a few years back, I wrote a book, Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States. It explored a question of great public significance: the treatment of immigrants in the United States in the past, present, and future. That book had two main goals. One was to suggest a three-part framework for thinking about the treatment of immigrants throughout the history of US immigration and citizenship law. I explained how some laws and policies might reflect a view of immigration as contract or, in other words, the idea that newcomers enter into a sort of agreement when they come to America. They can be held to the conditions of admission, and both sides should have their expectations protected. Other laws and policies can be thought of as a matter of immigration as affiliation, or the idea that a newcomer develops ties or a stake in the United States that should be protected by law. The third view of immigration is immigration as a transition to citizenship or, in other words, the idea that immigrants should be treated with the expectation that they would become citizens—as Americans in waiting. The second major goal of Americans in Waiting was to show how the idea of immigration as transition faded over much of the twentieth century. No longer are immigrants treated with the same expectation of future citizenship that prevailed in the nineteenth century, at least for white European immigrants. Immigration to the United States became more open in the twentieth century, but America’s welcome of immigrants became more hesitant, and the idea of immigration as transition faded. Americans in Waiting explained why it is important to recover this fundamental aspect of the treatment of immigrants in US history.