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38 Comp. Pol. Stud. 3 (2005)

handle is hein.journals/compls38 and id is 1 raw text is: ARE NONDISCRIMINATORY IMMIGRATION POLICIES REVERSIBLE? Evidence From the United States and Australia CHRISTIAN JOPPKE International University Bremen In the English-speaking settler states, the notion of nondiscriminatory immigration policy has the precise meaning of eschewing ethnicity, race, and national origins as selection criteria in the context of past policies that had blatantly resorted to them. There has been an interesting recent debate over whether the commitment to nondiscrimination has consolidated into a structural feature of liberal democracy(G. Freeman), or whether it is a conjunctural feature of public dis- cussion at certain times and places (R. Brubaker), and thus could be easily reversed. Evidence from the United States and Australia can adjudicate this debate in favor of the structural position. Three factors are identified that shore up nondiscriminatory immigration policies: the general acceptance of the nondiscrimination norm, even by those who are opposed to some of its effects; the shrinking demographic possibility of ethnic selectivity by subterfuge; and the instantly mobilizeable memory of settler states' racist pasts. Keywords: immigration policy; ethnic and race relations; human rights; United States; Australia T he notion of a nondiscriminatory immigration policy seems a par- adox, perhaps even nonsense, because in selecting some, by implication, all others must be excluded. However, not all criteria of immigrant selection are equally innocent. If one surveys contemporary immigration policies across Western states, one will find only three legitimate selection criteria: skills, family ties, and elementary human need (which is channeled into the separate refugee and asylum policy domain). Immigrant selection on the AUTHOR'S NOTE: This article was written while I was a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, New York, in 2002 and 2003. 1 would like to thank the foundation's stafffor superb working conditions. COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES, 1o1. 38 No. 1, February 2005 3-25 DOI: 10.1177/0010414004270887 0 2005 Sage Publications 3

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