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55 Colum. L. Rev. 311 (1955)
American Immigration Policy

handle is hein.journals/clr55 and id is 365 raw text is: AMERICAN IMMIGRATION POLICY CHARLES P. SCHWARTZ, JR.* Like all newcomers to a community, immigrants invariably create problems. They often face severe personal and economic difficulties in ad- justing to an unfamiliar environment. The community finds it difficult to define the standards and methods for admission and integration of the new members since this involves a fresh appraisal of basic assumptions or pur- poses as well as resolution of conflicting interests. The personal difficulties faced by immigrants to the United States have received eloquent and detailed statement elsewhere.' The procedures and substantive provisions relating to visa issuance, admission of immigrants into our country and deportation from our shores have also been thoroughly discussed.2 There have been, moreover, a number of accounts of the motives and manner of enactment of past and present immigration legislation.2 Accordingly, this article will focus on the presently possible and desirable functions or ends of United States immigration policy; it will seek to deter- mine what persons born outside our country should be permitted to come here to live permanently. All agree that such persons must be healthy, non-criminal, non-subver- sive and unlikely to become public charges because of economic insufficiency. But there is sharp disagreement as to the number of people so qualified that should be permitted to immigrate and as to how available places should be distributed if immigration is going to be limited. Although it involves basic, almost jurisprudential, arrangements which order our society, immigration policy has been little discussed among lawyers,4 perhaps because Congres- sional decisions as to the number and types of people who may be admitted are not usually subject to judicial review.5 Yet the nature of this policy certainly affects individual cases with which lawyers will have to deal, for it provides the frame of reference within which our immigration laws are interpreted and administered. If our aim is to keep immigration to a bare * Research Associate, Harvard Law School; Director of Study of Public Opinion and Persuasion in Modern Law Practice; member of the Illinois and New York bars. 1. See, e.g., ABBOTT, IMMIGRATION, SELECT DOCUMENTS AND RECORDS (1924); HAND- LIN, THE UPROOTED (1951); HANDLIN, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (1954). 2. See, e.g., KANSAS, IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY ACT-ANNOTATED (4th ed. 1953); VAN VLECK, THE ADMINISTRATIVE CONTROL OF ALIENS (1932); Note, Developments in the Law-Immigration and 'Nationality, 66 HARV. L. REv. 643 (1953). BRUCE, THE GOLDEN DOOR (1954) is the most recent book for laymen. 3. See the bibliography on this subject in AMERICAN IMMIGRATION POLICY 315-18 (Bernard ed. 1950). Published under the sponsorship of the National Committee on Immi gration Policy, it is probably the best recent comprehensive book on the subject. 4. But see Harrison, Immigration Policy of the United States, 23 FOREIGN POLICY REP' 14 (1947). 5. Cf. Shaughnessy v. United States ex. rel. Mezei, 345 U.S. 206, 216 (1953); United States ex. rel. Knauff v. Shaughnessy, 338 U.S. 537, 543 (1950).

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