ABSTRACT
Immigration has long held a central place in the national mythology of the United States. By setting conditions for admission and membership into the American polity, U.S. immigration policy has, as Aristide Zolberg (2005) writes, not only been “a major instrument of American nation-building, but also fostered the notion that the nation could be designed” (p. 2). The centrality of immigration policy in America's political and broader societal development is manifest when it comes to matters of entry, for example, when denning the characteristics of whom to admit, as well as how many should be permitted to enter. Simultaneously, immigration policy has helped to construct and entrench notions of American identity through the exclusion of others (see Johnson 1996/1997 for discussion of the significance of the term “alien” in immigration law). Put otherwise, immigration policy has helped to define who we are by keeping the pejorative them out.
