xviii Introduction immigrants from social and welfare services to militarizing the border or amending the constitution to deny birthright citizenship to persons born in the United States of parents who are in the country illegally, or to ban entire groups on the basis of their religious affi liation. Calls for the imple- mentation of “extreme vetting” are thinly disguised attempts to legally ban Muslims. What is consistent throughout the six eras is that each shift is associated with the advocacy of some new solution to a perceived immi- gration problem. The long-term view of immigration history demonstrates that through- out, four main elements fi gure prominently in the formulation of immi- gration policy: (1) national security/foreign policy (2) economics, (3) racism, and (4) a sense of populist nationalism or national identity. Sometimes two or more of these elements work in harmony, reinforcing each other. At other times they work in confl ict with one another, and the contending forces seek to infl uence immigration policy by stressing dif- ferent elements. But in all cases, these four elements are central to under- standing U.S. immigration policy. Throughout American history, immigration policy advocates form and maintain stable coalitions of interest groups generally advocating more or less unrestricted immigration versus a coalition of groups advocating the need for restrictionist policy. Time and again there is a coalition of busi- ness and ethno-religious associations favoring immigration doing battle with labor, “patriotic,” or social conservative groups advocating restric- tions to “take back” the country from the infl uence of newcomers whom they deem to be undesirable. Time and again these coalitions lobby and work with and through fairly consistently stable factions in the Congress, which sometimes establish an informal “caucus” of legislators that often may be bipartisan in membership, but whose members share a common interest important to their respective electoral districts. U.S. Immigration Policy, Ethnicity, and Religion in American History uses historical analysis to focus on those commonalities and themes evident in the story of U.S. immigration policy making from 1820 to the present, highlighting particularly ethno-religious-related interest groups advocat- ing or opposing change at any given time, and the coalition of congres- sional political party or congressional caucus forces that they marshal in seeking to implement or to oppose a policy shift. Interest groups are treated herein as organized bodies of individuals who share some common goals and who try to infl uence public policy to better pursue those goals. Group theory suggests public policy is the product of the struggle among groups. It views policy as “the equilibrium reached in this [group] struggle at any given moment, and it represents a
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