Clearly, Williams was drawing on stereotypes that had been established by
restrictionists during the new immigration.
The entrance of the United States into war in 1917 coincided with a surge in nativist and
restrictionist fervor.
Transnational migration, while potentially generating pressures for
restrictionist legislation, also creates new pressures for openness.
Yet Newt Gingrich took a position that was closer to "comprehensive immigration reform"--adjusting the legal status of illegal aliens in exchange for various enforcement measures--than to the attrition-through-enforcement policy favored by
restrictionists. The "comprehensive" approach includes a guest-worker program, an expansion of H-1B visas, and legalization of certain illegal immigrants who pay a $5,000 fine.
This comes as no surprise from self-defined,
restrictionist think tanks in Washington, D.C., such as the Center for Immigration Studies, whose recent article, "The Masses Are Revolting," was apparently published without noticing the title's double entendre.
Yet he has become the
restrictionist right's weapon of choice to expunge the GOP's pro-immigration faction.
Instead of making a moral judgement, it purports to make an empirical one, implying that the serious case for immigration restriction is all but nonexistent, and that negotiating with
restrictionists is therefore like negotiating with flat-earthers.
Conversely, the strongest prolife members of Congress tend to be immigration
restrictionists. Finn tried valiantly to pry these issues apart.
He understands that giving immigrants the opportunity to earn an honest foothold in this country - the path to citizenship despised by
restrictionists as ''amnesty'' - is not giving a reward to criminals.
HERE'S THE oddest thing about the ongoing--never-ending may be more apt--donnybrook over immigration: Amidst all the finger pointing and fury, all the column inches and congressional speeches dedicated to hammering out the last best hope for keeping foreigners from our shores, the nativists and
restrictionists forgot to document what problems immigrants actually pose to these United States.
Restrictionists predict a stark picture of America as a Bosnia of continental proportions without a sense of common nationhood, culture, or political heritage.
For years, tort
restrictionists have propagated myths about the civil justice system that were intended to advance their political agenda.
