Keith Fitzgerald. The Face of the Nation: Immigration, the State, and National Identity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), xii + 285 pp.; ISBN 0-8047-2485-7 (cloth).

U.S. immigration policy proves as difficult to understand for the analyst as for the potential migrant seeking to enter the United States. While offering opportunities for immigration each year that exceed those of any other nation in the world, the United States also denies entry to more potential immigrants than do all other nations in the world combined. With relatively few periods of low immigration, the United States has long led the world in immigrant admissions. Yet, these opportunities for migration have for much of the nation’s recent history been limited to migrants from certain parts of the world. The steady growth in immigration has spurred increasingly vociferous popular demands for further restriction. Yet, Congress seems incapable of responding to the demands. So, the United States is at once open and restrictive, a nation of immigrants, and a nation seeking restrictions on immigration.