The intermestic politics of immigration policy: Lessons from the Bracero Program

Although a quintessentially intermestic issue, immigration policy is usually analyzed as a one-level (domestic or international) policy question, and existing theories essentially talk past each other while failing to explain changes over time. I develop a domestic-international model of migration policy-making which explores the ability of Congress, the president, and migrant-sending states to influence outcomes. I examine the U.S.-Mexican Bracero Program (1942–1964), and I find that my model strongly outperforms existing one-level theories of migration policy-making. I conclude by exploring the current immigration policy environment, and I argue that it too is best understood as a two-level process.