Hiroshi Motomura is Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). A nationally recognized expert on immigration and citizenship law, he co-authored the widely used law school casebook, Immigration and Citizenship: Process and Policy.

• Introduction: Immigrants in America


• 1: Contract and Classical Immigration Law


• 2: Promises, Promises


• 3: All Persons Within the Territorial Jurisdiction


• 4: Alienage and the Ties That Bind


• 5: The Most Tender Connections


• 6: The Lost Story of Americans in Waiting


• 7: Transition at a Crossroads


• 8: The Meaning of Transition


• 9: Race, Belonging, and Transition


• 10: Taking Transition Seriously


• Conclusion: The Idea of Americans in Waiting


• Notes


• Index

Although America is unquestionably a nation of immigrants, its immigration policies have inspired more questions than consensus on who should be admitted and what the path to citizenship should be. In Americans in Waiting, Hiroshi Motomura looks to a forgotten part of our past to show how, for over 150 years, immigration was assumed to be a transition to citizenship, with immigrants essentially being treated as future citizens--Americans in waiting. Challenging current conceptions, the author deftly uncovers how this view, once so central to law and policy, has all but vanished. Motomura explains how America could create a more unified society by recovering this lost history and by giving immigrants more, but at the same time asking more of them. A timely, panoramic chronicle of immigration and citizenship in the United States, Americans in Waiting offers new ideas and a fresh perspective on current debates.