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Focusses on EU immigration policy. While providing an overview of the current status of EU immigration policy, Givens and Luedtke also examine the various national‐level factors from party politics to citizen action that can influence the direction and shape of new EU laws. The analysis reveals that harmonization is more difficult in areas of immigration policy that are highly politicized at the national level. After an introduction, the second section of the chapter proposes a model of how EU immigration policy is harmonized, and how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. The third section traces the history of EU immigration policy harmonization, focussing on European Court of Justice case law in respect of Third‐country nationals, and the fourth concludes.

King uses historical archival research to examine American immigration policy's formulation between 1900 and 1930, and illustrates how racial quotas and eugenic categories shaped restrictions on immigration. He especially focuses on the influence of eugenic arguments upon legislation in the 1920s. Moreover, King explores the illiberal implications and effects of criteria outlining who were suitable immigrants and who were not: measures that compromised the US’ traditional commitment to the equality of treatment.

An analysis is made of the creation of new European Union (EU) spaces for cooperation in policing and immigration policies. The Treaty of Rome was silent on both topics, and before the Maastricht Treaty on European Union (TEU), European Community (EC) states had begun to coordinate their responses to specific problems – such as terrorism, drugs, and asylum seekers – usually on a bilateral basis, with multilateral forms of cooperation fragmented, ad hoc, and outside EC structures. The chapter has three main sections, the first of which briefly describes the institutional landscape in policing and migration in Europe before the TEU. Section 2 assesses the major internal and external changes – the Single Market and the collapse of the Iron Curtain, respectively – that provoked the move toward institutionalizing police and migration cooperation at the EU level; it devotes particular attention to the domestic crisis in Germany resulting from massive migrations from the east, and the policy entrepreneurship of Germany’s Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Section 3 analyses how the Third Pillar of the TEU, that on Justice and Home Affairs (in which policing and immigration policies were combined) borrowed from existing institutions – most notably the Second Pillar (the Common Foreign and Security Policy); the Amsterdam Treaty (1996) then partially separated policing and migration again – but with a completely different institutional structure within the European Union.

This chapter examines the potential interrelationships between migrant rights and national policies for admitting migrant workers. It explains how we can expect high-income countries to regulate the rights of migrant workers as part of their labor immigration policies. It develops a basic approach that conceptualizes the design of labor immigration policy in high-income countries as a process that involves “choice under constraints.” It shows that nation-states decide on how to regulate the number, selection, and rights of migrant workers admitted in order to achieve a core set of four interrelated and sometimes competing policy goals: economic efficiency, distribution, national identity and social cohesion, and national security and public order. Although their importance and specific interpretations vary across countries, and over time, the chapter argues that each of these objectives constitutes a fundamental policy consideration that policymakers can and do purposefully pursue in all countries.

This chapter examines the key features of labor immigration programs in high and middle-income countries in practice. After providing an overview of existing academic and policy literature that comparatively discusses labor immigration policies in different countries, the chapter constructs and analyzes two separate indexes that measure the openness of labor immigration programs in forty-six high- and middle-income countries to admitting migrant workers, as well as the legal rights (civil and political, economic, social, residency, and family reunion rights) granted to migrant workers admitted under these programs. The empirical results show that labor immigration programs that target the admission of higher-skilled workers are more open and grant migrants more rights than programs targeting lower-skilled workers. Among programs in upper-high-income countries, labor immigration programs can be characterized by a trade-off between openness and some migrant rights.

This chapter examines the drivers of the relationships between openness, skill levels of workers, and migrant rights in high-income countries. It considers each of the three relationships—between openness and skills, rights and skills, and openness and rights—providing short case studies of where they occur, and why. It also looks at examples of policies that are not characterized by these relationships and analyzes the reasons for these exceptional cases. The case studies cover a wide range of political systems, welfare states, labor markets, and geographic regions of the world. They thus include labor immigration policies that are made in different national policy spaces. The chapter shows that policy decisions on how to regulate the admission and rights of migrant workers in high-income countries are firmly based on assessments of the consequences of admitting migrants as well as granting/restricting rights for the national interests of migrant-receiving countries.

This chapter examines the ethics of labor immigration policy, moving the discussion from a positive analysis of “what is” to the equally important normative question of “what should be.” If high-income countries' labor immigration policies are characterized by a trade-off between openness and some rights for migrant workers, the chapter asks what rights restrictions—if any—are acceptable in order to enable more workers to access labor markets in high-income countries. It proposes a pragmatic approach that takes into account existing realities in labor immigration policymaking and gives more weight to the interests of migrants and countries of origin than most high-income countries currently do when designing labor immigration policies. Based on this approach, the chapter asserts that there is a strong normative case for tolerating the selective, evidence-based, temporary restriction of a few specific migrant rights under new and expanded temporary migration programs that help liberalize international labor migration.

There is the argument that the average citizen will feel less threatened by skilled immigrants, for assimilation reasons and because the skilled immigrants are not perceived as a drain on the fiscal situation. This chapter examines this issue in the United States, using the data for different states, and finds that the skilled-to-unskilled composition of immigrant inflows does matter in shaping public attitudes toward immigration policy. Less highly skilled natives tend to support freer immigration more when living in states with a relatively skilled mix of immigrants. The sensitivity of less highly skilled natives' opinions to the skill composition of immigrants resonates with earlier findings of concern over the labor-market pressures of immigration. The chapter also considers the political implications of proposals to reform U.S. immigration policy.

This chapter alerts to the complexity of the immigrant process and the contradictory policies on both sides of the border that exacerbate already difficult family situations. It also points to the discretionary power given to immigrant officials, whose approach to the cross-border flow of population is more one of security and less of family reunions. If these new arrivals have the right to be Hong Kong's present and future citizens, this chapter argues, the government should consider proactive ways to nurture them. Moreover, in view of the general decline in fertility rates among Hong Kong's locally born, these newcomers from mainland China could be a significant source for replenishing Hong Kong's labor force. Immigration policies involve social and human investment. The government should make use of this opportunity to eradicate prejudice and develop a comprehensive and proactive immigration policy.

One of the most curious aspects of anti-Chinese policies was officials’ practice of hiring immigrant Chinese interpreters, thus foiling exclusionary laws. The clash of two titans, Yip On and David Lew, shows how political alliances across racial lines compromised enforcement of anti-Chinese immigration policies. The study of interpreters and the politics through which they won, held, and lost their posts reveals a new understanding of how immigration policy was made. As an ethnic collaborator, the interpreter engaged in policy-making from a distinctive position. He had a duty to carry out the mandates of Parliament, but he gained political leadership from supporters who viewed anti-Chinese laws as illegitimate.

This chapter examines migration within a “regional” context: the focus is on Europe, specifically immigration within the European Union (EU). After a consideration of the nature of immigration into and within the EU and some of the major policies promoted by the EU in relation to immigration, the chapter examines aspects of the immigrant experience within this (sub)region. While the EU provides a framework for analysis—and its policies inform and constrain individual nations—entry to, and the experience of immigrants in, different countries varies. This is partly due to the extent to which member states retain some autonomy, as well as the distinct histories and cultures of member states. Promotion of more positive attitudes to diversity and observance of antidiscriminatory legislation at EU and national levels need to be supported as do debates about the nature of citizenship and the rights of various types of immigrants.

Formerly a country of outmigration, Spain was a belated addition to the ranks of receptor societies. Gathering pace from the late 1980s and reaching a peak in the early years of the new century, immigration has transformed Spain from a monocultural to a multicultural society. Transnational migration contributed to the country's economic boom, which came to an end in 2008 when the construction and financial sectors suffered a setback in the global recession after nearly two decades of continuous growth. This chapter examines the nature and patterns of immigration to Spain, the government's reactive and ad hoc response to the significant influx of migrants, and its impact on a country that faced the challenge of exclusion and integration in the context of an entirely different and much less favorable set of economic circumstances.

This chapter demonstrates that immigration policy has been increasingly turned into an anti-terrorism tool after September 11, with the relevant law enforcement efforts singling out citizens of a number of specified states. It argues that there are no objective and reasonable grounds for making distinctions between different categories of foreign nationals according to their country of origin or nationality. This criterion is not narrowly tailored enough to allow for an effective targeting of immigration law enforcement efforts. To subject all those who are citizens of (or originally come from) certain specified states to particularly harsh treatment clearly runs counter to the principle of proportionality. At the same time, selective immigration law enforcement efforts based on these criteria are also under-inclusive in that they fail to include within their scope a large portion of potential terrorists.

Despite the persistence of idiosyncratic characteristics, the trend in Europe's immigration policies is one of convergence in two basic areas: border control and residence rights. Everywhere border control is a priority, and the principle of closure to foreign workers is maintained. Nonetheless, discrepancies remain in the rights each country grants to foreigners, including right to remain, residence status, social rights, and access to work and to citizenship. The Amsterdam Treaty of 1997 raised new issues about the decline of nation‐state sovereignty with the transition from the “third pillar” (intergovernmental decision‐making processes for immigration and asylum) to a “first pillar” (a communalization of decisions). This treaty may lead to the end of European national immigration policies and an end to citizen control over such decisions.

This book examines how and why high-income countries restrict the rights of migrant workers as part of their labor immigration policies, along with the implications for policy debates about regulating labor migration and protecting migrants. It seeks to reframe the theoretical debates about the tensions between human rights and citizenship rights, the agency and interests of migrants and states, and the determinants and ethics of labor immigration policy. The book analyzes the characteristics and key features of labor immigration policies and restrictions of migrant rights in more than forty high-income countries as well as policy drivers in major migrant-receiving and migrant-sending countries. This introductory chapter explains the aims, approach, and main arguments of the book, as well as its terminology and scope, and provides an overview of the chapters that follow.

So far immigration to Poland can be described by its amorphous nature characteristic of the period of transition between the first and second stages of the immigration process. In the first stage a highly dynamic and irregular inflow of immigrants (irregular, short-term, and transit migration) prevails accompanied by a lack of state immigration policy. Currently, Poland is approaching the second stage, during which immigration is stabilizing and becoming more permanent, the influx is being increasingly controlled, and a coherent immigration policy is being constructed. In this stage attitudes toward foreigners are being crystallized, immigrants are settling down, and immigrant communities are slowly emerging.