Divergent Paths of Immigration Politics in the United States and Australia

Abstract

The United States and Australia converged by the mid-1980s on receptive and expan sive immigration policies reflecting "client" politics. Australia has since pursued a more restrictive and selective course while the United States has resisted pressures toward such a stance. The authors account for these differences by assessing the theoretical perspectives of interests, rights, and states. Conflicts among groups with direct interests in policy outcomes are the principal source of immigration politics, but a comparison of the roles of rights and state institutions helps explain peculiarities of the two cases. The distinctive Australian policy trajectory is shaped by greater volatility of public opinion about immigration and multiculturalism, and by political institutions that are more responsive to popular sentiment. Copyright 2001 by The Population Council, Inc..

Immigration and Prosecutorial Discretion

“…This finding likely comes as no surprise to scholars who study the relationship between public opinion and immigration policy. Both in comparative political studies (Freeman and Birrell 2001;Howard 2009) and American political studies (Citrin et al 1990), researchers consistently have noted the gap between popular (often nativist) opinion on immigration matters and the actual policies implemented by elites in the US and other countries.…”

Immigration and Status Exchange in Australia and the United States

“…Although birthplace is not a caste-like barrier, there are reasons why status exchange might occur among mixed nativity couples. In Australia, immigrants largely enjoy the full benefits of the welfare state, including health care and social welfare benefits, but growing emphasis on immigrant skill since the mid-1970s has increased social inequities between nativeand foreign-born residents (Freeman & Birrell, 2001;Walsh, 2008 Despite its appeal, the status exchange hypothesis is controversial for several reasons.…”

“…Australia's immigration department implemented a point system to judge the admissibility of skilled immigrants (Birrell, 1990;Miller, 1999). In addition to strictly regulating annual caps, Australia's immigration authorities periodically adjust the admission ceilings in response to economic conditions and in recent years increased the points awarded to market skills, including higher thresholds for English proficiency (Freeman & Birrell, 2001;Walsh, 2008 (Wasem, 2007). As a result the skill distribution of U.S. immigrants is bimodal: migrants admitted under employment visas average higher education than the native population and family migrants average education levels well below the national average (Tienda, 2002).…”

“…Canada trump the United States as immigrant nations: about one in four Australian residents are foreign born, compared with 19 percent for Canada, 12.5 percent for the United States and nine percent for the UK (Walsh, 2008;GMF, 2009;Freeman & Birrell, 2001). …”

“…If the salience of nativity as a social boundary for marriage depends on education such that highly skilled immigrants are more attractive to potential spouses than less-skilled natives, then patterns of status exchange will surely differ between Australia and the United States because of the countries' differing emphases on skill and national origins as a condition for admission (Freeman & Birrell, 2001;Walsh, 2008;Wasem, 2007).…”