Perceptions of Context and Immigrant Settlement Policy in the United States: Toward a Value-Critical Policy Analysis.

This paper begins a project of a "value-critical" policy analysis of the U.S. approach to immigrant settlement policy. After describing this approach to policy analysis, the paper argues that the U.S. approach to immigrant settlement policy - described herein as punitive, assimilative, and laissez-faire - is based on an inaccurate and distorted understanding of the social and historical context within which international migration to the United States takes place. That false understanding is one in which the United States is understood to be a passive recipient of immigrants, bearing no causal role in the generation of immigrants. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]