Playing the Trump Card: The Enduring Legacy of Racism in Immigration Law

Playing the Trump Card: The Enduring Legacy of Racism in Immigration Law grew out of a 2011 European conference on "The ‘others' in Europe and Beyond" and will eventually be published in revised form in a book featuring papers from the conference.  

Looking at the historical experience on major immigrant communities in the U.S, including the Irish, Jews, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, and Mexicans, the article finds that from the earliest days of the republic, "racism and xenophobia have been a driving force behind immigration law in the United States...In every generation of American immigration, the predominant immigrant group has been the victim of discrimination and oppression." The authors call attention to the "paradox" of a nation desperately needing successive groups of immigrants for their labor but denying them the welcome they deserve. The article also attempts to define the meaning of the terms assimilation (applicable, they suggest, to European immigrant groups), integration (applicable to Chinese and Japanese), and racialized non-white others - a category with shifting boundaries, which may or may not encompass Mexican immigrants and their descendants in the future. (Abstract by Prof. Nick Montalto)

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