ABSTRACT
This article describes the major features of the institutional arrangement implementing American immigration law in the early years of the twenty-first century. It explores some of the consequences of existing arrangements for particular groups and for the country’s evolving national community. The intricate structure of the American immigration system is interesting in its own right as an example of how competing pressures can produce a legal arrangement replete with contradictions yet capable of accommodating millions of immigrants over the years. But the structure is also revealing for what it illustrates about the forces shaping a domain profoundly important to the nation-state.
