Untitled-7 RESEÑA BIBLIOGRÁFICA The Transnational Politics of U.S. Immigration Policy Marc R. Rosenblum La Jolla, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, 2004 Matt Bakker University of California, Davis Scholarship across the social sciences has become increasingly focused on “transnational politics.” The “trans- national” signifier has been used to describe a number of discrete phe- nomena—from the networks of NGO activists invoking international norms in particular domestic conflicts to transnational migrants engaging in homeland politics—. However, a uni- fying theme in much of this research has been the emphasis on grassroots, non-state actors that take advantage of opportunities presented by the technological advances and economic integration characterizing the cur- rent round of “globalization” to con- struct a politics that crosses national boundaries. Given this recent focus, one might expect that Marc R. Rosenblum’s pro- vocatively titled monograph, The Transnational Politics of U.S. Immigra- tion Reform, would deal with novel forms of political action initiated by Mexican transnational migrants or activist networks linking up across the Mexico-U.S. divide. After all, Mexi- can migrants are the largest immigrant group in the United States, and they and their advocates have increasingly engaged in transnational political ac- tivity by seeking immigration reforms through labor unions, hometown as- sociations, and migrants-rights orga- nizations. The Transnational Politics of U.S. Immigration Policy, however, does not fulfill that expectation. Eschewing the current cross-dis- ciplinary dabbling of many scholars o f “transnational” phenomena, Rosenblum remains firmly planted within his discipline of political sci- ence and places his attention on state actors, not the grassroots. Despite the restrictive boundaries this state- centric focus creates, Rosenblum has skillfully crafted a concise monograph that seeks to develop a theoretical model capable of explaining immi- gration policy outcomes in the con- flict-ridden policy-making environ- ment of the United States. In an attempt to capture the dynamics and variation of policy outcomes, the author synthesizes dominant perspec- tives in the subfields of comparative politics and international relations to create an “intermestic” model of im- migration policy formation. The monograph’s five chapters draw on an impressive set of some 180 MIGRACIONES INTERNACIONALES 120 elite interviews with elected of- ficials, policy makers, NGO officials, and academics from Mexico, Cen- tral America, and the United States. In Chapter 1, Rosenblum sets out the theoretical problem: how to ex- plain contradictory trends in U.S. immigration policy making, ranging from restrictive to more pro-immi- grant legislation. His review of the literature suggests that analysts are often focused either on the compet- ing desires of domestic interest groups or on the international aspect of immigration policy, but they rarely combine both levels of analy- sis. The author proposes a synthesis of these two approaches as a way toward a more comprehensive theory of U.S. immigration policy out- comes. His intermestic model, com- bining both domestic and interna- tional aspects into a “two-level game” approach, aims to explain the shifts and variations in immigration policy making that are inexplicable in ear- lier models. Chapter 2 introduces the key ele- ments of the monograph’s formal theoretical model. Rosenblum argues that immigration policy outcomes are a function of the preferences, actions, and cost-benefit determina- tions of three key actors: the U.S Congress, the U.S. president, and mi- grant-sending states. The three actors are thought to have different prefer- ences due to the “constituents” they represent and the level at which they assess policy impact. In describing their actions, Rosenblum effectively shows the limitations of other ap- proaches, which see immigration policy as the sole domain of either the president or Congress. Although the task of approving legislation may fall solely to Congress, the executive branch is involved both during the legislative process and afterward, dur- ing the enforcement stage. Further- more, migrant-sending states are shown to participate in migration- policy formation both directly, through their own policies aimed at controlling migration flows from the source, and indirectly, by lobbying state officials and policy makers or promoting co-ethnic lobbies within the United States capable of pushing the sending state’s agenda. The key piece of Rosenblum’s theo- retical model is the “strategic envi- ronment,” which helps to shape the preferences of the different actors and their willingness to act on those pref- erences given the “payoff function,” or cost-benefit ratio, likely under par- ticular circumstances. The strategic environment is made up of two key independent variables, one domes- tic and one international, that help explain the variation in immigration policy. The “domestic salience” of migration policy refers to the level of popular attention paid to migra- tion policy in the United States, whereas the “foreign policy value” of migration policy refers to the impor- tance of migration in shaping the bilateral relationship with particular states combined with the overall im- portance of those states to the larger U.S. foreign policy agenda. The in- teraction of these two variables cre- ates a four-square typology of pos- sible policy outcomes. RESEÑA BIBLIOGRÁFICA 181 At the core of the monograph are Chapters 3 and 4, which explore these different policy outcomes and test the model’s validity and predic- tive capacity against the empirical record of policy making during the last two decades in the context of U.S. relations with Mexico and Central America. The period leading up to the passage of the IRCA or Simpson- Rodino reforms (1984 through 1986) is presented as an example of “mass politics,” which arose in response to the increasing salience of immigra- tion in the aftermath of the Mariel boatlift and in a context of low for- eign policy value, at least in relation to Mexico and Central America. The period after IRCA’s passage (1988 through 1990) is presented as an ex- ample of “client politics,” which re- sulted from the combination of immigration’s low domestic saliency (Congress having finally acted in 1986) and low foreign-policy value. This second combination made pos- sible more permissive policies, such as the settlement of the American Baptist Church case regarding Cen- tral American asylum petitions and the 1990 Immigration Act. Chapter 4 goes on to examine policy making under conditions of high foreign policy value. The com- bination of high foreign policy value and high domestic salience creates periods of “inter-branch conflict.” This type of policy-making envi- ronment is illustrated by the dis- agreements between Congress and the executive over the treatment of Salvadoran and Nicaraguan asylum applicants at the height of the Cen- tral American conflicts and over the particulars of the get-tough stance on “illegal” immigration and border en- forcement adopted in the mid-1990s under the Clinton administration. Finally, high foreign policy value com- bined with low domestic salience creates a period of “immigration as foreign policy.” This combination arose after the approval of strict anti- immigrant legislation in 1996, and it provided the conditions for Presi- dent Clinton to seek reforms to asy- lum regulations that would provide relief for Salvadoran and Guatema- lan applicants. However, lingering conflicts with Congress resulted in a reform package that treated Nicara- guan and Cuban applicants signifi- cantly more generously than their Salvador and Guatemalan counter- parts. Overall, the monograph provides a welcome correction to overly sim- plistic one-level models of immigra- tion policy formation. I must, how- ever, mention a few concerns. First, although the theoretical model seems to provide an orderly categorization of policy-making episodes, we should question its predictive capacity. This concern arises from the fact that the key variables making up the “strate- gic environment” are difficult to operationalize and measure. This measurement problem is most ap- parent with the “domestic salience of immigration”—defined as the amount of “popular attention” given to the issue—. Can this concept be measured accurately—as Rosenblum seems to suggest—by the amount of newspaper, television, and magazine 182 MIGRACIONES INTERNACIONALES coverage dedicated to immigration? Without more direct measures of popular opinion and attention, cat- egorizations of the salience of the issue appear quite problematic. An additional problem, and one that is particularly important given that the monograph addresses the “transnational” dimension of the policymaking process, is that Rosen- blum’s analysis of the foreign policy value of immigration does not in- clude any assessment of domestic preferences and demands in the mi- grant-sending countries. This is per- haps the book’s most important limi- tation, and it is a remnant of the exclusive focus on state actors. On this point, a richer—and truly transnational—analysis would focus on the political conditions in the sending countries rather than assum- ing that sending-state preferences are determined by calculations of static political-economic benefits and sociopolitical costs made by officials in those states. It is here that the absence of attention to transnational grassroots challenges and the de- mands of migrants themselves are most apparent. With this limitation in mind, it seems that a more ap- propriate allusion in the book’s title would have been to the “intermestic” rather than the “transnational” poli- tics of immigration policy.