Week 12: Chapter Seventeen (2 of 2) & Very Short Introduction (VSI) Reading Questions

For this week, please make a serious effort to come up with a final project/question that will demonstrate (a) your synthesis of the material we have covered and (b) its application to current issues of immigration and or immigration policy. We will pool everyone's input and come up with something great.

For Monday's class, please read Chapter Seventeen from page 422 to 451, and prepare written answers to the questions below.

This is the last of the Daniels book, and it is interesting to see what was going on just fifteen years ago, and what he predicted for the future. Was he right? After this we will focus on current issues and make our own predictions about the future of immigration.

• Why was there so much anti-immigrant rhetoric in the IRCA and the sixteen statutes affecting immigration passed during the 1990s? Were they really getting "tough"?
• Did Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton reduce immigration?
• What replaced the concern about communists?
• Why was the money thrown at the INS during the 1990s largely wasted?
• What has been the corollary of increased border security?
• Do people caught at the border usually get deported?
• What is the INS record on prisoners?
• Why did naturalization increase so much in the 1990s? How much did it cost?
• What did the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform report (aka the Jordan report) not point out as the chief culprit in the illegal immigration dilemma?
• Who supported California Proposition 187? Was it effective? Why was George W. Bush (then the governor of Texas) against it?
• Layout the problems with the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the 1998 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.
• What did Pope John Paul II say about immigration?
• How have Germany and Japan dealt with immigration in the past? What do those countries and many other developed countries have to worry about for the future of their economies?
• Why did organized labor completely reverse its policies on immigration?

For Wednesday's class, please read the Introduction and Chapter 1 of American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction, and prepare written answers to the following questions:

• What binds the American people together if not a common genealogy? (1)
• What are the three great waves of immigration that reconfigured the population? (2)
• For what three reasons may things be different for recent immigrants? (3)
• What do "nativists" and "pluralists" argue about? (4)
• What is the question ultimately? (5) And what is the answer many cannot accept? (6)
• What are the three parts of the book? (12)
• Define "nativism" (15); are there legitimate reasons for restricting immigration? (16)
• What was the principal rationale for a liberal immigration policy for first 150 years of European presence in North America? (18)
• What are the provisions of the Naturalization Law of 1795 and the 14th Amendment? (19)
• What gave rise to reactive nativist policies in the mid-1800s?
• Why 21 year for naturalization? (22)
• Who was barred from entry by legislation passed between 1864 and 1917? (23)

For Friday's class, please read Chapter 2 of American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction, and prepare written answers to the following questions:

• What makes it clear that in post-Gold Rush California, arguments against immigration were racist? (27)
• Which Chinese were barred from immigration by the Chinese Exclusion Act and which were not? (28)
• How did Angel Island differ from Ellis Island? (29)
• What did the 1891 Immigration Act do, and what inspired it? (30)
• Why were Japanese immigrants seen as a threat? What action was taken in 1913? (31)
• Who was White? (32)
• What is the principle of derivative citizenship? (34)
• What was different about immigrants after the 1890s? (35-36)
• What were the three main sources calling for greater immigration restriction after 1890? (37-38)
• What did Eugenicists advocate? (39)
• What were the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 based on? (42-43)
• What were other countries doing? (44)