-----Original Message----- From: Rakesh Bhandari <bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Through an examination of 2000 cases Yale poli scientist Rogers Smith
>argues that America has endured a tradition of ascriptive racial hierarchy
>in the recognition of citzenship rights, the legal contestation over which
>he uses to interrogate basic assumptions about America's liberal and
>democratic tradition. I have just begun reading his Civic Ideals published
>by yale university press. Nathan, have you met Rogers?
I haven't but it sounds very interesting. Many countries have stable enough populations that immigration policies have mattered less for self-identification, but the United States has been continually transformed by its migration waves, so our national self-definition has always been tied intimately to our immigration laws and the racial castes we have tried to maintain in the face of those changes. In that we share a reality with Israel. Beyond immigration, of course, are issues of citizenship. Many countries have relatively open immigration with extremely tight citizenship requirements that disallow voting or other civil rights for the children and even grandchildren of immigrants. (Just see the fight over citizenship rules in Germany for long-time Turkish immigrants).
One interesting thing about Israel is that its Law of Return is that it theoretically allows anyone in the world to migrate to Israel if they convert to Judaism. To the extent that every country requires adherence to certain beliefs - democracy, loyalty to the state, etc. - Israel's law is only unusual in its religious self-definition. While Israel suffered a certain internal crisis over the Ethipian Jewish migration, they did ultimately adopt a non-racial religious self-definition. In that their law could be considered an improvement over many countries' more racially based approaches. I am not familiar with Iran's or other Islamic states' immigration laws, but it would be interesting to know if they give any immigration preference to believers in Islam.
--Nathan Newman