Not only can Jewish-American migration to Israel be reconciled within the scholarly literature, it stands out as an important case study of the role of the State in the incentivization of ethnic return to the homeland. As Tsuda suggests, most ethnic return migrants are dually propelled “because of their nostalgic affiliation to their country of ethnic origin and because of the ethnically preferential immigration policies of homeland governments, which
have enabled them to return migrate.”19 In other words, “The transnational ethnic connections that enabled ethnic return migration were forged from below by diasporic descendants . . . and from above by the policies of these homeland governments, which have reached out to their ethnic descendants abroad and encouraged them to return ‘home’.”20