Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the I.N.S.

Sociologist Kitty Calavita, long a leader in the law and society movement, dug deep into the INS and other entrenched bureaucracies to uncover the real reasons why a program of temporary farm workers to Southwestern states in the 1940s-1960s, as opposed to complete immigration, failed among scandals and abuse. The answer says a lot about America's ambivalence toward immigration and labor, but also about how government really works, from the inside. Previous notions of political “capture” an...