Julia Albarracín shows that immigration to Argentina since the 1850s has both shaped and reflected the competing interests of the legislative and executive branches in the country's governance. This book focuses on policies and the public debates that gave form to the Argentine state's approach to immigration. It does an exceptionally good job of stressing how policies were made by legislation or presidential decrees and why that matters to our overall understanding of political decision-making and democratization.

In addition to two formal immigration laws in 1876 and 2003, presidential decrees since the 1910s have been an important part of Argentine immigration policy. As Albarracín shows, such decrees responded to changing economic, international, and cultural factors at a much faster pace than new immigration legislation would have. Through decree, presidents excluded and included foreign nationals in various ways. Early decrees barred entry to people who might become a public burden or criminals (37, 199), but others regularized the status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants already in the country. This happened not only in 1984 in the aftermath of dictatorship and in 2004 after the Argentine congress passed a comprehensive immigration reform, but also in 1949 (3, 73, 175).

This political science book offers important historical perspectives on immigration policy. While it does make reference to “two centuries” (8), “150 years” (197), and the time between 1876 and 2003 (2) in its framing, it is mainly an excellent study of the two decades between the end of the last dictatorship in 1983 and a major immigration law passed in 2003. Indeed, five of the six chapters focus on these two decades, while the first chapter moves quickly (and skillfully) over the previous century. This is not a fault of the book but is worth mentioning in a review by a historian and in a history journal.

There are other methodological differences between this study, rooted in political science, and how a historian would likely approach a similar topic. Several chapters use articles in newspapers to link presidential decrees to broader societal discussions. Depending on short-term economic factors, the press portrayed immigrants in a more positive or negative light. Yet Albarracín largely uses a quantitative approach: she “codes” articles as either positive or negative and makes statistical statements about public opinion (for example, that 65 percent of articles were in favor of immigration). She has a similar quantitative approach with the results of surveys she distributed to Argentine congresspeople.

The book begins with the question of why there was such a long period of time between the 1876 Avellaneda Law, which played a foundational role in making Argentina a nation of immigrants, and the 2003 reform. The answer, for Albarracín, lies with the concept of “delegative democracy” in which presidential authority overrode the power of the congress and in which the congress withdrew from its responsibility. One could add to that point that between 1930 and 1983, congressional authority was often abrogated or truncated as the result of recurring and periodic military rule. But her question does become increasingly salient for the period after 1983, when presidents Alfonsín and Menem continued to use decrees to deal with several minor issues related to migrants. Congress launched formal information requests about such decrees, which made the executive branch more accountable and showed the legislative branch's interest in reasserting its involvement in immigration policy.

One last important theme of the book is its focus on migrant laborers from neighboring countries throughout the history of republican Argentina. Indeed, by 2010, 70 percent of foreign-born residents came from such countries. Yet, in the 1950s, as immigration from Europe again became significant, migrants from border countries accounted for 56 percent of arrivals (48). And even in the era of mass migration in the half century before the Great Depression, foreigners from neighboring countries were consistently present but often not classified as “immigrants” because they did not arrive by transatlantic voyage. By linking European and South American immigration even in the nineteenth century, the author aptly shows the changing popular perceptions and policies relating to each group. The distinction between past European contributions and contemporary South American job stealers/criminals/illegals appears to have emerged in the 1980s. As this book shows, changing economic circumstances influenced how welcoming Argentines would be to people of different origins.