Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States.

• Author: Rodriguez, Cristina M.
• Position: Book review

AMERICANS IN WAITING: THE LOST STORY OF IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE UNITED STATES. By Hiroshi Motomura. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 2006. Pp. vii, 254. Cloth, $29.95; paper, $19.95.

INTRODUCTION

Through Americans in Waiting, Hiroshi Motomura (1) tells us three different stories about how U.S. law and policy, over time, have framed the relationship between immigrants and the American body politic. He captures the complexity, historical contingency, and democratic urgency of that relationship by canvassing the immigration law canon and teasing from it the three frameworks that have structured immigrants' social status, their interactions with the state, and the processes of immigrant integration and naturalization. In so doing, he illuminates how popular mythologies about the assimilative capacity of the American melting pot obscure myriad political and social conflicts over how best to produce Americans. He also demonstrates how alternating cycles of inclusive and exclusionary politics have shaped the processes through which American citizenship has been defined. As he charts this history, Motomura reminds us of the unceasing importance of the institution of national citizenship, particularly in an era of semiporous borders and transnational forms of political and economic association. He calls on Americans to honor the very best of the three historical traditions he presents by treating lawful immigrants as American citizens in waiting, presumptively entitled to all the prerogatives of membership.

In making this bold plea, Motomura brings to light a paradox that has become increasingly apparent over the last decade. In a globalizing world marked by heightened migration and transnational forms of association, we still need robust conceptions of national, geographically anchored citizenship to promote social cooperation. (2) But the political institutions, such as citizenship, that support strong frameworks of belonging cannot fully absorb the influx of migrants with plural loyalties. The public opinion on which the maintenance of those frameworks depends often resists including too many new members, particularly when those new members are poor or racially and culturally distinct. In other words, the global phenomena of large-scale migration and transnational loyalties fragment national political communities and make it more difficult for the institutions that traditionally promote social cohesion--like citizenship--to effectively respond to that fragmentation.

This paradox may not be resolvable, and it may make full-scale revival of the Americans-in-waiting ideal impossible. But the first step in addressing the dilemma is certainly to understand its origins. In Part I of this Review, I therefore begin by discussing Motomura's account of the history of immigration to the United States. Through this retelling, Motomura provides an essential resource for those steeped in immigration law and history, as well as a revelatory read for anyone interested in how Americans can remain true to our historical willingness, as a nation of immigrants, to incorporate newcomers humanely and fairly. In Part II, I consider why Motomura's insights on the need for strong national anchors of belonging still matter in a supposed transnational age and how that need conflicts with the preferences of entrenched populations. This conflict results in what I call the admissions--status tradeoff, or the dynamic whereby the acceptance of large numbers of immigrants is accompanied by parsimonious treatment of those same immigrants. I conclude by offering some thoughts on how to broach these tensions in a way that is true to Motomura's vision of immigrants as Americans in waiting.

1. LOOKING IN ON IMMIGRATION: THREE OLD RELATIONSHIPS

   In Americans in Waiting, Motomura identifies three conceptions of the relationship between immigrants and the body politic that have shaped our law and policy: immigration as contract, immigration as affiliation, and immigration as transition (pp. 8-12). The discussion of immigration as transition represents the normative and emotional heart of the book, as well as Motomura's primary challenge to his readers. In dialogue with the work of other scholars who have made the case for treating immigrants as full and genuine members of our society, (3) Motomura calls for a reinvigoration of the idea that immigrants are in transition toward becoming American citizens and therefore should be treated as presumptively equal to citizens (p. 9).

   Motomura describes immigration as transition as a lost tradition in our immigration history that predates the passage of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (p. 8). According to this tradition, lawful residents who filed a declaration expressing their intention to naturalize acquired many of the rights of citizenship. "Intending citizens" possessed voting rights into the early twentieth century, as well as the right to sponsor the immigration of their relatives without limitation. They were eligible for grants of land under the 1862 Homestead Act, and many states and localities permitted them to participate in public-works projects and other public programs intended for citizens (pp. 116-19).

   Not all immigrants were eligible to be treated as Americans in waiting, of course. As Motomura points out, naturalization was open only to whites from 1790 to 1870, to whites and blacks from 1870 to the 1940s, and to all immigrants regardless of race only after 1952 (p. 123). But the equal treatment of intending citizens reflected a belief that certain "we/they" dichotomies are inappropriate in a democratic society (p. 14). Motomura calls for a universally applicable revival of this conception to honor our country's immigrant traditions and advance the integration of current immigrants, who are arriving in the United States in unprecedented numbers. (4)

   To understand what such presumptive equality would entail and to appreciate why Motomura's Americans-in-waiting idea is simultaneously compelling and challenging, it is first critical to understand the frameworks with which immigration as transition has competed throughout American history. Under immigration as contract, immigrants are entitled to remain in the United States as long as they abide by the terms of their admission (p. 36). The government need only provide them with fair notice of those terms. Should the terms be violated, the government can revoke its permission to stay at any time and deport the immigrant--an option not available to the government in its relations with its citizens. The animating principles behind immigration as contract are fairness and the protection of expectations, not equal treatment (p. 10). Equality presumes belonging. But under the immigration-as-contract framework, noncitizens, by definition, do not belong to the body politic, and equal treatment therefore has no place in defining their status (pp. 88-89).

   Immigration as affiliation, by contrast, assumes that immigrants can earn their inclusion in the body politic (p. 89). The ties and roots immigrants establish inside the United States--to employers, to spouses and children who are citizens, and to social networks--gradually transform immigrants from outsiders to quasi citizens. As immigrants become increasingly integrated into American life, they accrue entitlements that the government must recognize-entitlements that also, indirectly, protect the interests of the U.S. citizens to whom they have become attached (p. 90). In other words, immigrants derive their status from the role they play in making our society function. The terms of their membership can change over time as that role evolves, in contrast to the contract model that determines an immigrant's rights upon his arrival (p. 90). Though the transition and affiliation models can both be characterized as inclusive, under the latter in particular, "America's welcome is uncertain and deferred," and immigrants are not treated as presumptively equal (pp. 154-55).

   Both immigration as contract and immigration as affiliation have shaped our laws and policies, and together largely have subsumed the transition model. Motomura canvasses the Supreme Court's major immigration cases and shows how these models have competed with one another in court opinions and legislative debates. Immigration as contract, for example, emerged in the foundational cases of immigration law through which the Supreme Court upheld the Chinese Exclusion Acts and developed the so-called plenary power doctrine. (5) Though the ideology of Anglo-Saxon superiority expressed by the Court marks the opinions as products of the late nineteenth century, the idea that controlling borders, or setting the terms of immigrant admissions, is a core function of the national sovereign remains vital today. Immigration as contract therefore shapes much of contemporary immigration law. For instance, Congress has dramatically expanded the grounds for removal under the aggravated felony category--a category that originally included murder and the trafficking of firearms or drugs but that has been broadened to include fraud or deceit crimes and crimes classified as misdemeanors under state law (p. 55). This expansion of the list of terms according to which immigrants forfeit their right to remain in the United States reflects a continuation of the contract mentality. (6) Proposals circulated in the last year for guest worker programs (7) that would admit workers on a strictly temporary basis with no path to permanent residence and bar those workers who violate the terms of their visa from ever legally returning to the United States also reflect the contract mentality. (8)

   As Motomura points out, because the contract framework consists of the fairness principles of notice and the protection of expectations, it can sometimes work in the immigrant's favor, as when the Supreme Court declined, in INS v. St. Cyr, (9) to...