After the Last Border:Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America

At base, public opinion drives immigration policy. Those policies, in turn, have dramatic consequences for individuals and families. Since the 1880s, two groups have dominated the immigration debate: restrictionists and liberalizers. Restrictionists, as the name implies, seek to limit entry to the US and define identity in an exclusive way. Liberalizers, on the other hand, associate American identity with values such as human rights, and seek to expand opportunities for immigrants to enter the country.

Restrictionists achieved a big victory with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. With large waves of immigration in the early 20th century, mainly from Southern Europe and Russia, restrictionists appealed to public fears about the loss of jobs and culture to substantially limit immigration with laws in 1917 and 1924. The Immigration Act of 1924 “was an attempt to allow in more people from England and Austria than from Greece and Italy. The act almost completely excluded arrivals from Asia, South America, the Middle East—and of course the entire continent of Africa” (98). Defining US identity in an exclusive and ethnic way, the law kept most out and represented a fearful attitude of better safe than sorry. It was in step with public opinion.

World War II exposed the human costs of a restrictionist policy. The US denied refuge to Jewish people fleeing the Nazis. In the aftermath of the war, President Truman argued for a more liberal approach. The American public, via photographs and newsreels, observed the atrocities committed by the Nazis and sympathized with the victims and displaced persons of Europe. In step with an identity that perceived itself as welcoming, the US accepted large numbers of European refugees. While tied to foreign policy, immigration policy nonetheless became more liberal. At the outset of the Cold War, refugees fleeing Communist countries were welcomed.

In 1965, the US overhauled its immigration law to fit its changing sense of identity. Gone were the racist quotas of the 1924 law, replaced by the Immigration and Nationality Act. That law made family reunification, refugee resettlement, and merit-based skills pillars of the new system. When millions were displaced in Southeast Asia in the 1970s, the American public remained sympathetic and open. In 1980, the Refugee Act passed with bipartisan support and established the Refugee Resettlement Program.

With the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, fear of outsiders returned. However, Presidents Bush and Obama kept that fear at bay and the refugee resettlement program ran smoothly. President Bush promised to accept more refugees from camps, enabling Mu Naw to come to the US in 2007. By 2015, American public opinion was turning. Trump, campaigning for the presidency, played to those fears, calling for a ban on Muslim entry to the country and promising to build a wall to keep people from crossing the Mexican border. When he assumed the presidency in 2017, he abandoned the pillar of family reunification and banned entry from seven countries, including Syria. His policy change, supported by a changing sense of American identity, had negative consequences for Hasna, whose family could not be reunited. Thus, throughout After the Last Border, Goudeau argues that the struggle to define American identity is the “single greatest determiner” (xvi) of who—and how many—get accepted for resettlement.