Situated during an era of unprecedented restriction, Cold War–era immigration to the United States has often been overlooked by historians. Most studies have focused on the mass migrations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Or they have concentrated on the more recent mass migrations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries and the ongoing debates over immigration. Forgotten has been both the movement of peoples to the United States and the laws and politics that supported that movement during the Cold War. Madeline Hsu's book The Good Immigrants, is one of a number of recent studies that convincingly demonstrate just how important this neglected era was, both in terms of immigration and the ways it set the stage for the transformative changes in immigration and immigration policies that we have been experiencing in recent years.
Hsu focuses on the rehabilitation of Chinese immigrants who had long...