One Mighty and Irresistible Tide
The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965
19 June 2020
Description
A sweeping history of the twentieth-century battle to reform American immigration laws that set the stage for today’s roiling debates.
The idea of the United States as a nation of immigrants has been at the core of the American narrative. But in 1924, Congress instituted a law that choked off large-scale immigration for decades, sharply curtailing arrivals from southern and eastern Europe and banning those from Asia.
In a riveting narrative with a fascinating cast of characters, Jia Lynn Yang recounts how lawmakers, activists and presidents worked relentlessly for the next forty years—through a world war, a global refugee crisis and McCarthyist fever—to abolish the 1924 law. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, one of the most transformative laws in the country’s history, ended the system of racial biases and opened the door to non-white migration at levels never seen before—changing America in ways that those who debated it could hardly have imagined.
Reviews
"While ‘we tend to describe immigrants’ stories as feats of will and strokes of destiny,’ Yang reminds us, ‘it is not destiny that brings a family here but politics.’ This is a message worth noting as we approach November.
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— David Nasaw, The New York Times Book Review
"Anyone who doesn’t understand that we are a nation of immigrants should be given a copy of Yang’s powerful and cogent look at immigrant strictures put in place in 1924 that were revoked by the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act." — Bethanne Patrick, The Washington Post
"An effort to understand precisely what kind of nation of immigrants we are and how we arrived at this moment in our history... Admirably thorough." — Philip Terzian, The Wall Street Journal
"A masterly study of political struggle... Yang has written a captivating account, full of personality and drama—and significance... worth reading to the last page." — David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe
"Yang sketches lively portraits of the famous and obscure players behind the legislative fights... [Her] voyage across early-20th-century U.S. immigration debates makes palpable how much diplomacy and perseverance are required to win legislative change." — Laura Wides-Muñoz, The Washington Post
Awards
Longlisted — ALA Carnegie Medal, 2021
Shortlisted — Arthur Ross Book Award, 2021
