Collision Course: The Strange Convergence of Affirmative Action and Immigration Policy in America
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Book Overview
When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 were passed, they were seen as triumphs of liberal reform. Yet today affirmative action is foundering in the great waves of immigration from Asia and Latin America, leading to direct competition for jobs, housing, education, and government preference programs.
In Collision Course, Hugh Davis Graham explains how two such well-intended laws came into conflict with each other when employers, acting under affirmative action plans, hired millions of new immigrants ushered in by the Immigration Act, while leaving high unemployment among inner-city blacks. He shows how affirmative action for immigrants stirred wide resentment and drew new attention to policy contradictions. Graham sees a troubled future for both programs. As the economy weakens and antiterrorist border controls tighten, the competition for jobs will intensify pressure on affirmative action and invite new restrictions on immigration. Graham's insightful interpretation of the unintended consequences of these policies is original and controversial.
In Collision Course, Hugh Davis Graham explains how two such well-intended laws came into conflict with each other when employers, acting under affirmative action plans, hired millions of new immigrants ushered in by the Immigration Act, while leaving high unemployment among inner-city blacks. He shows how affirmative action for immigrants stirred wide resentment and drew new attention to policy contradictions. Graham sees a troubled future for both programs. As the economy weakens and antiterrorist border controls tighten, the competition for jobs will intensify pressure on affirmative action and invite new restrictions on immigration. Graham's insightful interpretation of the unintended consequences of these policies is original and controversial.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0195168895
ISBN13:9780195168891
Release Date:August 2003
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Length:246 Pages
Weight:0.80 lbs.
Dimensions:0.7" x 6.4" x 8.9"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
Outstanding history, frightening future
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 21 years ago
Graham was a distinguished historian and political scientist at Vanderbilt and UC Santa Barbara. Sadly, he died just as it was time to go do a book tour in promotion of Collision Course, so the book got little publicity. As an expert on Congress and the workings of the federal bureaucracy, he is able to recreate just how we managed to stumble unintentionally into the current, highly contradictory, immigration and affirmative action systems. At a time when the nation was finally intending to help African-Americans, why did it suddenly import tens of millions of low wage workers to drive blacks from many workplaces? And if affirmative action was intended as compensation for slavery and Jim Crow, why was it extended to new immigrants, even illegal ones? And what does this portend for the future, when the "racial ratio" of beneficiaries from quotas compared to those who must shoulder the burden mounts ever higher?
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