In 2006, unprecedented crowds took to the streets to protest proposed legislation in the House of Representatives that would have, among other things, made it a crime to “assist” undocumented immigrants to remain within U.S. borders. HR 4437, also known as the Sensenbrenner Bill, never became law, but it nonetheless sparked a fierce debate about immigration policy, which has divided the Republican Party in particular. Carolyn Wong's book provides a timely account of the making of immigration policy, commencing with the Hart Cellar Act of 1965 and proceeding through the last major piece of immigration in 1996.

Wong explores how economic interests and ethnic groups at times work together and at times are at odds concerning their positions on immigration legislation. She examines the precise mechanisms for these lobbying efforts in her case studies on three major pieces of immigration legislation. In addition, she conducts several regression analyses to ascertain the determinants of congressional votes on a wide array of immigration legislation, including particular amendments. The book for the most part adopts Gary Freeman's (1995) model of client politics, in which costs are distributed and benefits are concentrated. In this respect, employers and ethnic groups benefit from liberal immigration policies, while taxpayers bear the costs in many ways, ranging from the negative economic effects of nonunionized native workers to costs borne by the undocumented in social services. Wong states that Freeman's model is attractive because of its parsimony, although she argues that we must be cognizant of the multiple dimensions in this policy space.

The first substantive chapter outlines the goals of various interest groups during immigration legislative debates in the past 40 years. Much in the same way that Daniel Tichenor (2002) outlines the four different categories of groups regarding alien admissions and rights (i.e., classic exclusionists, free market expansionists, nationalist egalitarians, and cosmopolitans), Wong discusses in turn how employers, workers, civil rights advocates, religious groups, civil libertarians, and restrictionist environmentalists have shaped the immigration debate in Congress. She then shows how each of these groups has lobbied Congress on legal admissions, temporary workers, and enforcement policies. This is a particularly useful chapter because it frames the parameters of the immigration debate, though as Wong shows later, these interest groups do not hold static preferences. For example, organized labor has traditionally opposed liberal immigration policies because of perceived economic threats to native-born workers. In recent debates, however, organized labor has had more of a negligible impact on immigration policy, due largely to its overall waning influence in American politics.

Chapters 3 and 4 provide historical overviews of the Hart Cellar Act and Post-Bracero immigration policy. Passed in 1965, the Hart Cellar Act eliminated the national origins quota system from the 1920s, and it had the important effect of expanding legal immigration from Asia and stimulating the movement of undocumented immigrants across the U.S.-Mexican border. Although rich in detail and useful for those interested in learning more about the vicissitudes of immigration policy, these two chapters do not compose the more significant contribution of the book.

Chapter 5 turns to more recent legislation, including the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and the Immigration Act of 1990. This chapter provides an array of statistical analyses of House votes on a variety of immigration bills. Wong only chooses House votes, even though Senate votes are arguably just as important, despite the claim that Senate votes consist of little variation (p. 111). Indeed, many of the immigration compromises have occurred in the Senate (e.g., the Kennedy-McCain bill in 2007). Nevertheless, the logistic analyses follow the same format throughout and include a wide variety of independent variables and controls. It would have been useful to have seen a more sustained theoretical discussion of the independent variables. Moreover, as Wong acknowledges, one particular problem with the foreign-born and agricultural-employment variables is that they are aggregate measures, while the rest of the variables deal with district-level observations. This produces bias in the estimates, requiring caution in interpretation. Despite this, the various statistical analyses reveal mostly unsurprising results, though there are some exceptions. For example, as concentrations of Mexican-American constituents in a district increase, policy votes move in a liberal direction. This finding is not consistent with previous research, and more discussion would have been desirable (p. 131).

In Chapter 6, Wong describes the determinants of the votes of House members on the Immigration Act of 1996. The statistical model is adapted to address the issue of a multidimensional policy space, due to this bill's amendments relating to both legal and illegal immigration. As E. E. Schattschneider (1960) and later William Riker (1986) attest, as the scope of conflict expands, coalitions tend to realign and more groups are thrust into the debate, thus changing the nature of any given conflict. As in 1990, Wong finds that unions are no longer a potent restrictionist force in the making of immigration policy. She also finds that the conservative–liberal dimension is inadequate when trying to explain some key votes, such as enforcement and privacy. Some conservatives, such as Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), oppose the expansion of alien admissions and rights, while others, such as President George W. Bush, support a more comprehensive immigration reform plan, meaning the implementation of a “guest worker” program, along with a path to citizenship.

Overall, this book is an important contribution, which should be read by scholars interested in interest groups, legislative politics, and immigration policy. It is a nice complement to two recent books on immigration: Tichenor's Dividing Lines (2003) and S. Karthick Ramakrishnan's Democracy in Immigrant America (2005). Tichenor employs a historical institutionalist perspective, Ramakrishnan a political behavior perspective, and Wong an institutionalist perspective. The first half of Wong's book would be quite accessible to undergraduates in a class on immigration policy. Given the recent debates in Congress and on the airwaves about this important topic, Lobbying for Inclusion contextualizes the many competing voices in the immigration debate, providing policymakers and political scientists alike with the tools they need to be informed about the nuances of immigration policy.