At home and abroad: The foreign and domestic sources of United States immigration policy

This dissertation explains variation in the making and enforcement of U.S. immigration policy. Existing models of immigration policy-making are unable to account for major policy decisions because they treat immigration policy strictly as a function of congressional interest group politics, or they ignore domestic politics altogether while focusing on "globalization." I argue that immigration policy is a subject of contested control, with both Congress and the president claiming jurisdiction, and with both national and international actors influencing outcomes. Thus, policy is the product of the strategic interaction between Congress, the president, and migrant-sending states. The president often seeks to use immigration as a tool of foreign policy, and is especially successful at doing so during the enforcement stage of policy-making. I develop a three-player model of immigration policy-making, and test it with both qualitative and quantitative methods.; I argue that Congress, the president, and migrant-sending states all care about U.S. immigration policy, and that each has some ability to influence outcomes during both the legislative process and policy enforcement. Because the preferences of these three actors often conflict, I develop four hypotheses about how such conflicts are resolved. First, I argue that players' preferences establish the parameters of the bargaining game and may privilege one or another player in predictable ways. Second, the particular actions available to players---and therefore their influence---vary over time, by stage of policy-making, and as a function of the specific immigration issue area in question. The strategic environment determines how preferences are mapped into payoffs, and how costly it is for players to act. In particular, congressional influence over outcomes is a direct function of the domestic salience of immigration; and conversely, fourth, presidential and sending state influence are a direct function of the "foreign policy value" of immigration.; My evidence consists of a broad historical overview of the relationship between immigration and foreign policy, a quantitative analysis of deportations by migrant-sending states, and case studies of U.S.-Mexican immigration relations during the Bracero Program (1942--1964) and of U.S.-Mexican and U.S.-Central American relations since 1977.