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Abstract[Excerpt] Of the myriad public policies that have impinged on the economic well being of black Americans over the years, none has had more overarching and continuous effects than those pertaining to immigration. Immigration policies and trends have set the stage that has allowed other outcomes to happen. From the beginning, when blacks were introduced into the British colonies that would later become the United States, to contemporary times, when the nation finds itself in the throes of the largest and longest period of mass immigration in its history, immigration policy has significantly influenced the geographical, occupational, and industrial employment patterns of black Americans.Given the harrowing experiences of black Americans as the only racial or ethnic group to have ever been collectively subjected to both enforced slavery and de jure segregation, no form of public policy should be allowed to do harm to their quest to overcome these imposed handicaps. Unfortunately, U.S. immigration policy has not held to that standard. The burden of this neglect continues to this day.

[Excerpt] Of the multiple explanations for the post-World War II immigration experiences of those advanced industrial nations where the phenomena occurred, the most pernicious has been that immigrants are needed to do the "dirty work." Despite the fact that efforts to characterize the general employment patterns of immigrants in different industrial societies "has proved frustrating," Michael Piore observed in 1979 that "the only immigrant jobs that seem common throughout the industrial world are menial jobs". Likewise, much of the debate in the United States that preceded the enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of, 1986 (IRCA) centered on the efficacy of the assertion that the United States economy actually needed illegal immigrants to fill certain menial jobs that would not otherwise be filled.

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