ABSTRACT
The US government has at times used its immigration policy as an instrument to achieve certain foreign policy ends, at other times it has sacrificed foreign policy ends in response to domestic pressures to control immigration. Increasingly, however, it has inserted immigration questions into its broader foreign policy agenda. This chapter examines some of the crises that have led to the now more explicit connection between US immigration and foreign policies. It focuses on the dynamic relationship between immigration as a tool of US foreign policy, on the one hand, and as a goal of US foreign policy, on the other, that forms the third level of analysis. The link between immigration and foreign policy becomes apparent under crisis conditions. Some crises such as World War II, the cold war, upheaval in Central America, emerged mainly in the non-immigration sphere of US-Latin American relations, though they included an immigration component.
