The American Kaleidoscope: Race, Ethnicity, and the Civic Culture

Chapter Twenty-Five Questions of Membership: Who Are the Outsiders?

Chapter Twenty-Five QUESTIONS OF MEMBERSHIP Who Are the Outsiders? } ; . L countries that accept immigration decide the degree to which newcomers are accorded membership in the polity. After the Second World War, U.S. barriers that had been set earlier against Asians and Latinos (compared to Europeans) were substantially removed, making the American approach to immigration and naturalization increasingly more uniform. The tendency to reduce the differences in the nature of the welcome accorded different kinds of newcomers was matched by a tendency to reduce differences in rights and privileges between naturalized and native-born citizens, between citizens and permanent -resident aliens, and, to some extent, between illegal aliens and resident aliens. The 1986 decision of Congress to legalize what turned out to be three million undocumented aliens was so at variance with the past experience ofthe aliens that when the Immigration and Naturalization Service began a vigorous campaign in 1987 to reach those eligible for legalization, it was difficult for many ofthem to believe that they could apply without risking apprehension and deportation. To overcome those fears, the INS used Mexican street bands and free food and drinks to encourage illegal aliens to come to special mobile vans for legalization applications. INS regional offices held amnesty fairs, town meetings, and open houses, sponsored booths and floats at ethnic festivals, and enlisted the Boy Scouts to reach out to eligible aliens. One legalization officer wrote a song, "Amnestia," to be played on Spanish-language radio stations along the Rio Grande, and in the southern region, aliens were targeted with amnesty flyers stuffed with 580,000 packages of tortillas.l The INS's approach to legalization signified the acceptance by Congress of the 1981 recommendations of the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy that the front door to lawful immigration should be kept open even as the government tried to close the back door to illegal aliens in the future by penalizing employers who knowingly and willfully hired them. Although much of the media attention to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 centered on the employer sanctions provision to deter illegal migration, several other measures in the act, especially those concerning the legalization of illegal aliens, were 474 WHO ARE THE OUTSIDERS? 475 strongly pro-immigration. In addition to its comprehensive legalization program (1.77 million applicants), Congress also passed a speciallegalization program for illegal aliens who had worked in agriculture for ninety days in the previous year and for another group who could persuade the INS that they had worked·for ninety days in three successive previous years (1.3 million additional applicants). These special agricultural workers represented a concession to the old immigration tradition of the Southwest and California, in which low-cost workers were supplied to employers with the help of the government. But the program also signaled a fundamental departure from that tradition by specifying that the workers would not be confined to agriculture or to any section ofthe country and that they could become eligible for permanent residency. In addition to these major increases in lawful immigration, Congress in 1986 took other steps to open the front door: it increased the immigration ceilings for colonies and dependencies from 500 to 6,000; adjusted the status ofnearly 100,000 special entrants who came from Cuba and Haiti in the early 1980s to that ofpermanent resident alien; and added 5,000 immigrants annually for two years to be chosen from nationals of thirty-six countries with low rates of immigration attributed to the 1965 amendments' emphasis on family reunification. The last provision was extended to bring 15,000 additional immigrants in 1989 and in 1990; and in 1988, Congress increased immigration once more by providing 10,000 additional visas annually for 1990 and 1991 for would-be immigrants from 162 countries to be chosen by lottery. The results of the select commission's recommendations in 1981 were directly the opposite of those made by the Dillingham Commission (1907-1911). Then, the country had been alerted to the alleged dangers of large-scale immigration, with a special warning against those who came from eastern and southern Europe. Now, Congress accepted the select commission's recommendation that immigration at somewhat higher levels than the already post-Second World War high was good for the nation as long as it was legal; in 1990, a new law was enacted that would bring at least seven million immigrants to the United States in the 1990s. u.s. Immigration Polity...