Description: "This book is a ... study of how restrictionists and anti-restrictionists alike have influenced the process of immigration reform since the rise of a gate-keeping nation at the end of the nineteenth century. It provides a single ... story about how the dynamics of immigration reform have made the acceptance of restriction possible. Weaving together political, social, policy, and transnational history, the book examines how Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates in the United States mobilized against restrictive immigration laws from 1882 to 1965 within a transnational framework"--
Brief description: Maddalena Marinari is associate professor of history at Gustavus Adolphus College and coeditor of A Nation of Immigrants Reconsidered: U.S. Society in An Age of Restriction, 1924-1965.
Review Quotes:
"This timely study retraces the fraught political history of American immigration policy with emphasis on the work of Italian and Jewish pro-immigration lobbyists who challenged congressional restrictionists. Marinari . . . emphasizes debates among pro-immigration activists concerning strategy, race, and whether to compromise on principles. . . . A well-researched, richly detailed book that provides valuable background concerning the immigration issues of the present."--CHOICE