Carl J. Bon Tempo, an assistant professor of history at the State University of New York, Albany, has written an engaging account of the transformation of United States refugee policy since the end of World War II. He begins by positing a contradiction between the relatively closed doors of the United States to refugees during the war and the millions of refugees it admitted thereafter. Americans at the Gate seeks to explain how United States policy shifted so dramatically by focussing on Hungarian, Cuban, Soviet Jewish, Chilean, and Indochinese refugees.

Bon Tempo advances two principal arguments in his book, which he supports throughout his account. The first is that United States refugee policy was shaped by both American foreign-policy priorities and domestic politics and culture, which Bon Tempo skillfully demonstrates. Second, he argues that the implementation of United States policy regarding refugees varied a considerable degree over the years and must be studied in addition to policy formulation. Bon Tempo also connects debates over American refugee policy to similar discussions regarding immigration throughout his account. In particular, he clearly outlines the influence of the two dominant forces in immigration politics: “restrictionists,” whom he characterizes as those “generally opposed [to] the entry of immigrants,” and “liberalizers,” who “generally supported the entry of immigrants” (2).

For Bon Tempo, central to understanding United States refugee policy is the influence of ideology and the evolution of the meaning of “American.” In his view, the dominant interpretation in the early Cold War years intrinsically linked “American-ness” to anticommunism rather than to religion, ethnicity, or national origins (30). Bon Tempo argues that the Refugee Relief Program, the United States' first postwar refugee program, was precipitated by concerns about political and economic instability in Europe in the early 1950s. Refugees admitted under this program were primarily European and portrayed as victims of communism. These characteristics were also true of the significant numbers of Hungarians who fled the Soviet crackdown in 1956, solidifying the formula outlined here of “refugee equals European anticommunist” (66). With the admission of thousands of Hungarian refugees, the United States began its practice of “paroling” admitees without visas, thus delaying or denying them permanent immigration status. In Bon Tempo's view, “The decision to parole the Hungarians would in time reshape American refugee policymaking and programs” (71). Indeed, in subsequent chapters the author demonstrates how the tool of parole enabled greater flexibility in admitting refugees to the United States, as it permitted their entry without Congressional approval.

Bon Tempo analyzes the intersection between refugee policy and growing interest in human rights in the United States in the 1970s, arguing that the two issues became closely linked especially in the cases of Soviet Jews, Chileans, and Indochinese boat people. His account of the different currents of support for United States human rights policy is valuable and concise. The work culminates by outlining efforts to reform American refugee policy at the end of Carter's presidency, given what he terms its “elastic nature” (157). In his view, the Refugee Act of 1980 redefined the meaning of a “refugee” by shifting away from prioritizing ideological concerns over human rights principles; nevertheless, the Act was largely ignored by the Reagan administration in subsequent years. His epilogue demonstrates a “gender revolution in asylum law” and the increased influence of humanitarian concerns on refugee policy during the Clinton administration (203). In conclusion, Bon Tempo suggests that the United States' commitment to refugees remains as fragile today as it was during the Cold War.

The author bases his clearly argued and well-written work on research in the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Ford presidential libraries; Congressional records; a wide range of executive branch records available at the National Archives; and extensive secondary sources. Bon Tempo, however, does not draw upon the records at the Carter or Reagan presidential libraries, an omission he might have explained to the reader. Similarly, the author made a frustrating decision to forego a bibliography.

This rich account addresses the role of class in shaping American acceptance of certain refugees and details how the United States attempted to ease refugees' transition. Bon Tempo juxtaposes United States policy toward Cuban and Haitian refugees, but he could have offered more extensive analysis of how race influenced American refugee policy. In addition, the author could have expanded his discussion of the debate surrounding the admission of Indochinese in the 1970s by locating it in the context of Chinese exclusion and specific statistics about changing immigration patterns in the wake of the 1965 Immigration Act. Finally, his work would have benefited from greater attention to the groups that made up what he terms the “refugee advocacy community”; in particular, Bon Tempo might have devoted more attention to the religious, labor and other nongovernmental groups pressing for a more liberal refugee policy. In addition, his account incorporates very few voices of refugees seeking entry into the United States; their inclusion would also have enriched his account.