Looking for immigration law

Abstract

Culling the Masses by Professors David Scott FitzGerald and David Cook-Martín is an impressive work that makes important scholarly contributions. It analyses the trend in the USA, Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina away from explicit racial discrimination in immigration laws. One layer of the book's argument examines how ‘vertical’ (domestic) and ‘horizontal’ (external) forces led these countries to abandon explicit racism. In another layer, the book argues that this anti-racist turn was not a product of democracy. Instead, racist immigration laws were often the product of democratic influences and institutions. The nuanced examination of external influences on national immigration laws in Culling the Masses is an invaluable contribution. However, its inconsistent definition of ‘immigration law’ across countries leaves incomplete both its assessment of racism in the present-day immigration laws, and in turn, its assessment of the relationship between democracy and racism.

Keywords:

• immigration
• racism
• discrimination
• democracy
• citizenship
• ethnicity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart–Celler Act), Pub. L. No. 89–236, 79 Stat. 911; Act of May 26, 1924, ch. 190, 43 Stat. 153.

2. See Civil Rights Act of 1964, Pub. L. No. 88–352, 78 Stat. 241; Voting Rights Act of 1965, Pub. L. No. 89–110, 79 Stat. 437.

3. See Act of June 27, 1952, Pub. L. No. 82–414, ch. 477, § 311, 66 Stat. 163, 239.

4. See Act of June 27, 1952, Pub. L. No. 82–414, ch. 477, § 311, 66 Stat. 163, 239.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hiroshi Motomura

HIROSHI MOTOMURA is Susan Westerberg Prager Professor of Law at the School of Law, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).