Probationary Americans examines contemporary immigration rules and how they affect the make-up of immigrant communities. The authors' key argument is that immigration policies place race and class as important criteria for gaining entry to the United States, and in doing so, alter the makeup of America's immigrant communities.

Probationary Americans examines contemporary immigration rules and how they affect the make-up of immigrant communities. The authors' key argument is that immigration policies place race and class as important criteria for gaining entry to the United States, and in doing so, alter the makeup of America's immigrant communities.

Throughout American history, citizens have encountered people who are illegal-- that is, people who have no legal right to be in the United States or to freedom of movement because of their immigration status or race. Like Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, these citizens face the conflict between sympathy for the unlawful other and the force of the law.aIn "Illegal Migrations and the Huckleberry Finn Problem," John Park explores problems of status and illegality in American law and society by examining on-going themes in American legal history, comparative ethnic studies, and American literature. He observes that in reconsidering racially discriminatory laws, Americans have celebrated persons who were out of status, as well as the citizens who had helped them avoid American law. Similarly, in confronting illegal immigrants in our own time, many Americans have chosen to ignore or to violate federal laws in favor of assisting such persons. In light of these experiences, Park insists that the U.S. ought to rethink policies that have criminalized millions of immigrants, as the injustice of such rules has encouraged people to disobey the law, thereby undermining broader commitments to principles of equality and to the rule of law itself.

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aIn many ways, this book is perfect... This is an important book that succeeds on its own terms and will be well used in immigration and legal history as well as Asian American studies.a
--Journal of Asian Studies

"Lucid and compelling, Park's book is essential reading for those who want to understand the limits of American civil rights discourse--and post-September 11, that should be all of us."
--Angela Harris, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley

"Although he is a legal scholar, his book is more than academic. The issues that Park raises are at the heart of what it means to be a diverse democracy- or not."
--"Trial"

"A well-executed interdisciplinary work combining the theoretical and the empirical in ways that benefit the understanding of both."
--"The Law and Politics Book Review"

"An eye-opening account."
--" The Harvard Law Review Association"

Since the late nineteenth century, federal and state rules governing immigration and naturalization have placed persons of Asian ancestry outside the boundaries of formal membership. A review of leading cases in American constitutional law regarding Asians would suggest that initially, Asian immigrants tended to evade exclusionary laws through deliberate misrepresentations of their identities or through extralegal means. Eventually, many of these immigrants and their descendants came to accept prevailing legal norms governing their citizenship in the United States. In many cases, this involved embracing notions of white supremacy.

John S. W. Park argues that American rules governing citizenship and belonging remainfundamentally unjust, even though they suggest the triumph of a "civil rights" vision, where all citizens share the same basic rights. By continuing to privilege members over non-members in ways that are politically popular, these rules mask injustices that violate principles of fairness. Importantly, Elusive Citizenship also suggests that politically and socially, full membership in American society remains closely linked with participation in exclusionary practices that isolate racial minorities in America.