Strangers at the Gate

Immigrant Political Incorporation in a New Century

The United States has been a nation of immigrants for much of its history. Although it has not always extended the ready welcome implied by the famous Emma Lazarus poem, it has nonetheless long been the leading host country for the world’s migrants. At the turn of the last century, this country absorbed unprecedented numbers of newcomers. Today, at the dawn of a new millennium, the United States is experiencing yet another great wave of immigration. More than 25 million immigrants have entered the country since the 1960s (Jones-Correa 2002). The current immigration flow is, in fact, historically unprecedented, both for its numerical proportions and for its demographic composition.

   First, the number of newcomers to the United States in the last four decades has exceeded the high-water mark achieved during the last great wave of migration to this country from 1880 to 1920. With this latest influx of immigrants, there are now over 35 million foreign-born people living in the United States, that is, more than 10 percent of the total population. The proportions are even more substantial in cities around the country. Thirteen of the nation’s cities house more than half of the immigrant population. For instance, roughly one of every three New Yorkers is a person of foreign birth (Logan 2003). Immigrants constitute even greater shares of the population in Los Angeles and Miami (ibid.). Their proportions are expected to continue inching upward, as the current immigration trends show no signs of abating.

   Even more striking than the numbers, however, is the demographic composition of this latest wave of newcomers. The current immigration stream is the first ever to the United States that has not been dominated by immigrants from Europe. Immigration to the United States until World War II consisted largely of European newcomers – the German, Irish, Italian, and Polish immigrants who eventually would become the white ethnics of America’s melting-pot myth. But major congressional reforms in 1965 radically altered the complexion of the immigration inflow.¹ Today’s huddled immigrant masses are mostly non-whites from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. These three regions account for more than 85 percent of all immigration to the United States since 1965 (Passel and Edmonston 1994).

   Asian, Caribbean, and Latin American immigrants have expanded and diversified the ranks of the nation’s minority population. Taken together, the three major minority groups – Asians, Latinos, and blacks – now account for almost a third of all people living in the United States (U.S. Census Report 2001). Even the most glancing review of today’s headlines reveals a great deal of popular focus on the growth of the non-white population, especially the foreign born. Again, the numbers at the city level bring this demographic shift into even sharper focus. Minorities actually now outnumber whites in most of the country’s largest cities, such as New York and Los Angeles. What is more, the term “minority" no longer refers just to African Americans, Puerto Ricans, or Mexicans. Flat-footed minority categories like black, Latino, and Asian have been stretched to encompass a diverse mix of new foreign-born groups. In sum, what it means to be an immigrant and a minority in the United States has changed dramatically over the last few decades.

   As these unprecedented immigration trends and demographic shifts have taken shape, the inevitable questions about what it all means for the United States likewise have emerged. Anxieties about how this latest wave of newcomers will change American life dominate the news headlines. Will they precipitate economic losses for those who are already here, pose terrorist threats, place new burdens on government resources, or unsettle the cultural norms and values of the country (e.g., Kelly 2005; Kirkpatrick 2005; Marosi 2004)? Other headlines and ongoing debates focus on how these immigrants will fit into American politics and society (Huntington 2004). How will they adapt to American culture, change our conceptions of race, participate in politics, or become dutiful citizens and patriots in their new country? An endless number of questions and anxieties have surfaced in the wake of this latest immigrant stream.

   One of the most important of these questions is how the new, non-white immigrants will adapt to the American democratic experiment. More precisely, how will these newcomers be incorporated into the political system? Political incorporation is a vital process for any democracy. Democracies rest on the bedrock principle of equal consideration – if not outright representation – of the preferences and interests of every citizen (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1993). When new groups achieve incorporation – when they secure citizenship and become active in the political process – they lend legitimacy to representative democracy. Their presence and participation mean they have a reasonable prospect of seeing their preferences and needs met by government. When new groups fall short of incorporation, however, their interests cannot be considered by government and democracy is thus undermined.

   The question is whether today’s newcomers will achieve this basic standard of political inclusion in American democracy. How will they mobilize and achieve political influence in the cities where they now constitute a significant presence? This is not a new question. As a nation of immigrants, the United States has confronted almost perennially the challenge of absorbing and integrating newcomers. There is a long record, and perhaps even some settled assumptions, about how the foreign born are incorporated into American political life (e.g., Huntington 2004). Yet this current wave of newcomers give scholars occasion to revisit the question with a set of new cases that provide an empirical basis for generating fresh theoretical insights about the dynamics of political incorporation at the turn of a new century. First, the new immigrants allow us to test – and perhaps update – conventional accounts of how the process unfolds. Second and even more critically, the fact that these newcomers are mostly non-white minorities is an invitation to explore how America’s deepest dilemma, the problem of race, affects political incorporation.

I. RACE AND POLITICAL INCORPORATION

Today American cities are confronting for the first time ever the challenge of incorporating large numbers of non-European, non-white voluntary immigrants into the political system. Racial discrimination historically has made incorporation a difficult and sometimes uncertain enterprise for minority groups in the United States. For centuries, minority populations were formally barred from participation in the political process and had no serious or meaningful prospect of achieving incorporation. They were essentially excluded from participation in the American democratic experiment. But since the civil rights reforms of the 1960s, full political rights and the other formal benefits of citizenship have been available to all minority groups.

   In fact, the 1965 change in immigration rules that helped trigger the current wave of non-European newcomers to the United States was enacted in part because civil rights leaders and interest groups insisted such reform was a necessary step for ending racial discrimination (Tichenor 2002; Yu 2001). Forty years later few would suggest discrimination has ended, but the question is how much it has diminished. Is racism still a significant obstacle in the path of non-white groups seeking political inclusion in this country? Studying how the growing numbers of foreign-born minority groups are faring in their adjustment to American political life is an opportunity to answer this question. It is also a chance to gauge the success of the civil rights revolution begun in the 1960s and to determine whether the promise of democratic inclusion held out by its reforms actually has been achieved.

   The literature on the experiences of the new, non-white immigrant arrivals is small but growing rapidly. There is only a modest body of research on how these newcomers are adapting to the political process. Even fewer studies have explored how the racial minority status of these immigrants affects their political adjustment to this country, despite the fact so much has been made of their predominantly non-European and non-white origins. There is, in short, no settled theoretical framework for analyzing the unfolding dynamics of contemporary immigrant political incorporation (Jones-Correa 2002).

   Nevertheless, there are normative guideposts in the wider political science literature and the winding course of American history to help us understand the experiences of these newcomers. First, there is an older, classic literature on immigrant incorporation that includes studies like Robert Dahl’s seminal work Who Governs? (1961). Based largely on the experiences of early European immigrants, this body of research arguably provides predictive cues for charting and understanding the incorporation patterns of today’s newcomers. By this light, the current immigrants, like their European predecessors, will overcome initial prejudice, secure economic mobility, and achieve political incorporation in a gradual, steady march into the American mainstream – without significant disruption to the political system. A number of scholars have taken their cues from this classic literature and have arrived at just this conclusion (e.g., Portes and Rumbaut 1996; Skerry 1993; Portes and Stepick 1993; Chavez 1991).

   Yet other researchers believe the fact that today’s newcomers are mostly non-European, non-white minorities vitiates any easy comparisons with early European immigrants. America’s record of incorporating non-whites into the political system has been deeply problematic. To be sure, some early European immigrant groups initially were viewed as non-white, inferior “races” by so-called old-stock white Americans and suffered the stigma of those racial labels; yet, they were all gradually accepted as white and incorporated into the political system (e.g., Jacobson 1998; Ignatiev 1996; Roediger 1991).² Not so for non-European, non-white groups. African Americans are the paradigmatic case in this regard. Political incorporation for them has been a slow, tortuous, and arguably incomplete process, complicated by the rigors of American racism (Dawson 1994a; Reed 1988; Pinderhughes 1987). Accordingly, some scholars believe the road awaiting today’s non-white arrivals will be more like the difficult one navigated by African Americans and less like the path traced by early European immigrants.

   Most of these researchers acknowledge racism has been receding from American life over the last several decades. They also concede the racial obstacles these non-white newcomers encounter perhaps will not be as formidable or severe as those faced by African Americans. Yet they believe serious discriminatory barriers remain and are bound to influence how new minority groups adapt to the political system. These obstacles, they argue, will complicate and impede the political incorporation process for the new, non-white immigrants just as they have for African Americans (e.g., Kim 2001; Hero 1998; 1992; Takaki 1989; Browning, Marshall, and Tabb 1984).³ They contend these newcomers will follow the same path as their native-born black counterparts. In short, this argument casts African Americans as a kind of “model minority” group for other non-whites in American society. Their experiences with discrimination and their strategic responses to it form a behavioral mold most other minority groups are likely to follow.

   There are thus two major perspectives for understanding how today’s newcomers are likely to adapt to the American political process. Each one suggests a different empirical model of political incorporation. One, the pluralist view, is informed by European immigrant history; the other, the minority group view, derives from the experiences of African Americans. Each of these models also carries distinct normative and practical implications about how American democracy works and how these newcomers will affect political life. The pluralist model suggests the system is relatively open, liberal, and egalitarian for all groups, notwithstanding the anomaly of the African-American experience. Newcomers thus can be expected to secure a firm foothold and a share of influence in the give-and-take of political life in the cities where they live.

   The minority group view, however, suggests racial inequalities pose a dilemma for America democracy and render it less inclusive for non-white groups. Full political inclusion for racial minorities is thus anything but certain. Implicit in this minority group perspective is the presumption non-whites will find political common cause and strategy in their shared racial predicament. It places most non-whites on one side of the racial divide and whites on the other. The pluralist view, in contrast, sees no such chasm in American political life and casts blacks as a vexing anomaly – a grim, unfortunate exception to the usually egalitarian workings of liberal democracy.

   These two perspectives represent competing sides of an emerging debate about how the new foreign-born arrivals will be incorporated into American politics. Most scholars agree the political incorporation patterns of whites and blacks have differed sharply. The question is where the new non-European, non-white immigrants will fit. Predicting and charting the political incorporation process for these newcomers is not a matter of drawing simple historical parallels between them and early European immigrants or African Americans. After all, what counts as a point of similarity between the current immigrants and one population – say, the voluntary immigrant experience of European ethnics or the racial minority status of African Americans – is actually a point of difference with the other.

   For instance, although many of today’s newcomers share non-white status with African Americans, they, like earlier generations of European white ethnics, are voluntary immigrants to the United States. African Americans can claim no such voluntary immigrant experience. Rather, theirs is a singularly bitter history of coerced importation, enslavement, and discrimination.

Likewise qualifications might be stipulated for comparisons drawn between today’s newcomers and previous immigrants from Europe. In short, the parallels between contemporary immigrants and their European predecessors or African Americans only go so far.

   What is more, American political institutions, practices, and attitudes about race have undergone significant transformations over the last several decades. Add to those changes the possibility that this new wave of non-white immigrants actually might destabilize and scramble the American racial system, and easy comparisons with the past become all the more untenable. In light of these analytic and historical complications, the question of whether either of these perspectives applies to contemporary immigrants is very much open to debate.

II. AFRO-CARIBBEAN IMMIGRANTS

This book wades into the debate by evaluating the two models alongside each other. It also considers less well-known alternatives such as transnationalism that are not well developed in the political science literature but warrant serious attention.⁵ The goal is not only to ascertain how well these models explicate the experiences of recent non-white arrivals, but also to shed light on how race affects their political incorporation patterns. To do so, the book turns to the contemporary case of Afro-Caribbean immigrants in New York City, the largest group of foreign-born blacks in the United States.⁶ These Caribbean newcomers are among the city’s largest and fastest-growing immigrant groups (Logan and Deane 2003). But their analytic importance goes well beyond their numbers. These foreign-born blacks furnish a uniquely instructive case for studying contemporary political incorporation patterns. Among recent non-white newcomers to the United States, they are the only group that allows for a natural case study of the impact of race on the political incorporation process, without bracketing the question of black exceptionalism.

   Most of the emerging research on today’s non-white immigrants has focused on Latino and Asian newcomers: that is, groups that are not black (e.g., Wong 2006; Ramakrishnan 2001; Jones-Correa 1998; Hero 1992).⁷ Yet most researchers agree Latinos and Asians, though they encounter prejudice, do not face anything like the harsh, systematic forms of discrimination blacks have tended to encounter in this country. For example, there is considerable evidence Latinos and Asians confront fewer racial obstacles in the housing market than blacks, leading one pair of scholars (Massey and Denton 1989) to conclude “it is black race, not non-white race per se that matters” in the United States. It is also difficult to know whether the bias these immigrants confront is due to their racial minority or foreign-born status. Racism may thus prove to be a far less significant factor in the political adaptation patterns of these two groups than it has been for African Americans. In short, Asian and Latino immigrants do not allow for a straightforward, rigorous test of the impact of racism on the political incorporation process.

   Afro-Caribbeans, on the other hand, do. As black immigrants, they share a common racial classification with African Americans. By phenotype, in fact, the two groups are indistinguishable and thus ostensibly vulnerable to the same forms of racial discrimination. They wear the “racial stigmata of subordination” in their physical appearance (Mills 1998, 84). Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans also have some obvious history in common: the deplorable legacy of enslavement and racial domination by whites. Of all the recent non-white immigrants, then, Afro-Caribbeans are the ones most likely to encounter and experience the same strain of American racism as African Americans.

   Despite these racial commonalities, however, there are significant differences between the two groups. Unlike their native-born black counterparts, Afro-Caribbeans are voluntary immigrants who claim a distinctive ethnic identity and hail from countries with very different racial dynamics than the United States’. They migrate from a region of the world where the population is predominantly black. They are accustomed to living as part of the majority and seeing people who look like them in control of political and economic power. The countries of the Caribbean are also largely unfamiliar with the historical experience of Jim Crow and more contemporary American patterns of racial segregation.⁸ Racial classificatory schemes in the Caribbean also historically have been less rigid and more fluid than the fixed, dichotomous black-and-white categorizations that prevail in the United States (e.g., James and Harris 1993; Patterson 1987; 1972). Finally, there is some evidence whites in this country occasionally make distinctions between Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans, treating the immigrants more favorably than their native-born counterparts (e.g., Waters 1999; Kasinitz 1992). With their immigrant background, distinctive ethnic heritage, and particular home country experiences, then, Afro-Caribbeans are perhaps more like early European immigrants.

   These foreign-born blacks thus have a great deal in common with both African Americans and European ethnics. It is precisely this mix of racial, ethnic, and immigrant attributes that makes these foreign-born blacks an especially powerful case for testing the relative validity of the two dominant models of political incorporation. Even more significantly, their experiences provide an unusually clear window for observing and understanding the impact of racial discrimination on the political incorporation process. The question is whether racism still shapes the political adaptation patterns of minorities, especially blacks. It may be that racial hurdles still impede the path to incorporation for these groups. Or these barriers may loom larger and have a greater effect on blacks than on other minorities. Or it may be that the impact of discrimination has diminished altogether – as a result of either the recent steps toward racial equality or the gradual collapse of the country’s bipolar racial system under the weight of an unprecedented mix of new minority groups that defy easy categorization.

   If any of these empirical alternatives holds true, its effects should be plainly evident in the experiences of a group of black immigrants such as Afro-Caribbeans. Will they follow the path of political incorporation marked out by their native-born black counterparts and complicated by racism, in keeping with the minority group view? Or will their voluntary immigrant status and ethnic heritage enable them to replicate the far easier route to incorporation traced by earlier European immigrants, as the pluralist model predicts? An analysis of Afro-Caribbeans’ political incorporation patterns promises to shed light on these questions.

   The book also uses the Afro-Caribbean case to consider the political significance of internal divisions within the black population. Over the last two decades, political scientists have begun to pay increasing attention to social differences among blacks, breaking with a long-standing and unfortunate tendency of treating the population as if it were monolithic. Most of this research has focused on the political implications of class and gender divisions (e.g., Gay and Tate 1998; Hochschild 1995; Dawson 1994a; Tate 1993). Comparatively little attention has been directed to other cleavages such as ethnicity, region, and generation. The rapid growth of the Afro-Caribbean population in New York and other cities over the last few decades is an invitation to shift the analytic lens to ethnic divisions: that is, to consider the political significance of the differences between native- and foreign-born blacks.

   The growing literature on Afro-Caribbean immigrants has been dominated by sociologists, economists, and historians. Their research has yielded important insights on how ethnicity influences social and economic differences between Caribbean- and American-born blacks (e.g., Waters 1999; Vickerman 1999; Model 1995; Kasinitz 1992). Some of these studies actually have contributed to long-standing popular debates about whether non-white immigrant groups, such as Afro-Caribbeans, are “model minorities” by comparison with African Americans (e.g., Sowell 1978). There long has been considerable media interest in the relative socioeconomic performance of the two groups (e.g., Fears 2003). In fact, popular and policymaking interest in the differences between Afro-Caribbean immigrants and their native-born counterparts has reignited once again, but this time with a new twist.