Lobbying for inclusion : rights politics and the making of immigration policy

In every decade since passage of the Hart Cellar Act of 1965, Congress has faced conflicting pressures: to restrict legal immigration and to provide employers with unregulated access to migrant labor. Lobbying for Inclusion shows that in these debates immigrant rights groups advocated a surprisingly moderate course of action: expansionism was tempered by a politics of inclusion. Rights advocates supported generous family unification policies, for example, but they opposed proposals that would admit large numbers of guest workers without providing a clear path to citizenship. As leaders of pro-immigrant coalitions, Latino and Asian American rights advocates were highly effective in influencing immigration lawmakers even before their constituencies gained political clout in the voting booth. Success depended on casting rights demands in universalistic terms, while leveraging their standing as representatives of growing minority populations. The 1965 passage of immigration reform, which removed racial quotas, generated a mass immigration to the United States from Latin America and Asia. This wave of immigration began in the immediate aftermath of the civil rights era and it led to the formation of a new set of ethnic advocacy groups in American politics