The Rebirth Of American Immigration Analysis

Despite of the decreased advantage of naturalization, a bad economic situation, and public disgust against immigrants, in the era after the Civil Rights Movement, the wave of immigration did not stop. In this chapter, “The Rebirth of American Immigration,” Tichenor argues how each components of immigration, illegal entries, legal immigrants, and refugees were affected by the new situation.
The Hart-Celler Act in 1965 prepared 10,000 visas per year for asylum seekers to prevent the president from using its executive order to let them in. However, the author claims that in the following decades, presidents of the United States took advantage of their authorities to accept political asylum in the context of human rights and propaganda against
By the early 1970s, prominent Mexican American organizations regarded illegal immigrants as the hindrance for assimilation into the United States, while labor unions considered them as a threat for the job. This situation, the author claims, changes because of the newly formed Mexican American political groups in Washington. Heavily influenced by the Civil Rights Movement, they saw employer sanctions as threat which could be the way to discriminate Mexican and Hispanic in the United States, and represented all the Mexican and Hispanic people regardless of the legal status. Other Mexican and Hispanic political organizations, both new and old ones, adopted the policy which embraces the right of illegal immigrants and opposes the sanctions. On the other hand, Tichenor discuss, African American rights group had always been against immigrants, regarding them as the source of cheap labor which deprives jobs of poor African American, and those organizations agreed with the sanctions too. While the author makes sure that the conflict actually existed, he states that the two groups avoided the obvious conflict. Tichenor continues that they rather came to an agreement with the problems about citizenship, border patrol, and guest worker programs, and later African American leaders even opposed to the sanctions. Lastly, the
However, he claims that the environmentalist and population-control supporters emerged as the new restrictionists. For example, the author mentions the report by the Rockefeller commission, which supports the employer sanctions in the context of population control. Then, Tichenor explains that the environmentalism and population control are in fact the alternative of old restrictionist idea, by citing John Tanton, who states that the idea of environment conservation comes from the Western Civilization. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, founded by Tanton, failed in making an ally with African American leaders, but supported to pass further restriction on immigration. The author then elaborates on the political and social situation of the era. Although the public overall were in favor of anti-immigration policy because of increasing immigrants from the Third World and the bad economic situation, the Democrats did not want to touch the issue, since it could cause