Thesis advisor: James M. O'Toole / This dissertation argues that the movement to restrict European immigration to the United States in the early 1900s was critically supported by a set of ideas that the dissertation refers to as "classic racialism." Derived from several intellectual traditions - such as anthropology, biology, criminology, eugenics and zoology - classic racialism posited that differences in human population groups were biologically determined and hereditary, and because of this fact, American nativists held that the "new" immigration to the United States had to be curtailed in order to save the American Anglo-Saxon racial stock. The dissertation uses Italian immigration to the United States as a case study for understanding the fluidity of racial and biological thought. While classic racialism played a key role in supporting nativists' calls for immigration restriction, advances in methods of scientific research were revolutionizing the fields of biology, genetics and anthropology. Research in these fields cast doubts on the veracity of intellectual claims made by classic racialists, which were increasingly untenable in the light of advancing scientific knowledge. The tensions between these competing intellectual paradigms of classic racialism and modern experimentalism in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries reveal the esoteric nature of scientific revolutions, in that the uncertainty and complexity of the developing biological and genetic sciences kept knowledge of scientific advances in these fields restricted to a narrow audience of professional scientists and academics. While modern experimental biology raised significant scientific doubts about the principles of classic racialism, it was the latter that influenced American immigration policy in the 1920s because of classic racialism's simplicity and the broad public recognition that "like produces like." / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

Thesis advisor: Kevin Kenny / The present study examines the Catholic social critique of U.S. immigration law from the introduction of literacy testing in 1917 to the removal of the national origins quota system in 1965. During this period, Catholic thinkers developed a distinctive theology of migration and engaged in a long campaign for reform of federal immigration policy. They did so at a time when the debate over that policy was characterised by a number of contentious issues: discrimination against prospective immigrants on the basis of race and national origins; the importation of migrant labor; the obligation to respond to an international refugee crisis; and the imperatives of Cold War national security. Catholic thinking on these issues involved a constant negotiation between a liberal policy position emphasizing the dignity of the individual and man's natural right to migrate, and a restrictive outlook which acknowledged sovereign states' right to control immigration and citizenship in the national interest. The Catholic philosophy was an important dimension of a national debate that oscillated between exclusionary and inclusionary approaches. In keeping with Catholic social doctrine, Catholic intellectuals and immigration experts insisted that the debate over policy and implementation should give priority to the integrity of the migrating family and the attainment and protection of a living wage for all. These priorities coalesced with a post-New Deal political and social emphasis on the heteronormative family as the core consuming and breadwinning unit in American life. Current historical understanding of the debate over American immigration policy elides the significance of religious thought. This study demonstrates that religious ideas and institutions were used to give the Post-World War II campaign for immigration reform and the Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965 the weight of moral authority, inclusive of their liberalizing and restrictive features. By giving the 1965 law their imprimatur, Catholic social thinkers helped efface the law's retention of restrictive and selective measures. Examination of the Catholic social critique of immigration policy reveals that socio-economic and moral ideals - as embodied by the idealized nuclear, male breadwinner-headed family - pervaded the debate over immigration reform in this era of restriction. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

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