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Global norms, domestic institutions and the transformation of immigration policy in Canada and the US

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2010

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Abstract

This article examines the liberalisation of immigration policy in Canada and the US in the post-World War II era. I argue that shifting norms pertaining to race, ethnicity, and human rights cast longstanding discriminatory policies in Canada and the US in a highly critical light. Opponents of racially discriminatory immigration policies exploited this shift in normative contexts to highlight the disjuncture between Canada and the US’ postwar commitments to liberal norms and human rights, on the one hand, and their extant policy regimes, on the other. The resulting pressure set in motion comparable processes of policy stretching and unravelling, which culminated in policy shifting in the mid-1960s. Policy shifting was, however, subject to very different political dynamics. Whereas Canada's institutional configuration granted the executive branch and bureaucracy a high degree of autonomy that enabled experimentation, the greater openness of the American political system led to a more politicised process, marked by compromises and deal-making. Thus while changing norms prompted the liberalisation of immigration policies in both countries, differences in their domestic political contexts resulted in very different admissions regimes.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 2010, pp. 169 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2010

Introduction

From the latter part of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th, industrialised countries’ immigration and citizenship policies were crafted with an eye to satisfying employers’ demands for cheap, pliable labour while also restricting the entry and incorporation of outsiders deemed threatening to host societies. Drawing on widely held scientific theories and reacting to the agitation of anti-immigration forces, policymakers established barriers to particular peoples, based on their ranking in an elaborate hierarchy of races, nations, and cultures.Footnote 1 By the early part of the interwar period, a highly effective wall designed to keep out undesirable groups ringed the industrially advanced core states of Western Europe and North America.Footnote 2 Practices including summary deportation were commonplace, even in states with long-standing liberal traditions.

Immigration remains an extremely contentious issue. As in the past, immigrants are regarded by some as a threat: to jobs, security, social goods, and cultural homogeneity. Hence, immigration controls and complex regulations governing the acquisition of residency rights and citizenship continue to play an important role in delimiting boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. However, unlike the past, basing restrictions on criteria pertaining explicitly to race and ethnicity is no longer acceptable. More precisely, there has been a shift in what count as legitimate criteria of exclusion among contemporary liberal-democratic states in the post-World War II era.Footnote 3 Restrictions based on racial and ethnic categories are no longer deemed permissible and exclusions aimed at preserving national homogeneity are increasingly subject to scrutiny and contestation.Footnote 4

This article examines the postwar transformation of immigration policy-making in Canada and the US to better understand the forces shaping this important turn in liberal-democratic states’ practices. I argue that policy change in Canada and the US was driven by a similar confluence of factors. Shifting norms pertaining to race, ethnicity, and human rights cast longstanding discriminatory policies in Canada and the US in a highly critical light.Footnote 5 Opponents of racial discrimination in immigration policy took advantage of this new normative context to highlight the lack of fit between Canada and the US’ commitment to liberal norms and human rights, on the one hand, and their extant policy regimes, on the other. This pressure set in motion comparable processes of policy ‘stretching’ and ‘unravelling’, which culminated in policy ‘shifting’ in the mid-1960s.

Policy unravelling and shifting were, however, subject to different political dynamics. Canada's institutional configuration granted the executive branch and bureaucracy a high degree of autonomy; policymakers were thus able to experiment with new ideas, eventually arriving at an admissions system which eliminated racial discrimination while maintaining a degree of selectivity based on immigrants’ potential contributions to the Canadian economy. Conversely, the greater openness of the American political system and the pivotal role of Congressional committees led to a more politicised process. As a result, the executive branch's efforts to recast immigration policy in terms similar to Canada's failed. The end result was a patchwork policy that aimed at mollifying distinct and conflicting interests. Thus, while Canada and the US replaced discriminatory policies with more liberal alternatives, their respective solutions were distinctive.

I begin by outlining my argument regarding the interplay of shifting normative contexts and domestic politics, noting its relation to the extant literature on postwar immigration policymaking. I then apply the resulting analytical framework to better understand postwar immigration policymaking Canada and then the US. I conclude with a brief summary of the article's findings.

Argument and analytical framework

In a world of nation-states, international migration is a subversive process. While migrants are used to meet labour market requirements, keep production costs low, and serve related economic purposes, the satisfaction of these interests typically provokes negative reactions among actors with conflicting material interests and others who view immigration as a threat to communal stability and societal integration.Footnote 6 Efforts to address this clash of distinct interests and concerns drive the politics of membership. Immigration and citizenship policies thus represent answers to the basic questions provoked by the politics of membership, namely: Who are we? Who do we wish to become? Which individuals can help us reach that goal? ‘And most fundamentally: Which individuals constitute the ‘we’ who shall decide these questions?’Footnote 7

Normative contexts

States' responses to these questions reflect a complex array of factors, including regime type, traditions of nationhood, economic requirements, migration histories, and geography.Footnote 8 Limiting our attention to these domestic variables, however, obscures more encompassing material, political, and ideational structures that influence outcomes across states. As Aristide Zolberg has noted, domestic policymaking ‘takes place within the context provided by changing conditions in the world at large. Hence […] analysis must take into account the configuration of international conditions that generates changing opportunities and challenges in relation to […] immigration.’Footnote 9 Zolberg's efforts to explain the development of immigration policies in relation to changing ‘world systems’ represents one effort along these lines.Footnote 10

While Zolberg emphasises changes in global economic and geostrategic environments, Alan Cairns' work on the transformation of indigenous peoples’ politics in Canada highlights the importance of changing moral structures. In Citizens Plus, Cairns argues that the dramatic contrast in historic assumptions governing Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal relations in Canada cannot be understood without recognising the impact of changing international norms, and in particular the demise of European colonialism.Footnote 11 Cairns develops this insight by making a useful distinction between the global culture of the late 19th and early 20th century (‘Globalization I') and that of the period after World War II (‘Globalization II”’). Both periods were marked by globalisation and ‘diversity’, but differed significantly in their prevailing attitudes toward diversity:

Globalization I, the age of empire, encompassed not only an international system dominated by Europe but also the “colonial” treatment of indigenous minorities in the West, restrictive immigration policies, and a hierarchical view of cultures, religions, and races. Globalization II, the post-imperial era, supported the independence of colonies (leading to a multicultural and multiracial international state system), reinforced the aspirations of minority indigenous peoples in the West for enhanced self-governance, led to a relaxation of immigration criteria, fostered respect for cultural differences at home, and was normatively underpinned by an international human rights movement that stressed equality as the norm of social and political relationships. Globalization II was clearly a reaction to Globalization I. Empire and its demise were, respectively, the motor of change for the cluster of policies and assumptions linked to each globalization era (emphasis added).Footnote 12

My understanding of ‘normative contexts’ builds on these insights. Normative contexts represent complex configurations of global structures (for example, the international state system), processes (for example, colonialism), and beliefs (for example, scientific racism versus human rights) that serve as broadly encompassing conditions informing domestic policymaking. Shifts in normative contexts throw policies enacted under older conditions into doubt, as the grounds of legitimacy underpinning them are challenged.Footnote 13 Policies in line with the ‘common sense’ of one era may be rendered highly problematic in another as a result of changes in what constitutes appropriate conduct.

I distinguish between two periods with distinct normative contexts. The first spans the turn of the 20th century until the Second World War. The second emerges as a consequence of the war and related developments, including the Holocaust, decolonisation, and the emergence of a global human rights culture. Both contexts had a profound effect on immigration and citizenship policies in Canada and the US. Solutions to the migration-membership dilemma devised during the early part of the 20th century were influenced by prevailing attitudes toward racial and ethnic difference, nationalism, and state sovereignty, tending, on the whole, to legitimise discriminatory exclusions.Footnote 14 The discrediting of scientific racism, integral nationalism and white supremacy, and the simultaneous emergence of human rights after the war problematised efforts to structure policies along familiar lines, granting leverage to actors pressing for reforms. Canada and the US’ identification as liberal democratic countries that respected the rule of law and human rights made them especially vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy. This, in turn, created the conditions for policy change.

Stretching, unravelling, and shifting

How did this sensitivity to charges of hypocrisy translate into policy change? In an effort to answer this question, I advance an analytical framework that divides the process into three stages, which I refer to as ‘stretching’, ‘unravelling’, and ‘shifting’.Footnote 15

The concept of stretching speaks to the durability of governance paradigms and their propensity to channel policymaking along well worn paths.Footnote 16 Existing frameworks

define the broad goals behind policy, the problems to be tackled, and the instruments to be deployed, as well as mapping the respective responsibilities of the state, market and citizens in meeting societal challenges. Once institutionalised, a governance paradigm channels the thoughts and actions of a range of state and societal actors, reflecting shared policy knowledge and habitual decision-making routines. The result is broad continuity in both content and process of public policy.Footnote 17

Contrary to theories of institutional change premised on models of ‘punctuated equilibrium’, changes in normative contexts did not ‘shock’ policymakers into devising and implementing radically new solutions.Footnote 18 Rather, their initial response was to ‘stretch’ established policies to conceal anomalies generated by lack of fit without abandoning the fundamental premises of extant policy frameworks.Footnote 19 Changes therefore tended to be cosmetic, aiming to diffuse and co-opt criticism while avoiding fundamental transformation.

Nevertheless, these initial responses had unintended effects that accelerated the breakdown of established policy frameworks. Attempts to answer critics with ‘tactical concessions’ affirmed the normative validity of their claims, increasing pressure for more substantive reforms.Footnote 20 Policy stretching thus gave rise to unravelling, as anomalies accumulated and an expanding constellation of critics pulled more determinedly at the most vulnerable strands of existing policy regimes – that is, those policies, practices and procedures which stood at odds with the liberal-democratic identity their state wished to craft for both internal and external audiences. The unravelling of established policy frameworks increased demands for innovative strategies, encouraging experimentation and opening space for the introduction of policies in line with the ascendant normative context. In time, new approaches to the migration-membership dilemma were developed by decision makers keen on aligning domestic immigration policies with the prevailing logic of appropriateness at the global level. The formulation and implementation of new approaches marked the transition from policy unravelling to shifting, during which new policies were institutionalised.Footnote 21

Unravelling and shifting were, however, subject to quite different political dynamics. In Canada, ‘[o]ne party government in a parliamentary system […] tended to reinforce the effects of executive policymaking by dramatically curtailing avenues for challenging […] policies.’Footnote 22 Thus, Cabinet dominance in this issue area allowed for a relatively insulated form of policymaking that encouraged experimentation and elite learning. Conversely, divided government in the US limited the executive branch's ability to shape policy in a similar fashion.Footnote 23 The unique role of congressional committees and subcommittees in the American system granted opponents of reform a source of influence that was absent in Canada.Footnote 24 Thus, even when American restrictionists found themselves at a disadvantage, in terms of prevailing elite opinion and legislative majorities, they were still able to exact important concessions. The lack of any comparable source of leverage made opposition in Canada futile and this, in turn, muted potential dissenters’ voices. Without any credible opposition in their way, Canadian policymakers enjoyed wide latitude in crafting alternatives to established policies.

This difference in policy processes and outcomes would have important consequences. Most notably, the 1965 Immigration Act's preference for family reunification has led some commentators to decry a ‘precipitous decline […] in the average skills of the immigrant flow reaching the US’, which has ‘rekindle[d] the debate over immigration policy’.Footnote 25 Conversely, the Canadian system's reputation for linking of immigrant admissions and economic need has helped maintain a remarkable degree of acceptance for mass immigration in Canada.Footnote 26 Indeed, Canada's ‘points system’ has become something of a model for other countries formulating organised immigration policies.Footnote 27

My argument reconciles competing claims about the sources of immigration policymaking in the postwar period, providing a way out of the impasse that has marked debates in this field. In the following section, I summarise rival approaches and identify their respective strengths and weaknesses in order to highlight the advantages of the integrative approach developed here.

Bridging the internal-external divide

In her influential book Limits of Citizenship, Yasemin Soysal argues that the proliferation of global human rights instruments in the postwar period has brought forth a ‘new and more universal concept of citizenship […] whose legitimizing principles are based on universal personhood rather than national belonging.’Footnote 28 Postwar changes in the organisation and ideologies of the global system ‘have increasingly shifted the institutional and normative basis of citizenship to a transnational level and […] extended rights and privileges associated with it beyond national boundaries.’ Footnote 29 This has led to the de-coupling of membership rights and national citizenship.Footnote 30

According to Soysal, the key factors animating contemporary membership politics are located outside the state. As transnational forces generated by global culture and economic globalisation erode the traditional basis of nation-state membership, ‘postnational’ forms, legitimated by international codes, conventions, and laws on human rights, fill the breach.Footnote 31 Soysal and others, including David Jacobson and Saskia Sassen, thus reduce the state's role in this process to one of implementing and enforcing what are, in essence, global norms. In Sassen's words, ‘the legitimization process of states under the rule of law calls for respect and enforcement of international human rights codes, regardless of the nationality and legal status of the individual’. (emphasis added)Footnote 32

This ‘externalist’ argument provoked a strong reaction among ‘internalists’, who offer a very different take on the forces underlying membership politics. In a pointed reply to postnationalists, Christian Joppke argues that liberal states have no need to resort to international norms. Contrary to Soysal and Jacobson, ‘[u]niversal human rights are not the invention of the UN in 1945, but of liberal nation-states in the late eighteenth century.’Footnote 33

Joppke maintains that the expansion of membership regimes in the post-World War II era has marked the unfolding of domestic liberal principles that have ameliorated exclusions even in ethno-cultural nation-states such as Germany.Footnote 34 Courts have tended to drive this process; unlike the executive and legislative branches of government, the judiciary is shielded from populist sentiments in civil society. As such, judges have often been the defenders of nationals and select non-nationals alike.Footnote 35 The ‘decline of sovereignty’ diagnosed by externalists is therefore strictly a domestic affair: sovereignty is ‘self-limited’ through the judiciary's extension of domestic liberal rights to immigrants.

Both positions have their respective strengths and weaknesses. Soysal, Jacobson, and Sassen help us understand how new normative standards woven into global culture confront exclusions based on tradition and give marginal actors a means of legitimising their claims. Changing logics of appropriate state conduct make it difficult for policymakers to treat foreign workers as mere means. The result is a blurring of traditional insider-outsider distinctions and, in some cases, a fairer distribution of rights irrespective of individuals’ citizenship status.

Despite the strength of their core propositions, externalists’ neglect of politics is problematic. As is true of arguments derived from the ‘Stanford School’ of sociological institutionalism – a principal intellectual source for Soysal and Jacobson – postnationalists tend to assume a world of general consensus, in which human rights norms dictate policy outcomes and politics loses its importance.Footnote 36 Yet, for better or worse, partisanship, contestation and politics continue to play a key role in determining the status and scope of rights accorded to migrants – perhaps more so now than at any other time since World War II. Failure to incorporate domestic political actors (for example, parties) and processes (elections) into their arguments leaves externalists unable to account for this or to explain significant variations in the rights accorded to foreigners in different immigrant receiving countries.Footnote 37

Proponents of the liberal state thesis rightly note that human rights claims have been most effective in states that already uphold a commitment to liberal democracy.Footnote 38 However, attributing causal primacy exclusively to domestic liberal structures neglects important changes in liberal states’ conduct over time.Footnote 39 Even a cursory review of immigration and citizenship politics in liberal states during the first half of the 20th century demonstrates that ‘liberal’ countries engaged in grossly illiberal practices against immigrants and other minorities.Footnote 40 Contrary to the internalists, these policies were not simply the product of legislatures and executives pressured by populist forces. Scholars have convincingly demonstrated that courts in the US and elsewhere were critical actors in the erection and perpetuation of blatantly illiberal, racially defined exclusions.Footnote 41 There is growing agreement among these scholars that the rise of a more universal, anti-racist liberalism has only come recently, in the second half of the 20th century. Hence, internalists have little choice but to accept externalists’ claims that the post-World War II period marks a fundamental shift in norms that has influenced the development of liberalism and, by extension, liberal states’ regulation of immigration.Footnote 42

The challenge lies in demonstrating the interplay of domestic and global political dynamics. The following seeks to demonstrate the influence of shifting normative contexts on domestic politics through a careful analysis of immigration policymaking in Canada and the US from the end of World War II to the mid-1960s.

Dismantling white Canada, 1947–1967

Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King presented the first important statement on Canada's postwar immigration policy in a speech before Parliament on 1 May 1947. According to King, Canada was intent on structuring its immigrant admissions policies as it had in the past; ‘Asiatic’ and other non-white immigration would be avoided so as to preserve Canada's white-European ‘composition.’Footnote 43

Yet, state officials understood that changed normative conditions made it difficult to pursue such an approach in the postwar period. A candid working paper bluntly laid out the dilemma confronting Canadian policymakers: ‘The problem of Asiatic immigration into Canada is twofold: an international problem of avoiding the charge of racial discrimination and a domestic sociological and political problem of assimilation.’ Canada's membership in the UN carried with it an ‘unqualified obligation to eliminate racial discrimination in its legislation.’ This effectively meant supporting the UN's goal of ‘promoting and encouraging human rights and […] fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.’ Further, Canada's statements in the General Assembly regarding the competency of the UN to intervene in the domestic affairs of member states indicated that Canada favored a ‘wide interpretation’ of the provisions of the Charter. Claims to sovereign jurisdiction in domestic matters would therefore be open to challenge. Given the risks to Canadian international prestige, the brief recommended that something be done to avoid or at least minimise the likelihood of such an outcome. The answer lay in ‘revising our immigration legislation so as to avoid the charge of racial discrimination and yet so effectively limiting Asiatic immigration as to prevent aggravation of the Asiatic minority problem.’Footnote 44

Stretching: 1947–1952

This strategy of stretching established policies to co-opt and counter charges of hypocrisy would define Canadian immigration policymaking in the early postwar period. For instance, pressure from the Committee for the Repeal of the Chinese Immigration Act moved the government to strike the Act in 1947. The repeal of discriminatory naturalisation regulations soon followed, lifting bars to citizenship for Chinese and other groups that had long faced discrimination in this area.Footnote 45 Despite these reforms, the goal of limiting the entry and incorporation of immigrants to whites remained a primary aim of policy. Chinese immigration thus fell under the terms of P.C. 1930–2115, which restricted the range of admissible ‘Asiatics’ to the wives and children less than eighteen years of age of Canadian citizens; other immigrant groups could sponsor a much broader range of relatives after they secured legal residency.

Similarly, efforts to staunch charges of discrimination against nationals from Canada's Commonwealth partners in south Asia led to the establishment of a symbolic quota system allowing for limited migration from India, Pakistan, and Ceylon.Footnote 46 According to the terms of the quotas, 150 Indians, 100 Pakistanis, and 50 Ceylonese were to be granted access to Canada on a yearly basis.

The regulation of other ‘restricted classes’ came under the terms of Orders-in-Council P.C. 2115 and 2856Footnote 47 and the new 1952 Immigration Act. The 1952 Act's provisions regarding immigrant admissions bore a striking resemblance those of the past. The Governor-in-Council was empowered to prohibit or limit the admission of persons by reason of their

  1. 1 Nationality, citizenship, occupation, class, or geographical area of origin

  2. 2 Peculiar customs, habits, modes of life, or methods of holding property

  3. 3 Unsuitability vis-à-vis climatic, social, industrial, educational, labor, health, or other conditions or requirements existing temporarily or otherwise, in Canada or in the area or country from or through which such persons came to Canada

  4. 4 Probable inability to become readily assimilated or to assume the duties and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship, within a reasonable time after admissionFootnote 48

The intent of the list was clear: immigration was to be closely regulated to ensure that Canada's ‘national character’ remained essentially ‘white-European’.

Unravelling: 1952–1962

While officials in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration insisted that ‘immigration must not have the effect of altering the fundamental character of the population’,Footnote 49 invocations of official policy became increasingly difficult to maintain in light of developments in Canadian foreign policy. Changes in international politics were pushing Canada to take increasingly liberal positions in the UN and the British Commonwealth. Decolonisation in Africa and Asia had transformed power relations in both organisations and placed racial discrimination at the top of their agendas. By 1961, African, Asian, and Latin American members constituted two-thirds of the UN General Assembly and anti-racist resolutions were becoming sharper and more frequent.Footnote 50 As Canada's ability to play an independent role in world affairs depended on the preservation and functioning of both organisations, it could not afford to sit back when crises arose over the international community's handling of matters pertaining to racial justice.

Among the most important challenges confronting the Commonwealth during this period was the debate over South Africa's membership. Non-white member states argued that there was no place in the organization for racist regimes and demanded that their partners come out strongly against apartheid.Footnote 51 During the 1960 Commonwealth Conference, non-white members made it clear that the future of the organisation would depend on how the apartheid issue was resolved. In an effort to avoid a split that could imperil the Commonwealth's future, Canada's Prime Minister John Diefenbaker came out strongly against the principle of racial discrimination during the Commonwealth's 1961 Conference in London.Footnote 52

Diefenbaker's crusading anti-racism was a source of concern among diplomatic personnel charged with administering Canadian immigration policy. Canadian consular officials understood that their country's public stand against race discrimination could be turned against it if and when immigration matters were raised; Canada was courting trouble by taking a leading role against racism internationally while maintaining discriminatory controls against non-whites in its immigration policies.Footnote 53 Their opinion was born out, as foreign critics of Canadian immigration policy made a point of highlighting Canada's continuing reluctance to implement the principles it espoused abroad in its own legislation.

Domestic critics, such as the Canadian Council of Churches, the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Negro Citizenship Association, and the Canadian Congress of Labour, also challenged the government's continuing use of racial categories. The arguments advanced by these groups highlighted the discrepancy between the government's progressive rhetoric and the reality of ongoing discrimination against ‘Asiatics’, ‘Negroes’ and individuals of ‘mixed-race’. Advocacy groups challenged the government's commitment to anti-discrimination, civil rights, and liberal democratic principles by exposing its maintenance of discriminatory immigration policies and administrative practices.Footnote 54 Virtually all of these appeals included arguments pertaining to Canada's obligation to live up to its commitment to international human rights and the elimination of discrimination based on race, colour or creed.

The Canadian government's reaction to charges of discrimination during this period was to continue to adjust regulations to pre-empt or at least limit the force of criticisms while endeavoring to meet the objectives set out in King's 1947 statement. In an effort to respond to critics, the Diefenbaker government introduced a number of changes, including doubling India's annual quota from 150 to 300 persons, raising the annual quota of female domestic workers from the British West Indies, and reconsidering previously rejected applications for sponsorship to increase the number of entries from China and other non-preferred countries.Footnote 55

These and other attempts to respond to critics’ demands while avoiding more fundamental reforms compounded the government's problems. For example, efforts to assuage the concerns of Canada's East Indian community by doubling India's annual immigration quota prompted Pakistan to demand that its quota also be doubled.Footnote 56 While Canadian officials were well aware that acceding to Pakistan's demand would run the risk of encouraging requests for similar programs from other Commonwealth countries they believed they had to comply, given that rejecting Pakistan's demand would likely lead to further accusations of discrimination and perhaps even a public airing of Canadian policies in the Commonwealth.Footnote 57 Similarly, while efforts aimed at increasing the number of Chinese immigrants through Ministerial discretion and Orders-in-Council failed to satisfy domestic advocacy groups, potential alternatives that remained wedded to traditional principles – such as quotas – were also open to charges of discrimination and therefore of little practical use.Footnote 58

In short, Canadian immigration officials found that their ability to meet the challenges raised by lack of fit by tinkering at the margins of the prevailing policy regime was running into increasingly difficult political obstacles. Cosmetic solutions aimed at mollifying international and domestic opinion while preserving the essential features of the prevailing system could not paper over the fact that existing policies no longer fit a changed normative context.

Shifting: 1962–1967

Scholars have assumed that Canada's turn to a ‘skills-based’ admissions system was driven by changes in its economic needs and diminishing numbers of potential migrants in Europe.Footnote 59 While there certainly was growing consensus within the Department of Citizenship and Immigration on the need to revamp the immigration program and focus recruitment on skilled workers, professionals, and entrepreneurs,Footnote 60 there is little evidence to suggest that officials believed that this would necessarily entail active recruitment from ‘non-traditional’ sources.Footnote 61 Rather, the shift to universal skills-based selection criteria in 1962 was primarily aimed at mollifying domestic and international critics of racial discrimination, rather than opening up new sources of skilled migrants.

This is clear when one considers how officials characterised the reforms at the time. In a memorandum to Cabinet outlining the Department's proposed measures, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Ellen Fairclough, noted that the principle objective of the revised regulations was ‘the elimination of any valid grounds for arguing that they contain any restrictions or controls based on racial, ethnic or color discrimination.’ This would be accomplished through the amendment of Regulation 20, which constituted ‘the heart of Canada's immigration policy’ and the main target of criticism. The proposed changes to Regulation 20 were unique in that they eliminated ‘all reference to questions of nationality, geography or regions of the world.’ The chief effect of the new regulations would be the elimination of ‘all grounds for charges of discrimination’ and placement of ‘emphasis henceforth on the skills, ability and training of the prospective immigrant himself, and on his ability to establish himself successfully in Canada.’Footnote 62

The government's last minute decision to limit the sponsorship rights of non-Europeans and the official but unpublicised policy of maintaining a preference for immigrants from Canada's traditional sources also speak to the political nature of the 1962 reforms. Whereas Canadian citizens hailing from European and Western Hemisphere countries were able to sponsor a full range of family members and relatives, citizens from non-European and non-Western Hemisphere countries were limited to sponsoring immediate family and a narrower range of relatives. The decision to restrict the sponsorship rights of citizens from Asia, Africa, and most of the Middle East (with the exception of Egypt, Israel, and Lebanon) was meant to limit the impact of the policy changes on immigration flows. Officials feared that granting of full sponsorship rights to migrants from Asia and Africa would prompt a sharp increase in non-white immigration, catalysing a negative backlash among white Canadians.Footnote 63 Similar anxieties stood behind the decision to interpret the 1962 reforms passively. While the door was open to applications from extremely well qualified migrants from non-traditional source countries, only immigrants from the US and Europe were actively recruited.Footnote 64 Given these qualifications, doubt as to Canada's real intentions persisted among opponents of racial discrimination, leading to continuing criticism of Canada's immigration policy.

Thus the challenge of bringing Canada's immigration policies into line with the postwar normative context fell to Diefenbaker's successor, Lester Pearson. The 1966 White Paper on Immigration Policy marked his government's first sustained effort to meet this end. The White Paper advanced two core policy recommendations. First, Canada would accentuate its effort to recruit well-educated and highly skilled immigrants. Second, remaining discrimination in the realm of sponsorship rights would be ended. Rather than discriminating according to national background, the White Paper proposed making sponsorship rights for all landed immigrants equal. For the first time, all landed immigrants would enjoy the right to sponsor the same array of dependents and ‘eligible relatives’. However, after a six-year adjustment period, only Canadian citizens would enjoy the right to sponsor the full range of relatives.Footnote 65

While the White Paper's call for the elimination of remaining discrimination in Canada's Immigration Regulations was applauded, critics questioned how criteria relating to education and skills would be applied without a clearly defined set of standards.Footnote 66 Lingering doubt expressed during consultations on the White Paper persuaded the Department of Manpower and Immigration to reconsider its approach. An internal task force was appointed and charged with devising admissions rules that offered some means of controlling sponsored flows while also basing admissions on a standard set of universal criteria.Footnote 67 The group, headed by Deputy Minister of Manpower and Immigration, Tom Kent, met these objectives through the development of a ‘points system’, according to which prospective immigrants would be assigned a score based on their age, education, training, occupational skill in demand, knowledge of English and/or French, arranged employment, and employment opportunities in the area of destination. A score based on a personal assessment made by an immigration officer would be added to the total. Applicants meeting the government's threshold (initially 50 points) would be admitted as independent immigrants, along with their spouses and minor children. Independent immigrants would enjoy a further right to sponsor more distant ‘nominated relatives’, who would also be subject to a less demanding version of the points system.Footnote 68 Although the maintenance of a sponsored stream for more distant relatives meant that flows of such immigrants would remain significant, officials believed the points system could be used to control this movement by regulating the number of nominated relatives granted entry according to labour market conditions.Footnote 69 More generally, officials believed that they had crafted a system which satisfied both political and policy requirements. In the words of the Minister of Manpower and Immigration, Jean Marchand, ‘[b]oth the efficiency and the humanity of the selection process will be increased and be seen to be increased.’Footnote 70

The new regulations came into effect in October 1967. Other reforms introduced at this time, including the expansion of the Assisted Passenger Loans Scheme, the opening of several immigration offices outside of Europe, and the establishment of an independent Immigration Appeals Board, secured the institutional prerequisites for an immigration regime open to qualified applicants regardless of their ‘race’. Canadian policymakers thus succeeded in crafting a non-discriminatory immigration policy that opened Canada to large-scale immigration from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and other ‘non-traditional’ sources, while also offering officials a means of regulating the sponsored stream and harnessing immigration for economic needs. Their ability to arrive at a solution which met these objectives through a process of trial and error speaks to the style of policymaking made possible by Canada's institutional configuration.

Immigration reform in the US: 1945–1965

As was the case in Canada, the shift in normative contexts prompted by World War II placed the US’ longstanding solution to the migration-membership dilemma under strain. Even before the end of the war, national security concerns propelled the elimination of the Chinese Exclusion Act, as the Roosevelt administration scrambled to neutralise Japanese claims the US’ bar on Chinese immigration made American positions on human rights hypocritical and empty.Footnote 71 At home, the Citizens’ Committee to Repeal Chinese Exclusion also made the case that the laws stood in the way of America fulfilling its wartime mission to defeat fascism. The exclusion laws were repealed in December 1943 and replaced with a symbolic quota authorising the admission of 105 Chinese immigrants annually. Similar quotas were established for India and the Philippines.Footnote 72

Stretching: 1945–1952

After the war, critics continued to argue that the outright exclusion of most non-white migrants and tight controls against southern and eastern Europeans stipulated under the National Origins Quotas made a mockery of American leaders’ claims that their country was the world's beacon of liberty and freedom. Conscious of the US’ new role in the postwar world, President Harry S. Truman also argued that racial discrimination was hampering America's efforts to counter the growing influence of its ideological rival, the Soviet Union, both in Europe and the newly independent states of the ‘Third World’. Thus, Truman supported the abolition of the quota system and other racially discriminatory policies, arguing that failure to act aggressively would assist ‘those with competing philosophies […] prove our democracy an empty fraud and our nation a consistent oppressor of underprivileged people.’Footnote 73

National security considerations also lay behind Truman's championing of American relief for the millions of ‘Displaced Persons’ (DPs) crowding continental Europe. ‘American openness to this category of immigrants was a sign to the world that America respected human rights and had the superior political system.’Footnote 74 Thus America took the lead in organising the International Refugee Organisation and its successor, the office of the UN’ High Commissioner for Refugees. At home, Truman's linking of the refugee issue to Cold War considerations helped him gain support for the passage of the Displaced Persons Act in May 1948.Footnote 75 In response to continuing pressure from the White House and more liberal members of the House of Representatives, the terms of the law were expanded in 1950. In all, 409,696 persons were admitted under the Displaced Persons Act, making up over half of the refugees admitted between 1946 and 1965.Footnote 76 Approximately 300,000 more were admitted under other special refugee measures enacted during the same period.Footnote 77

While most American politicians agreed that the onset of the Cold War meant that explicitly racist dimensions of America's immigration and naturalisation policies required modification, they rejected Truman's calls for radical reform insisting instead that the goals of established policies were legitimate and should be maintained. This point is clear in a 1950 report of the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on immigration:

Without giving credence to any theory of Nordic superiority, the subcommittee believes that the adoption of the national origins quota formula was a rational and logical method of numerically restricting immigration in such a manner as to best preserve the sociological and cultural balance in the population of the US. There is no doubt that it favored the peoples of northern and western Europe over those of southern and eastern Europe, but the subcommittee holds that the peoples who made the greatest contribution to the development of this country were fully justified in determining that the country was no longer a field for further colonization and, henceforth, further immigration would not only be restricted but directed to admit immigrants considered to be more readily assimilable because of the similarity of their cultural background to those of the principal components of our population.Footnote 78

Like Mackenzie King's 1947 statement, the subcommittee's report made it clear that American politicians preferred to respond to the exigencies of lack of fit by stretching established policies. This was the intent of the 1952 Immigration Act, also known as the McCarran-Walter Act, after its sponsors, Senator Pat McCarran (D-NV) and the chair of the House Immigration Subcommittee, Representative Francis E. Walter (D-PA). While the 1952 law formally abolished racist criteria in immigration and naturalisation policy, it maintained the fundamental features of the national origins quota system. Thus, while the ‘Asiatic Barred Zone’ was eliminated, only 2000 visas per year were allotted to individuals born within the so-called ‘Asia-Pacific Triangle’ – a region spanning India, China, Japan, and the Pacific Islands. The law also held that individuals ‘of as much as one-half Asian blood born outside the Triangle be charged against the quota of his country of Asian-Pacific ancestry.’Footnote 79 This was meant to block the entry of ‘Asiatics’ hoping to gain admission to the US under the quotas of countries outside the Asia-Pacific Triangle.Footnote 80 Furthermore, the weighing of visa quotas in favor of immigrants from northwestern Europe was maintained, as immigrants from these traditional source countries were considered to be better able to assimilate into American society. This point of view was endorsed by the law's supporters, which included veterans’ associations, patriotic groups, and organised labour. The bill's sponsors regarded its lifting of barriers to naturalisation for immigrants from Asia as a symbolic concession to those concerned about racial inequality. The reform of naturalisation policy would pose ‘no real threat to the nation's ethnic makeup, since the vast majority of non-citizens entering the country came from Europe.’Footnote 81

Congress passed the McCarran-Walter bill in June 1952. Truman expressed his strong disagreement with the legislation by vetoing it, arguing that the law would ‘perpetuate injustices of long standing against many other nations of the world, hamper the efforts we are making to rally the men of East and West alike to the cause of freedom, and intensify the repressive and inhumane aspects of our immigration procedures.’Footnote 82 His complaints proved ineffective, as Congress easily overrode his veto, making the McCarran-Walter bill law.Footnote 83

The passage of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act highlighted both the influence of immigration restrictionists in Congress and the durability of established policies. While America's relatively new role as a global superpower made the negative repercussions of discriminatory policies clear, policymakers in Congress opted to make cosmetic changes in the hope that this minimal response would diffuse criticism while preserving the ethnic composition of the American nation. As we shall see below, policy stretching failed to mollify critics, resulting in continuing pressures for change and the steady unravelling of the established policy regime.

Unravelling: 1952–1958

Critics of discriminatory immigration admissions policies correctly viewed the McCarran-Walter Act as a symbolic gesture that offered little in the way of substantive reform. This point of view is nicely captured in the following ‘warning’ issued by the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People:

McCarran says his Bill has eliminated racial restrictions. Don’t Let Him Fool You. It Hasn’t. In a very subtle way, this Bill draws the racial line even more tightly for the people from the Asia-Pacific area and the West Indies.Footnote 84

Similarly, Senators Herbert Lehman (D-NY) and Hubert Humphrey (D-MN) argued that the maintenance of an immigration system based on national origins quotas meant that the US was not honouring its commitment to fundamental liberal-democratic norms. Truman went several steps further while campaigning on behalf of the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, Adlai Stevenson, arguing that by reaffirming the national origins quota system, conservative Republicans in Congress had perpetuated ‘a philosophy of racial superiority developed by the Nazis, which we thought we had destroyed when we defeated Nazi Germany and liberated Europe.’Footnote 85 Truman linked support for the McCarran-Walter Act to the Republicans’ presidential nominee, Dwight Eisenhower and his running mate, Richard Nixon.Footnote 86 Regardless of their veracity, these charges compelled Eisenhower to insist that he too rejected the principles underlying the national origins quotas, thus placing him on the side of the reformers even before his victory in the November election. This marked a significant setback for restrictionists in Congress.

Eisenhower was not alone in questioning the political merits of supporting the McCarran-Walter Act. The 1950s witnessed a steady shift in elite opinion on the national origins system. The discrediting of scientific racism in the postwar period played an important role in this regard. As Daniel Tichenor has noted,

In the early-twentieth-century, eugenicists and other specialists supplied expert research to commissions and congressional committees that rationalized severe restrictions on immigration from outside northern and western Europe. Yet the racist fascism of America's wartime foes encouraged an official ideological retreat from notions of ascriptive hierarchy; principles of biological determinism fell into intellectual disrepute in the postwar era.Footnote 87

This ‘retreat’ was very much in evidence in the work of the Presidential Commission on Immigration and Naturalisation, appointed by Truman in September 1952. The Commission's experts challenged the assumptions regarding race that underlay the quota acts, offering evidence that the differences between groups that seemed so obvious earlier in the century were based on faulty science. The Commission's report, Whom We Shall Welcome, concluded: ‘the best scientific evidence available today is that there [are] no […] inborn differences of personality, character, intelligence, or cultural or social traits among races. The basic racist assumption of the national origins system is invalid.’Footnote 88 Consequently, restrictionists could no longer claim the authority of science when defending their positions. While they adjusted to this new situation by moderating their language and offering cosmetic reforms, they were increasingly on the defensive, as critics continued to highlight the lack of fit between the US’ immigration policies and its putative commitment to liberal-democratic principles and human rights.

The strength of the reform movement was greatly enhanced when organised labour came out in favor of the scrapping of the national origins quota system in 1955.Footnote 89 This marked an important shift in American immigration politics, as organised labour had long sided with restrictionists. Labour's turnaround was driven by ideological changes on the Left, the merger of the AFL with the more progressive CIO, and a decrease in fears concerning the threat to jobs posed by legal immigrants (based in part on the remarkable growth in the American economy during this time). Labour's shift had a ripple effect, as it also brought the Democratic Party more firmly on the side of the reform movement, a trend that was reinforced by northern Democrats’ strong support for the nascent Civil Rights Movement. Changing norms were driving a realignment of domestic forces, as ethnic groups, organised labour, religious organisations, civil liberties groups, and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party formed an increasingly influential coalition dedicated to the pursuit of fundamental reforms in immigration policy.Footnote 90 High profile statements, such as Senator John F. Kennedy's A Nation of Immigrants and Hubert Humphrey's The Stranger at Our Gate, increased the profile of immigration reform nationally and helped to ‘frame a pro-immigrant narrative […] that further eroded the early-twentieth-century “policy paradigm” legitimating quotas.’Footnote 91 Slow but steady progress in the area of domestic anti-discrimination legislation also ‘undermined the legitimacy of the national origins system posted on America's door.’Footnote 92

Foreign policy considerations complemented domestic political pressures. President Eisenhower argued that the national origins quotas made it extremely difficult for him to offer sanctuary to refugees ‘fleeing Communism’ and this, in turn, was hampering the US’ efforts in the Cold War. Eisenhower thus demanded and received special powers to override quota limits, in order to quickly respond to refugee movements including the 1956 Hungarian Refugee Crisis.Footnote 93 Although restrictionists in Congress viewed these concessions as a worthwhile price to pay in order to maintain the national origins quota system, each exception highlighted the awkwardness of the McCarran-Walter Act and its failure to accord with America's foreign policy concerns and commitment to human rights and liberal-democratic principles. Indeed, by the end of the 1950s, most newcomers were arriving to the US as a result of special exemptions to the McCarran-Walter Act – exemptions often supported for very different reasons by members of Congress hailing from cities with large ‘ethnic’ populations.Footnote 94 Slowly but surely, domestic and international pressures generated by lack of fit conspired to force the unravelling the national origins quota system, creating space for the emergence of new ideas more in line with the prevailing normative context.

Shifting: 1958–1965

The momentum behind the movement for immigration reform increased after the 1958-midterm elections, as liberal Democrats keen on pursuing change won a majority in the House of Representatives. This trend was reinforced by John F. Kennedy's victory in the 1960 presidential election. The Democratic Party included immigration reform in its electoral platform and went out of its way to appeal to ethnic voters in northern cities, often employing language that emphasised civil rights and respect for cultural pluralism.Footnote 95 Many believed that Kennedy's commitment to immigration reform and dynamism would quickly spell the end of the McCarran-Walter Act and allow for the introduction of a radically new solution to the US’ migration-membership dilemma.Footnote 96 This hope grew after Kennedy introduced and helped pass a bill that authorised the immigration of 18,000 foreign relatives outside the quota system. The 1961 Act also granted quotas to the newly independent states of the Caribbean and gave non-quota status to many close relatives of American citizens who were on waiting lists in Italy, Greece, Portugal and elsewhere.Footnote 97

Despite this promising start, hopes for a rapid and fundamental reform of immigration policy were checked by institutional factors. Specifically, immigration restrictionists still exercised a great deal of power in Congress; conservative Republicans and southern Democrats often held the chairmanships of important congressional committees and subcommittees and could therefore stall initiatives and otherwise manipulate the legislative process. Wary of provoking a fight with the ‘committee barons’, Kennedy waited for nearly two years before submitting a legislative initiative to Congress, doing so only after Walter's death in 1963.Footnote 98

The legislation that was eventually introduced by the Kennedy administration included sweeping changes, including the abolition of the national origins quota system, the elimination of the Asia-Pacific Triangle, and the granting of preferences to immigrants with work-related skills.Footnote 99 The bill envisioned the transferring of individual countries’ quotas to a world quota pool, of which 50 per cent would be reserved for persons with special skills and training. The other 50 per cent would be reserved for spouses and children under twenty-one and married sons and daughters of US citizens over the age of twenty-one. Furthermore, the proposal rejected any limits to immigration from the Western Hemisphere and made special allowances for the reception of refugees.Footnote 100 Representative Emmanuel Celler (D-NY) and Senator Philip Hart (D-MI) introduced the legislation to Congress.

The Kennedy bill enjoyed the support of the American Immigration and Citizenship Committee, a group that included the American Civil Liberties Union, religious organisations, trade unions, ethnic associations, and refugee support groups. High-ranking administration officials, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk, also came out strongly in favor of the bill.Footnote 101 Speaking before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, Rusk noted that not only did the national origins quota system no longer work; its maintenance was hindering American foreign policy objectives. Eliminating the system would add a dose of reality to American immigration policy while also aiding in the fight against enemy propaganda.Footnote 102

Despite this broad support for the Kennedy bill, powerful members of congressional committees, including the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, James Eastland (D-MS) and the new chair of the House Immigration Subcommittee, Michael Feighan (D-OH), voiced opposition to what came to be known as the ‘Hart-Celler bill’ tying it up in committees through 1963 and 1964. Indeed, the opponents of immigration reform ensured that very little progress was made up until Kennedy's assassination.

The push for reform resumed under President Lyndon Johnson. Although Johnson had supported the McCarran-Walter Act in 1952, like Truman and Eisenhower before him, he now believed that the law hindered the pursuit of America's foreign policy interests. The national origins quota system was also incompatible with Johnson's position of civil rights reform, a point he stressed in his 1964 state of the union address.Footnote 103 Johnson used his considerable political skills and the political capital earned through his impressive 1964 electoral victory to surmount the obstructions set up by restrictionists in Congress. Among his most important successes in this regard was convincing Senator Eastland to temporarily relinquish his chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee to the more liberal Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. Johnson also pressured congressional Democrats to increase the size of the House Immigration Subcommittee, thus limiting Feighan's ability to block the legislation's progress.

While Johnson's maneuvers helped revive the movement to reform America's immigration policy, restrictionists in the House and Senate responded by using their power to amend the legislation. Perhaps most importantly, Feighan rejected the Hart-Celler bill's preference for immigrants with special skills and training and demanded that preferences be granted to family members instead. Feighan made this demand in response to pressure from organised labour (whose members feared an influx of skilled workers) and traditional supporters of immigration restrictions. In a memorandum to Johnson, Assistant Attorney General Norbert Schlei noted that

Mr. Feighan appears to be looking for a way to justify a vote abolishing the national origins system. The justification has to make sense to the traditional supporters of the national origins system (veterans groups, patriotic societies, conservative nationality groups, etc.), which Mr. Feighan regards as his constituency. He wants to be able to say that in return for scrapping the national origins system – which never really worked anyway – he has gotten a system that for the first time in our history puts a limit on all immigration, not just immigration from “quota” areas (original emphasis).Footnote 104

Senate conservatives, such as Sam Ervin of (D-NC) and Everett Dirksen (R-IL), supported Feighan's position. Ervin, Dirksen and other restrictionists believed that it would help perpetuate the effect of the national origins quota system by favouring nationalities already in the US. In an effort to limit the entry of non-whites from the Caribbean and Central and South America, Congressional restrictionists also called for a ceiling on immigration from the Western Hemisphere – a region that had previously been exempt from numerical limits.Footnote 105 Unwilling to wage a battle over either Feighan or Ervin's amendments and eager to pass the legislation while he still enjoyed an advantage over Congress, Johnson opted to strike a deal with his opponents, concluding (correctly) that the switch in preferences to family members and limitations on Western Hemisphere immigration would not come at too great a political cost.Footnote 106

The system established by the amended Act provided for the granting of 170,000 visas for immigrants originating in the Eastern Hemisphere (with no country receiving more than 20,000 spots) and 120,000 visas for immigrants from the Western Hemisphere (with no country limits). Spouses, minor children and parents of American citizens were exempted from the numerical limits. As a result of the compromise forged between Johnson and his congressional opponents, 74 per cent of yearly visa allotments were dedicated to family reunification, with preference granted to brothers and sisters of American citizens; only 20 per cent were reserved for immigrants with occupational skills. Refugees – defined as people fleeing persecution from Communism or the Middle East and victims of natural disasters, as specified by the President – received six per cent of the yearly visa allotment.Footnote 107

Johnson signed the new Immigration Act on October 3, 1965, in an elaborate ceremony held at the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. In his speech, Johnson noted that although the bill he was signing was not revolutionary, it did

repair a deep and painful flaw in the fabric of American justice […] The days of unlimited immigration are past. But those who come will come because of what they are – not because of the land from which they sprung.Footnote 108

Conclusion

Johnson and his contemporaries grossly underestimated the impact of the 1965 Immigration Act, as its effects on America's demographic profile were nothing less than ‘revolutionary.’ The abolition of strict controls on migration from the Asia-Pacific Triangle allowed for an increase of Asian immigration from 1.5 million in 1970 to 13.1 million in 2000.Footnote 109 Immigration from Central and South America, Africa, and the Middle East also increased sharply, transforming America's cities and making the US a highly diverse, multicultural society. Similarly, Canada's demographic profile was transformed as a result of increasing migration from so-called ‘non-traditional sources’ made possible by the abolition of discriminatory admissions policies and the introduction of the points system. Whereas the vast majority of immigrants arriving in Canada up to the late 1960s came from Europe, by 1971 36 per cent of total migration originated from the ‘Third World’; by 1980 this figure had reached 81 per cent. By 2002, immigrants from Mainland China – formerly targets of harsh restrictions – represented the largest single group entering Canada, at 15 per cent of a total intake of 228,575 (approximately 33,000) and were followed by immigrants from India, Pakistan, and the Philippines at 13, 6, and 5 per cent respectively.Footnote 110 As a result of these changes in immigration policy, the vision of a predominantly white European Canada defended in Prime Minister Mackenzie King's 1947 speech to Parliament was effectively overturned.

I have argued that the reform of immigration and citizenship policies that allowed for these changes was driven by the shift in normative context catalysed by World War II. The discrediting of scientific racism, rise of human rights, and transformation of the global system as a consequence of decolonisation and the Cold War cast older, discriminatory policies in a new light, exposing a lack of fit between Canada and the US’ postwar commitments to liberal-democratic principles, on the one hand, and their management of the migration-membership dilemma, on the other. This lack of fit impeded foreign and domestic policy objectives and this, in turn, drove the stretching and consequent unravelling of established frameworks.

Differences in political context and institutions influenced the course of policy shifting in the two countries. In Canada, the autonomy of the executive branch granted ministers and civil servants a great deal of freedom in formulating policy. While political pressures were important, there was no need to strike compromises with well-positioned rivals. Rather, the challenge for Canadian civil servants lay in devising a solution that balanced the government's core objectives: the elimination of racial discrimination, control over sponsored migration, and encouragement of skilled immigration. The points system satisfied all of these aims. Conversely, the more fragmented American political system led the Johnson administration to broker a compromise with restrictionists in Congress, despite the relative weakness of the latter and strength of the former. Thus an admissions system which was to target immigrants with special skills and training was amended so that it granted disproportionate preference to family members.Footnote 111

References

1 Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos, ‘Building Walls, Bounding Nations: Migration and Exclusion in Canada and Germany, 1870–1939’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 17:4 (2004), pp. 385–427; Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 39–90; Mae M. Ngai, ‘The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924’, The Journal of American History, 86 (June 1999), pp. 67–92; Elazar Barkar, The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in the US and Britain between the World Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

2 Aristide R. Zolberg, ‘Global Movements, Global Walls: Responses to Migration, 1885–1925’, in Wang Gungwu (ed.), Global History and Migrations (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), pp. 279–308.

3 Debra L. DeLaet, US Immigration Policy in an Age of Rights (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), p. 11.

4 Randall Hansen and Jobst Koehler, ‘Issue Definition, Political Discourse and the Politics of Nationality Reform in France and Germany’, European Journal of Political Research, 44 (2005), pp. 626. Also see Christian Joppke, Selecting by Origin: Ethnic Migration in the Liberal State (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005); Patrick Weil, ‘Access to Citizenship: A Comparison of Twenty-five Nationality Laws’, in T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer (eds), Citizenship Today: Global Perspectives and Practices (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001).

5 Both states regulated migration so as to exclude non-whites and favour ‘Nordic races’ – that is, groups from northern and western Europe. The US’ National Origins Quota Acts also ranked European ‘races’; immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were deemed inferior and therefore subject to strict restrictions. While Canada also discriminated against southern and Eastern Europeans, there was no formal system devised for restricting their admission. Rather, policy was adjusted according to economic demands, with ‘non-preferred’ Europeans accepted during economic good times and excluded during downturns. For details on Canada see Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998). For the US see Ngai, ‘The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law’.

6 Aristide R. Zolberg, ‘International Migrations in Political Perspective’, in Mary M. Kritz, Charles B. Keely and Silvano M. Tomasi (eds), Global Trends in Migration: Theory and Research on International Population Movements (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1981), pp. 5, 8; Aristide R. Zolberg, ‘Wanted but Not Welcome: Alien Labor in Western Development’, in William Alonso (ed.), Population in an Interacting World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 37–73; Michael Walzer, ‘The Distribution of Membership’, in Peter G. Brown and Henry Shue (eds), Boundaries: National Autonomy and its Limits (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981), p. 2.

7 Peter Schuck, ‘Immigration Law and the Problem of Community’, in Nathan Glazer (ed.), Clamor at the Gates: The New American Immigration (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1985), pp. 285–6. I contend that admissions policies governing legal entry into a state fall under the rubric of membership policies and should therefore not be sharply distinguished from so-called ‘immigrant policies’ governing the conferral of rights and regulation of naturalisation. This is particularly true of states such as Canada and the US, where an individual's admission as a legal immigrant is considered the first step in his or her integration into citizenship. More generally, the very act of crossing a state boundary entails a shift in membership status. As Aristide Zolberg has persuasively argued, ‘transnational migration entails not merely movement in relation to environmental space, but a process whereby, in deviation from the universal norm in terms of which the world is organized, individuals and the activities they carry out are transferred, temporarily or permanently, from the domain of one state to that of another. Distance traveled is incidental; what matters is the crossing of a boundary.’ ‘Contemporary Transnational Migrations in Historical Perspective: Patterns and Dilemmas’, in Mary M. Kritz (ed.), US Immigration and Refugee Policy: Domestic and Global Issues (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1983), p. 16.

8 Stephen Castles, ‘How Nation-States Respond to Immigration and Ethnic Diversity’, New Community, 21:3 (1995), pp. 293–308.

9 Aristide R. Zolberg, ‘A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America’, (paper presented at the 2002 meeting of the American Political Science Association), pp. 4–5.

10 Aristide R. Zolberg, ‘International Migration Policies in a Changing World System’, in William H. McNeill and Ruth S. Adams (eds), Human Migration: Patterns and Policies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), pp. 244–51; ‘Bounded States in a Global Market: The Uses of International Labor Migrations’, in Pierre Bourdieu and James S. Coleman (eds), Social Theory for a Changing Society (New York: Russell Sage Foundations and Boulder: Colorado: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 311–2.

11 Alan C. Cairns, Citizens Plus: Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian State (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2000), p. 41.

12 Alan C. Cairns, ‘Empire, Globalization, and the Fall and Rise of Diversity’, in Alan C. Cairns et al (eds), Citizenship, Diversity, and Pluralism: Canadian and Comparative Perspectives (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999), pp. 24–5.

13 Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’, International Organization, 52:4 (Autumn 1998), p. 909; Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘Introduction: Alternative Perspectives on National Security’, in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.), Cultural Norms and National Security (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 5.

14 Joppke, Selecting By Origin, pp. 34–6;

15 My approach draws on insights from historical institutionalism, generally, and Peter Hall's theory of ‘paradigm shift’ in particular. See Kathleen Thelen and Sven Steinmo, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics’, in Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen, and Frank Longstreth (eds), Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 1–32; Peter A. Hall, ‘Policy Paradigms, Social Learning and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain’, Comparative Politics, 25:3 (April 1993), pp. 277–80; Peter Hall, ‘Policy Paradigms, Experts, and the State: The Case of Macroeconomic Policy-Making in Britain’, in Stephen Brooks and Alain-G. Gagnon (eds), Social Scientists, Policy, and the State (Westport: Connecticut: Praeger, 1990).

16 Hall, ‘Policy Paradigms, Experts, and the State’, p. 61.

17 Neil Bradford, ‘Public-Private Partnership? Shifting Paradigms of Economic Governance in Ontario’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, 36:5 (December 2003), p. 1006.

18 Stephen Krasner, ‘Sovereignty: An Institutional Perspective’, Comparative Political Studies, 21:1 (1988), pp. 66–94.

19 Hall, ‘Policy Paradigms, Experts, and the State’, p. 61; Hall, ‘Policy Paradigms, Social Learning and the State’, pp. 277–80.

20 As per Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink's ‘spiral model’ of state socialisation. See ‘The Socialization of International Human Rights Norms into Domestic Practices: Introduction’ in Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink (eds), The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 25. Also see Thomas Risse, ‘International Norms and Domestic Change: Arguing and Communicative Behavior in the Human Rights Arena’, Politics and Society, 27:4 (December 1999), p. 538.

21 Processes by which global norms are entrenched into domestic policies are usefully discussed in Kai Alderson, ‘Making Sense of State Socialization’, Review of International Studies, 27 (2001, pp. 415–33.

22 Kelley and Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, p. 449.

23 Daniel Tichenor, Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 29–30.

24 Aristide R. Zolberg, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 290.

25 George J. Borjas, Heaven's Door: Immigration and the American Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 8.

26 Whether this reputation is based on a proper understanding of Canadian immigration policy is open to question.

27 Ayelet Shachar, ‘The Race for Talent: Highly Skilled Migrants and Competitive Immigration Regimes’, New York University Law Review, 81 (2006), pp. 101–58.

28 Yasemin Nuhoğlu Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 1.

29 Ibid., ‘Changing Citizenship in Europe: Remarks on Postnational Membership and the National State’, in David Ceasarini and Mary Fulbrook (eds), Citizenship, Nationality andMigration in Europe (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 21.

30 Soysal, Limits of Citizenship, p. 3.

31 David Jacobson, Rights Across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 9.

32 Saskia Sassen, ‘The de facto Transnationalizing of Immigration Policy’, in Christian Joppke (ed.), Challenge to the Nation-State: Immigration in Western Europe and the US (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 72.

33 Christian Joppke, ‘Immigration Challenges the Nation-State’, in Christian Joppke (ed.), Challenge to the Nation-State: Immigration in Western Europe and the US (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 18.

34 For related positions see James F. Hollifield, Immigrants, Markets, and States: The Political Economy of Postwar Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992); Gary Freeman, ‘Modes of Immigration Politics in Liberal Democratic Societies’, International Migration Review, 29:4 (1995), pp. 881–902.

35 Christian Joppke, ‘The Legal-Domestic Sources of Immigrant Rights: The US, Germany, and the European Union’, Comparative Political Studies, 34:4 (May 2001), pp. 339–36.

36 Martha Finnemore, ‘Norms, Culture, and World Politics: Insights from Sociology's Institutionalism’, International Organization, 50:2 (Spring 1996), p. 343. For a concise summary of the Stanford School's core arguments see John W. Meyer, John Boli, George M. Thomas and Francisco O. Ramirez, ‘World Society and the Nation-State’, American Journal of Sociology, 103:1 (July 1997), pp. 144–81.

37 Amy Gurowitz, ‘Mobilizing International Norms: Domestic Actors, Immigrants, and the Japanese State’, World Politics, 51 (April 1999), pp. 414–5; Alderson, ‘Making Sense of State Socialization’, p. 416.

38 Christian Joppke, ‘Why Liberal States Accept Unwanted Immigration’, World Politics, 50 (January 1998), pp. 268–9; Myron Weiner, The Global Migration Crisis (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), pp. 80–3. Also see Amy Gurowitz, ‘Mobilizing International Norms: Domestic Actors, Immigrants and the State’, (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1999).

39 Sassen, ‘The de facto Transnationalizing of Immigration Policy’, p. 70; Rogers Brubaker, ‘Comment on “Modes of Immigration Politics in Liberal Democratic States”’, International Migration Review, 29:4 (Winter 1995), pp. 909–13.

40 Aristide R. Zolberg, ‘Global Movements, Global Walls: Responses to Migration, 1885–1925’, in Wang Gungwu (ed.), Global History and Migrations (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), pp. 279–303.

41 Ian Hany-López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996); Angelo N. Ancheta, Race, Rights, and the Asian American Experience (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998). For Canada see James W. St. G. Walker, ‘Race’, Rights and the Law in the Supreme Court of Canada: Historical Case Studies (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997).

42 In his more recent work, Christian Joppke has revised his argument, acceding that changes in international norms following World War II did indeed have a profound affect on liberal-democratic states’ approaches to immigration policy. See Selecting By Origin, pp. 27–28, 52. Yet, Joppke continues to insist that the demise of ‘settler states’ ethnoracial admissions policies’ was driven by ‘domestic society’ and not ‘international regimes’ (p. 28). The position developed in this article differs from Joppke's in that it sees domestic societies’ views and interests emerging out of interaction with an encompassing normative context. It is not a question of international regimes compelling states to behave in certain ways; understandings of what constitutes legitimate conduct are themselves fashioned out of the interplay of encompassing norms and more specific state interests. Moreover, my approach allows us to see how interest based decisions which reflect strategic reactions to changing normative standards (‘policy stretching’) can give way to a more fundamental reappraisal of precisely what constitutes a state's ‘interest’ in the sphere of immigration policy.

43 House of Commons, Debates, 1 May 1947, pp. 2644–6.

44 ‘Asiatic Immigration into Canada’, Canadian National Archives, RG 76, vol. 854, file 554-5, pt.1.

45 Carol Lee, ‘The Road to Enfranchisement: Chinese and Japanese in British Columbia’, B.C. Studies, 30 (1976), pp. 44–76; F. J. McEvoy, ‘“A Symbol of Racial Discrimination”: The Chinese Immigration Act and Canada's Relation with China, 1942–1947’, Canadian Ethnic Studies, 14:3 (1982), pp. 24–42.

46 Canada, House of Commons, Special Committee on Estimates, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence, No. 11, 14 March 1955, p. 301.

47 ‘Memorandum to Cabinet: Admission of Restricted Classes of Immigrants, June 10, 1952’, RG 26, vol. 125, file 3-33-7, vol. 2.

48 Hawkins, Canada and Immigration, p. 102.

49 Confidential Letter from Director of Immigration, C. E. S. Smith, to Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, G. McInnes, 17 January 1957. National Archives of Canada RG 76, vol. 830, file 552-1-644, pt. 2.

50 Linda Freeman, The Ambiguous Champion: Canada and South Africa in the Trudeau and Mulroney Years (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), p. 19.

51 Robert Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion: Canada and the World, 1945–1984 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007), p. 143.

52 See ‘Meeting of Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth: Report by Prime Minister John G. Diefenbaker on the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference, House of Commons, May 16, 1960’, in Arthur E. Blanchette (ed.), Canadian Foreign Policy 1955–1965: Selected Speeches and Documents (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977), pp. 302–6; Freeman, The Ambiguous Champion, p. 25.

53 Telegraph from Canadian Trade Commissioner in Port-of Spain to Department of External Affairs, Ottawa, 20 March 1961.

54 ‘Immigration by Discrimination’, The Black Worker, March 1952. National Archives of Canada, RG 26, vol. 123, file 3-32-24; National Archives of Canada, Box 266, RG 76, vol. 830, file 552-1-644, pt. 2.

55 David Corbett, ‘Canada's Immigration Policy, 1957–1962’, International Journal, 18:2 (Spring 1963), p. 173.

56 Memorandum to Cabinet: Immigration Agreements with Pakistan and Ceylon, 23 October 1958. National Archives of Canada, RG 76, vol. 948, file SF-C-1-1, pt. 2.

57 Ibid. National Archives of Canada, RG 76, vol. 948, file SF-C-1-1, pt. 2.

58 Memorandum to Cabinet: Immigration Policies and Procedures (Immigration from China and Japan), 8 August 1958. National Archives of Canada, RG 76, vol. 948, file SF-C-1-1, pt. 2.

59 Alan Green, Immigration and the Postwar Canadian Economy (Toronto: Macmillan-Hunter Press, 1976), pp. 34–5; Sunera Thobani, Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), p. 146.

60 See Memorandum from Director of Immigration to Deputy Minister of Department of Citizenship and Immigration: Immigration Policy and Programming as Related to Economic and Employment Factors in Canada, 9 December 1960. National Archives of Canada, RG 26, vol. 75, file 1-1-1, pt. 2.

61 In fact, efforts were stepped up to generate increased immigration from traditional European sources though advertising and other means. It was felt that Canada's passive approach to immigration was costing it in terms of attracting highly skilled Europeans. See materials in RG 26, vol. 75, file 1-1-8, pt. 3; RG 76, vol. 909, file 572-15, pt. 2.

62 Memorandum to Cabinet Re: Immigration Regulations, 16 October 1961. National Archives of Canada, RG 26, vol. 100, file 3-15-1, pt. 8.

63 Freda Hawkins, Canada and Immigration: Public Policy and Public Concern (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988), p. 131.

64 Memorandum from Assistant Deputy Minister to Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, 21 January 1966. National Archives of Canada, RG 26, vol. 145, file 3-33-6; cited in Satzewich, ‘Racism and Canadian Immigration Policy’, p. 84.

65 Canada, House of Commons, Debates, ‘Tabling of White Paper on Government Policy’, 14 October 1966, p. 8652.

66 Canada, Special Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Commons on Immigration, Minutes of the Proceedings and Evidence, no. 9, p. 407.

67 Hawkins, Canada and Immigration, p. 162.

68 Ibid.; Kelley and Trebilcock, Making the Mosaic, pp. 358–61.

69 Memorandum from the Assistant Deputy Minister (Immigration) to the Deputy Minister on the Parliamentary Committee on Immigration, 19 February 1968, p. 6. National Archives of Canada, RG 76, vol. 966, file 5000-14-2, pt. 14.

70 Memorandum to Cabinet, Re: A New Immigration Selection System: Amendments to the Immigration Regulations, Part I, National Archives of Canada, RG 76, vol. 948, file SF-C-1-1, pt. 3.

71 Zolberg, A Nation by Design, p. 290; Bill Ong Hing, Making and Remaking Asian America Through Immigration Policy, 1850–1990 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 110. Zolberg rightly notes that war time considerations ‘also occasioned the relocation and large-scale internment of some 110,000 West Coasters of Japanese origin, including not only 40,000 foreign-born who remained alien by virtue of the prohibition on their naturalization but also 70,000 American-born children.’ Zolberg, A Nation by Design, p. 298.

72 Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution, pp. 39–44.

73 Cited in Daniel J. Tichenor, Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America (Princeton: Princeton University Pres, 2002), p. 179.

74 Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution, p. 47.

75 Aristide R. Zolberg, ‘From Invitation to Interdiction: US Foreign Policy and Immigration since 1945’, in Michael S. Teitelbaum and Myron Weiner (eds), Threatened Peoples, Threatened Borders: World Migration and US Policy (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1995), p. 123.

76 Zolberg, A Nation by Design, p. 308.

77 Zolberg, ‘From Invitation to Interdiction’, p. 125.

78 Cited in Marion T. Bennett, ‘The Immigration and Nationality (McCarran-Walter) Act of 1952, as Amended to 1965’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (September 1966), pp. 129–30.

79 Bennett, ‘The Immigration and Nationality (McCarran-Walter) Act of 1952’, p. 131.

80 Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants Since 1882 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004), p. 116.

81 Tichenor, Dividing Lines, p. 196.

82 Congressional Quarterly Almanac (1952), p. 159.

83 Jeffrey Togman, The Ramparts of Nations: Institutions and Immigration Policies in France and the US (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2002), p. 36; Desmond King, The Liberty of Strangers: Making the American Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 127.

84 Cited in Desmond King, Making Americans: Immigration, Race, and the Origins of Diverse Democracy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 237.

85 ‘Truman Assails Eisenhower as Supporting Isolationists’, The New York Times (18 October 1952).

86 ‘Eisenhower Accepts “Nazi” Racial Views, Truman Declares’, Washington Evening Star (17 October 1952).

87 Tichenor, Dividing Lines, pp. 179–80.

88 Commission on Immigration and Nationalization, Whom We Shall Welcome (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1953).

89 Tichenor, Dividing Lines, pp. 203–4.

90 Joppke, Selecting By Origin, p. 55.

91 Tichenor, Dividing Lines, p. 205; Zolberg, A Nation by Design, p. 297.

92 Zolberg, A Nation by Design, p. 300.

93 King, Making Americans, p. 239; Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution, pp. 47–48. On the Hungarian Refugee Crisis see Arthur A. Markowitz, ‘Humanitarianism versus Restrictionism: The US and the Hungarian Refugees’, International Migration Review, 7:1 (Spring 1973), pp. 46–59; and Philip Wolgin, ‘Whom Shall We Accept? Immigrants, Refugees, and the Limits of Liberalization in the Early Cold War’ (unpublished ms. Department of History, University of California Berkeley).

94 Joppke, Selecting By Origin, p. 54. Also see Gary Gerstle, American Crucible (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

95 DeLaet, US Immigration Policy in an Age of Rights, p. 39.

96 Kennedy made immigration policy one of his central concerns as a member of the US Senate. See Zolberg, A Nation by Design, p. 325.

97 Bennett, ‘The Immigration and Nationality (McCarran-Walter) Act of 1952’, pp. 135–6.

98 Tichenor, Dividing Lines, p. 209.

99 David M. Reimers, ‘Recent Immigration Policy: An Analysis’, in Barry R. Chiswick (ed.), The Gateway: US Immigration Issues and Policies (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1982), pp. 13–53.

100 Abba P. Schwartz, The Open Society (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1968), p. 114; Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution, pp. 50–51.

101 Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution, p. 50.

102 Ibid., p. 52.

103 James G. Gimpel and James R. Edwards, Jr., The Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999), p. 102.

104 Cited in Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution, p. 55.

105 Zolberg, A Nation by Design, pp. 332–3.

106 Edward M. Kennedy, ‘The Immigration Act of 1965’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 367:1 (1966), p. 147.

107 Zolberg, A Nation by Design, p. 333.

108 Cited in Reimers, ‘Recent Immigration Policy’, p. 38.

109 US Census Bureau, Facts for Features, 19 April 2004, available online at {http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/001738.html}.

110 Citizenship and Immigration Canada, The Monitor, no. 1/2 (Spring 2003), {http://www.cic.gc/english/monitor/issue01/02-immigrants.html}. For discussion see Doreen M. Indra, ‘Changes in Canadian Immigration Patterns Over the Past Decade with a Special Reference to Asia’, in K. Victor Ujimoto and Gordon Hirabayashi (eds), Visible Minorities and Multiculturalism: Asians in Canada (Toronto: Butterworths, 1980); Warren Kalbach, ‘A Demographic Overview of Racial and Ethnic Groups in Canada’, and Jean Leonard Elliot and Augie Fleras, ‘Immigration and the Canadian Ethnic Mosaic’, both in Peter S. Li (ed.), Race and Ethnic Relations in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990).

111 Ironically, contemporary critics of American immigration policy often draw attention to the 1965 Act's privileging of family reunification, arguing that it threatens the maintenance of ‘American national identity’ by allowing for ‘immense and continuing immigration from Latin America, especially from Mexico’. See Samuel P. Huntington, ‘The Hispanic Challenge’, Foreign Policy, 136 (March/April 2004).