ABSTRACT
This chapter integrates a psychological conceptual framework by which to explore group, collective-affective linking processes related to the development of a synthetic national identity and its implications. It reconceptualizes immigration policy as an external manifestation of intrapsychic conscious and unconscious collective group efforts, aimed at preserving the "White Native" identity and culture from its inevitable transformation due to capitalist labor demands. Immigration reform efforts since 1996, as in the 1920s, have focused on keeping the immigrant other outside of the US, unless needed to meet the labor demands of the country. The sociopolitical historical critical discourse analysis of White Nativism, American citizenship and immigration policy linked contemporary immigration discourses and reforms to their historical origins. Political psychology integrates and applies individual psychological theoretical frameworks to large, group collective processes to explain the conscious and unconscious nature of these processes, and their sociopolitical manifestations.
