The Moral Community and Immigration

In “Which American Dream Do You Mean?” David Stoll never justified his assumption that Guatemalans who want to immigrate to America have a moral claim on our attention. The “conversation” he describes really involves only Americans as only they are held responsible for immigration. Some advocates justify immigration on the basis of rights while others appeal to compassion, but both assign all responsibility to rich Americans and none to the sending societies. A huge moral asymmetry separates the West, which is assumed capable of achieving civic values from the non-West, which is not. Americans hunger for a more candid conversation about how to distribute the responsibility for immigration. That is essential to legitimizing immigration policy and preserving the civic character of American society.     

The Many Facets of Effective Immigration Reform

The United States needs a new immigration policy that is based less on wishful thinking and more on realism. Spending vast sums of money trying to enforce arbitrary numerical limits on immigration that bear no relationship to economic reality is a fool’s errand. We need flexible limits on immigration that rise and fall with U.S. labor demand, coupled with strict enforcement of tough wage and labor laws that protect all workers, regardless of where they were born. We need to respect the natural human desire for family reunification, while recognizing that even family-based immigrants are unlikely to come here if jobs are not available. And we need to create a pathway to legal status for unauthorized immigrants who are already here so that they can no longer be exploited by unscrupulous employers who hang the threat of deportation over their heads.     

The Politics of Immigration and Public Health

The Conservative party's recent proposal to introduce compulsory medical examinations for immigrants should it win the upcoming election marks a departure in the politics of immigration and public health. For many years, the public health impact of immigration was kept out of party competition and successive governments pursued a voluntaristic approach to health checks. In this article, I outline the political history of immigration and public health, and consider the implications of attempts to raise the subject onto the public agenda. I argue that recent developments militate against a calm and balanced approach to the genuine public health concerns associated with immigration, which threatens not only to stigmatise immigrants and stoke anti-immigrant popular opinion, but also prevent the development of effective policies. In particular, the introduction of compulsory examinations may create perverse incentives for migrants to circumvent legal channels and thereby actually increase public health risks.     

Partisan Influence on Immigration: The Case of Norway

Do governments decide the size of immigration? This article analyses partisan impact on refugee immigration to Norway. The first part maps party positions on refugee immigration and demonstrates that the views of Norwegian parties are far from consensual. The second part tests whether the number of refugees admitted has been affected by changes of government by way of a panel analysis covering the period 1985–2005 and 143 sending countries. Controlling for other determinants of immigration both in receiving and sending countries, the analysis suggests that that the number of refugees admitted to Norway has been significantly lower during Conservative rule. Among parties with government experience, the Conservative Party also has adopted the most restrictive stand in its manifestoes. No significant differences between Labour Party and centre governments were found, even though the centre parties express more liberal preferences.     

Immigration Benefits America

David Stoll suggests that because contemporary immigrants are non-European, uneducated, poor, and uninterested in joining the moral community of American society, their presence threatens national unity, obscures citizens’ obligations to one another and will shortly change the US into a minority–majority society. Drawing from historical accounts and statistical evidence, this article asserts that immigrants provide American society with social, economic and demographic benefits. Moreover, while pundits have long predicted that immigrants with national origins distinct from those of natives will transform American life to its detriment, the record reveals the US has been able to incorporate diverse nationalities to the benefit of immigrants and the native-born alike.

Immigration after 1992

"This paper outlines European trends in immigration and national policy regimes, focusing in particular on the social rights of established immigrants; part three looks at recent European transnational measures--mostly inspired by the 1992 initiative. Finally some of the implications of 1992 for immigrants in Europe are explored."     

The Limits of Deliberation: Institutions and American Immigration Policy

I take issue with the Brookings-Duke Immigration Policy Roundtable’s assertion that the mode of deliberation that facilitated the formulation of its report might serve as a model for bridging deep disagreements on immigration policy among politicians. I point out that the institutional dynamics that have shaped immigration politics and policy-making in the United States have tended toward horse trading and desperate last minute deals rather than reasoned compromises. Whereas the Roundtable suggests that its sensible recommendations might hold the key to shaping a politically viable comprehensive reform package, I maintain that the way forward may lie in abandoning efforts at comprehensive reform and focusing instead on piecemeal changes to discreet aspects of the immigration system.     

The Ideological Effects of Framing Threat on Immigration and Civil Liberties

Assuming that migration threat is multi-dimensional, this article seeks to investigate how various types of threats associated with immigration affect attitudes towards immigration and civil liberties. Through experimentation, the study unpacks the ??securitization of migration?? discourse by disaggregating the nature of immigration threat, and its impact on policy positions and ideological patterns at the individual level. Based on framing and attitudinal analysis, we argue that physical security in distinction from cultural insecurity is enough to generate important ideological variations stemming from strategic input (such as framing and issue-linkage). We expect then that as immigration shifts from a cultural to a physical threat, immigration issues may become more politically salient but less politicized and subject to consensus. Interestingly, however, the findings reveal that the effects of threat framing are not ubiquitous, and may be conditional upon ideology. Liberals were much more susceptible to the frames than were conservatives. Potential explanations for the ideological effects of framing, as well as their implications, are explored.