One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965

by Jia Lynn Yang

Overview

Winner of the Zócalo Book Prize
Shortlisted for the Arthur Ross Book Award
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice

A "powerful and cogent" (Bethanne Patrick, Washington Post) account of the twentieth-century battle for immigration reform that set the stage for today’s roiling debates.

The idea of the United States as a nation of immigrants is at the core of the American narrative. But in 1924, Congress instituted a system of ethnic quotas so stringent that it choked off large-scale immigration for decades, sharply curtailing arrivals from southern and eastern Europe and outright banning those from nearly all of Asia. In a riveting narrative filled with a fascinating cast of characters, from the indefatigable congressman Emanuel Celler and senator Herbert Lehman to the bull-headed Nevada senator Pat McCarran, Jia Lynn Yang recounts how lawmakers, activists, and presidents from Truman through LBJ worked relentlessly to abolish the 1924 law.

Through a world war, a refugee crisis after the Holocaust, and a McCarthyist fever, a coalition of lawmakers and activists descended from Jewish, Irish, and Japanese immigrants fought to establish a new principle of equality in the American immigration system. Their crowning achievement, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, proved to be one of the most transformative laws in the country’s history, opening the door to nonwhite migration at levels never seen before—and changing America in ways that those who debated it could hardly have imagined. Framed movingly by her own family’s story of immigration to America, Yang’s One Mighty and Irresistible Tide is a deeply researched and illuminating work of history, one that shows how Americans have strived and struggled to live up to the ideal of a home for the “huddled masses,” as promised in Emma Lazarus’s famous poem.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393867527
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	05/25/2021
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	137,490
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jia Lynn Yang, the national editor at The New York Times, was previously deputy national security editor at The Washington Post, where she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Trump and Russia. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

1 "God's Crucible" 7

2 Slamming the Door 33

3 A "Tragic Bottleneck" 62

4 "A Land of Great Responsibilities" 90

5 A Son of Nevada 115

6 Internal Security 142

7 An Irish Brahmin 176

8 A Bold Proposal 203

9 A Martyr's Cause 230

Epilogue 261

Acknowledgments 273

Notes 277

Bibliography 301

Index 309

Editorial Reviews

"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."

Boston Globe - David M. Shribman

02/24/2020

Journalist Yang chronicles four decades of American immigration legislation and reform in her sober and well-researched debut. Noting that between 1880 and WWI, only 1% of new arrivals were turned away from U.S. ports of entry, Yang explores how the rise of eugenics in the early 20th century helped anti-immigration activists to win passage of the 1924 Johnson–Reed Act, which set quotas drastically reducing immigration from southern and eastern Europe, “banned Asian immigration altogether,” and required prospective arrivals to obtain American visas before departing their countries of origin. The new law, according to Yang, cut the total number of arrivals by more than half. As the Nazi Party rose to power in Germany in the 1930s, quotas and “anti-Semitic prejudices” within the U.S. State Department shut the doors to many Jewish refugees. After WWII, President Harry Truman’s executive order allowing private charities to sponsor refugees “became central to the U.S. immigration system,” and in 1965, Sen. Ted Kennedy played a key role in the legislative effort to replace quotas with a cap system that prioritized family reunification. Yang’s comprehensive and easy-to-follow record of a crucial period in the evolution of U.S. immigration policy sheds light on the political, cultural, and historical considerations behind this contentious issue. Readers seeking insights into contemporary proposals to reform the system will find plenty in this lucid account. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"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."

Washington Post - Bethanne Patrick

"Yang’s compelling history could not be more timely.... The combination of meticulous research and captivating writing creates a beautiful surprise; a dark history that gleams under the spotlight of unvarnished truthtelling. Expect a lot of reader requests and award attention for this significant title."

Booklist (starred review)

"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."

Washington Post - Laura Wides-Muñoz

"Powerful, riveting, and beautifully written, this book tells the story of how the most significant immigration laws in the twentieth century came to pass in the United States. From Takao Ozawa’s heartbreaking bid to become a citizen to our nation’s rejection of Jewish refugees of World War II, Jia Lynn Yang exposes the myth that ours is a nation that has consistently welcomed immigrants. With force and imagination she transports us to the halls of Congress and the White House and shepherds us through four decades of political conflict. This book could not be more timely: In a divisive moment where the place of immigrants in America is bitterly debated, we need this book more than ever. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how politics has shaped, and can shape, the lives of immigrants in the United States."

Michelle Kuo

"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."

New York Times Book Review - David Nasaw

"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."

Wall Street Journal - Philip Terzian

05/01/2020

New York Times editor Yang's book focuses on a period between two sweeping immigration reform laws that dramatically reshaped the nature of American society. The Immigration Act of 1924 ended a period of largely unrestricted entry into the United States by people from throughout the world, though largely from Europe. This ultimately created a system of racist laws that led to a shift in the country's racial makeup; preferring groups from northern and western Europe as opposed to Eastern Europe and Asia. In 1965, following World War II and the Cold War, Congress replaced quotas with new criteria that became the basis for our current system. Yang presents a series of portraits of individuals who shaped this social and political transition, and sought to control national laws. New York congressman Emanuel Celler, for example, was an outspoken advocate, opposing the Immigration Act of 1924 and sponsoring the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. The book reveals the complexities of these policies during times of dramatically changing international conditions. VERDICT A clear, well-crafted historical overview of U.S. immigration, and the people who shaped it. Yang defines the issues these debates raised but never settled in a way that informs without overwhelming readers.—Charles K. Piehl, Minnesota State Univ., Mankato

Library Journal

★ 2020-02-09
A history of the struggle for immigration law reform in 20th-century America.

In this excellent debut, Yang—a deputy national editor at the New York Times who was part of a Washington Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the ties between Donald Trump and Russia—recounts the making of the historic Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which opened the door to Asian, Latin American, African, and Middle Eastern immigrants and “helped define America as a multicultural nation.” Until then, becoming an American was tied to European ancestry, with entry barred to nearly all Asians. In a lively, smoothly flowing narrative based on archival research, the author describes the “racial paranoia” of the 1920s, marked by the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan, the continued popularity of Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race, and the surge in eugenics. Anti-immigration sentiment led to a restrictive 1924 law, which deliberately cut immigration under quotas based on the number of foreign-born Americans in 1890. In ensuing decades, writes the author, restrictions continued, with concerns over communist infiltration by immigrants growing more important than the desire to control the race and nationality of Americans. By the 1950s, a “coalition of the powerful and powerless,” led by Congressman Emanuel Celler and including families of interned Japanese Americans, argued for immigration in the more conducive climate engendered by increasing celebration of the immigrant past, the scholarship of historian Oscar Handlin (The Uprooted), and politicians’ eagerness for urban ethnic votes. By then, even organized labor supported immigration. Throughout her important story, Yang highlights human and political drama, from the histrionics of racists to the political machinations of Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson on behalf of the displaced and others. The author also reveals the roles of unsung heroes like White House aide Mike Feldman, who shaped JFK’s message in A Nation of Immigrants. Yang illuminates the little-known, “transformative” 1965 law that spurred demographic changes expected to result in a nonwhite majority in America within a few decades.

Critical in understanding today’s immigration issues.

Kirkus Reviews