Migraciones Internacionales ISSN: 1665-8906 [email protected] El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, A.C. México

Bakker, Matt Reseña de "The Transnational of U.S. Immigration " de Marc R. Rosenblum Migraciones Internacionales, vol. 3, núm. 1, enero-junio, 2005, pp. 179-182 El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, A.C. Tijuana, México

Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=15103109

How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative RESEÑA BIBLIOGRÁFICA The Transnational Politics of U.S. Immigration Policy Marc R. Rosenblum La Jolla, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, 2004

Matt Bakker University of California, Davis

Scholarship across the social sciences engaged in transnational political ac- has become increasingly focused on tivity by seeking immigration reforms “transnational politics.” The “trans- through labor unions, hometown as- national” signifier has been used to sociations, and migrants-rights orga- describe a number of discrete phe- nizations. The Transnational Politics of nomena—from the networks of NGO U.S. Immigration Policy, however, does activists invoking international norms not fulfill that expectation. in particular domestic conflicts to Eschewing the current cross-dis- transnational migrants engaging in ciplinary dabbling of many scholars homeland politics—. However, a uni- of “transnational” phenomena, fying theme in much of this research Rosenblum remains firmly planted has been the emphasis on grassroots, within his discipline of political sci- non-state actors that take advantage ence and places his attention on state of opportunities presented by the actors, not the grassroots. Despite technological advances and economic the restrictive boundaries this state- integration characterizing the cur- centric focus creates, Rosenblum has rent round of “globalization” to con- skillfully crafted a concise monograph struct a politics that crosses national that seeks to develop a theoretical boundaries. model capable of explaining immi- Given this recent focus, one might gration policy outcomes in the con- expect that Marc R. Rosenblum’s pro- flict-ridden policy-making environ- vocatively titled monograph, The ment of the . In an Transnational Politics of U.S. Immigra- attempt to capture the dynamics and tion Reform, would deal with novel variation of policy outcomes, the forms of political action initiated by author synthesizes dominant perspec- Mexican transnational migrants or tives in the subfields of comparative activist networks linking up across the politics and to Mexico-U.S. divide. After all, Mexi- create an “intermestic” model of im- can migrants are the largest immigrant migration policy formation. group in the United States, and they The monograph’s five chapters and their advocates have increasingly draw on an impressive set of some 180 MIGRACIONES INTERNACIONALES

120 elite interviews with elected of- policy as the sole domain of either ficials, policy makers, NGO officials, the president or Congress. Although and academics from Mexico, Cen- the task of approving legislation may tral America, and the United States. fall solely to Congress, the In Chapter 1, Rosenblum sets out branch is involved both during the the theoretical problem: how to ex- legislative process and afterward, dur- plain contradictory trends in U.S. ing the enforcement stage. Further- immigration policy making, ranging more, migrant-sending states are from restrictive to more pro-immi- shown to participate in migration- grant legislation. His review of the policy formation both directly, literature suggests that analysts are through their own aimed at often focused either on the compet- controlling migration flows from the ing desires of domestic interest source, and indirectly, by groups or on the international aspect state officials and policy makers or of immigration policy, but they promoting co-ethnic lobbies within rarely combine both levels of analy- the United States capable of pushing sis. The author proposes a synthesis the sending state’s agenda. of these two approaches as a way The key piece of Rosenblum’s theo- toward a more comprehensive theory retical model is the “strategic envi- of U.S. immigration policy out- ronment,” which helps to shape the comes. His intermestic model, com- preferences of the different actors and bining both domestic and interna- their willingness to act on those pref- tional aspects into a “two-level game” erences given the “payoff function,” approach, aims to explain the shifts or cost-benefit ratio, likely under par- and variations in immigration policy ticular circumstances. The strategic making that are inexplicable in ear- environment is made up of two key lier models. independent variables, one domes- Chapter 2 introduces the key ele- tic and one international, that help ments of the monograph’s formal explain the variation in immigration theoretical model. Rosenblum argues policy. The “domestic salience” of that immigration policy outcomes migration policy refers to the level are a function of the preferences, of popular attention paid to migra- actions, and cost-benefit determina- tion policy in the United States, tions of three key actors: the U.S whereas the “foreign policy value” of Congress, the U.S. president, and mi- migration policy refers to the impor- grant-sending states. The three actors tance of migration in shaping the are thought to have different prefer- bilateral relationship with particular ences due to the “constituents” they states combined with the overall im- represent and the level at which they portance of those states to the larger assess policy impact. In describing U.S. foreign policy agenda. The in- their actions, Rosenblum effectively teraction of these two variables cre- shows the limitations of other ap- ates a four-square typology of pos- proaches, which see immigration sible policy outcomes. RESEÑA BIBLIOGRÁFICA 181

At the core of the monograph are tral American conflicts and over the Chapters 3 and 4, which explore particulars of the get-tough stance on these different policy outcomes and “illegal” immigration and border en- test the model’s validity and predic- forcement adopted in the mid-1990s tive capacity against the empirical under the Clinton administration. record of policy making during the Finally, high foreign policy value com- last two decades in the context of U.S. bined with low domestic salience relations with Mexico and Central creates a period of “immigration as America. The period leading up to foreign policy.” This combination the passage of the IRCA or Simpson- arose after the approval of strict anti- Rodino reforms (1984 through 1986) immigrant legislation in 1996, and is presented as an example of “mass it provided the conditions for Presi- politics,” which arose in response to dent Clinton to seek reforms to asy- the increasing salience of immigra- lum regulations that would provide tion in the aftermath of the Mariel relief for Salvadoran and Guatema- boatlift and in a context of low for- lan applicants. However, lingering eign policy value, at least in relation conflicts with Congress resulted in a to Mexico and Central America. The reform package that treated Nicara- period after IRCA’s passage (1988 guan and Cuban applicants signifi- through 1990) is presented as an ex- cantly more generously than their ample of “client politics,” which re- Salvador and Guatemalan counter- sulted from the combination of parts. immigration’s low domestic saliency Overall, the monograph provides (Congress having finally acted in a welcome correction to overly sim- 1986) and low foreign-policy value. plistic one-level models of immigra- This second combination made pos- tion policy formation. I must, how- sible more permissive policies, such ever, mention a few concerns. First, as the settlement of the American although the theoretical model seems Baptist Church case regarding Cen- to provide an orderly categorization tral American asylum petitions and of policy-making episodes, we should the 1990 Immigration Act. question its predictive capacity. This Chapter 4 goes on to examine concern arises from the fact that the policy making under conditions of key variables making up the “strate- high foreign policy value. The com- gic environment” are difficult to bination of high foreign policy value operationalize and measure. This and high domestic salience creates measurement problem is most ap- periods of “inter-branch conflict.” parent with the “domestic salience This type of policy-making envi- of immigration”—defined as the ronment is illustrated by the dis- amount of “popular attention” given agreements between Congress and to the issue—. Can this concept be the executive over the treatment of measured accurately—as Rosenblum Salvadoran and Nicaraguan asylum seems to suggest—by the amount of applicants at the height of the Cen- newspaper, television, and magazine 182 MIGRACIONES INTERNACIONALES

coverage dedicated to immigration? On this point, a richer—and truly Without more direct measures of transnational—analysis would focus popular opinion and attention, cat- on the political conditions in the egorizations of the salience of the sending countries rather than assum- issue appear quite problematic. ing that sending-state preferences are An additional problem, and one determined by calculations of static that is particularly important given political-economic benefits and that the monograph addresses the sociopolitical costs made by officials “transnational” dimension of the in those states. It is here that the policymaking process, is that Rosen- absence of attention to transnational blum’s analysis of the foreign policy grassroots challenges and the de- value of immigration does not in- mands of migrants themselves are clude any assessment of domestic most apparent. With this limitation preferences and demands in the mi- in mind, it seems that a more ap- grant-sending countries. This is per- propriate allusion in the book’s title haps the book’s most important limi- would have been to the “intermestic” tation, and it is a remnant of the rather than the “transnational” poli- exclusive focus on state actors. tics of immigration policy.