Efficacy of Facts-Based Advocacy: Immigration Politics in the Early 20th Century

Sunmin Kim, Dartmouth College

This paper examines under what conditions facts become politically powerful by drawing on the case of the immigration debate in the early twentieth century United States. Whereas anti-immigration activists relied on fear and demagoguery to mobilize their supporters, pro-immigrant intellectuals and activists presented empirical facts about immigrants to dispel those myths. While on the surface this process looked like a straightforward enlightenment – i.e., the public changed their opinion in light of new information – the facts-based advocacy was in fact much more: it was an effort to build a discursive network of people who were willing to debate such facts, from which a new framework of addressing the immigration problem would emerge. The participants of the network did not share a common political stance on immigration; their social backgrounds were diverse; yet they shared commitment to engage in the discussion through those pre-define rules, represented in the notion of facts. By bringing in epistemological axis to the political debate on immigration, pro-immigrants advocates effectively engineered a new collation that would change the terms of the debate. In the twenty-first century, pro-immigrant advocacy still relies on facts to counter stereotypes, but its efficacy is severely limited. Drawing on my case study, I discuss the reason why and ways to move forward.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 115. Scholarly Orthopraxy/Orthodoxy: Re/Constructing Norms and Canons