The Walls Within - (Politics and Society in Modern America) by Sarah R Coleman

About the Book

"In 1965, the Hart-Celler Act abolished the national origins quotas of the 1920s that had severly limited immigration to American from everywhere but Western Europe. The result was mass immigration from Latin America, Asia, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. The wave of immigration and the restrictionism it produced led to a bitter political struggle over immigrants' rights that continues to this day. This book is a history of the post-1965 political battles between advocates of expansive admissions policies, rights, and benefits for immigrants and their anti-immigration, or restrictionist, opponents. Coleman argues that as immigration rendered what had once been seen as hard boundaries of the physical nation-state into something more porous, the rights of immigrations became crucial to immigration control. Restrictionists sought to limit immigrants' access to the American welfare state by arguing that they were a burden to the state and taking jobs from working- and middle-class Americans. However, the legacies of the civil rights movement, a growing commitment to deregulation, unusual political alliances, and institutional structures provided significant barriers to anti-immigration efforts. By the end of Reagan's presidency, restrictionists efforts to reverse the flow of immigration rights failed at the national level. In the 1990s, however, with national policy-making gridlocked, restrictionists focused their efforts on the state level. States acquired new powers in driving immigration policy and curtailed the expanded notion of alienage rights that had been forged over the previous decades. Coleman provides a new way of understanding the political history of immigration, looking not at borders and admissions policy but at the broad, internal battles over domestic policy that resulted from immigration. The author draws on a wealth of new sources from the Carter, Reagan, and Clinton administrations as well as from immigration and civil rights organizations. This book reveals that the current wave of anti-immigration sentiment seen in the electoral success of Donald Trump is not a recent phenomenon but has deep roots in the post-1965 immigration battles"--

Book Synopsis

A history of the battles over US immigrants' rights since 1965--and how these conflicts reshaped access to education, employment, civil liberties, and more

The 1965 Hart-Celler Act transformed the American immigration system by abolishing national quotas in favor of a seemingly egalitarian approach. But subsequent demographic shifts resulted in a backlash over the social contract and the rights of citizens versus noncitizens. In The Walls Within, Sarah Coleman explores those political clashes, focusing not on attempts to stop immigration at the border, but on efforts to limit immigrants' rights within the United States through domestic policy. Drawing on new materials from the Carter, Reagan, and Clinton administrations, and immigration and civil rights organizations, Coleman exposes how the politics of immigration control has undermined the idea of citizenship for all.

Coleman shows that immigration politics was not just about building or tearing down walls, but about employer sanctions, access to schools, welfare, and the role of local authorities in implementing policies. In the years after 1965, a rising restrictionist movement sought to marginalize immigrants in realms like public education and the labor market. Yet throughout the 1970s and 1980s, restrictionists faced countervailing forces committed to an expansive notion of immigrants' rights. In the 1990s, with national politics gridlocked, anti-immigrant groups turned to statehouses to enact their agenda. Achieving strength at the local level, conservatives supporting immigration restriction actually acquired more influence under the Clinton presidency than even during the so-called Reagan revolution, resulting in dire consequences for millions of immigrants.

Revealing the roots behind much of today's nativist sentiment, The Walls Within examines debates about who is entitled to the American dream, and how such dreams can be subverted for those already calling the country home.

Review Quotes

"Coleman provides valuable historical perspective on how the politics of immigration control has resulted in dire consequences for millions of immigrants and transformed the US into a country in which the benefits of citizenship are denied to a significant population living legally within its borders. . . . Recommended."-- "Choice Reviews"

"Immigrants' struggles to live and flourish in the United States aren't only about the border, Sarah Coleman demonstrates in this comprehensive examination of immigration politics since 1965."---Elizabeth Palmer, The Christian Century

"The complex thicket of political divisions over immigration policy, whose origins in the late twentieth century Coleman so ably analyzes, remain largely intact. For those eager to advance the cause of immigrant rights, or for anyone who wants to understand the historical roots of the current political landscape, The Walls Within should be required reading."---Ruth Milkman, Dissent

"The virtue of Coleman's book is its thick descriptive account of the to-and-fro struggle between liberals and conservatives and her appreciation of the variety of contingent realities that made outcomes difficult to predict."---Peter Kivisto, Ethnic and Racial Studies

"Winner of the Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize, Western Association of Women Historians"

"Winner of the Theodore Saloutos Book Award, Immigration and Ethnic History Society"

About the Author

Sarah R. Coleman is assistant professor of history at Texas State University. Twitter @sarahrcoleman6