National insecurities

the long version

Dierdre Moloney provides a history of key elements of deportation and exclusion policies: who created them, how they worked. Along the way she makes it clear that they discriminate against some people—often by design, sometimes not. As she states it, they function as a “social filter” to shape the future U.S. population. Current policy and the people it affects re-enter the conversation at regular intervals. Moloney labels her work as social history and public policy history. As social history the book pays attention to race and gender, socio-economic status, sickness and ability. Because people’s religious or political beliefs also tied specifically to exclusion, Moloney includes chapters on those categories as well. As social history it also provides evocative stories of those who faced deportation or exclusion, people who might otherwise have no voice. As public policy history National Insecurities chronicles the development of the policies and agencies of exclusion, from some background on early local provisions to the initial laws and offices up to Immigration and Citizenship Enforcement –ICE and the category of “enemy combatants”. Two nice additions are appendices of the [1] numbers of people deported or “returned” 1892-2008, and [2] an appendix of key laws through the mid-1990s (shortened from the USCIS site).