Book contents
- A Nation of Immigrants
- A Nation of Immigrants
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 “Gentlemen, Tradesmen, Serving-men, Libertines”
- 3 “A City upon the Hill”
- 4 “The Seed of a Nation”
- 5 Immigration and the Formation of the Republic
- 6 Building a Nation
- 7 The Golden Door
- 8 The Triumph of Restrictionism
- 9 Turning Inward
- 10 “A Nation of Immigrants”
- 11 A Nation of Refuge
- 12 The Pennsylvania Model at Risk
- 13 Executive Action and Immigration
- 14 Looking Ahead
- References
- Index
11 - A Nation of Refuge
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2021
- A Nation of Immigrants
- A Nation of Immigrants
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 “Gentlemen, Tradesmen, Serving-men, Libertines”
- 3 “A City upon the Hill”
- 4 “The Seed of a Nation”
- 5 Immigration and the Formation of the Republic
- 6 Building a Nation
- 7 The Golden Door
- 8 The Triumph of Restrictionism
- 9 Turning Inward
- 10 “A Nation of Immigrants”
- 11 A Nation of Refuge
- 12 The Pennsylvania Model at Risk
- 13 Executive Action and Immigration
- 14 Looking Ahead
- References
- Index
Summary
Just as the civil rights movement affected attitudes toward immigration, notions about the universalism of human rights eventually affected refugee policy, with the adoption of the international definition of the term “refugee” in the Refugee Act of 1980. The Cold War definition, in contrast, had been related specifically to those fleeing Communist or Communist-dominated countries. As early as 1948, the United States had subscribed to the idea that all people, regardless of where in the world they lived, had certain inalienable rights. Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the United Nations conference that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and lent her considerable prestige to the endeavor. During the height of the Cold War, however, US leadership in the field of human rights diminished as US foreign policy increasingly relied on realpolitik, which included support for authoritarian regimes as long as they allied themselves with the West against the Communist threat.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Nation of Immigrants , pp. 231 - 262Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021