Daniel J. Tichenor

Organized Interests and American Political Development

The striking resonance of these quotations from leading interest group scholars generations apart suggests that something remarkably similar may have been happening at both ends of the twentieth century. Contemporary political science offers no shortage of careful research on the behavior of organized interest groups and their place in democratic theory. Yet this impressive body of scholarship routinely concentrates on the past half century of interest group politics. This article highlights the need to expand the time horizons of

The Politics of Immigration Reform in the United States, 1981-1990

American immigration politics produced two major laws in the 1980s, overcoming formidable obstacles to policy change and unleashing new forces for increased migration when new restrictions seemed likely. This article examines the ideologically mixed coalition behind these changes and the ambiguous, often conflicting policy that was the result. Subsequent struggles within the courts and the administrative presidency to interpret and apply these reforms, the author concludes, have resulted in greater public antipathy toward immigration and also enervated participatory citizenship in the United States.

Immigration and the Transformation of American Unionism

Does immigration hamper union organizing in the United States? The prevailing literature strongly suggests that it does and for two reasons: first, immigrants increase the labor pool and diminish union influence over the labor market. And second, immigrants may be harder to organize than native workers. In this dominant view, unions are well served to restrict immigration and have always done so. But how, then, to explain the fact that American labor has long been deeply divided over the response to immigration? Drawing on new archival research and interviews, this paper uncovers a neglected side of American labor history in which many union leaders have extended solidarity to immigrants and sought to organize them. Moreover, analysis of time series data on immigration and union density corroborates the implicit theory of this alternate account of labor history: immigration has, in fact, no statistically significant effect – either positive or negative – on union density over time. Depending on specific conditions and strategies, unions can and have been successful in organizing during periods of high immigration.

The Political Dynamics of Unauthorized Immigration: Conflict, Change, and Agency in Time

There is no shortage of historical and sociological works tackling the long-term development of U.S. policies on unauthorized immigration. This essay highlights several key conceptual and empirical gaps for understanding the politics of immigration policy history, and spotlights the meaning and implications of conflicts over problem definition, reform impasses, “strange bedfellow” compromises, and immigrant agency. The study underscores the increasing intensity and texture of struggles over “illegal” immigration over time. This essay also highlights how rare shifts from gridlock to major policy change have been driven by unexpected alliances, the necessity of painful compromises to appease disparate actors, and the contradictions produced by immigration reform packages. Finally, this essay highlights the role of immigrants as transformative agents in immigration politics, who employ strategies of litigation, civil disobedience, protest, and electoral mobilization.

Solidarities and Restrictions: Labor and Immigration Policy in the United States

In American labor’s response to immigration over time, one can observe “a movement wrestling” between restrictionist and solidaristic positions. A crucial transformation of American labor’s response to immigration occurred from the 1930s to the 1960s which is attributed to four factors: changes in the structure and composition of the labor market, shifts in immigration flows, shifts in the attitudes of the labor movement toward immigrants, and the changing disposition of the American state toward unions. In this article we look at the policy choices and dilemmas that have faced the American labor movement since the 1940’s, putting forth a conceptual framework for understanding labor’s shifting positions over time and identifying critical moments in American political development. Having laid this foundation, we move on to a consideration of labor’s most recent positions concerning contemporary policy debates.

The Congressional Dynamics of Immigration Reform

Unauthorized immigration and the status of millions of undocumented immigrants in the US are subjects that for years have spurred ferocious debate over the airwaves, on campaign trails, and in statehouses across the country. Yet these fiery battles have stood in bold contrast to the deep freeze that enveloped comprehensive immigration reform in the halls of Congress. As congressional scholars like Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have observed, the emergence of increasingly “parliamentary parties” on Capitol Hill—parties that are ideologically polarized, internally unified, and vehemently oppositional—has yielded stalemate and dysfunction in a separation-of-powers system. And few issues rivaled illegal immigration for how great the divide was between the Democratic and Republican bases—an ideological distance replicated in Congress. Soon after entering office in 2009, President Barack Obama’s administration found it impossible to find key Republican lawmakers willing to work across the aisle on immigration reform. Obama officials responded to these hurdles by explaining that immigration legislation would have to come after more looming priorities such as economic stimulus, health care, and financial regulatory reform as reported by Thompson and Herszenhorn and Farrell. Meanwhile, partly as a “down payment” on comprehensive reform, the Obama administration continued and expanded several enforcement programs initiated during the final years of the administration of President George W. Bush, deporting a record number of unauthorized immigrants in each of Obama’s first 2 years in office.

The Great Divide: The Politics of Illegal Immigration in America

For almost two decades, successive US presidents and Congresses have viewed porous national borders and the presence of 10-12 million undocumented immigrants in the country as a pressing problem. A majority of Americans have shared this view that remedial government action is urgently needed, and new grassroots movements have emerged favoring immigrant rights, on the one side, and tougher enforcement and border control, on the other. Against this backdrop, the White House and Congress have worked together several times to advance a comprehensive immigration reform package comprising four core elements: (1) new measures to strengthen enforcement of immigration laws and border control; (2) improved employer sanctions to penalize those who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants; (3) an earned legalization program that would allow most undocumented immigrants living in the country to gain legal status; and (4) revision of the legal immigration preference system to allow US businesses to have easier access to immigrant workers or foreign guest workers. While national policymakers largely agree on the essential building blocks of comprehensive immigration reform, each legislative effort has been derailed by disputes over which of these elements should take precedence over others.