ABSTRACT
Although immigration presents legal and public policy questions of global impact, its implications for the disability community have received scant attention. This chapter presents a case study of Israel’s singular experience in opening its doors to immigrants with disabilities. It stands as a generous and humane endeavor, posing a sharp contrast to the laws and policies of the United States and many other nations. The U.S. government has longerected barriers to entry for immigrants who disclosed their disabilities or presented visible disabilities. American immigration policies, for example, required the exclusion of immigrants with mental retardation (Herr, 1983). Even today, an alien can be excluded from the United States if he or she has “a physical or mental disorder and behavior associated with the disorder that may pose, or has posed, a threat to the property, safety, or welfare of the alien or others” (Immigration and Nationality Act, 1997). Advocates have also invoked the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 to challenge a lack of reasonable accommodations in citizenship testing procedures. In recent years, immigrants to the United States with HIV have become the latest group to bear the brunt of exclusionary immigration policy, treated as having a “communicable disease of public health significance” (Immigration and Nationality Act, 1997; Kidder, 1996). But their difficulties reflect the broader problem of an immigration law that served as “a preserve for prejudices about race, disability, and sexual orientation no longer considered polite in domestic discourse” (Margulies, 1994, p. 555).
