Responding to Immigration: Perceptions of Promise and Threat (review)

Responding to Immigration: Perceptions of Promise and Threat. By Brian N. Fry. LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2001. 257 pp. Cloth, $65.00.

As I began reading Brian Fry's Responding to Immigration I could not help but wonder if anything in the book is still relevant in a post-September 11th world. Would the threat of terrorism completely and permanently reshape debates on immigration policy in the U.S.? Or would the debate simply end? I quickly returned to my senses, as I was reminded of other historical periods in which fears and suspicions of immigrants were even more pervasive and intense than they are today. The threat of terrorism will clearly give anti-immigration forces rhetorical ammunition for years to come, yet the past should continue to inform the present when it comes to the centuries-old struggle over how many people and which people should be allowed into the country.

Fry's book addresses the following three questions. What is American nativism? Under what conditions does heightened nativist activity occur? What does immigration mean to those involved in immigration reform? The author uses the bulk of sixty pages to define nativism as "an illegitimate defense of native proprietary claims over and against the encroachment of aliens." Fry maintains that the nativist label should rest upon the general public's perceptions of legitimacy and encroachment rather than the fixed definitions that social scientists may offer. We are left, then, with a historically floating definition of nativism that may not describe some of the movements that the author himself labels as nativist. It is not clear, for example, that the majority of Americans viewed anti-immigrant activity as illegitimate during the early 1900s or in other time periods in which anti-immigrant sentiment was particularly strong.

The author does provide insight into the ways that Americans have, historically, evaluated the legitimacy of various responses to immigration. Opposition to immigration is considered legitimate if the claims are couched in terms of national sovereignty, tapping into the widely held belief that the rights and interests of a nation's citizens supersede those of noncitizens. An argument that increased immigration imposes costs or hardships on native-born citizens, then, is considered to be legitimate. Opposition to immigration that appeals primarily to alleged racial inferiorities, on the other hand, is considered illegitimate and hence nativistic. Even those who advocate expanded immigration must defer to national sovereignty, as they depict immigration as something that benefits, rather than harms, the interests of the nation and its citizens.

Fry's discussion of the conditions associated with heightened nativist activity is largely descriptive, rather than explanatory, and it suffers at times from a tendency to conflate the concept of nativism with its alleged causes. The author breaks little new ground in this section as he relies heavily on secondary sources to describe ebbs and flows of nativist activity across hundreds of years of American history.

In the third section of the book Fry draws upon his in-depth interviews with full-time activists and policymakers who are currently involved in immigration reform in the U.S. to describe how these opinion leaders make their cases for or against expanded immigration. The views expressed by Fry's interviewees may not be representative of the views held by ordinary, nonprofessional immigration opponents or advocates. Fry also gives little consideration to the causes of varying opinions on immigration. Nevertheless, the author effectively conveys the arguments of those who are most actively involved in immigration reform.

The issue of immigration reform, as Fry demonstrates, can make for some strange political bedfellows. Immigration opponents, or "restrictionists," fall into two primary ideological camps. One group characterizes increased immigration as a threat to the environment, arguing that continued population growth will deplete the nation's natural resources. The other group views immigration more as a threat to American culture and values than as a source of environmental devastation. Proponents of immigration, or "expansionists," include those who see...