Includes statistical tables and graphs.

Presents twenty-one essays exploring contemporary immigration and its impact on politics in the US and Europe.

This book offers a broad interdisciplinary approach to the changes in the U.S. immigration debate before and after 9/11. A nation’s reaction to foreigners has as much to do with sociology as it does with political science, economics and psychology. Without drawing on this knowledge, our understanding of the immigration debate remains mundane, partial, and imperfect. Therefore, our story accounts for multiple factors, including culture and politics, power, organizations, social psychological processes, and political change. Examining this relationship in the contemporary context requires a lengthy voyage across academic disciplines, a synthesis of seemingly contradictory assumptions, and a grasp of research traditions so vast and confusing that an accurate rendering may seem implausible. And yet, to tell the story of the immigration debate in the age of terrorism, polarization, and Trump in any other way is to tell it in part. The immigration debate in the United States has always been about openness. Two questions in particular—how open should the door be and what type of immigrant should walk through it—have characterized policy disputes for well over a century. In the current debate, expansionists want to see more legal immigrants in the U.S. and greater tolerance, if not respect, for immigrants. Restrictionists favor lower levels of immigration, stronger borders, and tighter law enforcement measures to stop the stream of ‘illegal’ migration and alleged crime. The aim of this book is to describe how these opposing views materialized in the news media, political rhetoric, and, ultimately, in policy. Much of our argument rests on the idea that history matters, that the dominant narrative about immigration is in constant flux, and that the ‘winner’ of the immigration debate is determined by a vector of contextual elements: the joint impact of current events, enduring traditions, and political-economic forces. Our approach to the immigration debate avoids deterministic claims and grand-scale projections. Although we argue with conviction that a climate of fear played an important role in shaping the debate, the fear itself and its effects on social attitudes and public policy were neither inevitable nor necessarily long lasting.

Do states have the right to prevent potential immigrants from crossing their borders, or should people have the freedom to migrate and settle wherever they wish? Christopher Heath Wellman and Phillip Cole develop and defend opposing answers to this timely and important question. Appealing to the right to freedom of association, Wellman contends that legitimate states have broad discretion to exclude potential immigrants, even those who desperately seek to enter. Against this, Cole argues that the commitment to the moral equality of all human beings - which legitimate states can be expected to hold - means national borders must be open: equal respect requires equal access, both to territory and membership; and that the idea of open borders is less radical than it seems when we consider how many territorial and community boundaries have this open nature. In addition to engaging with each other's arguments, Wellman and Cole address a range of central questions and prominent positions on this topic. The authors therefore provide a critical overview of the major contributions to the ethics of migration, as well as developing original, provocative positions of their own.

This issues-based reference work (available in both print and electronic formats) shines a spotlight on immigration policy in the United States. The U.S. is a nation of immigrants. Yet while the lofty words enshrined with the Statue of Liberty stand as a source of national pride, the rhetoric and politics surrounding immigration policy all-too-often have proven far less lofty. In reality, the apparently open invitation of Lady Liberty seldom has been without restriction. Throughout our history, impassioned debates about the appropriate scope and nature of such restriction have emerged and mushroomed, among politicians, among scholars of public policy, among the general public. In light of the need to keep students, researchers, and other interested readers informed and up-to-date on status of U.S. immigration policy, this volume uses introductory essays followed by point/counterpoint articles to explore prominent and perennially important debates, providing readers with views on multiple sides of this complex issue. While there are some brief works looking at debates on immigration, as well as some general A-to-Z encyclopedias, we offer more in-depth coverage of a much wider range of themes and issues, thus providing the only fully comprehensive point/counterpoint handbook tackling the issues that political science, history, and sociology majors are asked to explore and to write about as students and that they will grapple with later as policy makers and citizens. Features & Benefits: The volume is divided into three sections, each with its own Section Editor: Labor & Economic Debates (Judith Gans), Social & Cultural Debates (Judith Gans), and Political & Legal Debates (Daniel Tichenor). Sections open with a Preface by the Section Editor to introduce the broad theme at hand and provide historical underpinnings. Each section holds 12 chapters addressing varied aspects of the broad theme of the section. Chapters open with an objective, lead-in piece (or "headnote") followed by a point article and a counterpoint article. All pieces (headnote, point article, counterpoint article) are signed. For each chapter, students are referred to further readings, data sources, and other resources as a jumping-off spot for further research and more in-depth exploration. Finally, volume concludes with a comprehensive index, and the electronic version includes search-and-browse features, as well as the ability to link to further readings cited within chapters should they be available to the library in electronic format.

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, University of Paderborn (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: From melting pot to quilt: The immigration issue in the american studies-classroom, 33 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: As former U.S. President John F. Kennedy indicates in his posthumously published and recently re-edited essay A Nation of Immigrants, all citizens of the United States are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Therefore, according to the author, immigration policy should suit their needs in order to ensure the well-being of a country which depends on "the contribution of immigrants [...] in every aspect of [its] national life." However, with 37.4 million foreign-born residents in the United States in 2006, of which 9.1 million have obtained legal permanent resident status since 1997 (1,266,264 in 2006 only) and an estimated 11.6 million are unauthorized migrants, immigration has become a highly controversial subject. Fuelled by the 9/11 attacks and a growing xenophobia in the United States, protest against legal and illegal immigration is increasing, forcing politicians to take action. Although the U.S. economy depends largely on immigrant labour, immigration policy is becoming tougher than ever. This paper deals with the latest legal efforts to control illegal immigration: the 2005 Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act, House of Representatives Bill 4437 and the 2006 Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, Senate Bill 2611 and the reactions they caused among Americans. In order to illustrate the momentousness of the current debate about unauthorized migration, I will start with an overview of the most important facts and figures including a definition of the notion 'illegal/ unauthorized (im)migrant', the countries of origin and distribution of illegal immigrants and their impact on the U.S. economy. T