- According to Sassen, what are the political and economic forces that give rise to migration?
no less than 150 words use the sources to support your answer. in cite inapp format
World Policy Institute America's Immigration "Problem" Author(s): Saskia Sassen Source: World Policy Journal, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Fall, 1989), pp. 811-832 Published by: The MIT Press and the World Policy Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40209134 . Accessed: 10/01/2011 19:34 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mitpress. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. The MIT Press and World Policy Institute are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to World Policy Journal. http://www.jstor.org http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mitpress http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=wpi http://www.jstor.org/stable/40209134?origin=JSTOR-pdf http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mitpress AMERICA'S IMMIGRATION "PROBLEM" Saskia Sassen Immigration has traditionally aroused strong passions in the United States. Although Americans like to profess pride in their history as "a nation of immigrants ," each group of arrivals, once established, has fought to keep newcomers out. Over the past two centuries, each new wave of immigrants has encountered strenuous opposition from earlier arrivals, who have insisted that the country was already filled to capacity. (The single excep- tion to this was the South's eagerness to import ever more slaves.) Similar efforts to shut out newcomers persist today. But those who would close the door to immigration are mistaken on two counts: not only do they underestimate the country's capacity to absorb more people, but they also fail to appreciate the political and economic forces that give rise to immigra- tion in the first place. U.S. policymakers and the public alike believe the causes of immigra- tion are self-evident: people who migrate to the United States are driven to do so by poverty, economic stagnation, and overpopulation in their home countries. Since immigration is thought to result from unfavorable socioeco- nomic conditions in other countries, it is assumed to be unrelated to U.S. economic needs or broader international economic conditions. In this con- text, the decision on whether to take in immigrants comes to be seen pri- marily as a humanitarian matter; we admit immigrants by choice and out of generosity, not because we have any economic motive or political respon- sibility to do so. An effective immigration policy, by this reasoning, is one that selectively admits immigrants for such purposes as family reunification and refugee resettlement, while perhaps seeking to deter migration by Saskia Sassen is professor and chair of urban planning in the Graduate School of Architecture and Planning at Columbia University. This article is drawn from her most recent book, The Mobility of Labor and Capital: A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow (New York: Cam- bridge University Press, 1988). 812 World Policy Journal promoting direct foreign investment, foreign aid, and democracy in the migrant-sending countries. Although there are nuances of position, liberals and conservatives alike accept the prevailing wisdom on the causes of immigration and the best ways to regulate it. The only disagreement, in fact, is over how strictly we should limit immigration. Conservatives generally maintain that if immigration is not severely restricted, we will soon be overrun by im- poverished masses from the Third World, although the demand for cheap agricultural labor at times tempers this position. Liberals tend to be more charitable, arguing that the United States, as the richest country in the world, can afford to be generous in offering a haven to the poor and oppressed. Advocates of a less restrictive policy also note the positive effects of immigration, such as the growth of cultural diversity and a renewed spirit of entrepreneurship. Not surprisingly, U.S. immigration laws have reflected the dominant assumptions about the proper objectives of immigration policy. The last two major immigration reforms, passed in 1965 and 1986, have sought to control immigration through measures aimed at regulating who may enter legally and preventing illegal immigrants from crossing our borders. At the same time, the U.S. government has attempted to promote eco- nomic growth in the migrant-sending countries by encouraging direct for- eign investment and export-oriented international development assistance, in the belief that rising economic opportunities in the developing world will deter emigration. Yet U.S. policies, no matter how carefully devised, have consistently failed to limit or regulate immigration in the intended way. The 1965 amendment to the Immigration and Naturalization Act was meant to open up the United States to more immigration, but to do so in a way that would allow the government to control entries and reduce illegal immigration. It sought to eliminate the bias against non-Europeans that was built into earlier immigration law and to regulate the influx of immigrants by setting up a series of preference categories within a rather elaborate system of general quotas.1 Under this system, preference was given to immediate relatives of U.S. citizens and, to a lesser extent, to immigrants possessing skills in short supply in the United States, such as nurses and nannies. The 1965 law brought about major changes in immigration patterns, but not necessarily the intended ones. The emphasis on family reunification should have ensured that the bulk of new immigrants would come from countries that had already sent large numbers of immigrants to the United States- that is, primarily from Europe. But the dramatic rise in immigra- America's Immigration "Problem" 813 tion after 1965 was primarily the result of an entirely new wave of migra- tions from the Caribbean Basin and South and Southeast Asia. The failure of U.S. policy was particularly evident in the rapid rise in the number of undocumented immigrants entering the country. Not only did the level of Mexican undocumented immigration increase sharply, but a whole series of new undocumented flows were initiated, mostly from the same coun- tries that provided the new legal immigration. The outcry over rising illegal immigration led to a series of congres- sional proposals that culminated in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. This law was intended to rationalize immigration policy and, in particular, to address the problem of illegal immigration. It features a limited regularization program that enables undocumented aliens to legalize their status if they can prove continuous residence in the United States since before January 1, 1982, among other eligibility criteria. A second provision of the law seeks to reduce the employment opportunities of undocumented workers through sanctions against employers who know- ingly hire them. The third element is an extended guest-worker program designed to ensure a continuing abundant supply of low-wage workers for agriculture. So far, the law's overall effectiveness has been limited. While some 1.8 million immigrants applied to regularize their status2 (a fairly significant number, though less than expected), there is growing evidence that the employer sanctions program is resulting in discrimination against minority workers who are in fact U.S. citizens, as well as various abuses against undocumented workers. Meanwhile, illegal immigration has apparently continued to rise. Congressional efforts to correct the law's shortcomings have already begun. In a relatively promising departure from earlier immigration policy, the Senate recently approved a bill that seeks to give higher priority to applicants who satisfy labor needs in the United States.3 Though the 54,000-per-year limit placed on such immigrants would still be small, the proposed law would set an important precedent by acknowledging that immigrants, while only about 7 percent of the U.S. labor force, have accounted for 22 percent of the growth in the work force since 1970, and by responding to U.S. Department of Labor forecasts of impending labor shortages in a variety of occupations. Yet even a modified version of the 1986 law has little chance of success- fully regulating immigration for one simple reason: like earlier laws, it is based on a faulty understanding of the causes of immigration. By focusing narrowly on immigrants and on the immigration process itself, U.S. policymakers have ignored the broader international forces, many of them 814 World Policy Journal generated or at least encouraged by the United States, that have helped give rise to migration flows. In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States played a crucial role in the development of today's global economic system. It was a key exporter of capital, promoted the development of export-manufacturing enclaves in many Third World countries, and passed legislation aimed at opening its own and other countries* economies to the flow of capital, goods, ser- vices, and information. The emergence of a global economy- and the cen- tral military, political, and economic role played by the United States in this process- contributed both to the creation abroad of pools of po- tential emigrants and to the formation of linkages between industrial- ized and developing countries that subsequently were to serve as bridges for international migration. Paradoxically, the very measures commonly thought to deter immigration- foreign investment and the promotion of export-oriented growth in developing countries- seem to have had pre- cisely the opposite effect. The clearest proof of this is the fact that several of the newly industrializing countries with the highest growth rates in the world are simultaneously becoming the most important suppliers of immigrants to the United States. At the same time, the transformation of the occupational and income structure of the United States- itself in large part a result of the globali- zation of production - has expanded the supply of low-wage jobs. The decline of manufacturing and the growth of the service sector have increased