David Scott FitzGerald and David Cook-Martín. Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas.

This is an interesting and useful volume. Largely based on secondary sources (though with some original research), the book analyzes the immigration policies and issues not just of the United States but also of the other American nations. It is divided into chapters dealing with the history of racial restrictions and preferences and their dismantling. Whereas chapter 2 examines international events affecting racial restrictions and preferences in immigration policy, the following chapters look at the history of race and immigration in the United States, Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina individually (with an appendix briefly looking at 16 more countries).

The authors' main point concerns the coexistence of democracy and racism; the more democratic a country, they note, the more racist its immigration controls. “Simply put, democratic input—whether in its liberal or populist variations—historically has been linked to racist immigration policy in...