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Inventing the Immigration Problem : The Dillingham Commission and Its Legacy / Katherine Benton-Cohen.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2018]Copyright date: ©2018Description: 1 online resource (330 p.) : 17 halftonesContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780674985667
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 325.7309/041 23
LOC classification:
  • JV6483 .B48 2018
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. The Professor and the Commission -- 2. The Gentlemen’s Agreement -- 3. Hebrew or Jewish Is Simply a Religion -- 4. The Vanishing American Wage Earner -- 5. Women’s Power and Knowledge -- 6. The American Type -- 7. Not a Question of Too Many Immigrants -- Epilogue -- Dillingham Commission Members and Selected Staff -- Dillingham Commission Reports -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Illustration Credits -- Index
Summary: In 1907 the U.S. Congress created a joint commission to investigate what many Americans saw as a national crisis: an unprecedented number of immigrants flowing into the United States. Experts—women and men trained in the new field of social science—fanned out across the country to collect data on these fresh arrivals. The trove of information they amassed shaped how Americans thought about immigrants, themselves, and the nation’s place in the world. Katherine Benton-Cohen argues that the Dillingham Commission’s legacy continues to inform the ways that U.S. policy addresses questions raised by immigration, over a century later. Within a decade of its launch, almost all of the commission’s recommendations—including a literacy test, a "a system based on national origin, the continuation of Asian exclusion, and greater federal oversight of immigration policy—were implemented into law. Inventing the Immigration Problem describes the labyrinthine bureaucracy, broad administrative authority, and quantitative record-keeping that followed in the wake of these regulations. Their implementation marks a final turn away from an immigration policy motivated by executive-branch concerns over foreign policy and toward one dictated by domestic labor politics. The Dillingham Commission—which remains the largest immigration study ever conducted in the United States—reflects its particular moment in time when mass immigration, the birth of modern social science, and an aggressive foreign policy fostered a newly robust and optimistic notion of federal power. Its quintessentially Progressive formulation of America’s immigration problem, and its recommendations, endure today in almost every component of immigration policy, control, and enforcement.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780674985667

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. The Professor and the Commission -- 2. The Gentlemen’s Agreement -- 3. Hebrew or Jewish Is Simply a Religion -- 4. The Vanishing American Wage Earner -- 5. Women’s Power and Knowledge -- 6. The American Type -- 7. Not a Question of Too Many Immigrants -- Epilogue -- Dillingham Commission Members and Selected Staff -- Dillingham Commission Reports -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Illustration Credits -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

In 1907 the U.S. Congress created a joint commission to investigate what many Americans saw as a national crisis: an unprecedented number of immigrants flowing into the United States. Experts—women and men trained in the new field of social science—fanned out across the country to collect data on these fresh arrivals. The trove of information they amassed shaped how Americans thought about immigrants, themselves, and the nation’s place in the world. Katherine Benton-Cohen argues that the Dillingham Commission’s legacy continues to inform the ways that U.S. policy addresses questions raised by immigration, over a century later. Within a decade of its launch, almost all of the commission’s recommendations—including a literacy test, a "a system based on national origin, the continuation of Asian exclusion, and greater federal oversight of immigration policy—were implemented into law. Inventing the Immigration Problem describes the labyrinthine bureaucracy, broad administrative authority, and quantitative record-keeping that followed in the wake of these regulations. Their implementation marks a final turn away from an immigration policy motivated by executive-branch concerns over foreign policy and toward one dictated by domestic labor politics. The Dillingham Commission—which remains the largest immigration study ever conducted in the United States—reflects its particular moment in time when mass immigration, the birth of modern social science, and an aggressive foreign policy fostered a newly robust and optimistic notion of federal power. Its quintessentially Progressive formulation of America’s immigration problem, and its recommendations, endure today in almost every component of immigration policy, control, and enforcement.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Aug 2021)