In Party and Nation: Immigration and Regime Politics in American History, authors Scot J. Zentner and Michael C. LeMay provide a documentary historical overview of the relationship between American immigration patterns and the two-party political system from the founding in the eighteenth century to the present day. At a time when national immigration conversations are dominated almost exclusively by Donald Trump’s hyperbolic rhetoric (“when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best” or calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”), one can easily be forgiven for assuming that the strong party polarization on immigration is a relatively recent phenomenon. Zentner and LeMay, in contrast, show that this sort of thing is nothing new—American political coalitions and political parties have always taken distinctive views (to one degree or another) on the issue of immigration.

Taking a largely historical approach, Zentner and LeMay devote roughly half the book to a descriptive overview of historical trends in immigration to the United States since the colonial era. The other half is an overview of the development of the American two-party system, organized into seven chapters representing differe