Throughout America's history immigration policy has always been a controversial and complex topic, going to the heart of what it means to be American. Now, with terrorism as a new concern, Americans have begun to look closer at the effects of rising immigration and porous borders. In this cogently-argued work, immigration scholar Otis L. Graham, Jr. examines the history of immigration pressures and American policy debates and choices. He begins with the first "Great Wave" of the 1880s and traces the effects of the system of national origins, enforced from the 1920s through 1965. The reforms of the 1960s ushered in an era of large-scale legal and illegal immigration, resulting in a vast social experiment in demographic transformation. In assessing the past, present, and future of immigration, Graham shows that the failure to control the influx of foreigners is leading America toward further security risks, unsustainable population growth, imported worker competition with American labor, and, ultimately, social fragmentation.

"Graham performs a valuable service in refuting modern-day charges that racist motivations and eugenicist theories underlay the Progressives' move to restrict immigration. Unguarded Gates is especially enlightening in its analysis of the vast cultural rift between the elites, who benefit economically from cheap immigrant labor, and average Americans, who bear the costs and consequences of the present mass immigration." - National Review

"This is a clear and rational little book—no small accomplishment when the subject is immigration.Unguarded Gates: A History of America's Immigration Crisis is less a policy tome or a polemic than a fine exercise in simply telling it like it was." - Sunday Washington Times

"Unguarded Gates provides an intriguing historical survey of America's immigration crisis. . . . This should be a part of any college-level collection on immigrant social issues." - The Bookwatch