Debates on U.S. Immigration

This issues-based reference work (available in both print and electronic formats) shines a spotlight on immigration policy in the United States. The U.S. is a nation of immigrants. Yet while the lofty words enshrined with the Statue of Liberty stand as a source of national pride, the rhetoric and politics surrounding immigration policy all-too-often have proven far less lofty. In reality, the apparently open invitation of Lady Liberty seldom has been without restriction. Throughout our history, impassioned debates about the appropriate scope and nature of such restriction have emerged and mushroomed, among politicians, among scholars of public policy, among the general public. In light of the need to keep students, researchers, and other interested readers informed and up-to-date on status of U.S. immigration policy, this volume uses introductory essays followed by point/counterpoint articles to explore prominent and perennially important debates, providing readers with views on multiple sides of this complex issue. While there are some brief works looking at debates on immigration, as well as some general A-to-Z encyclopedias, we offer more in-depth coverage of a much wider range of themes and issues, thus providing the only fully comprehensive point/counterpoint handbook tackling the issues that political science, history, and sociology majors are asked to explore and to write about as students and that they will grapple with later as policy makers and citizens.

Features & Benefits:

• The volume is divided into three sections, each with its own Section Editor: Labor & Economic Debates (Judith Gans), Social & Cultural Debates (Judith Gans), and Political & Legal Debates (Daniel Tichenor).
• Sections open with a Preface by the Section Editor to introduce the broad theme at hand and provide historical underpinnings.
• Each section holds 12 chapters addressing varied aspects of the broad theme of the section.
• Chapters open with an objective, lead-in piece (or "headnote") followed by a point article and a counterpoint article.
• All pieces (headnote, point article, counterpoint article) are signed.
• For each chapter, students are referred to further readings, data sources, and other resources as a jumping-off spot for further research and more in-depth exploration.
• Finally, volume concludes with a comprehensive index, and the electronic version includes search-and-browse features, as well as the ability to link to further readings cited within chapters should they be available to the library in electronic format.

Judith Gans manages the immigration policy program at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona. Her areas of expertise include immigration and globalization, U.S. immigration policy, economics, and trade. The focus of her work is to provide conceptual frameworks for understanding the complexities of U.S. immigration policy rather than to advocate a particular policy position. She has written extensively on immigration including Immigrants in Arizona: Fiscal and Economic Impacts and a Primer on U.S. Immigration in a Global Economy. She has a BA degree in economics from Stanford University, an MBA from UCLA’s Graduate School of Management, and a master’s in public administration from Harvard University. She has two grown children, was raised in Mexico and Brazil, and is fluent in Portuguese.

Elaine M. Replogle teaches in the Sociology Department at the University of Oregon. Her research and publications have focused on the sociology of health and medicine, social inequality, and immigrant and second-generation social adjustment. She is author of Head Start as a Family Support Program: Renewing a Community Ethic (Harvard Family Research Project). She is currently working on a book on the intersection of mental health and intergenerational conflict among second-generation South Asian Americans (her dissertation research). Her work on mob violence toward women, adolescent health, patterns in smoking trajectories among black and white youth, and Head Start, has appeared in publications such as Sociological Forum, Evaluation Review, Children Today, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, and the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Aging.

Daniel J. Tichenor is the Philip H. Knight Professor of Political Science and director of the Politics and Policy Program at the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics at the University of Oregon. He has published extensively on immigration politics and policy, the American presidency, civil liberties, interest groups, social movements, political parties, and U.S. political history. He is the author of Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America, which won the American Political Science Association’s Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book in American national policy. Other works include The Politics of International Migration and A History of the U.S. Political System, a three-volume set examining the development of American political thought, institutions, behavior, and public policy. He has been a Faculty Scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University, Research Fellow in Governmental Studies at the Brookings Institution, Abba P. Schwartz Fellow in Immigration and Refugee Policy at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Research Scholar at the Eagleton Institute of Politics, a visiting scholar at Leipzig University, and a faculty associate at Princeton’s Center for Migration and Development and the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego.