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U.S. Immigration Policy and Latin America: In Search of the “Special Relationship”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Robert A. Pastor
Robert A. Pastor*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
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The most prevalent criticism of U.S. policy toward Latin America is that it takes Latin America for granted or that Latin America would be better off if it did. According to this view, Latin America is either neglected or treated shabbily. The florid rhetoric that U.S. policymakers sometimes use to describe the “special relationship” with Latin America raises expectations that are never fulfilled. Abraham Lowenthal has repeatedly described this policy cycle as “a burst of interest followed by concrete decisions that contradict the very policies just announced.” He continues, “Whether calling its approach a ‘Good Neighbor Policy,’ an ‘Alliance for Progress,’ [or] a ‘Mature Partnership,’ one administration after another has promised to improve U.S.-Latin American relations,” but all have failed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , 1984 , pp. 35 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 by Latin American Research Review

Footnotes

*

This essay draws on my longer paper, “Caribbean Emigration and U.S. Immigration Policy: Cross Currents,” which was prepared for a conference on “The International Relations of the Contemporary Caribbean,” sponsored by the Caribbean Institute and Study Center for Latin America (CISCLA) at the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico, San Germán, 22–23 April 1983. The longer paper, together with other conference papers, will appear in a forthcoming book edited by Jorge Heine, Director of CISCLA, and Leslie Manigat. I am grateful to Jorge Heine for support and comments on that paper, to Franklin Baitman and Stephen Hill of the University of Maryland for their research assistance, and to Rosemary Blunck for her indefatigable secretarial support. I also gratefully acknowledge the perceptive and useful comments on an earlier draft made by Susan Kaufman Purcell, Robert J. Alexander, Yale Ferguson, and David North.

References

Notes

1. See his “Ronald Reagan and Latin America: Coping with Hegemony in Decline,” in Eagle Defiant: United States Foreign Policy in the 1980s, edited by Kenneth A. Oye, Robert J. Lieber, and Donald Rothchild (Boston: Little, Brown, 1983), pp. 320–21. Also, “Jimmy Carter and Latin America: A New Era or Small Change?,” in Eagle Entangled: U.S. Foreign Policy in a Complex World, edited by Kenneth A. Oye, Donald Rothchild, and Robert J. Lieber (New York: Longman, 1979), pp. 297–98; and “Latin America: Not So Special,” Foreign Policy 32 (Fall 1978): 119–20. Jorge Domínguez places this thesis in the context of scholarship on inter-American relations in the 1970s in “Consensus and Divergence: The State of the Literature on Inter-American Relations in the 1970s,” LARR 13, no. 1 (1978): 87–126.

2. Abraham F. Lowenthal, “Ronald Reagan and Latin America,” Eagle Defiant, p. 322.

3. Global Trends in Migration: Theory and Research on International Population Movements, edited by Mary M. Kritz, Charles B. Keely, and Silvano M. Tomasi (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1981), pp. xvi–xvii.

4. Many of these characteristics are shared by other “global” issues. See Robert Pastor, Congress and the Politics of U.S. Foreign Economic Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), particularly pp. 12–14.

5. Testimony of the Reverend Ethelred Brown, Hearings before the President's Commission on Immigration and Naturalization, 1952, p. 250; Arthus S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), pp. 60–61.

6. See Sidney Kansas, U.S. Immigration: Exclusion and Deportation and Citizenship (Albany: Matthew Bender, 1941, 2nd ed.).

7. Malcolm J. Proudfoot, Population Movements in the Caribbean (1950; New York: Negro Universities Press, 1970), table 24, p. 88.

8. Robert A. Divine, American Immigration Policy, 1924–1952 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), pp. 16–18. In 1925 the House Immigration Committee published a report by Robert Foerster, a Princeton economist, who argued that because 90 percent of the Latin American population were of Indian descent, which was racially inferior to “white stock,” the United States should severely limit Latin American immigration (p. 56).

9. Ibid., p. 23.

10. Hearings before the President's Commission on Immigration and Naturalization, 1952, p. 247.

11. Congressional Record, Senate, 68th Congress, 18 April 1924, p. 6624. The following quotes in the text are from the Congressional debate on 18, 19, and 24 April, pp. 6622–33.

12. Robert Divine, American Immigration Policy, p. 52.

13. Congressional Record, Senate, 71st Congress, 24 April 1930, p. 7424.

14. Ibid., p. 8842.

15. Congressional Record, Senate, 13 May 1930, p. 8842.

16. Cited in Robert Divine, American Immigration Policy, p. 60.

17. After the House of Representatives passed a bill on 10 April 1924 that unilaterally abrogated a “gentleman's agreement” between the United States and Japan restricting Japanese immigration to the United States, the Japanese ambassador gave a note to Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes protesting the bill and warning against “grave consequences” if it passed. Hughes believed that this note might influence Congress favorably and therefore allowed it to be printed in the Congressional Record. Congressional reaction was exactly the opposite; Senator Henry Cabot Lodge angrily called the Japanese note a “veiled threat.” The considerable opposition in the Senate to the House bill immediately collapsed, and the bill passed overwhelmingly. See Divine, American Immigration Policy, p. 23.

18. Ibid., pp. 65–67.

19. Powell's remarks are from the Congressional Record, House, 25 April 1952, pp. 4431–40. “The New Immigration Bill,” New York Times editorial, 1 May 1952, p. 28.

20. Testimony cited in Marion T. Bennett, American Immigration Policies: A History (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1963), pp. 190–91.

21. Hearings before the President's Commission on Immigration and Naturalization, 1952, p. 54.

22. Ibid., p. 55.

23. Report of the Select Commission on Western Hemisphere Immigration, January 1968, tables on pp. 40–55.

24. Cited in Dennis Forsythe, “Black Immigrants and the American Ethos: Theories and Observations,” in Caribbean Immigration to the U.S., edited by Roy Bryce-Laporte and Delores Mortimer (Washington, D.C.: Research Institute on Immigration and Ethnic Studies, 1983), p. 68.

25. Edward P. Hutchinson, Legislative History of American Immigration Policy, 1798–1965 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), p. 374.

26. “Progress on Immigration,” New York Times editorial, 17 July 1954, p. 24.

27. The Commission on U.S.–Latin American Relations, a private group of distinguished leaders chaired by the Honorable Sol M. Linowitz, issued two reports in 1974 and 1976 on ways to improve U.S. policy toward Latin America. One recommendation was to place U.S.–Latin American relations in a modern global context. The Carter administration borrowed this idea from the Linowitz commission.

28. U.S. Immigration Policy and the National Interest: Staff Report of the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy, 30 April 1981, p. 208.

29. Report of the Select Commission on Western Hemisphere Immigration, January 1968, p. 11.

30. Robert Pastor, “Migration in the Caribbean Basin: The Need for an Approach as Dynamic as the Phenomenon,” in U.S. Immigration and Refugee Policy: Global and Domestic Issues, edited by Mary M. Kritz (Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1983), p. 97.

31. Staff Report of the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy, 30 April 1981, p. 66.

32. Over time and as a result of continuing efforts, however, a certain level of cooperation on the migration issue was attained. By June of 1980, the Migration Working Group of the Consultative Mechanism agreed on the following work program, which was already underway: joint training sessions for U.S. and Mexican immigration officials, exchange of information and research including joint review of methodology of a major Mexican migration study, cooperative efforts to oppose undocumented alien smugglers, and efforts to improve channels of communication to ensure high human-rights standards in the treatment of undocumented workers. (See the prepared statement of Ambassador Robert Krueger before the Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Update: United States–Canadian–Mexican Relations, 17 and 26 June 1980, pp. 34–35.)

33. “Interview with Mexican President José López Portillo,” Los Angeles Times, 26 April 1977.

34. For the profile of the average migrants, see Wayne Cornelius, Mexican Migration to the United States with Comparative Reference to Caribbean-Basin Migration: The State of Current Knowledge and Recommendations for Future Research, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, Working Paper no. 2, May 1979, pp. 91–98. For discussion on migration and development in the Caribbean, see the International Migration Review 16, no. 4 (Winter 1982), particularly the article by Thomas K. Morrison and Richard Sinkin, “International Migration in the Dominican Republic: Implications for Development Planning,” pp. 819–36. See also Thomas K. Morrison, “The Relationship of U.S. Aid, Trade, and Investment to Migration Pressures in Major Sending Countries,” International Migration Review 16, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 4–26; and Robert Pastor, “The Implications of U.S. Immigration Policy for the Caribbean Basin,”' prepared statement before the Subcommittee on Census and Population of the House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, 9 December 1982.

35. Sidney Weintraub, Trade Preferences for Less-Developed Countries: An Analysis of U.S. Policy (New York: Praeger, 1967).

36. Roger Hansen, “U.S.–Latin American Economic Relationships: Bilateral, Regional, or Global?,” in The Americas in a Changing World, Commission on U.S.–Latin American Relations (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1975), pp. 231–34.

37. I am indebted to Susan Kaufman Purcell for this point.

38. Lowenthal pointed to the U.S. decision in the late 1970s to dispose of surplus tin as an example of failure to take regional concerns into account, although the decision involved only one country rather than a region (see p. 321 of his 1983 article and the list of global policies). This decision, however, was taken only after long and intense consultations with the Bolivian government. The Carter administration also refrained from disposing of the tin in any way that could harm the prospects for democratization in Bolivia, and as it turned out, the first major sales did not occur until the end of 1981. One reason for the 1978 decision was that the price was exceeding the ceiling set by the International Tin Agreement. Other tin producers, as well as some in Bolivia, thought that sales would steady the price on the high side just as commodity agreements are generally reached to lift and steady prices on the low side. Moreover, U.S. stockpile reserves of tin were excessive (over six times the required amount), and sales would narrow the budget deficit, an important domestic interest.

39. For an alternative explanation of the gap between initial statement and final action, I analyze the changes and continuities in U.S. policy toward El Salvador in “Continuity and Change in U.S. Foreign Policy: Carter and Reagan on El Salvador,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 3, no. 1 (Winter 1984): 175–90.