The Immigration Backlash and the New Policy Debate

Who is Watching America's Door?          Roberto Suro is deputy national editor of the Washington Post and author of the Twentieth Century Fund paper   Back to NCPA Debate Home Page

Watching America's Door: The Immigration Backlash and the New Policy Debate by Roberto Suro The following is the foreward to Robert Suro's 80-page report and was copied from The Century Foundation's web site (click here for the source page). For more information on this 1996 report and for ordering information, click here.   There are, perhaps, only a handful of truly special qualities that define the American experiment. One can imagine a spirited argument among scholars about what these qualities might be &emdash; with one exception. It is impossible to imagine a serious discussion of the subject that does not begin with the premise that our history is special because we are a nation of immigrants. Moreover, at every stage of its development, the United States has embraced more diversity in terms of immigration than has any other place on earth. As the flow of people from one region has dried up or been cut off, a new area has opened up. Sometimes there have been gaps, often there has been confusion about what was actually going on, but one thing has remained consistent: at most stages in our history the vast bulk of immigration has been from a few locations. Whenever immigration has been substantial &emdash; regardless of where the immigrants came from or where they congregated &emdash; the political reaction has been predictable. "Newcomers don't fit." "They detract from the quality of life." "They cost money and they will ultimately change the nation in undesirable ways." The fact that this has never turned out to be true has never stopped the issue from becoming part of the political debate of the moment. People live in the here and now, and the arrival of large numbers of immigrants means changes that take place almost as soon as the first waves of a given immigration appear on our shores. Nothing, of course, has quite the immediacy of campaigns and elections. A few weeks can change everything. A few years normally alters the balance of political forces completely. In this context, immigration is bound to be a hot-button issue. Anywhere immigrants arrive in any numbers, the immigration issue becomes a part of the political agenda. And that is certainly the case in several parts of the United States today, most obviously in the nation's largest state, California. In 1994, in fact, 59 percent of California voters approved Proposition 187, which aims at prohibiting illegal immigrants from receiving social or welfare services, bans them from public schools and universities, and prevents them from receiving publicly funded health care except in emergencies. Although federal and state restraining orders and ongoing legal challenges have prevented Proposition 187 from being enacted, the vote provides a stark indication of the depth of anti-immigrant sentiment in California. In this context, the Twentieth Century Fund asked Roberto Suro, deputy national editor of the Washington Post, to revisit his 1995 Fund paper, Remembering the American Dream, and report on recent trends in immigration and on the contemporary political debate about how to handle them. In that earlier work, Suro emphasized the great recent surge in immigration, which reached levels not seen since the turn of the century. He reflected upon the widespread uncertainty about what to make of the latest immigrants: Will the benefits of having them here outweigh the costs? Will they assimilate and become more like "us"? Does their presence aid or hurt in economic competition, a process now perceived by most citizens as a dog-eat-dog international struggle? In this volume, Suro updates and elaborates on the information he presented about contemporary immigration in Remembering the American Dream. In addition, he carefully examines the political reactions at the grass-roots level to immigration. But his policy discussion is even broader in scope. He argues that the sweeping immigration bills of the past, designed to guide U.S. policy for decades at a time, have proven woefully ineffective and calls for a new national immigration policy &emdash; one that is more responsive. Washington should be prepared to adjust its priorities regularly, and shift resources in response to new needs at home and changes in the immigration flow from abroad. The question is not one of keeping people out, but rather shaping the flow so it meets our needs in a changing global economy. Over the years, the Twentieth Century Fund has published a number of works that deal with immigration, including Thomas Muller's Immigrants and the American City, Alan Dowty's Closed Borders, and Gil Loescher's Beyond Charity. At present, Saskia Sassen is writing a book for the Fund exploring immigration and the world economy. With this monograph, Suro expands and deepens his discussion and our understanding of the continuing debate about large-scale immigration in United States. On behalf of the Trustees of the Twentieth Century Fund, I thank him for this contribution. Richard C. Leone, President The Twentieth Century Fund July 1996 A Twentieth Century Fund Report 80 pages, 0-87078-383-1, $9.95, paper Publisher: The Twentieth Century Fund Press Click here for more information on this book and for ordering information.