As we move into a lively election year, I wish that every candidate would be required to read Margaret “Peggy” Sands Orchowski’s book, The Law That Changed the Face of America: The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).
The book begins by examining the history of our immigration laws leading up to major early immigration legislation, the National Origins Immigration Act of 1924.
This congressional act allocated specific quotas for immigrants of particular nationalities. The effect severely restricted those from Africa and banned immigrants from Arab and Asian countries.
In the next 40 years, additional legislation tweaked those laws. Then came the last of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society’s legislation, Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) 1965.
Orchowski explores the INA’s effects and unintended consequences as well as misconceptions and myths surrounding one of the biggest political and social issues this year.
A journalist by profession, Orchowski currently works in Washington, D.C., as congressional correspondent for Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine. She is a member of the National Press Club and JAWS, a national women’s journalist organization.
In June 2008, her book Immigration and the American Dream: Battling the Political Hype and Hysteria was released by the academic publisher Rowman & Littlefield.
Orchowski writes the book without a political agenda, the sign of a professional journalist. She covers history while including blame and credit to both sides of the political spectrum. That I respect.
Born in Santa Barbara, Orchowski attended Santa Barbara High School, where she was editor of The Forge newspaper. She did her journalism undergraduate work at UC Berkeley and later received a Ph.D. from UC Santa Barbara in international public and educational finance.
Her career in journalism took her to South America as an Associated Press reporter followed by a position working for the U.N. Press Corps in Geneva, Switzerland. She also has written for Noozhawk and the Santa Barbara News-Press.
She speaks four languages and lives in Georgetown but spends several weeks per year in the Santa Barbara area.
Orchowski states in the introduction why she wrote The Law That Changed the Face of America.
“What is needed today is a universal understanding about what immigration is, and why there are immigration laws,” she wrote. “That includes what crucial roles immigration laws have in a nation, how they evolve, and what are the major factors in the political and economic environment that affect global immigration and national immigration regulations.”
Our Constitution gives Congress the power to “establish an uniform rule of naturalization.”
Orchowski points out that since 1788 two factors have often determined immigration legislation: family reunification and work circumstances.
Four driving forces have also played into these decisions: economics, demographics, technology and politics.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was written to end discrimination based on gender, race, creed, religion and national origin. The INA of 1965 applied those stipulations to immigration, too.
Publishing the book took almost as many oddball turns as immigration history itself. The Law That Changed the Face of America serves its purpose but has not found that popularity “bump” after publication, something authors ultimately wish for; however it will likely be in print for years to come, especially as an academic resource.
While Orchowski was in town over the holidays, we sat down over coffee. I asked her how she found a publisher.
“I had the idea for the book for well over a year, but my then-agent was not flexible how to get it out there,” she said. “A year ago October I went to Washington, D.C.’s National Book Festival.
“There I ran into the publisher for Rowman & Littlefield and pitched my book idea to him about the need to have the history of immigration available on the 50th anniversary of INA 1965. He answered, ‘E-mail me with a three-page proposition.’”
She did. Three weeks later he replied with, “Let’s do it!”
On Dec. 23, 2014, they negotiated the advance and signed the contract to write a 90,000-word book with a deadline of March 3, 2015!
A three-month deadline is close to impossible, especially with a topic requiring endless research. Fortunately, Orchowski had been working with this topic for years so had good material at her fingertips.
Then Jan. 31, 2015, arrived. Her work-in-progress had 35,000 words, not even half of what she needed. With more than half the book to write in five weeks, she pushed her panic down and dug in even harder.
She canceled everything and took only one break a day at a nearby gym. There she would work out and have a cup of coffee while reading the newspaper before going back to work for the rest of the day. It was nose to the proverbial grindstone.
I asked if she ended up making the actual deadline. She laughed with a humorous chortle.
“I did!” she exclaimed. “One thing going for me was winter in Georgetown. It’s the best time to write a book with all that cold weather and little calling to be outside.”
When fact checking her research, Orchowski found the Internet helpful, although not always. During the research she remembered reading that 20 percent of slaves had been Muslim. The Internet could not confirm the figure so she went to the Library of Congress.
“They have access to much information so I found the source,” she recalled. “They also have information on laws and areas such as who was the majority in Congress when immigration bills were passed.”
Finally the book was done and released in September 2015 on schedule for the 50th anniversary of the INA. Now was the time for Orchowski to sit back and enjoy having her work read.
“I ended up with false expectations,” she said. “Here I had a hot topic, the anniversary of a nation-changing law at the time of civil rights, and we’re coming into an election year.
“I felt it was a big deal. It didn’t turn out that way.”
One problem publishing with an academic book publisher is that the books often sell for higher prices than those published for general consumption.
The Law That Changed the Face of America sells for $40. If there are enough sales, according to a representative from Rowman & Littlefield, the book might be printed in paperback at a lower price, which would make it more accessible to a broader audience.
At the same time, another book using the 50th anniversary landmark was published: A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story by Tom Gjelten.
It uses the story of five immigrant families moving into a nearly all-white county in Virginia outside of Washington. Their stories tell about the effects of non-European people becoming a part of the community.
While these human-interest stories show the unintended consequences of INA 1965, it is not a complete history of immigration as is Orchowski’s book. The two books look at a difficult topic in different ways.
Gjelten’s work with National Public Radio and his connections in national media gave him greater exposure, resulting in appearances and speaking engagements.
Invitations to Orchowski have been limited, even though her more scholarly book is based on historical fact and evaluation.
“Although the ‘bump’ did not happen for my book, Rowman & Littlefield see my book being published well into 2016 and beyond,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’m working to get the book out there such as writing articles using material from it.”
I asked what messages she wants readers to take away.
“I keep running into two misconceptions,” she said. “We have to keep in mind that immigration laws are always evolving, always a work in progress. They will never be ‘fixed once and for all’ as President Barack Obama is prone to say.
“The other is that they are not set in stone like the poem on the Statue of Liberty about ‘bring me your huddled masses.’ Never has that been part of the U.S. immigration policy or reflected in U.S. immigration law. It’s a poem stating hope. Many people quote it as if it were unchangeable immigration policy and law!
“Another point of confusion that it’s the right of every sovereign nation state to decide who can immigrate, who can’t and what are the penalties for not honoring that decision. Potential immigrants can apply but the nation state decides.”
To illustrate her point, Orchowski turns to an analogy of a popular public college choosing students from among tens of thousands of qualified applicants. Each hopeful student knows the admissions office has the right to set the qualifications and choose who gets in, she says.
“If they don’t get chosen, they don’t get to storm the dorms, take the classes and demand a degree but instead have to go elsewhere,” she said.
Orchowski finished our talk with her hope for the book’s effect.
“I wish that a more productive debate about U.S. immigration reform could begin by understanding how our own immigration laws, especially INA of 1965, developed and evolved,” she said.
“We should put its passage into perspective with the expectations of today, and learn lessons from the past 50 years.”
— Noozhawk columnist Susan Miles Gulbransen — a Santa Barbara native, writer and book reviewer — teaches writing at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and through the Santa Barbara City College Continuing Education Division. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are her own.
