with fundamental questions: what is the purpose of immigration in an age of mass mobility? Which immigrants should be selected and potentially become citizens and who should be excluded? How should immigration be controlled in an era of universal human rights and non-discrimination?

Stevens provides an in-depth case study comparison of two settler societies, Australia and the United States, while drawing parallels with Europe, Canada and New Zealand. Though contemporary immigration history that focuses on one national setting is well established, this book is unique because it actively compares how a number of societies debated vexing immigration policy challenges. The book also explores the ideas, values and principles that underpin this contentious area of public policy, and in doing so permits a broader understanding of contemporary immigration than outlining policies alone.

1
Introduction

At the signing of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that ended the national origins quota system, President Lyndon Johnson declared, “The days of unlimited immigration are past. But those who do come will come because of what they are, and not because of the land on which they sprung.” In draft remarks of this speech, the speechwriters of Johnson were explicit about the objectives of the new immigration program. They wrote, “We are now asking those who would come here ‘What can you do and what can you contribute?’—not ‘Where were you born?’”¹

These statements illustrate that with the abolition of the national origins quota system that privileged the admission of western Europeans, admitted small numbers of southern and eastern Europeans and all but barred Asians, American policymakers had begun imagining immigration in a new way: immigrants were more likely to be judged on what they offered their adopted country rather than on their race or nationality. Johnson’s comment, “The days of unlimited immigration are past” also reveals that for American policymakers, immigration still needed to be restricted and tightly controlled, albeit using different criteria than in the past.

Across the Pacific, the Australian government gradually wound down the White Australia policy in the 1960s, culminating in its formal abolition when the Whitlam Labor government came to power in December 1972. Yet by the time the Whitlam government left office in 1975, that administration had halved the immigrant intake quota as a reaction to souring economic conditions. Australia’s immigration policies remained restrictive despite the rhetoric of universalism and nondiscrimination. Yet in Australia and the U.S., as well as other immigrant receiving nations, the number of immigrant applicants typically exceeds the number of visas available. Policy-makers therefore need to determine which immigrants should be selected for settlement, all the while eschewing the explicitly racist policies of their past.

This book examines public debates on immigration policy from 1970 to today. It provides an in-depth case study comparison of two traditional immigrant-receiving societies, Australia and the United States, while situating the experiences of these countries within a global story of migration in the contemporary world. In the chapters that follow, Australian and American debates are compared with similar controversies in the United Kingdom, Malta, Canada and New Zealand. This book shows how a number of immigrant receiving states responded to new immigration challenges after 1970. In this period policymakers debated new ways to regulate immigration; they also encountered external challenges such as the arrival of asylum seekers and unauthorized immigrants. Furthermore, after 1970 the ethnicity of immigrants became increasingly diverse as migration patterns globalized. In this context of social change, immigration became a politicized and divisive policy issue.

This book explores how policymakers responded to immigration controversies on three issues. First, Part I analyzes debates on admission policies during the 1980s, a period when the ethnic diversity of the immigrant intake had become visible and contested in Australia and America, as well as in the UK. Part II examines reactions to the arrival of asylum seekers between the late 1970s and early 1990s. In this 15-year period, Australia received asylum seekers primarily from Vietnam, Cambodia and China. For the United States, large numbers of Cubans and Haitians arrived in south Florida in 1980 and the early 1990s. In recent years, the tiny Mediterranean island state of Malta has also been confronted with the arrival of East African asylum seekers, an issue that is explored in chapter 4. Part III, the final section, analyzes contemporary debates on the admission of unskilled temporary migrant workers, especially for work in the agricultural sector. A guest worker program has long been seen as a solution to unauthorized immigration in the U.S. But as we will see in chapter 6, for Australia, New Zealand and Canada, a temporary migrant labor scheme is also considered an instrument for development and possibly more effective than foreign aid in addressing endemic poverty in under-developed countries.

To date, research on immigration to Australia and the U.S. after 1970 has generally been dominated by social scientists, especially political scientists, demographers and economists. Scholars such as James Jupp, Robert Birrell, Katharine Betts and Shanthi Robertson have made valuable contributions to Australian immigration studies. In the case of the United States, Gary Freeman, Daniel Tichenor, Peter Andreas, Thomas Espenshade, Douglas Massey and George Borjas have made substantial contributions to the field. These social scientists focus on issues such as the development and effectiveness of immigration policies, public opinion toward immigration, the economic impact of immigration (such as effects on the labor market and welfare access) and the motivating factors for migration. This book, in contrast, is distinct as it examines the ideas surrounding immigration. Although it does outline the development of immigration policies, the policies themselves are not the sole focus. Rather, this book explores the ideas, values and principles that underpin this contentious area of public policy, and in doing so enables a much broader understanding of contemporary immigration.

Immigration Policy from 1970 to the Present compares in a sustained fashion how American and Australian policymakers defined and discussed immigration issues while drawing parallels with similar events in Europe and beyond. It examines the language and arguments employed by policy-makers to debate the admission or exclusion of permanent settlers, asylum seekers and temporary workers. It asks: According to policymakers at the time, which immigrants should be admitted and why? How did policymakers portray and represent immigrants to voters? Was there a transnational exchange of political language, ideas and proposed solutions to perceived immigration policy problems? And conversely, were there elements of political discourse that were peculiar to these societies?

To answer these questions, I examine official government documents, including the Congressional Record, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates (or Hansard), press releases, congressional hearings and parliamentary inquiries. It is acknowledged that these primary sources are carefully crafted political documents produced for public consumption and designed to advance policy positions. This study is not concerned with what policymakers privately thought about immigration or confidential considerations that informed government actions, decisions and policies, and therefore will not analyze internal memoranda and minutes from cabinet or intra-party meetings. Rather, it concentrates on the analysis of official discourse: the language that policymakers intended to have preserved on the record for posterity and how they presented their views to the electorate. Official documents warrant close analysis. As discourse analyst Tuen A. van Dijk observed, political discourse does not control what citizens think but it does influence what they think about.² The book also includes analysis of press coverage and public opinion data when it is evident that these sources were influencing the ways in which immigration issues were debated.

My analytical approach has been influenced in large part by van Dijk, who has written extensively on exclusionary language, particularly racism in official discourse. Van Dijk analyzes official discourse by examining the strategies and structures of text and talk. For example, he considers the variations in word selection (such as referring to unauthorized immigrants as “illegal aliens” or just “illegals”). Van Dijk analyzes the selection of specific discourses and the omission of other topics to frame public debate. For example, some policymakers choose to link immigrants with crime or welfare access, and often ignore stories of successful immigrant settlement in an attempt to justify further restrictions on immigration. Finally, van Dijk considers rhetorical moves such as metaphor and hyperbole, and strategies of argumentation and persuasion, such as the use of examples, narratives, positive self-representation and negative other-representation.³

This book presents a comparative history of ideas about immigration in traditional and emerging nations of immigrants. Comparative history offers advantages over single-country studies. For instance, it can eliminate self-evident assumptions and challenge historical narratives that are taken for granted, which can sometimes plague national histories. As Jürgen Kocka stated, comparison “opens the door to other possibilities” and therefore has an eye opening effect.⁴ George Fredrickson concurred, arguing that comparative history has the capacity to suggest new ways of thinking about old historical problems by shifting our attention to alternative approaches adopted by other societies.⁵ The comparative method also enables the historian to identify unique features of each case as well as illuminate shared experiences and cross cultural interactions.

The need for a comparative approach is strong in both Australian and United States history. Ann Curthoys wrote that there is little interest in Australian history in international historical scholarship and that the greatest challenge facing Australian historians is to find ways to address local and international audiences.⁶ In this context, the comparative approach may serve as a bridge to international audiences: it could provide greater access to Australian material, and by creating links between nations, enhance the appeal and relevance of Australian history to a global market. Michael Adas argued that the value of a comparative approach for American history is twofold: one, it tests notions of exceptionalism in key aspects of American history and two, it helps integrate American historiography into broader studies of global processes, phenomena or themes.⁷

There is little consensus on how to write comparative history; however, leading practitioners in the field have offered useful suggestions. George Fredrickson wrote that cross-national comparative history should draw attention to both cultural and structural factors, probe the interactions between countries and draw attention to the peculiarities of each nation while eschewing claims of exceptionalism.⁸ Marc Bloch posited in a seminal essay that comparative history is only of value when the study is limited in scope, detailed, critical and well documented.⁹ Jürgen Kocka noted that whereas all historians use selectivity and construction, for comparative historians, such decisions play a crucial role in determining the success or failure of a comparative study. For this reason, comparative historians need to be clear about their selection of cases or countries for analysis.¹⁰ Case selection has proved controversial among comparative historians. For example, Bloch argued that case studies should be drawn from societies that share common origins as a way to draw causal explanations for divergent developments. William Sewell, on the other hand, contended that comparative history works best when the cases selected are in contrast to each other. Between these two opposing poles, most comparative studies contain cases that share parallels and contrasting characteristics.¹¹

I selected Australia and the United States as case studies because as settler societies in the New World, these nations have the shared experience of dispossessing indigenous populations and developing their countries primarily through immigration. In the mid-20th century, Australia and the United States implemented race-blind immigration policies and have attempted to incorporate large numbers of migrants into the national community. Beyond these similarities, historically Australian and American immigration policies have had differing emphases. The following section outlines Australian and American immigration programs from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries.

A Short History of Immigration to Australia and the United States

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the U.S. government implemented a suite of restrictive immigration laws. During this time, prospective immigrants could be denied entry because of their race, nationality, class, gender, political affiliation, health condition or immoral behavior. Although race was not the sole criterion upon which to exclude unwelcome immigrants, scholars have noted that racial anxieties played “perhaps the largest role in defining and categorizing which immigrant groups to admit or exclude.”¹² In 1882 Congress enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act that suspended the admission of all Chinese laborers for ten years and excluded all Chinese immigrants from naturalized citizenship. The Chinese Exclusion Act was renewed in 1892 and renewed indefinitely in 1902 until its repeal in 1943. The Chinese Exclusion Act was important not only because it prohibited the entry of Chinese immigrants—with the exception of merchants, students, teachers, ministers, tourists and their d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• PART I Who Gets In?
• PART II Boat People
• PART III Temporary Labor Migration
• Index