![European Journal of American Studies, 4-3 | 2009, “Special Issue: Immigration” [Online], Online Since 01 December 2009, Connection on 08 July 2021](http://data.docslib.org/img/405e710e5d668b0bc5da3dadb732f942-1.webp)
European journal of American studies
4-3 | 2009 Special Issue: Immigration
Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/7654 DOI: 10.4000/ejas.7654 ISSN: 1991-9336
Publisher European Association for American Studies
Electronic reference European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009, “Special Issue: Immigration” [Online], Online since 01 December 2009, connection on 08 July 2021. URL: https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/7654; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.7654
This text was automatically generated on 8 July 2021.
Creative Commons License 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Politics of Immigration: Introduction to a Special Issue on US Immigration Jonathon W. Moses
The Minutemen and Anti-immigration Attitudes in California Frédérick Douzet
“A Day Without Immigrants” Benita Heiskanen
Immigrants in the United States: “Illegal Aliens” On Their Way To Becoming Emergent “Possible Subjects” Catherine Lejeune
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 2
The Politics of Immigration: Introduction to a Special Issue on US Immigration
Jonathon W. Moses
1. Introduction
1 While the Obama administration is burdened with many pressing problems, the plight of undocumented immigrants ranks high among them. Luckily, some of the most xenophobic voices on the national scene have been temporarily stunned by Obama’s victory. In this new political context, where Hope has vanquished Fear, we might hope that America can return to the task of constructing a reasonable and humane response to the needs of its Illegal People.2
2 The size of America’s population of undocumented immigrants is impossible to gauge. Given their irregular status, we should not be surprised that they avoid being counted. As a rough estimate, however, Passel and Cohn suggest that there are less than 12 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States. If correct, this number is fewer than those who enjoy permanent legal status. These people keep the country running: they pick the crops, build the houses, wash the bathrooms, and care for the sick and elderly. In short, they perform the tasks that Americans are unwilling to do (at least not at the going rate). In return, they are treated mostly as second-class citizens.3
3 While undocumented workers have always suffered wide-ranging exploitation— working dirty jobs at miserable pay, subjected to raids and arrests, deterred from organizing—their plight was exacerbated by the post-9/11 political climate in the United States. In a context characterized largely by fear, the war on terror quickly and easily morphed into a war on the foreigner. After the 2008 election, and the signals it sends, a new Congress will have to re-think its approach to border control.
4 While undocumented workers have always been treated poorly, they were also welcomed (albeit implicitly) in a period characterized by economic expansion in the United States. As a commentator quoted in Benita Heiskanen’s contribution tells us, undocumented workers are often met by mixed signals: “[W]e have two signs posted at
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 3
our borders. ‘Help Wanted’ and ‘Keep Out.’” The American economy was booming, and the domestic labor supply was insufficient to meet the growing demand. Immigrant labor filled the void.
5 Like the political tide that comes with elections, this economic context is changing quickly. In the wake of the 2008 election, the US Government announced that over 500,000 jobs had been lost in the month of November alone—surging the unemployment rate to 6.7% (or 10.3 million jobless), a 14-year high. Since the start of the current recession (December 2007), over 2.7 million people have become unemployed—most of these jobs were lost in the three months surrounding the election! As the country experiences a severe recession, the plight of (and demand for) undocumented immigrants becomes all the more uncertain.4
6 It is this radically new economic and political context that sets the stage for the new Congress, and its work on immigration reform. At the center of its deliberations will be three related issues: the costs of immigration; border control and the war on terror; and the growing influence of Latinos. This special issue takes aim at these three important subjects. 2. The Economics of Undocumented Immigration 7 The first, and most contentious, of the background issues that will influence America’s future immigration policy is the anticipated costs of undocumented immigrants. Political debate in the United States (not to mention most of the developed world) is remarkably myopic when it comes to immigration. Indeed, I was motivated myself to write a book in response to the significant gap that separates public opinion and academic research on the subject of international migration.5
8 In most political contexts it is simply assumed that undocumented immigration constitutes a drain on national resources. But this assumption flies in the face of experience, and actually contradicts much scholarship on the subject. Unless costs and benefits are calculated in a ridiculously narrow (and economistic) fashion, communities mostly benefit from immigration—both documented and undocumented.
9 Consider the recent writings of three very different commentators. A one-time journalist for The Economist magazine, Phillipe Legrain, argues in his recent (2006) book, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them, that the free movement of people is just as beneficial as the free movement of goods and capital. How odd, then, that a country which has (for so long) embraced the free flow of international trade and capital, and whose own remarkable economy was built with the sweat and foresight of immigrant labor, should today spend so much money and energy keeping immigrant labor out!6
10 Similarly, the work of a World Bank economist, Lant Pritchett’s Let Their People Come, considers how the developed world needs to devise better mechanisms for supporting and integrating the assimilation of immigrants from the developing world. For Pritchett: “The rich countries of the world should actively look for ways to increase the mobility of unskilled labor across their national boundaries. They should do this primarily because it is the right thing to do, because of the enormous potential benefits to people who are allowed to move.”7
11 Finally, Jason Riley, a member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, wrote Let Them In to show how some of the most common arguments against immigration are simply, and obviously, wrong. For Riley, an open-border policy is not only consistent with American traditions and mores, but it is also in America’s best economic interest.8
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 4
12 Each of these three, very different, authors makes the same point, but in different ways: it is in America’s economic interest to open its border to immigrants from the developing world. In choosing these three examples, I do not mean to suggest that all economists believe that the benefits of greater immigration outweigh the costs. Economists, after all, are known for their inability to agree about anything. But even the most skeptical economists realize that the economic costs of immigration—if they do, in fact, exist—are remarkably small and vary by level of aggregation.9 The costs associated with undocumented immigrants is probably even smaller, as these workers pay local and payroll taxes, but shy away from using many of the public services that these taxes support (indeed, their demographic profile makes them less likely to rely on public support, as they tend to be young male workers, without children and family). Even if we accept a small economic cost to immigration, there is no reason to dwell on these as the political, moral and social gains from immigration are almost overwhelming positive.
13 Still, this sort of myopic argument about the economic costs of undocumented workers continues to dominate political discussion, as evidenced in different ways in each of the three contributions that follow. 3. Border Control and the War on Terror 14 Terrorism is one obvious touchstone for any future debate about US immigration reform. In an era of Homeland Security, there is a common perception that foreign terrorists exploited America’s porous borders to attack the country in 2001. In light of this perception, the country circled its bandwagons: beefing up the monitoring of its international borders and hermetically sealing off the rest of the world. Only an imminent threat to the security of the country could justify the phenomenal cost of such a (pointless) feat.10
15 But this fear-based perception tends to ignore the fact that most of the September 11 terrorists entered onto the United States via legal channels. Indeed, existing border controls have not been effective at stopping other attempts at terrorist infiltration into the US (or other countries, for that matter). Most suspected terrorist arrests are made by local police authorities, not border guards.11
16 Of course, none of this has stopped politicians from linking Homeland Security and border control under the Bush administration. This connection is especially clear in Catherine Lejeune’s contribution, which examines how a new National Security State, borne of 11 September, has been used to intimidate immigrant workers. Lejeune’s examination is done by way of a detailed survey of recent immigration legislation in the US, and the sundry political motivations that lie behind them. The picture that Lejeune paints is a disturbing one, where the Bush administration’s War on Terror has slowly spread to a subsequent War on Immigrants.
17 It is in light of this sort of detailed, and up-to-date, survey of recent immigration legislation that we can clearly see how rapidly the political ground was changing prior to the recent presidential election. Lejeune provides us with a fascinating glimpse of the complicated ways that US immigration policy is infused with party politics. There are few other political issues that create stranger political bedfellows in the United States—as is evidenced by the co-authorship of the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act (S. 1033), a bill proposed in May 2005 by Senators Ted Kennedy and John McCain. Indeed, there are few other issues that are better-suited to splitting today’s
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 5
Republican Party (as witnessed early-on in the race for the Republican Party nomination). Immigration policy is the venue for Super Bowl Politics.
18 It is because of the high-stakes nature of immigration policy that America finds it so difficult to secure the sort of considered and thoughtful legislation it deserves. It is also the reason that immigration policy lends itself so readily to political grandstanding. As Lejeune’s contribution hints (and as the contribution by Frederick Douzet examines in more detail), the result of this political stalemate has been a rise in local responses that borders on the vigilante. Border state residents have been encouraged to organize in armed groups that informally patrol the borders, wrapping themselves in patriotic sentiment while promising to compensate for what they see is an inadequate federal response at the borders.
19 Finally, Lejeune’s contribution points to a very interesting development, which I hope might be the subject of further study: the distributional range of cities that support immigrant sanctuaries. In light of the above-mentioned (and often misleading) assumptions about the costs of immigration to local political authorities, it is rather remarkable to find several of America’s largest cities willing to provide sanctuary to undocumented workers.12
20 This observation reveals two puzzles worthy of further study. First, what is the motivation driving so many cities to protect these undocumented workers if they represent such a phenomenal drain on their resources? More importantly, why do some local authorities embrace and protect these undocumented workers, while others spend scarce local resources to hunt them down and throw them out? This second question lends itself to a promising comparative research project for some enterprising scholar. 4. The Growing Influence of Latinos 21 Another issue that will certainly be considered when the US Congress returns to deliberate on a new immigration policy is the growing influence of America’s Latino population. While Hispanics already make up the largest minority group in the US population, they continue to grow rapidly. Indeed, since the year 2000 Hispanics have accounted for more than half of the United States’ overall population growth.13
22 With these numbers comes substantial influence—especially when they are politically engaged. The booming Hispanic population in political swing states delivered significant results in the recent presidential election. Since 2004, the number of Latino voters has doubled: there are now approximately 18 million Latinos eligible to vote in the United States. From the evidence provided by early exit polling, it is clear that Latinos overwhelmingly (just under 70%) supported Obama in the campaign.14 This level of support is consistent with an earlier (summer 2008) nation-wide survey conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center.15 Clearly, future Republican strategists will have to weigh heavily the electoral costs of the Party’s more xenophobic outbursts.
23 This growing Latino influence challenges the status quo on several fronts. One way to think about this challenge is made evident in Samuel Huntington’s (2004) influential book, Who are We?16 The reader may recall that Huntington is largely to blame for a common vision that scars our world: a view of civilizations clashing with one another (Huntington 1996). In Who are We? Huntington develops this view with a remarkably static picture of civilization and/or nation—a picture of something sterile, rigid, standardized, and tightly linked to specific territorial (national) spaces. Worse, this picture depicts national culture in stereotyped images of an idealized past. For
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 6
Huntington, American culture was set in the 17th century, and steeped in romantic images of America’s white Anglo-Protestant settlers.
24 Cultural stereotypes of this type fail to realize the degree to which political communities are themselves imagined and constructed.17 Indeed, one of the great advances of modern cultural theory, to quote Edward Said (1995: 348-9), “is the realization, almost universally acknowledged, that cultures are hybrid and heterogeneous, and…that cultures and civilizations are so interrelated and interdependent as to beggar any unitary or simply delineated description of their individuality.”18 In contrast to the vision of static culture (or identity) as found in Huntington, modern cultural theory recognizes that culture is a complicated, reflexive process that include historical, social, intellectual and political processes, as well as the imagined constructions of oppositions, like them and us.
25 This matters because much of the current debate about undocumented immigration in the United States concerns this underlying tension about how to interpret (and react to) the country’s changing identity. For those who draw on a pliable and reflexive notion of culture, there is no threat from a growing Latino presence in the US. Rather, the introduction of Latino voices offers new impetus and direction to the nation’s identity, which is understood as a collage, or imaginative blend, of the near (US) and the far (Latin America).
26 Nowhere has this influence been more evident than at the “Day without Immigrants” march. It is this historic event that Benita Heiskanen uses to center her contribution to this special issue. On 1 May 2006 over a million immigrant supporters took to the streets to protest the sweeping provisions of the Sensebrenner Bill. Outraged by increasingly frequent attempts to paint immigrants as criminals and/or terrorists, these peaceful protestors rocked the political establishment with both their size and their message.
27 Heiskanen begins her investigation with a fascinating discussion of the roots to the American national identity. Because US immigration law has always been tied to racial categories, race has always been—in effect—a policy matter. In Heiskanen’s discussion we learn of the role that race has played as a central premise for defining US citizenship, national identity and nationhood. This role remained important in the debates that followed the Day without Immigrants; debates that were largely about the nature of identity in a globalized world. In the one corner we find those, like Huntington, who see national identity as fixed in an idealized and ethnically homogenized past. For people in this corner, the growing Latino presence is a weed that needs to be plucked. In the other corner are those who understand American national identity to be fluid and constantly incorporating (and adopting) foreign influences.
28 In Heiskanen’s portrayal of these political debates we see commentators on the left and the right struggle with how to interpret this important new and Latino voice in American politics, in the wake of the May Day protests. It is in these sundry reactions, and the political deals that will result from them, where I expect to find the seeds of any future American immigration policy. It is for this reason that Heiskanen’s article constitutes a very important and insightful contribution.
29 This cultural and political tension is also very evident in the contribution by Frederick Douzet, which examines the rise of the Minutemen and recent anti-immigration attitudes in California. Drawing on her extensive field work along the Mexican-US
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 7
border in California, Douzet is able to show how contemporary attitudes about undocumented immigrants are fueled by different concerns than those that drove earlier anti-immigrant sentiment in California.
30 This field work reveals a number of related splinter groups, borne of the Minutemen, who have become so frustrated by the government’s apparent failure in responding to undocumented immigration, that they have taken to the border to stop what they see as a foreign invasion. While explicitly denying any racial motivation, they see the US engaged in a cultural war—it is being invaded by those who don’t respect its law, its language, or its (Anglo-Protestant) culture. The aims of this defensive and peaceful action are manifold: to man and protect the borders; to lobby the federal government and the larger political debate; to protest the employment of undocumented day labors; to litter the border with American flags and warning signs…
31 What is interesting about the broader context of these protests, compared to the anti- immigrant sentiment revealed in the struggle over Proposition 187, is the fact that the local economy was in much better shape during the rise of the Minutemen. From Douzet’s depiction, one sees how their struggle is only partly about the economic effects of this immigration. Sure, there are obvious concerns about the effects of immigration on the quality of local public services. But in contrast to earlier anti- immigration rounds, these protests matured in a relatively stable economy. From this favorable economic climate rose a grass-roots revolt that aimed to influence a national dialogue over the heart and soul of the country, in the face of a perceived threat.
32 The rise of the Minutemen, and like-minded organizations, illustrate the complicated mixture of motivations that animate the immigration issue in US political life. In Douzet’s depiction we see the clear influence of all three of the motivating factors described in this brief introduction: concerns about the economic effects of the immigrants, concerns about the national security context in the post-9/11 world, and concerns about how these workers challenge America’s cultural identity by living in ethnic enclaves, and refusing to integrate into the larger (white and English-speaking) melting pot that was once depicted on American TVs and in American history books. 5. Conclusion 33 What follows are three contributions that examine the contentious nature of contemporary immigration policy in the United States. As we distance ourselves from the horrific events of September 2001, and once the Obama administration is able to clear its crowded desk of pressing problems, the United States will need to re-think its attitude about undocumented workers. There is much at stake, and many paths from which to choose. These three contributions, together, provide readers with the sort of information and background that will be necessary to understand the nature of the political struggle ahead.
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 8
NOTES
1. Formally H.R. 4437, this bill provoked massive protests across the United States, as described below in several of the contributions. 2. David Bacon, Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Boston: Beacon, 2008). 3. Jeffrey S. Passell and D’Vera Cohn, “Trends in Unauthorized Immigration: Undocumented Inflow Now Trails Legal Inflow.” Pew Hispanic Center Report. 2 October2008. Online at: http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/94.pdf. Accessed 2 December, 2008. 4. US Department of Labor (2008) “Employment Situation Summary.” Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Economic News Release. 5 December. Online at: http:// www.lbs.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm. Accessed 5 December 2008. 5. Jonathon W. Moses, International Migration: Globalization’s Last Frontier (London: Zed, 2006). 6. Phillipe Legrain, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them (London: Little Brown, 2006). 7. Lant Pritchett, Let Their People Come (Washington DC: Center for Global Development, 2006), 2. 8. Jason L. Riley, Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders (New York: Gotham Books, 2008). 9. See Jonathon W. Moses, International Migration: Globalization’s Last Frontier (London: Zed, 2006), 111-122) for a review of this literature. 10. See Jonathon W. Moses, International Migration: Globalization’s Last Frontier (London: Zed, 2006) 118-121) for an estimation of these costs. 11. The one exception that seems to prove the rule is the Port Angeles (Washington) arrest and later conviction of an Algerian, Ahmed Ressam, in December of 1999, for trying to smuggle bomb-making materials across the Canadian/US border in an apparent attempt to disrupt millennium celebrations on the west coast of the US. 12. Several major US cities have adopted “sanctuary” ordinances that ban city employees (and police officers) from asking people about their immigration status. These include, but are not limited to, Washington DC, New York, Los Angles, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Detroit, Seattle, Minneapolis, Miami, and Denver. 13. Fry, Richard (2008) “Latino Settlement in the New Century.” Pew Hispanic Center Paper. 23 October. Online at http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/ 96.pdf. Accessed 1 December 2008. 14. Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas, “The Power of the Latina Vote.” Williamson Daily News 30 November 2008. Online at http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/ Archives?p_action=print&p_docid=124D66E7C7BE50A8. Accessed 2 December 2008. 15. Mark Hugo Lopez and Susan Minushkin, “Latinos Overwhelmingly Support Obama and Democrats in 2008.” 24 July 2008. Pew Research Center Publications. Online at http://pewresearch.org/pubs/908/obama-latino-voters. Accessed 2 December 2008.
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 9
16. This is a book-length extension of Huntington’s article, which Douzet refers to in her contribution: Who are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004) and The Clash of Civilizations (New York: Touchstone, 1996). 17. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 18. Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. With a new afterword (1978; London: Penguin, 1995).
ABSTRACTS
In reading this special issue we gain a remarkably insightful glimpse of the important role that immigration policy has played, and will continue to play, in several important aspects of contemporary American life. After eight years of the Bush Administration, a new immigration policy is poised to rise again from the ashes of the infamous Sensenbrenner Bill.1 A fresh political and economic context ensures this.
AUTHOR
JONATHON W. MOSES Jonathon W. Moses, Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 10
The Minutemen and Anti- immigration Attitudes in California
Frédérick Douzet
1. Introduction
1 On April 1st 2005, Jim Gildchrist launched the Minutemen Project movement1, which was soon to ramify into dozens of small organizations and inspire thousands of volunteers who were ready to invest their time patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border in a largely vain attempt to stop illegal immigration to the United States.2 This motley gung-ho crowd dressed in camouflage and carrying guns attracted worldwide attention and sarcastic comments from the media and President Bush himself, who publicly called them “vigilantes”.3 Yet in the midst of heated debates over illegal immigration and comprehensive immigration reform, the minutemen offer an interesting window into anti-immigration sentiment in California. The variety of their motivations and origins echoes to the complexity and conflicting nature of views on immigration. Shortly after Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante had prematurely declared “hate politics” over in the Golden State in 1999, anti-immigration sentiment has been on the rise again. It has come back as a wedge issue in California politics in the mid-2000s. Given the circumstances, which are in many ways different from the 1990s, the question we must ask here is “why?”
2 In 1994, Governor Pete Wilson was up for reelection in a state struggling to recover from an economic recession worsened by drastic cuts in defense contracts. In the meantime, the state was facing a tremendous population growth mostly driven by massive immigration from Latin America and Asia. In a context of growing concern about immigrants being a drain on the state and local government budget, Wilson endorsed immigration as the primary issue of his platform to build political capital and sponsored an anti-immigration initiative to help his reelection, Proposition 187. Anti- immigration attitudes grew in California during the 1990s and culminated with the passage of Prop. 187 by a large majority of Californians, which included a substantial a substantial share of African-Americans and second generation immigrants.4 Had it not been invalidated by a Federal Court, the law would have denied undocumented immigrants social services, health care and education. Although the debate about
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 11
immigration had quieted down for a few years, the questions that arose in the mid-1990s are the same that are asked ten years later. Why would a state that had seemed so unconcerned about immigration and demographic changes in the previous decades become so frantic about illegal immigrants?
3 Based on the causes of the anti-immigration debate of the 1990s, this paper offers to analyze the causes of the rise of anti-immigrant attitudes in California in the mid-2000s through the analysis of the minutemen's perceptions. Drawing from my extensive field work at the California-Mexico border, I argue that it is a somewhat different set of circumstances that has led to the rise of anti-immigration attitudes in California in the mid-2000s. By using immigration as a wedge issue in the early 1990s, Pete Wilson ensured his reelection but did not succeed in his attempt to make it a national issue likely to win him the presidential nomination. Yet this government initiative clearly stirred up resentment for political gain at the popular level.
4 In a reverse “bottom-up” dynamic, from 2004 to 2006, a grassroots movement organized to put pressure on the federal government to strengthen the border. When the issue of immigration finally hit the national stage at the end of 2005, it trickled down again to California, stirring dormant passions about the latinization of the state.
5 This paper is based on interviews at the border with elected officials, border patrol officers and community leaders, as well as five days of immersion with minutemen organizations in the summer of 2006. I attended a camp organized by the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps in Campo, California5. I went along border watch operations during daytime and nighttime, attended briefing meetings and went along a flag operation in Jacumba, California. I also met with the Campo minutemen and several volunteers from various groups patrolling the border east of San Diego area. I conducted geographic observation and semi-directive interviews.
6 This analysis uses the geopolitical approach, meaning the study of power rivalries on territories. More than the reality of the immigration challenge to the U.S., I focus on the perceptions of immigrants and immigration among the minutemen in order to understand how and why the debate over immigration has regained such vitality in the mid-2000s in California. 2. Anti-Immigration in the 1990s 7 Karin Mac Donald and Bruce E. Cain analyzed the vote by county for Proposition 187 and compared it to the vote for Proposition 63, a measure that declared English the official language of California in 1986, which was overwhelmingly approved by 73 percent of the voters. They found that Prop.187 divided voters along party, racial, ethnic, educational and income lines: “Counties with larger shares of Republicans, whites, noncollege educated, foreign born, and the less affluent tended to support Prop. 187, and those with larger shares of Democrats, Asians and Pacific Islanders, Latinos, the college educated and the affluent were less inclined to support Prop.187.”6
8 The drastic demographic changes in Southern California and the Bay Area over the past two decades had raised concerns about the future of American identity among some Americans. The vast majority of immigrants moving into California since the 1970s were non-white and non-English speaking, coming in almost equal share from Latin America and Asia. In addition, soon after the 1986 general amnesty, Mexican undocumented immigrants started flowing in greater numbers into the state. Demographic projections were equally worrying for some, predicting there would be no racial majority in the state at the beginning of the twenty-first century, which indeed
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 12
turned out to be the case. Although racial nativism might have motivated part of the voters, it has to be counterbalanced with other more pragmatic considerations considering the timing of the vote.
9 At the end of the 1980s, California’s economic situation had seriously deteriorated. In addition to the downturn of the American economy, the drastic cuts in defense contracts and base closures drove unemployment up, heightened job insecurity, and eroded incomes. This context played a role in shifting public attitudes against undocumented immigrants who were perceived as competing for jobs and driving wages down. In that sense, the vote for Prop 187 was probably less motivated by a racial nativism, which aims at “keeping the country’s racial stock pure,” but rather by political nativism, with “pragmatic policy considerations such as keeping citizen unemployment at a manageable level, preserving median income levels, maintaining a certain quality of life, trying to hold down the costs of public services and the like.”7
10 The divide between white and minority voters has later become clearer on Prop. 209 (1996), which dismantled affirmative action programs and Prop. 227 (1998) which put an end to bilingual education. This could also be seen as a result of party strategy to use immigration and race as a wedge issue. It was clearly part of Governor’s Pete Wilson’s successful strategy for reelection in 1994 and his unsuccessful attempt to win the Republican nomination for the 1996 presidential election.
11 At the turn of the century, anti-immigration attitudes had largely quieted down. In 1999, Governor Gray Davis dropped the state’s appeal of the federal court decision that overturned Proposition 187. Californians, encouraged by a booming economy, seemed to have overall adjusted to the new diversity. Legislature term limits and redistricting had helped the election of many Latino and Asian representatives across the state. In addition to providing the main labor source for the agriculture industry, Latino immigrants became pivotal to the economy, regardless of the fiscal costs they might have engendered. They worked in most of the people's garden, in house construction and in restaurant kitchens. In 2005, the city of Los Angeles elected its first Latino mayor since 1872, thanks to the support of a wide coalition of white progressives and African- American voters.8
12 Meanwhile, the political instrumentalization of immigration backfired on the California Republicans. Prop.187 helped Wilson win in the short run but encouraged more Latino immigrants to apply for naturalization and to register to vote. The Latino electorate substantially increased and helped change the political dynamic of the state. In the 1990s, more than one million Latinos registered to vote for the first time in California. Yet the surge in Latino voters cannot explain alone the shift from a red Republican state to a blue Democratic state. Republican representatives in California have become more conservative, on immigration and social and cultural issues such as abortion and same sex marriage. This altered the middle-of-the-road image of their party, making it very difficult for them to win statewide elections.9
13 When the anti-immigration issue erupted again in 2005, it came as a surprise to many observers in the state. The rise of the minutemen at the California border, who revived the issue, was widely perceived as an anachronism. The economy was then doing much better than in the early 1990s and despite the downturn of the dotcom industry, it had stabilized. People seemed to have adjusted to diversity and most of the laws providing preferential treatment to minorities had been dismantled. In the meantime, California had elected an immigrant governor and had become a state with no racial majority.
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 13
14 In short, the 1994 anti-immigration debate was a Californian issue, started by a governor through a government initiative in the context of an economic recession. The primary goal was for the governor to win reelection and possibly the presidential nomination. The 2004-2006 immigration debate, however, was started by a grassroots movement, in the context of a stabilized and favorable economy, in order to influence Congress on a debate that soon became national. In that context, it is important to understand the perceptions of the minutemen in order to explain the resurgence of anti-immigration attitudes in the mid-2000s in California. 3. Who Are the Minutemen ? 15 The Minutemen Project is one of the citizen-border patrol groups started out of frustration with the United States immigration policy. It originated mostly from Arizona and rapidly became the most visible group drawing a great number of volunteers through media coverage and internet strategy. Founding father Jim Gildchrist’s goal has been to attract attention to the situation at the border and lobby the Washington administration for immigration policy reform. He has therefore concentrated most on highly visible demonstrations as opposed to ground operations, which were launched by other minutemen groups. Chris Simcox, who had teamed up with Gildchrist to found the Minutemen Project, left the organization and founded the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC), a group more focused on border action. Other members, more interested in leading operations than following orders, have left both organizations to create their own groups. According to the comments by several members of the California branch, there have been competing egos in the organization. When I first met them, MCDC leader Carl Braun informed the group that Tim Donnelly had left for “ personal reasons,” which turned out to be the creation of his own civilian border patrol group, the Minuteman Party. The minutemen groups are very diverse. Some, such as the Campo minutemen, are very local, rather small with a loose informal structure, while others such as the MCDC, are highly structured with regular activities and up-to-date websites,.
16 The MCDC organizes regular gatherings at the border and offers training to new volunteers. I spent a few days of full immersion in their group, attending briefings and night surveillance. The MCDC is one of the largest, most visible and structured minutemen group. While the Minutemen Project mostly focusses on demonstrations and lobby activities, the MCDC takes action at the border and encourages members to directly participate in stopping immigration. It therefore seemed to me a good way to meet highly motivated people willing to contribute their time to stop immigration in order to study their motives. I also met with border patrol officers and other minutemen organizations. I had the opportunity to discuss issues at length with volunteers and interview most of them separately at the California Border in July 2006.
17 The minutemen are often portrayed in the media as a bunch of crazy people, if not racist, with too much time on their hands. Judging from the groups I have encountered, they could easily fit some of these stereotypes. Most of them carry and love guns, venerate the flag, dress in military camouflage clothes, drive huge pick-up trucks, support the troops in Iraq and are overtly against illegal immigration. Many of them have some background in the military, are former marines or wanna-be soldiers who have missed an opportunity to join the army. All of them declared admiring the military and feeling proud to serve their country.
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 14
18 Although most of them deny being racist, many showed clear nativism and ethnic jokes kept being made about undocumented Mexicans. For most of the campers, the country is facing an invasion and they are waging a cultural war against people who do not respect the law, refuse to assimilate and learn the language, and who send their money back home. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the minutemen are not a “hate group” but fall into the new category of “extremist nativist” groups.10 Yet there is growing concern that their type of rhetoric and action might attract white supremacists and other dangerous individuals. The long history of violence and racial hatred that paved the formation of the U.S.-Mexico border makes many observers suspicious about the minutemen’s activities and their potential for racial hatred. Although minutemen leaders claim to carefully screen their new applicants, there have been a number of neo-Nazis and white supremacists who have joined minutemen organizations and who carry guns without being checked for permits.
19 Yet the MCDC camp I attended in mid-July 2006 in Campo revealed a much more diverse crowd than I was expecting. The members had a wide range of motives. They repeatedly denied being racist. Interestingly, there were some foreigners, mixed couples and minorities among them. Joseph Fong, a minuteman from Singapore, explained he had waited years before he could get his visa to the United States. “Why should people who break the law jump in front of the line?” The group leader, Carl Braun, has even been a diversity recruiter for women and minorities senior for level jobs for over 25 years. He has therefore spent most of his life helping minorities go through the glass ceiling and raise to senior level positions.
20 All the minutemen I met had in common a frustration with the Bush administration and its lack of action towards undocumented immigration. They all talked about immigration in terms of an invasion that was ignored by the government. They therefore share a sense of standing-up for their country, in the typically voluntarist American way, making up for the weakness of their government. “Do you know what we call these? Bush booties!” laughed Dan Russel, a Campo minuteman, proudly waving pieces of blankets used by Mexicans to cover their traces in the sand. “Everything that’s bad we call ‘Bush’,” he joked, admitting to always voting Republican no matter how much he disagrees with the administration on immigration.
21 Despite the omnipresence of guns, the activities displayed most of these groups do appear rather harmless on the ground. The minutemen claim to be a peaceful organization. They lobby the Washington administration, watch the border, or pass out flyers at day-laborer pick-up sites. These flyers carry messages threatening to denounce employers who hire undocumented immigrants. Many minutemen also volunteer for minor repairs on the fence or display American flags at the border and signs with straightforward messages such as: “Stay home, this is not your country!” or “Illegals go home!”
22 On July 15 at 6:00 A.M., the group I was following left for the neighboring city of Jacumba, a large immigrant community, to display American flags with little messages on a 3 feet high fence along the border. When I questioned the function of the flags, an organizer answered, “It won’t stop them but it will screw their day and that’s what we’re here for!”
23 The border patrol’s reactions to their presence varies from amused tolerance to moderate gratitude. Some officers, like Bobby Crowl who has spent 25 years as a Border Patrol in Campo, California, before retiring, made clear they could use all the help they
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 15
were getting. Generous donors had even equipped them with a $16,000 thermal scope, allowing them to watch human activity in the dark. Border enforcement is a power of the federal government which means that aside from calling the border patrol when they see an illegal crossing, the minutemen can not do anything. And in fact, it is about all they do, being highly aware that going further might backfire on them.
24 On the first day of the gathering, Carl Braun provided training and guidelines to all the members. Extreme cautiousness was recommended to all campers in order to avoid any type of incident which could potentially lead to negative portrayal in the media. From all these recommendations, it was clear that the last thing minutemen organizers wanted was an undocumented immigrant shot or someone being called a racist. The briefing included recommendations about gun use, emphasizing the rules: guns should be used exclusively for defensive purpose; long arms are offensive weapons so we do not use them; guns should be kept separate from ammunition in the car and loaded only on private property; firearms should not be taken out of the holster until you intend to use them; and technical advice on how not to get hurt. Verbal attacks were equally restricted: “On the radio, call them ‘persons of interest’, we don’t know what they are yet, don’t call them illegal;” give them water; “let them know, we do not have a fight with you, we have a fight with our government for allowing this;” call the Border Patrol; wear only one piece of camouflage, not the full outfit to avoid caricatures by the media...
25 It would be easy to just dismiss the minutemen as a group of “wackos” or vigilantes. And there are certainly among them a number of eccentrics such as Britt Craig, known on the border as “Kingfish,” a Vietnam veteran who had been living in a van on the border for fifteen months before I met him. But the minutemen movement is also drawing hundreds of mainstream citizens who found an opportunity to voice their fears and anxieties about massive immigration in a welcoming group and to take some action to serve their country they consider to be in danger. Their perceptions are therefore helpful in understanding the resurgence of an anti-immigration sentiment in the mid-2000s in California. 4. A National Debate 26 Our main hypothesis is that the immigration debate has come back to California through the national debate. This appears to be the main explanation for both the revival of the immigration debate in the state and the mobilization of California Minutemen. In the early 2000s, as massive undocumented immigration was growing, there was a push by immigrant advocates to legalize the millions of workers who had no rights and no status in the country and were highly vulnerable to employer abuse. With a Republican majority in Congress under the Bush administration, they clearly needed Republican support to build bipartisan support and were therefore ready to trade-off on border security enforcement and a kind of guest worker program which would at least provide them with basic rights. At the same time, many businesses suffered from labor shortages and were in great demand of immigrant labor, hoping for more flexibility in hiring workers in labor-intensive areas such as construction, agriculture, catering and cleaning services. President Bush was then perceived by both sides as a potentially good promoter for comprehensive reform, coming from a border state, Texas, and because he had a moderate position on immigration.
27 In January 2004, at a press conference, President Bush, asking for the cooperation of Congress to reform immigration laws, proposed a guest-worker temporary program for
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 16
immigrants who occupy a job “that American citizens are not willing to fill.”11 At that stage, the president had not fully elaborated the project which soon became the target of numerous criticisms and concerns. The president never introduced legislation and the reform project took on a life on its own.
28 Soon after, that same year, the highly regarded Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington published a very provocative article in the academic journal Foreign Policy, entitled “The Hispanic Challenge.”12 He argued that the persistent influx of Hispanic immigrants threatened to divide the United States into two separate nations, with two cultures and two languages. Along its history, the United States has assimilated waves of immigrants but Huntington believed that this wave was different from the previous ones because of the proximity of the border, the scale of the phenomenon and the regional concentration of immigrants that prevented their assimilation. The argument could have been dismissed by many scholars as blatantly racist if it had not come from such a highly respected figure of political science. Instead, it led to a flow of articles coming from a wide range of social scientists across the country who demonstrated how poorly argued and misleading his paper was.13 Yet, the paper echoed concerns shared by many citizens who saw their views about immigration confirmed14.
29 The Minutemen started organizing and publicizing their concerns over the media and the internet in order to put pressure on their representatives to introduce legislation. Some used bumper stickers rating their Congress representatives according to their stance on immigration. Dan Russel, 63, a Campo minuteman from San Diego gave an A+ to Tom Tancredo, Colorado Representative, who supported the House Bill and a F to his local Congress representatives. Their ranks started growing as a number of individuals heard about the movement. They felt less isolated in their concerns and anxieties that are not necessarily easy to voice, particularly in the most liberal areas of the state. Tom, who is married to an Indonesian woman, is a high school teacher in an academy for children with special needs. He enjoys sharing common values with the group. “When you’re a conservative living in the Bay area, it’s like going to a war zone! People tell me I suffer from over patriotism syndrome because there are 3 or 4 flags in my classroom.”
30 The response from Congress came in December 2005, when the United States House of Representatives passed the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act (HR 4437), known as the Sensenbrenner Bill. Among other propositions, the House bill planned to deport 11 million illegal and criminalize undocumented immigrants as well as people helping them.15 The Bill had a tremendous impact on the Latino population, fueling fear as well as outrage. On May 1st 2006, the Latinos declared “A Day without Immigrants” and massively demonstrated in the streets of major cities. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants, primarily Mexicans, came out of the shadow to protest, leaving watchers bewildered: Where did they all come from? How can they be so confident in publicly demonstrating?16 The May 2006 demonstrations had a dramatic impact on public opinion and fed the debate over reform. Despite the attempt of the Senate to promote a more moderate counter-bill, the word was out that illegals became a political force, that they were everywhere and that a new legislation was being prepared.17
31 In May 2007, one year after the massive protests, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill was introduced in the Senate. It was an attempt to compromise between conflicting demands and needs about immigration: securing the border and providing a
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 17
legal status and a path to citizenship to the twelve million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. The bill was never voted on and on June 28, a related bill failed in the Senate, ending the process of immigration reform.
32 This national debate had the effect of radicalizing both sides of the issue. The potential criminalization of illegal immigration had advocacy groups extremely worried and increasingly active. Meanwhile the perspective of a new amnesty of any kind led to the mobilization of anti-immigrant and nativist groups. This was instrumental in building up anti-immigration sentiment in the United-States, which came back to California through activism on both sides and intense media coverage of the national debate. 5. The Role of the Media 33 The media played a tremendous role in the revival of anti-immigration attitudes in California in various ways. At the turn of the century, the Census Bureau released new data showing that California no longer had a racial majority. For weeks, the focus of many articles was the extent and the diffusion of Hispanic immigration across the territory, with Hispanic becoming the majority in many cities and counties across the state. The maps and reports had a dramatic impact on many people who realized that it was not just their neighborhood being transformed by immigration but the whole state and soon-to-be the whole nation. This heightened the feeling of an invasion on people already inclined to cultural nativism and to worry about the future of the American identity.
34 The coverage of Samuel Huntington’s argument was equally generous. The argument that the nation was at risk of being split into two nations with two cultures and two languages spread all over the newspapers, reinforcing people's fears and anxieties about massive immigration. The nativism that had always been around was revived by the media. Despite the counter-attack by the vast majority of the scientific community, the idea of a serious threat to American identity dominated the news.
35 This created a highly favorable context for the minutemen to get their word across. It became much easier for them to get an audience when other people had heard the issues in the news as well. In addition, popular right-wing talk show figures such as Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs kept the debate and sense of threat going.
36 Most of the minutemen I met acknowledged that they first heard about their organizations in the media. They then went on the Internet to learn more about the movement, the issue of immigration, and the membership process. Many acknowledged their frustration at immigration rates about which they could do noting. They felt isolated and expressed relief when they discovered other people were sharing their views and taking some action.
37 In the end, it is probably the electronic media that played the greatest role. The mainstream media raised people’s awareness about the potential threat posed by massive immigration and undocumented immigrants. But as people concerned about immigration sought more information, in a highly divided media market, many resorted to the Internet where they could find all the data likely to reinforce their perceptions. The data invalidating their views was equally available but often disregarded. Most of the minutemen I interviewed, told me that they did their own research. They came up with the most extravagant data about the number of illegal aliens entering the US and the impact it had on the country’s economy and cultural identity.
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 18
38 To that extent, it is important to remember that the number one issue in the media in the early 2000s was security after the 9/11 terrorist attack. It was clearly the key issue in the 2004 election. According to Mary Beth Cahill, John Kerry’s campaign manager, “it was the elephant in the middle of the room and one always had to navigate around that on both sides.”18 6. The Security Context after 9/11 39 Since the 9/11 attacks of 2001, the United States has been engaged in a global war against terrorism. The Bush administration has constantly emphasized the threat to the nation’s security in order to justify the invasion of Iraq, the escalating military expenditures and the need for a strong leader—namely himself—to protect the country. As a result, airport security and customs checks have been seriously strengthened. The contrast between the security concern at the highest level and what was happening along the border became a source of anxiety and a major argument for the minutemen. How could the government seriously pretend to protect the country from terrorists, did the minutemen ask, while the border was wide open?
40 The wildest rumors circulate among the minutemen. During the training session, Carl Braun alerted the campers: “Do you know that they found a prayer carpet in Arizona?” He went on explaining that he had himself witnessed people arguing in Arabic language (at least he thought so). Many worried that Muslim terrorists might be changing their names to Latino names. Meanwhile, the border patrol officers I met seemed more concerned with gang members from El Salvador getting rid of their tattoos and pretending to be Mexican to avoid being sent back home. Yet the rumors according to which Al Qaeda might develop ties to the Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, have reinforced the fears. “What if even a hundred are from a nation that hates America?” asked Braun.
41 It only takes one visit to the border to realize why the prospect of a double fence all along it is unrealistic. The landscape at the border is an alternation of canyons and it would cost billions to build up and maintain, let alone watch. Many worry that even if the southern border were secured, the terrorists might start flowing in from Canada. The minutemen are fully conscious of the limited result of their action. Detention centers are often full. Most of the time, when a Border Patrol catches a group of undocumented immigrants, they put them in a bus to drive them back to the other side of the border even though these immigrants are highly likely to try to come back the next day. According to Border Patrol officer Crowl, he personally has seen someone coming back as much as 37 times. Yet if the border is hard to secure, it has less to do with the immigrants than with the traffic between Mexico and the United States that has developed over the past ten years. In addition to the national debate, there are a number of local circumstances that explain the revival of the immigration debate in California. 7. The Deterioration of Security at the Border 42 Since the operation Gatekeepers under the Clinton administration in 1994, the traditional points of passage have witnessed increased law enforcement. The San Diego-Tijuana area has become a tightly watched military zone with a wall that begins in the Pacific Ocean and stretches 14 miles to the east. After 9/11, security was reinforced in checkpoint areas and also in ports and airports. As a result, it became increasingly difficult for smugglers to use the points of passage they had traditionally been using. Most of the traffic moved east until enhanced enforcement along the
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 19
Arizona border ended up concentrating a great part of the traffic on the California border.
43 The border has therefore become a much more dangerous place to live and the Border Patrol’s main security concern has shifted to drug enforcement according to retired Border Patrol Bobby Crowl. The minutemen organizers gave extensive warning to the campers about the groups of people carrying big backpacks and usually rifle guns. The organizers clearly advised the campers to hide and stay away from them considering how violent they can be. People in the area have complained about the rise in crime and the resulting decline in property values.
44 The border has also become increasingly dangerous for the undocumented immigrants who cross. They are even more vulnerable to drug runners and “coyotes,” immigrant smugglers who now charge very high prices to cross. According to a Border Patrol officer I met in Tecate, crossing the border 15 years ago cost about $300. When the Gatekeepers operation was launched in 1994, it ranged from $1,000 to $1,500. In 2006, it could cost as much as $12,000. Many of the immigrants are unable to raise such sums. Some end up crossing the way as modern “indentured servants.” They commit to work for a gang and sell drugs until they have paid back their debt.
45 The journey itself across the border has become highly dangerous. Needles with steroids have been found, used by coyotes to keep the group going under difficult conditions. Many people die in the desert weather which can be burning hot during the day and freezing cold at night. Some of the minutemen argued that they actually were concerned about their government letting these people die in the desert and be abused by smugglers. They argued the situation would improve if security was reinforced and appropriate legislation passed. 8. Economic Insecurity and the Struggle of the Middle Class 46 Although the economy was in much better shape in the mid-2000s than in the early 1990s, there were still a lot of concerns about the burden of illegal immigrants on the state’s economy. The economy had been doing well in California up to the subprime crisis but the concerns of minutemen revealed two issues. First, over the past decade, the middle-class has clearly suffered from declining or stagnating real wages, high gas prices and rising costs of the health care system and college fees. The Bush administration tax-cuts benefited the most affluent but hurt the middle-class in a context of severe budget constraints. In addition, job outsourcing had taken its toll on the working class and created a greater economic insecurity among blue collar workers. Many of the minutemen did not believe that immigrants were taking jobs Americans did not want. They rather perceived immigrants as driving the wages down and competing at the bottom of the social scale for unskilled jobs that should be kept for Americans. This has also been a great concern in the African-American community, where many black unskilled workers have reported feeling displaced. Many minutemen argued that these jobs should be going to college kids, although no one could suppress a smile when I asked whether they could really pick-up strawberries in 110 F weather. Some of them joked that grapes were not being picked up in Sonoma county due to a shortage of labor. The economic loss for the wine grower was the price to pay for the exploitation of illegal labor. Dan Russel, a sixty-three-year-old Campo minutemen complained that the entire society had learned to rely on Latino labor force out of laziness: “Everyone looks for a cheap way to get things done: nobody wants to cut lawn, watch children, do their yard. I still cut my own grass, I guess it makes me a real
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 20
dinosaur!” They all blamed the employers for breaking the rules and the Bush administration for failing to sanction these employers.
47 Yet the main concern is linked to the legitimate concern that California public and social services are overrun, which is a direct result of tremendous population growth in a sate that doesn’t believe in taxes. The taxpayers’ revolt, Proposition 13, put a cap on property tax in 1978. California is regularly caught up in budget deadlocks due to resistance to new taxes and frustration at the poor level of performance of the public schools and social services. This generates a vicious circle where the decline in tax revenue leads to poorer public services. This, in turn, increases the defiance in state government and therefore undermines support for taxes. The perception is clear, among the minutemen, that the burden of immigration rests on the taxpayers. Although there is much debate among economists as to whether immigrants contribute more to the economy than they cost in services, the minutemen’s argument mostly rests on misinformation. Against all evidence, they believe that undocumented immigrants do not pay taxes and send all their money home. The argument is highly intertwined with racial nativism, as they usually add that immigrants tend to live in ethnic enclaves, watch Latin American TV, do not learn English and do not want to integrate. These are arguments politicians have chosen to push in hope for political gains. 9. Conclusion: The Dangers of the Political Instrumentalization of Fear 48 In the mid-2000s, the minutemen had become public relations figures. Their whole purpose was to attract attention to the situation at the border. They primarily sought to affect the debate about undocumented immigration and push for legislation. The most visible organizations were acutely aware they were being watched and worked at crafting a positive image. Although many showed concern about the economy, the message they advocated was mostly about securing the border, with constant references to the global war on terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11.
49 Unlike the Pete Wilson’s supporters, they did not get large protesting Latino crowds against them which suggests that they successfully blended patriotism with border protection. They seem to have faded from public view since the 9/11 trauma has receded. Meanwhile, Congress has backed away from immigration reform. But the minutemen served a purpose by putting a public face on border concerns. In this sense, they were the right-wing equivalent of the anti-war protestors and figures such as Cindy Sheehan. As a result, both the press and politicians used them to make points about immigration. Even Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger gave his support to the minutemen and committed to send the National Guard to the border in August 2006.19 Just like Pete Wilson in the mid-1990s, many politicians believed that divisive politics and playing on people’s fears of invasion and cultural change would pay-off in the short run.
50 To the shock of many observers, tough stands on immigration were adopted in local races by a number of Republicans, leaving middle-of-the-road Republicans not sure about what position to adopt. The immigration issue was heavily used, for example, by Brian Bilbray in a Congressional special election in June 2006. The Republican candidate was running in a safe Republican district (California’s 50th district in the San Diego area) to replace Randy Cunningham who had resigned on November 28, 2005 after pleading guilty to bribery, wire fraud, mail fraud and tax evasion charges.
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 21
51 The debate was still dividing Congress during the midterm election in 2006, with Congress showing no sign of finding a compromise. The Republicans were therefore caught in a situation where they had made illegal immigration a salient issue that they had proved unable to resolve. It helped in no way to undermine the growing unpopularity of the war in Iraq. In addition, the Federal Governement organized raids in immigrant communities to force undocumented immigrants to depart. Many cities passed “sanctuary city” ordinances, a public statement of their refusal to cooperate with immigration enforcement federal forces.20 Meanwhile, the debate on immigration reduced the flow of immigrants and many of the undocumented temporary workers who used to cross the border continuously as seasonal workers became permanent illegals since they feared they would not be able to re-enter the country if they left. Meanwhile, many asked for citizenship and registered to vote.
52 The November 2008 election demonstrated that the Republican strategy backfired on the party, at the national level this time. Stirring anti-immigration attitudes had clearly hurt the Republican party at the state level in the 1990s. The Latinos massively voted for the Democratic candidate Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, by a margin of 67%, with little consideration for the fact he was black.21 John McCain could have chosen to build on the sympathy he enjoyed in the Hispanic community for promoting a rather balanced bi-partisan immigration reform. But in order to reach out to the most conservative branch of his party, he took a much tougher stance on immigration. As a result, the Republican party has probably lost the Latino vote for at least a generation, which in the context of the Latino rapid demographic growth, could harm the future of the Republican electoral base.22 In Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and even Florida the new Hispanic voters delivered the margin Obama needed to win. The Republicans lost all their Congress seats in New Mexico, a state that George Bush had won by 6,000 votes in 2004 and that registered 40,000 new Hispanic voters. (We Are America Alliance, 200823) “Today we march. Tomorrow we vote,” read the signs of the Latino demonstrators in May 2006. In November 2008, the title on the homepage of “We Are America Alliance” said it all: “We did it!”
NOTES
1. The Minuteman Project
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 22
Immigration Among California Voters,” Current Psychology 19 (Fall 2000): 159-174; C.J. Tolbert and R.E. Hero, “Race/ethnicity and Direct Democracy: An Analysis of California’s Illegal Immigration Initiative,” Journal of Politics 58.3 (1996): 806-818. 5. The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps www.minutemanhq.com/hq/ 6. B.E. Cain and K. Mac Donald, “Race and Party Politics in the 1996 U.S. Presidential Election” in M.B. Preston, B.E. Cain and S. Bass, eds., Racial and Ethnic Politics in California, IGS Press, Berkeley, 1998: 296; C.R. Chandler and Y. Tsai, “Social factors influencing immigration attitudes: an analysis of data from the General Social Survey.” Social Science Journal 38(April 2001): 177-189; California Opinion Index 1995. Summary Analysis of Voting in the 1994 General Election. The Field Institute. San Francisco, California. 7. Cain and Mac Donald, “Race and Party Politics,” 299. 8. R.J. Sonenshein and S.H. Pinkus, “Latino Incorporation Reaches the Urban Summit: How Antonio Villaraigosa Won the 2005 Los Angeles Mayor’s Race,” Political Science and Politics 38 (2005): 713-721. 9. Field Poll 2000, The Expanding Latino Electorate. Release #1960, May 1; M. Fiorina, and S.J. Abrams, “Is California Really a Blue State? The New Political Geography of California (Berkeley CA: Berkeley Public Policy Press, 2008), 291-308. 10. http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=413 11. January 7, 2004: “President Bush Proposes New Temporary Worker Program,” White House Press Release. 12. S. Huntington, “The Hispanic Challenge,” Foreign Policy (March-April 2004). 13. F. Douzet, “Le cauchemar hispanique de Samuel Huntington,” Hérodote 115 (2004): 31-52. 14. Citrin, J. et al., Testing Huntington: Is Immigration a Threat to American Identity ? Perspectives on Politics (March 2007). 15. J. Weissman, “House Votes to Toughen Laws on Immigration,” Washington Post, 17 December, 2005. 16. Gorman, A. et al., “Marchers fill L.A.’s streets,” Los Angeles Times, 2 May 2006. 17. The bipartisan Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill was voted down by the Senate in June 2007. 18. K.H. Jamieson, ed., Electing the President, 2004 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 32. 19. T. Watanabe and M .Finnegan, “Rove tells of ‘shared values’ with Latinos,” Los Angeles Times, 12 July 2006. 20. N. Gaouette, “GOP’s Bitter ‘Sanctuary’ Dispute,” Los Angeles Times, 30 November 2007. 21. M.H. Lopez, “The Hispanic Vote in the 2008 Election,” Pew Hispanic Research Center. Updated on November 7, 2008 ; Leal, D. L., Nuno, S. A., Lee, J., Garza, R.O. de la 2008. Latinos, Immigration, and the 2006 Midterm Elections, PS: 309-317. 22. B. Cain, F. Douzet, and H. Lefebvre, “La nouvelle carte politique des Etats- Unis,” Hérodote 132 (2009): 60-81. 23. We Are America Alliance
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 23
ABSTRACTS
This paper examines the role of the Minutemen in building up popular pressure for immigration reform and capturing the growing frustration of some of residents at the way the Bush administration is handling immigration in a context of heightened fear about national security. The immigration issue in California had quieted down after anti-immigration proposition 187 was passed –yet never enacted- in 1994. Pete Wilson had unsuccessfully used this divisive issue to win presidential nomination, alienating minority voters in the State and therefore undermining the strength of the Republican party. Despite an apparent growing tolerance about diversity and good economic times, the issue came back to California both through the deterioration of the situation at the border and through the national debate over immigration reform in the mid-2000s. Based on field work at the California- Mexican border, the author gives a portrait of the Minutemen, explaining their motivations, hopes, fears and action which help understand the perceptions and strategies of congressmen and legislators and the fascinating radicalization of their positions on immigration over the past two years.
INDEX
Keywords: California, Jim Gildchrist, Cruz Bustamante, Pete Wilson, Campo, Jacumba, San Diego, United States, Karin Mac Donald, Bruce E. Cain, Latin America, Asia, Gray Davis, Minutemen Project, Chris Simcox, Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, Carl Braun, Tim Donnelly, Southern Poverty Law Center, Joseph Fong, Dan Russel, Bobby Crowl, Britt Craig, Texas, Arizona, Samuel Huntington, Tom Tancredo, George Bush, Sensenbrenner, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Mary Beth Cahill, John Kerry, El Salvador, Mexico, Al Qaeda, Mara Salvatrucha, Canada, Tijuana, Pacific Ocean, Tecate, Cindy Sheehan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Randy Cunningham, Barack Obama, John McCain, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Florida., Minutemen, national identity, immigration reform, class, labor, nativism, U.S. Latino/as, Hispanics
AUTHOR
FRÉDÉRICK DOUZET Frédérick Douzet, Institut Français de Géopolitique, Université Paris 8, France.
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 24
“A Day Without Immigrants”
Benita Heiskanen
1. Introduction1
1 On 1 May 2006, over a million mostly Latino/a, but also Middle Eastern, Asian, and Eastern European immigrants took to the streets of major U.S. cities—such as New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, and Denver—to express disapproval of H.R. 4437, the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005.2 The proposed bill, which passed the House of Representatives on 16 December 2005, included turning unlawful entrance into the United States a felony, punishable by imprisonment; militarizing the U.S.-Mexican border, complete with 700 miles of fencing erected along the border; and deporting undocumented and “terrorist” aliens.3
2 Because of its sweeping provisions, the proposal—dubbed as the “Sensenbrenner Bill” after its sponsor James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin)—immediately created uproar across the United States.4 The conflation of immigrants, documented, undocumented, and citizens alike, with criminality and terrorism in the post-9/11 period, in particular, was a source of outrage among many immigrant communities. In the words of 22-year- old Mexican immigrant Ricardo Vargas, “When you are a citizen and you don’t agree with the system, you are a ‘liberal.’ When you are undocumented and you don’t agree, you are a ‘terrorist.’”5 In 2003, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) created the National Fugitive Operation Program (NFOP) under the Department of Homeland Security to specifically “identify, locate, apprehend, process and remove fugitive aliens from the United States,” as a result of which especially Latino/a and Middle Eastern immigrants became targets of state-level search and seize operations across the nation.6
3 The “Day Without Immigrants” protest were part of a series of events staged in spring 2006 as a grassroots political response to the plight of the growing number of non- citizen immigrant workers in the United States. At the time of the protests, there were some 37 million legal immigrants in the United States, especially from Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean; alongside them, some 10-12 million people—four per cent of the population—worked in the country without authorization.7 Yet while the protests called attention to the grievances the immigrants were facing—and the problems of the
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 25
existing immigration law—they also triggered some unintended consequences. Heated political responses in the media and public discourses became marked by an ideological pattern by which various ethnoracial groups were pitted against each other to invoke the age-old question of entitlement: that is, who has the right to be in the United States to begin with?
4 These debates assumed a distinctly racial character by which the class-based immigrant labor force was accused of siphoning off “mainstream” society’s resources, while posing additional threats to national security at a time when the United States was in the midst of fighting two wars against “terrorism.” This paper will consider the debate from the perspectives of scholars, pundits, policy makers, and participants. By giving voice to divergent viewpoints, it seeks to underscore the complexity of the power dynamics at stake in the entire immigration issue.
5 To probe into the different sides of the controversy, then, I will first discuss the notion of national identity—that is, “Americanness”—as a socio-historically constructed racial category. I will then turn to the May Day rallies and the counter-reactions prompted by the protests across the U.S. political spectrum, as voiced by grassroots activists and various interest groups in the so-called “ethnic” and “mainstream” media alike. Since Latino/as constitute the largest numbers of both authorized and unauthorized immigrants currently residing in the United States, they will be the main focus of my discussion.8 Despite this dominance, I want to emphasize that the immigrant rights movement itself is much more heterogeneous than my discussion allows for; indeed, it is a collaborative effort by a range of different ethnoracial groups as well as a whole host of religious, political, labor, and grassroots civil rights organizations together.
6 Thirdly, I will address some of the larger implications of the current controversy in the light of occurrences of nativism in U.S. history. Through these diverse perspectives, I will argue that the immigration debates prompted by the “Day Without Immigrants” protests did not, ultimately, seek to offer solutions to the proposed legislation but rather commented on the ramifications of an increasingly multiracial nationhood, that is, the delineation of “Americanness” beyond a black-and-white paradigm. Yet, I want to suggest, such debates in the future might better be conceptualized not from the perspective of the United States alone, but as part and parcel of broader hemispheric socioeconomic power relations within the Americas. 2. “Americanness” as Racial Ideology 7 As historians and scholars on racial relations have in recent years frequently pointed out, ever since the United States was founded, race has been a central concern in defining citizenship, national identity, and nationhood. After the Naturalization Law of 1790 first granted U.S. citizenship to free “white” persons alone, the position of newcomers to the country was assessed for over two and a half centuries against the socio-historical and legal construction of “whiteness.”9 Because immigration law was tied to racial categorization, it determined both who was able to legally enter the country and who had the right to claim belonging in the U.S. nation-state at any one time.
8 Race, in effect, became a policy matter, albeit a contentious one due to the discrepancies between the nation’s legal scripture and everyday practices. While the 14th amendment, for example, granted citizenship to African Americans in 1868, the egalitarian principle was undermined by Plessy v. Ferguson’s “separate but equal” doctrine that established de jure segregation in 1896. Moreover, as evidenced in the
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 26
Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (and its corollary, the so-called “Asiatic Barred Zone” in 1917), the Quota Law of 1921, the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924, the Mexican repatriation campaigns in the 1930s, Operation Wetback of 1954, and a series of other legislative efforts from the past half century, certain immigrant groups have been deemed less “desirable” than others at particular historical moments, also contingent upon the geopolitical situation of the world.10 Indeed, Lina Newton aptly makes the case that such “policy designs rest on a national mythology about what types of immigrants made America, and which ones lack the values, traits, or contributions that would earn them inclusion in that story.”11
9 Even if the racial premise of naturalization was overturned with the McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, the socio-cultural question of who is entitled to claim “Americanness” continues to have widespread ramifications up until today. Because non-white immigrant experiences have historically been compared against the backdrop of the early European immigration waves of the 19th and early 20th centuries, “the idea of being an ‘American,’” to quote Richard Dyer, “has long sat uneasily with ideas of being any other colour [sic] than white.”12
10 The ambiguous position of Latino/as, the fastest growing U.S. minority, between the racial hierarchy of whiteness and blackness is the product of a complex historical relationship between the United States and Latin American nations. For example, while the Treaty of the Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, which ended the war between the United States and Mexico, granted de jure “whiteness” to Mexicans in the Southwest, it failed to bring about de facto citizenship rights to most of them. After the annexation, lower- class Mexicans became a racialized labor force serving as domestics and farm workers in the Southwest, frequently facing dual wage structures, segregation, and racism. Up until today, Mexicans from both sides of the border have comprised the largest number of migrant workers—especially in the agribusiness sector—and both the U.S. and Mexican governments have promoted such movement of labor through various bilateral initiatives.
11 During World War II, the so-called Bracero Program allowed 4.6 million Mexicans to come to the United States as farm workers. By the 1950s, however, there was a surplus of Mexican laborers, and the U.S. Border Patrol started implementing the Operation Wetback campaign to deport these migrant workers (some of whom were U.S. citizens) back to Mexico.13 Thus a dual system came into being during the course of the twentieth century whereby a racialized labor force without citizenship rights was allowed into the nation during political stability and economic prosperity; but once a downward tide seemed imminent, legal measures were taken to extradite them.
12 Latino/as’ situation within contemporary U.S. racial hierarchies is complicated further by the often ignored interdependence of race and ethnicity: namely, that they embrace a range of different racial markers, all the while representing various ethnic backgrounds, as the saying goes: “Latino/as come in all colors.”14 Latinidad as an identity label, then, may signify a variety of positions, such as ethnic/racial affiliation, citizenship status, generational experiences, and language use, complicated further by such relations of power as class, gender, age, sexuality, regionalism, if not all of them combined. What is more, the choice of any individual or collective nomenclature easily turns into a sensitive issue in which intercultural and interracial conflicts take on volatile meanings, with a marked difference in terms of who appropriates any particular label and where they may be used.
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 27
13 The U.S. Census Bureau’s appropriation of the term “Hispanic” to lump together remarkably heterogeneous ethnoracial groups under one linguistic category, for example, has generated resentment among those who prefer the racially inclusive term “Latino/a” as a pan-ethnic label of choice. The adoption of an identity label for a broader political purpose, in turn, speaks to Coco Fusco’s notion of “strategic essentialism,” or “a critical position that validates identity as politically necessary but not as ahistorical or unchangeable.”15 The ongoing “browning” of U.S. demographics and everyday culture continues to generate questions regarding where, in effect, do Latino/as fit in the social order of 21st-century U.S. nationhood, an issue that is central to the entire immigrant rights movement as well. 3. The Protests and Their Aftermath 14 On 1 May 2006, a sea of protesters trampled the streets of U.S. cities as part of the “Day Without Immigrants” demonstrations, vowing to neither go to work or school or to purchase any consumer goods for 24 hours. Some employers sympathetic to the cause made arrangements for their workers to take the day off as unpaid leave; others warned that dissidents need not come back the next day. Across the nation, organizers of the protests were giddy with a sense of optimism, synergy, and agency that the movement was engendering.16 In New York, a multiracial human chain was formed to symbolize the divisive nature of the Sensenbrenner bill. In a speech in Washington, D.C., Jaime Contreras, president of the National Capital Immigrant Coalition, evoked the Civil Rights era’s marches in Selma, Alabama, and the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: “I have a message for all of the politicians in Congress and...our president. Today we march, tomorrow we vote!”17 According to New Mexico’s governor Bill Richardson, “this is bigger than the civil rights movement in the 60s. This is huge.”18 Across the country, Latino/a protesters were chanting the slogan “¡Sí se puede!” (“Yes we can!”), made famous in the 1970s by César Chávez, the late labor activists and leader of the United Farm Workers.19 In Los Angeles, an unnamed African American religious leader spontaneously expressed his support of the movement: “We stand in solidarity with our Latino family, to say thank you to Congressman Sensenbrenner…because a power greater than [hurricane] Katrina has been unleashed here in Los Angeles!”20
15 The boycotters’ “We Are America” signs called attention to the legacy of the entire United States as an immigrant nation. As Rene Ochart, a hotel doorman of Puerto Rican descent put it: “Everyone’s an immigrant here. The only real American is the Indian.”21 Reports from supporters of the rallies, by and large, were overwhelmingly positive in their emphasis of immigrants’ “ownership” of the movement.22 In the words of Cecilia Muñoz, Vice President for Policy of the National Council of La Raza: “History Is Unfolding Before Our Eyes.”23
16 The protests were organized on the International Workers’ Day, which is not a public holiday in the United States, in an effort to call attention to the intersecting issues of human rights, workers’ rights, and immigrant rights. Above all, as laborers on the bottom-rung of the food chain, the protesters demanded the legalization of the millions of undocumented workers, who quite literally kept many cities up and running on an everyday level.24 In light of the history of unsuccessful attempts at long-term labor organizing in the United States, the focus on labor issues was quite noteworthy. Indeed, “the privileging of nationalist politics,” Laura Pulido argues, has allowed the avoidance of “a worker consciousness, especially an international worker consciousness, which could conceivably allow us to develop a radically different attitude toward immigrant
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 28
workers.”25 Whether cities saw businesses and factories close down for the day, the message of the impact of these workers on the U.S. economy was brought home to many. Those cities that witnessed mayhem due to a lack of general maintenance, in turn, saw the importance of the invisible pool of workers in tangible ways in their everyday lives.
17 Throughout the campaign, the point the proponents of immigrants’ rights wanted to underscore was that the root and cause of unlawful immigration was not some inherent wander-lust of the trespassers but the fact that non-skilled foreigners were continuously welcomed into the country as a labor force without adequate channels to legally enter the system. According to one estimate, there were some 500,000 unskilled jobs available within the U.S. economy each year; yet the annual quota for visas in that category of workers was only 5,000.26 The incongruous system itself, as one commentator put it, was untenable: [W]e have two signs posted at our borders: “Help Wanted” and “Keep Out.” The byproduct of this schizophrenia is that businesses, families and law-enforcement agencies are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There’s an unsustainable contradiction between U.S. economic policy and U.S. immigration policy, and economics is winning. We can either continue to spend billions of dollars in an immigration-enforcement battle against our own economy and our own labor force, or we can create an immigration system that’s not only good at keeping people out, but also effective at letting people in.27 18 Immigration from Mexico, in particular, has for the past century been fraught with inconsistencies in relation to policy-making. As Nicholas De Genova points out, “while no other country has supplied nearly as many migrants to the United States as has Mexico since 1965, most major changes in U.S. immigration law during this period have created ever more severe restrictions on the possibilities for ‘legal’ migration from Mexico.”28
19 The exception to this trend was the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which granted amnesty to undocumented immigrants, a premise which has been sporadic in its implementation. For the most part, the undocumented work force without prospects of an accessible path to citizenship is in no position to negotiate their conditions of employment; hence it is, to quote De Genova again, their “deportability, and not deportation as such, that has historically rendered Mexican labor to be a distinctly disposable commodity.”29
20 While the national polemics over illegal immigration have largely focused on the question of border security, a key issue has been strikingly absent from mainstream media debates: that migration in the Americas is part of a broader process of hemispheric relations and the United States’ historically powerful economic role in the Americas. Yet, as David Bacon argues, the North American Free Trade Agreement in fact aided and abetted the mass mobilization of the migrant labor movement that we have seen in the U.S. during the past two decades: “During the years following NAFTA’s implementation in 1994, a greater number of people moved from Mexico to the United States than in almost any other period in our history.”30 Even as the treaty created a favorable environment for U.S. entrepreneurs south of the border, real Mexican wages dropped some 22 per cent, with drastic consequences for the local labor force. According to a Mexican government estimate, the country lost a million jobs in the year 1995 alone, and the newly displaced people had few other options than to seek employment north of the border, where it was readily available.31 In the United States,
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 29
however, many commentators have turned a blind eye to the de facto benefits that the porous borders accrued for U.S. businesses in reductions of production costs and for the so-called “ordinary” people’s buying power as retail prices were kept low.
21 The critics of the “Day Without Immigrants” had an entirely different approach to the protests. To them, the immigration issue boiled down to a legal question—cracking down unlawful trespassers—albeit one that entailed a range of moral, security, and ideological ramifications. Lou Dobbs of the CNN, for example, opined that “It is no accident that they chose May 1 as their day of demonstration and boycott. It is the worldwide day of commemorative demonstrations by various socialist, communist, and even anarchic organizations.”32 Jerome Corsi of the World Net Daily elaborated on the imminence of the rise of the red scare: “Radical organizations, including active communist and revolutionary socialist organizations, were the driving force organizing the immigration boycott rally…to deliver an anti-American, anti-imperialist message under the guise of an ‘immigration rights’ rally.”33 Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, explained the sense of urgency to national security: “When the rule of law is dictated by a mob of illegal aliens taking to the streets, especially under a foreign flag, then that means the nation is not governed by a rule of law—it is a mobocracy.”34 Former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan called the boycotts “a strike against America”; while conservative commentator Michelle Malkin saw the movement driven by a Mexican conspiracy to “reconquer” the U.S. Southwest. 35 John Tanton of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), in turn, compared Latino/a immigrants to “bacteria,” whose high birthrates allowed them to multiply and, ultimately, “take over” the United States.36 While both sides of the debate express strong views about the immigration issue from their particular perspectives, few can come up with permanent solutions to the problem. The Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 was ultimately halted in the Senate; and as its spin-off, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 also failed to pass the Senate, the issue will remain unresolved until addressed by the Obama administration.37
22 While the legal issue may currently be at a stalemate on a federal level, the practical ramifications of the debates are experienced on an everyday level across the United States. The conspicuous pattern that emerged after the rallies in spring 2006 was that, unlike the immigration debates throughout the twentieth century, immigration was no longer racialized as a white/non-white issue. Quite the opposite, the immigration debate of the twenty-first century had specifically turned into a black-and-brown labor affair.38 Anti-immigrant proponents, in particular, made specific efforts to turn African American workers against Latino/a workers, arguing that not only do Latino/as take away jobs that rightfully belong to African Americans, but that they depress the wages of all non-skilled laborers.39 In the words of eighteen-year-old Stacey Bennett, “They give most of the jobs to the Latinos…I was born over here. My ancestors shed blood and sweat. I can’t get work but the Mexicans can—it ain’t right. To get right down to it, they are stealing our jobs and should be sent home.”40 According to Ted Hayes, a former homeless advocate turned Republican, “illegal immigration is the biggest threat to Blacks since slavery.”41 In May 2007, an activist group calling itself “Choose Black America” staged marches against illegal immigration in Washington, D.C., and a month later a group of African Americans protesters sponsored by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) organized a similar event in Los Angeles.42 However, soon a counter-movement in support of immigrant rights, the “Black Alliance
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 30
for Just Immigration” (BAJI), emerged to argue against such divisive rhetoric and to urge African Americans to bury the hatchet and enter into dialogue with Latino/as to promote concerns over a variety of class agendas across ethnoracial boundaries.43 Indeed, especially after the 2008 presidential primaries, both Latino/a and African Americans have increasingly emphasized that the rhetoric of pitting the two groups of workers against each other not only ignores their commonalities but it also fails to acknowledge their intra-group heterogeneity, as created and lived through by class, immigration status, and generational differences. 4. “Nativism Revisited?” 23 Immediately after the immigration rallies, signs of a nativist backlash became evident across the United States at several geographic scales, and racist incidents have continuously increased with the downturn of the U.S. economy.44 Different parties involved have resorted to the question of entitlement to justify their claims for inclusion/exclusion in the nation, but it is typically the immigrants who have been at pains to justify their claims in these debates. For “nativism,” Nicholas De Genova argues, always evaluates “migration from the standpoint of citizens who authorize themselves to debate the question in terms of ‘what is good for the nation.’”45 An important recent policy shift has brought about nativist measures by granting states and local governments the authority to enforce violations of immigration statutes, an area traditionally the domain of the federal government. Although Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1996 has permitted police to enforce immigration law locally for the past 12 years, such measures have only been taken by local law enforcement agencies in practice for the past five years.46
24 Vigorous new strategies have been implemented on state level, ranging from workplace raids, detaining and deportation of immigrants, and prosecuting employers who hire undocumented workers.47 During the period of 2005-2008, the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States, in effect, declined from about 800,000 to 500,000.48 According to a report dated 17 October 2008, there were a total of 1,172 worksite raids across the country within the preceding 11 months, complete with 4,956 arrests made, with charges of identity theft, Social Security fraud, or violation of the immigration law.49
25 Worried accounts from immigrant communities across the nation soon began to circulate in local and national media.50 Marta Moreno of Longmont, Colorado shares her experience as follows: “Colorado passed four to five anti-immigrant bills…targeting services provided to the undocumented. One bill requires that police report anyone who they hear speaking Spanish to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). One woman went to buy orange juice and they asked her for her license and photo ID. The same thing happened to a man who went to buy gas.”51 In a recent article in the Nation, Roberto Loveto labels the racial profiling of Latino/as in Georgia as that of “Juan Crow”: [T]he younger children of the mostly immigrant Latinos in Georgia are learning and internalizing that they are different from white—and black—children not just because they have the wrong skin color but also because many of their parents lack the right papers. They are growing up in a racial and political climate in which Latinos’ subordinate status in Georgia and in the Deep South bears more than a passing resemblance to that of African-Americans who were living under Jim Crow. Call it Juan Crow: the matrix of laws, social customs, economic institutions and symbolic systems enabling the physical and psychic isolation needed to control and exploit undocumented immigrants.
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 31
26 In the Southwest, traditionally a Latino/a stronghold, many families have experienced tragic consequences because of workplace raids and their ensuing deportations. Dee Ann Newell of Arkansas recounts: In the last year, we have had two significant raids. One was on a poultry plant in southern Arkansas, in a town called Arkadelphia. Homeland Security came in during the night shift and arrested 52 adults. Their children awakened to find one or both parents arrested and, within 36 hours, deported. Some of the children were infants and toddlers who awakened in day care centers with both parents gone. Because the majority of these children were also undocumented, they were not eligible for any state assistance formally.52 27 In Iowa, Erik Camayd-Freixas, an interpreter hired for legal assistance with undocumented immigrants, witnessed a workplace raid on a meatpacking plant in the town of Postville in May 2008: Then began the saddest procession I have ever witnessed, which the public would never see, because cameras were not allowed past the perimeter of the compound (only a few journalists came to court the following days, notepads in hand). Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignment. They sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before marching out again to be bused to different county jails, only to make room for the next row of 10.53 28 The nativist backlash is also evident in the mushrooming of anti-immigration organizations. The National Illegal Immigration Boycott Coalition (N.I.I.B.C.) has over one hundred member affiliates active nationwide, including such groups as America In Danger, American Patrol; Get My Country Back; Invading America; Secured Borders U.S.A; US Border Watch; USA Border Alert; Friends of the Border Patrol; and the state-based Minutemen chapters, to mention just a few.54 In addition, various hate groups have shifted their focus to immigration issues. According to one estimate, for example, there was a 63 percent increase in membership among Ku Klux Klan groups between 2000 and 2005.55 A recent FBI intelligence report states that there was an estimated 25 percent increase in hate crimes against Latinos or those perceived to be illegal immigrants between 2004 and 2006.56 In February 2007, the Oakland, California police released a statement about a new crime wave referred to as “amigo checking,” because it targets Latino/a immigrant workers, who may not have a bank account and often carry large amounts of cash with them.57 On 4 May 2007, a day-labor center for immigrant workers was burnt down in Gaithersburg, Maryland; and on 30 September 2007, a U.S. Latino mechanic found his garage destroyed in an arsonist attack in Avon Park, Florida, with a message sprayed on the premises by the perpetrators: “Fuck Puerto Rico.”58 In the words expressed by Hal Turner, a white supremacist internet radio talk host, “All of you who think there’s a peaceful solution to these invaders are wrong. We’re going to have to start killing these people…I advocate using extreme violence against illegal aliens. Clean your guns. Have plenty of ammunition. Find out where the largest gathering of illegal aliens will be near you. Go to the area well in advance, scope out several places to position yourself and then do what has to be done.”59 Such expressions of hatred serve as testimony to the intrinsic link between ongoing nativism, xenophobia, and racism. 5. Conclusion 29 On 25 September 2006, nearly four months after the “Day Without Immigrants” protests, immigrant rights activists across the nation were asked to evaluate the
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 32
immediate outcome of the movement. The respondents perceived inter-group collaboration between different ethnoracial minorities and religious groups as an important positive change as a direct result of the movement. In the words of Mohammad Razvi of Brooklyn, New York, “the impact was that many individuals saw people coming together from different ethnic groups and we had a collective voice. Different faith-based communities came out: Christian, Jewish, Muslim. We felt more comfort that there were other people in the same situation and political and elected officials have also changed their tone. Before they did not want to discuss the matter openly. Now immigration is discussed more openly.”60
30 In a similar vein, Rashida Tlaib of Detroit, Michigan reports: “Our [ACCESS, the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services] ties with the Latino community are growing stronger, and we’re involved with a church-based coalition. We wouldn’t have started working with them if it wasn’t for the immigrant rights movement. They’re broadening their base. We built an alliance with them that’s probably been the most effective in our work.”61 Unlike the collaboration between different minority groups, the overwhelming majority of those interviewed perceived the relation between minorities and the so-called “mainstream” society as significantly worse.
31 Small towns, in particular, witnessed an array of negative consequences. Bill Chandler of Gulfport, Mississippi, explains: “the results have been xenophobia and racism revealing themselves very openly in white districts where more Latinos are moving in.”62 In the words of David Oslo of Wichita, Kansas, immigrant presence has turned the town into “a hotpot of hate in the last few months.” Marilyn Daniels of Lexington, Kentucky describes her predicament as follows: “I don’t feel that I’m part of a movement. I feel I’m in a terrible problem. I’m afraid that we’re heading for even worse times. I’m afraid that they will pass punitive measures between now and the end of the year. What it does to families and children is what bothers me the most.”63
32 In September 2008, a Pew Hispanic Center report stated that 63% of Latino immigrants felt that their situation in the United States was worse than it had been just a year before.64 To quote former protester Sylvia Rodríguez, “The hopes we had are slipping from our hands. Amnesty will never come.”65 On 1 May 2008, two years after the “Day Without Immigrants,” the protests staged in the United States were a pale shadow of the earlier events. In New York, only 1,000 people from civil rights and labor organizations showed up to support the cause; for the workers themselves, the demonstrations had proved much too risky.66
33 Notwithstanding the discouraging evidence from the period after the first “Day Without Immigrants” marches, I will end this paper with a cautious note of optimism. The cross-racial mobilization between ethnoracial minorities and some of the predominantly white interest groups witnessed during the presidential campaign of 2008 may indicate a paradigm shift in class-based inter-group collaborations in the years to come. The understanding of “Americanness” itself may no longer be as stable a category as it seemed only a couple of years ago; its meanings may in the future be much more inclusive than the black-white dichotomy indicates. However, any evidence to such effects will have to wait until Congress introduces its next round of proposals to tackle the complicated immigration issue in law—or the entitlement for “Americanness” in practice—once again.
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 33
NOTES
1. This paper was written for the European Association for American Studies conference in Oslo, 9-12 May 2008. I would like to express thanks to Stepanka Korytova for organizing the workshop entitled “Nativism Revisited? Political Responses to Immigration in the United States.” Thanks also to Jørn Brøndal, Frederick Douzet, Catherine Lejeune, Jonathon Moses, Rune Reimar Christensen, Stepanka Korytova, and the editor and the anonymous reviewers at EJAS for their comments and suggestions on the manuscript. 2. See H.R. 4437 [109th]: Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd? bill=h109-4437 [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 3.The bill passed the House of Representatives on 16 December 2005 by a vote of 239 to 182. 4. The protests were referred to as “Un día sin inmigrantes in Spanish.” They were also known as the “Great American Boycott”—“El gran paro Americano.” 5. Ricardo Vargas, “I’m No ‘Anchor Baby,’ I’m an American.” New America Media, 17 February 2006, http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html? article_id=8aca573fa65b26ce5b6a70da305f642e [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 6. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, http://www.ice.gov/pi/dro/ nfop.htm [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 7. On annual estimates of unauthorized immigrants in the United States in the twenty-first century, see Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn, Trends in Unauthorized Immigration: Undocumented Inflow Now (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2 October 2008) http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/94.pdf [last accessed 26 June 2009], 2-6. 8. Latinos are the fastest growing U.S. minority, comprising about 14.8 % of the population in 2006. See Pew Hispanic Center, “Statistical Portrait of Hispanics in the United States, 2006,” http://pewhispanic.org/files/factsheets/hispanics2006/ hispanics.pdf [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 9. On the legal history of immigration, see Ian Haney-López, White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 2006); Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); and David Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White. The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (New York: Basic Books, 2005). 10. On the history of illegal immigration and immigration restriction in the United States, see Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 11. Lina Newton, Illegal, Alien, or Immigrant: The Politics of Immigration Reform (New York: New York University Press, 2008), 4. 12. Richard Dyer, “The White Man’s Muscles” in Rachel Adams and David Savran, eds., The Masculinity Studies Reader (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), 264. 13. On immigration policy toward Mexicans, see Newton, “Considering Unlikely Outcomes: the Peculiar Politics of Immigration” in Illegal, Alien, or Immigrant,
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 34
5-41 and Mae M. Ngai, “Braceros, ‘Wetbacks,’ and the National Boundaries of Class” in Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 127-166. 14. For discussions on U.S. Latinos and identity formations within the past decade, see also Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco and Mariela M. Páez, eds., Latinos: Remaking America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Arlene Dàvila, Latinos, Inc.: The Marketing And Making of a People (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Jorge J. E. Gracia, Hispanic/Latino Identity: A Philosophical Perspective (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000); Jorge J. E Gracia and Pablo De Greiff, Hispanics/Latinos in the United States: Ethnicity, Race, and Rights (New York: Routledge, 2000); Linda Martín Alcoff, “Latina/o Identity Politics” in David Batstone and Eduardo Mendieta, eds., The Good Citizen (New York: Routledge, 1999), 93-112; Rodolfo D. Torres and George Katsiaficas, eds., Latino Social Movements: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 1999); Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, eds., The Latino/a Condition: A Critical Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1998); Roberto Suro, Strangers Among Us: How Latino Immigration is Transforming America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998); William V. Flores and Rina Benmayor, eds., Latino Cultural Citizenship: Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997); Mary Romero, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, and Vilma Ortiz, eds., Challenging Fronteras: Structuring Latina and Latino Lives in the U.S. (New York: Routledge, 1997); and Suzanne Oboler, Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of (Re)Presentation in the United States (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995). 15. Coco Fusco, English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas (New York: New Press, 1995), 27. See also Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s discussion of “strategic essentialism” in her The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (New York: Routledge, 1996), 214. 16. See “Today’s Boycott Expected to Have Nationwide Impact,” New America Media, 30 April 2006, http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html? article_id=64c4eb3d59caf17d464724568c1627ee [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 17. See “Newly Energized, Undocumented U.S. Immigrants Plan More Protests,” USA Today, 11 April 2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-11- immigration-boycott_x.htm [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 18. “Albuquerque Students Join Continuing Nationwide Protests for Immigrant Rights.” 11 April 2006, http://www.whatkidscando.org/Wire/Wire.asp? SearchCase=FindId&WireId=700 [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 19. Pepe Lozano and Rosalio Muños, “United We March: ¡Sí se puede!” People's Weekly World Newspaper, 4 May 2006, http://www.pww.org/article/view/ 9065/1/320/ [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 20. Cited in Mehammed Mack, “True Colors,” LA Weekly, 11 May 2006, http:// www.laweekly.com/news/features/true-colors/13403/ [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 21. “US Immigrants Stage Boycott Day,” BBC News, 2 May 2006, http:// news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4961734.stm [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 22. For a summary of various ethnic media responses to the movement, see Daffodil Altan, “This Movement Is Big, And It's Ours,” 3 May 2006, New America
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 35
Media, http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html? article_id=10cbd22aaee585ce452a96cd807622f1 [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 23. Cecilia Muñoz, “History Is Unfolding Before Our Eyes,” New America Media, 20 April 2006, http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html? article_id=4a0fdab07720ff0b8b1be5870077da6a [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 24. On TV coverage of the event, see “Thousands March for Immigrant Rights: Schools, Businesses Feel Impact as Students, Workers Walk Out,” CNN, May 2, 2006, http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/05/01/immigrant.day/index.html [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 25. Laura Pulido, “A Day Without Immigrants: The Racial and Class Politics of Immigrant Exclusion,” Antipode 39:1 (February 2007): 4. 26. Juan Esparza Loera, Luz Peña, and Daniel Cásarez, “Analysts Evaluate Effectiveness of Marches,” Vida en el Valle, 30 March 2006, http:// news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html? article_id=198f4a5744f525648776a8ee44f54161 [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 27. Benjamin Johnson, “Manage Immigration As a Resource, Not an Enforcement Matter,” New America Media, 7 September 2006 http:// news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html? article_id=f5bf54cc3d52961841968e0dad16d9fa [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 28. Nicholas De Genova, Working the Boundaries: Race, Space, and Illegality in Mexican Chicago (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 214. 29. De Genova, Working the Boundaries, 8. 30. David Bacon, Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008), 51. 31. Ibid., 51-77. 32. Lou Dobbs, “Radical Groups Taking Control of Immigrant Movement” CNN, 2 May 2006, http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/05/01/dobbs.immigrantprotests/ index.html [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 33. Jerome Corsi, “May Day Protest Organized by Communists,” World Net Daily, 3 May 2006 http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50030 [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 34. Randal C, Archibold, “Immigrants Take to U.S. Streets in Show of Strength,” New York Times, 2 May 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/us/ 02immig.html? pagewanted=1&_r=2&ei=5094&en=e9b7414ed9b65b5f&hp&ex=1146542400&partner=homepage [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 35. Rene P. Ciria-Cruz “Can Opponents ‘Swiftboat’ the Immigrant Rights Movement?” New America Media, 9 May 2006, http://news.newamericamedia.org/ news/view_article.html?article_id=1ae94405936366396c155d53d08ac197 [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 36. See Mark Potok, “Hate Groups Hijack Immigration Debate,” New America Media, 13 December 2007, http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/ view_article.html?article_id=c177f36e695d5564e876c46203c1e50e [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 37. S. 2611 [109th]:Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, http:// www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s109-2611 [last accessed 26 June 2009].
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 36
38. On the black-brown dichotomy, see James Clingman, “When is the March for Black Folks?” New America Media, 17 May 2006, http:// news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html? article_id=b703d29006a44829264a53ef1bff8daa [last accessed 26 June 2009]; Van Jones, “Shout ‘Viva!’ Anyhow: On Being Black at a Latino March,” New America Media, 4 May 2006, http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html? article_id=2144b620afdda046f71ac16480f11375 [last accessed 26 June 2009] and Jennifer Bihm, “Blacks Differ on Immigration,” Los Angeles Sentinel, 24 April 2006, http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html? article_id=b25b30a6424410696f93de3951969f4a [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 39. See, for example, Valencia Mohammed, “Immigration: Where Blacks Stand” Media, 18 April 2006,
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 37
48. Pew Hispanic Center Estimates of Illegal Immigrants, 2008 (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, October, 2008) http://www.workingimmigrants.com/2008/10/ pew_hispanic_center_estimates.html [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 49. Jorge Morales Almada, trans. Elena Shore, « ICE Conducts 1, 172 Raids in 11 Months », New America Media, 17 October 2008,http://news.newamericamedia.org/ news/view_article.html?article_id=6eed205b6638330bde3f0734b45578c4 [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 50. See Marcelo Ballvé, “After Miss. Immigration Raid, Pastor Tries to Calm Chaos,” New America Media, 17 October 2008, http://news.newamericamedia.org/ news/view_article.html?article_id=54ff68f961ba9af377ca9bc35a6ab529 [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 51. “Snapshots of the National Immigrant Rights Movement,” New America Media, 25 September 2006, http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/ view_article.html?article_id=52995e3c9ccc3e02863c968a0157dbdb [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 52. Ibid. 53. Erik Camayd-Freixas, “Interpreting the Largest ICE Raid in U.S. History: A Personal Account,” New America Media, 11 July 2008, http:// news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html? article_id=dd3d7679d6579a9a883d376a80142456 [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 54. For links to these organizations, see http:// www.illegalimmigrationboycott.com/ [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 55. “Anti-Immigration Fears Spur KKK Growth,” 7 February, 2008, http:// newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Alt/alt.politics.bush/2007-02/msg01168.html [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 56. See Christine Senteno, “Take the Hate Out of the Immigration Debate,” New America Media, 1 February 2008, http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/ view_article.html?article_id=b62409cfac6131c993a8b822f3a31b9e [last accessed 26 June 2009]. See also Amy Bonilla, “Border Group Documents Rights Abuses Across Arizona,” New America Media, 16 September 2007,
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 38
64. Mark Hugo Lopez and Susan Minushkin, 2008 National Survey of Latinos: Hispanics See Their Situation in the U.S. Deteriorating; Oppose Key Immigration Enforcement Measures. (Washington, D.C.: Pew Hispanic Center, 18 September 2008) http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/93.pdf [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 65. Cited in Elizabeth Gonzalez, “Yesterday We Marched, But Today We Wait,” New America Media, 24 October 2006, http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/ view_article.html?article_id=9512e75bdfbe507fa03c17c9d8343fd8 [last accessed 26 June 2009]. 66. See Russell Morse, “M’aider! M’aider!–Reflections on the May 1st March,” New America Media, 2 May 2008, http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/ view_article.html?article_id=4e186670e87826b350956cc9e2518436 [last accessed 26 June 2009].
ABSTRACTS
This article considers the debates surrounding the “Day Without Immigrants” protests organized in major U.S. cities on 1 May 2006, prompted by H.R. 4437, the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, from the multiple perspectives of scholars, pundits, policy makers, and participants. Although much of these debates ostensibly centered around illegal Latino/a immigration to the United States, underneath the discussion ran a curious ideological thread, one that invoked groups’ right to be in the United States in the first place. The article argues that the rhetoric used in these discourses pitted various class-based ethnoracial groups against each other not so much to tackle the proposed immigration bill but, rather, to comment on the ramifications of an increasingly multiracial United States.
INDEX
Keywords: immigration reform, class, labor, nativism, U.S. Latino/as, ethnoracial identity
AUTHOR
BENITA HEISKANEN Benita Heiskanen is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the Center for American Studies at the University of Southern Denmark.
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 39
Immigrants in the United States: “Illegal Aliens” On Their Way To Becoming Emergent “Possible Subjects”
Catherine Lejeune
1. Introduction
1 Immigration reform, political analysts agree, is definitely on the agenda of the Obama administration and could seemingly be introduced into the U.S. Congress in 2010. Directives have already been given by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that signal a will to tackle immigration issues. Given the complexity of the task due to a high number of intertwined and sometimes contradictory economic, social and political factors, it is difficult to anticipate what the outcome will be. Without a doubt, the issue is highly fraught: from the failure of the 2007 congressional reform that followed the inflamed debates over immigration legislation in the two years preceding the demise of the bill, to the high expectations of Latino voters who massively supported the candidacy of President Obama, any initiative is likely to be risky and have consequences for the administration that proposes it. Yet, the present status quo is no option.
2 While federal legislation is pending, the way immigration matters are dealt with on a daily basis is a major concern to many, ranging from immigrant/human rights advocates and union activists to political analysts and theorists as well as local and state policy makers. United States immigrants have been under growing scrutiny and stress in recent years, especially those without proper immigration papers. Following the massive mobilizations of 2006, the Bush administration considerably increased its enforcement approach to immigration. In addition to a much tougher policy at the U.S.-Mexico border, workplace raids, home arrests, deportation orders, and placements in detention centers have multiplied alarmingly, constituting the most repressive practices immigrant workers who reside on U.S. soil have had to face. Notable abuses against them have been reported, such as the non-payment by employers of hours (if
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 40
not days) of work, dire working conditions, harassment and exclusion by communities who refuse to provide housing to day laborers or explicit racial profiling by local police officers.
3 As the possibility of immigration legislation reform is drawing near, it seems appropriate to examine the major stakes pertaining to immigration issues. In a ‘state- of-the-art’ overview of the situation, this article examines what has been referred to as a ‘national security regime’ by a significant number of scholars in the post-9/11 period, highlighting its rationale and its casualties. While there is no indication that President Obama intends to keep up with the enforcement-only approach, politics may dictate otherwise. He has made statements acknowledging a broken system and shown concern over the problematic recourse to the “employer sanctions” provision of the 1986 law which, in addition to instilling fear among immigrant communities, dramatically puts at risk the employment of migrant workers and increasingly leads to arrests and deportation orders (employers, who should legally be sanctioned for employing an unauthorized labor force, are rarely fined for violations). Yet, the recent directives do not reflect signs of significant change.
4 Secondly, I will address the crucial yet little debated issue of immigration power. So far few scholars have theorized this question. In an essay entitled Who Controls Immigration: Congress or the States?, law expert Victor Romero reviews constitutional immigration law in an attempt to discern the powers of the federal and state government over noncitizens.1 His insightful study brings to light the history and evolution of immigration control and helps to understand the root causes of the consistent contradictions existing between current federal government policies and local/state initiatives.
5 Given the proliferation of state and local regulation, the subsequent conflict with federal policies and the problems that it generates, a strong need for theoretical insight is felt. Legal scholar Christina Rodriguez convincingly addresses this issue in a brilliant demonstration of how immigration management should be dealt with. The federal- state divide is obsolete, she says. While Romero leaves us with an unsolved question, Rodriguez offers a standpoint, urging not to focus on federalism and arguing for an integrated system that would combine federal and local/states policies as an appropriate tool for the day-to-day management of immigration matters. Her argument will be carefully discussed as it offers alternative ways of thinking and acting.
6 To conclude, the article reviews the standpoints of leading political theorists Seyla Benhabib and Saskia Sassen on a question they have long examined, providing us with tools for a broader vision of the issues at stake. While Benhabib addresses political membership by looking at the boundaries of political community - she advocates the incorporation of aliens (as defined by alienage laws), immigrants and refugees into existing polities, arguing for a notion of just membership,)2 sociologist Sassen focuses on the blurring of the citizen subject and the alien subject as a result of the changes taking place in the current period. She identifies immigrants as emerging political actors in globalized cities. Neither “politics” nor “subjects” are yet formalized, she states, but the occurring changes have brought about what she calls “emergent possibilities.”3 2. The Criminalization of Unauthorized Immigrants 7 In the name of September 11 is the title of a book French political scientist Didier Bigo has recently edited4 and in which he and his co-authors widely document anti-terrorist
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 41
practices and correlated anti-immigrant policies conducted against noncitizens throughout the European Union and North America since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the name of September 11 stands for the rationale behind - hence the justification for - the various restrictive laws and policies that have been enacted to fight against terrorism and potential terrorists over the recent years. The logic which developed under the Bush administration, based on the “worst case scenario”, has increasingly prevailed among governments and media, he contends. It clearly is a war logic in which danger is always presented as immediate, hence creating a system of “generalized surveillance” and a subsequent form of radicalization, bearing dramatic consequences for the targeted groups.5 Bigo challenges the numerous practices developed in the name of the fight against terrorism – practices he calls “illiberal”6 - and argues that, in addition to being anti-democratic, they have proved counterproductive. Most interesting for this study is his insight into the political play on the criminalization of migrants and more generally on the connection being made between terrorism, foreigners, Muslims and migrants,7 now traditional figures to be blamed for the current state of “insecurity”: a rhetoric, it is interesting to note, now common to many countries.
8 The scholarship dealing with counter-terrorism and immigration is not new, but comparative studies are increasing as a result of the many parallels to be drawn between the ways in which both issues are managed, indeed interconnected, in western liberal democracies. As early as 2002, Bigo identified the historical moment as a new process of state formation in the United States “with regard to only one of its crucial and distinguishing features…, the securitization of immigration.”8 According to political scientist Nicholas de Genova, the phenomenon stemmed from an ideological operation: the refashioning of the national security state into a “Homeland Security State”. Within the national security framework, he states, there was “a tenacious blurriness sustained between national ‘defense’ and imperialist aggrandizement. This strategic reorientation palpably implied and often … avowed the militarization of every dimension of the United States’ relation to the rest of the world.”9 The reorganization of the U.S. federal government in 2003 – the inclusion of the former Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) into the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – was designed, in the words of The National Strategy for Homeland Security, “to secure the American Homeland ... from terrorist attacks.”10 While the emphasis on a specific and uniquely challenging threat, to Genova, was meant to turn the new mandate into a permanent mission,11 it also invoked the distinction between foreign and domestic. The extensive reconfiguration, Amy Kaplan forcefully explains, was actually “about breaking down the boundaries between inside and outside, about seeing the homeland in a state of constant emergency from threats within and without… to generate forms of radical insecurity.”12 In this globalized era, the Cold War ideology has given way to a different rhetoric, and the “enemies within” are no longer supposed (or real) communists but potential terrorists. Predicated upon a logic of permanent threat, and in a context of growing nativism, the fight against terrorism the United States government has engaged in has wide ramifications. It has extended its berth to migrant groups – in particular the undocumented, making this already vulnerable and easily exploitable category a privileged target.
9 Such is the political context in which the criminalization of migrants has taken shape. In the early 1980s, raids were already conducted by the INS, only they were “unlawful”. They became more frequent when the employer sanctions provision of the 1986
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 42
Immigration Reform and Control Act made them legal. The trend intensified with the restrictive immigration and anti-terrorism laws of 1996 and the anti-immigrant provisions contained in the USA Patriot Act of 2001. The next major piece of immigration legislation would have been the Border Protection, Anti-terrorism and Illegal Immigration Act (H.R. 4437), introduced by Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), which passed the House of Representatives in December 2005 (a similarly controversial but more limited law was approved in 2006, The Secure Fence Act, providing for further militarization of the US-Mexico border). 3. H.R.4437 10 The Sensenbrenner bill is the piece of legislation that raised the most controversy and initiated the mass mobilizations during the spring of 2006. Many aspects of H.R. 4437 continued a long-term policy of controlling immigrant labor through intensified militarization of the US-Mexico border, new penalties for immigration violations, stringent detention and deportation policies, as well as increased authority of local police to enforce immigration law. However, the bill went further. Its most punitive part lies in the provision that would have literally criminalized the estimated 12 million undocumented migrants residing in the United States by making it a federal crime, an “aggravated felony” (whereas it used to be a non violent civil offense), to be without documents in the United States. By converting their “unlawful presence” into a felony, H.R.4437 would have rendered unauthorized migrants subject to mandatory detention upon apprehension. Also, it would have been a felony for anyone to provide services and assist them, whether legally, socially or medically (which would have made it very problematic even for immigration lawyers to provide counsel). Furthermore, it turned any violations, no matter how minor, into felonies punishable with imprisonment, thus rendering any migrants, even previously legal residents, as “illegal aliens” for any sort of incidental infractions.13
11 Though initially seen as more “immigrant-friendly”, the Senate bill passed in May 2006 (S.B.2611) turned out to be a failure when Democrats and Republicans reached a compromise by integrating parts of the SOLVE Act14 with more regressive legislation (combining security and deportation measures). One month later, the House and Senate bills moved to Conference Committee where they were supposed to be reconciled but the possibility was torpedoed by the House Republican leadership who listened to the voices of immigration restrictionists. The final version strengthened anti-immigrant law-enforcement, provided labor protections to only some categories of workers, and defined a tortuous path to legalization for a limited number of undocumented immigrants, establishing a very controversial multi-tiered system. As the AFL-CIO15 concluded in a press statement: Instead of raising working standards for all workers.…the Senate adopted the framework of the fatally flawed Martinez-Hagel compromise, which creates an undemocratic, unjust and unworkable three-tiered society that denigrates and marginalizes millions of immigrant families. That three-tiered approach creates a caste society in which millions of hard-working immigrants are driven further into the shadows of American society, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation. We are also disappointed that the Senate adopted the greedy corporate model of addressing our nation’s future needs for workers – guest-worker programs – instead of crafting a mechanism to ensure that foreign workers come into the U.S. with full rights and as full social partners.16 12 In the Spring of 2007, attempts were made to revive the reform but the debate was conducted in an atmosphere poisoned by the followers of conservative talk radio and
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 43
anti-immigration reform groups. These groups promoted xenophobic sentiments that stated any practical immigration proposal was an “amnesty” (a reference to the provision of the 1986 Immigration Act which enabled three million undocumented workers to be legalized). Using the argument that it was a form of “amnesty for lawbreakers”, they succeeded in intimidating Congress into a stalemate. While estimates consistently showed that the general public continued to express support for reform (including “earned” legalization for “illegal” immigrants with a path to citizenship), the possibility of an alternative solution was gone. The 109th congressional session ended without a compromise, stalling immigration reform. 4. Raids, Detention, Deportation 13 Federal funding for raids, detention and deportation has come to replace a democratically debated immigration policy. In the absence of federal legislation, a vast array of initiatives have been set up with a view to deterring “illegal” residents from remaining in the United States and, at the same time, discouraging potential candidates from entering the territory. Developed more intensely since 2006, the measures consist of immigration raids, massive arrests, detention and deportation against the unauthorized immigrant workers living in the country – a vast majority of whom are Latinos.17 Used to maintain “a permanent state of terror” and made possible by the employer sanction provision, federal workplace raids hold the most contentious position and often appear as punitive expeditions. Launched by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), one such raid came as a reply to a New Haven, Connecticut city council vote, in 2007, which refused to comply with the federal Real ID Act of 2005 (the council issued drivers’ licenses that would allow undocumented workers to access city services). Among the numerous raids that have been carried out, one series also came as a direct response to the resistance immigrant workers formed in Iowa meatpacking plants during the May 1st mobilizations of 2006. Reflecting on the changes after May 1st, the American Friends Service Committee noted: “the raids were seen as a retaliation by the government.”18
14 The raids deserve attention on human, ethical and legal grounds, particularly so since they have come to symbolize the “criminalizing tactics” of the Bush administration under which the recourse to such deterrent tools became, de facto, an immigration policy. Of course, such use of immigration enforcement was not unprecedented. As David Bacon documents in his powerful Illegal People, “prying loose people ... from their meatpacking jobs became the focal point of the Clinton administration’s effort to end undocumented immigration.19 In the early 1980s, before the Immigration Reform and Control Act was passed, the INS conducted a series of raids called Operation Jobs which already led to deportation proceedings. According to Bacon, however, the biggest operation began in December 1998 in Nebraska when the INS looked into the personnel records of every meatpacking plant in the state, comparing the employment information (including Social Security numbers) with the national Social Security database. With Operation Vanguard, the INS agents concentrated on 40 plants, sifting out 4,762 names and sending the corresponding persons (what is now commonly called) “no-match letters”. Requiring undocumented workers to come for an interview at work, the INS hoped to and actually did terminate the jobs of a significant number of them, leading to their arrest and subsequent deportation.20
15 In the Bush years, Michael Chertoff, then Homeland Security Secretary, launched similar enforcement initiatives: DHS agents raided six Swift & Co meat-packing plants
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 44
in December 2006, arresting 1,300 workers. Again raids and deportation were highly publicized, this time by Chertoff, in an attempt to show Congress the need for “stronger border security, effective interior enforcement, and a temporary-worker program.”21 A more recent example of immigration enforcement came at the Smithfield Foods pork slaughterhouse, North Carolina, in January 2007. The ICE raid, in the words of a union organizer, was like a nuclear bomb.22 According to many workers, the plant management saw union organization taking place at Smithfield as a major problem. Workers started to organize as soon as 1994, and their efforts were beginning to show. So union organizing, and not the twenty-one detained immigrants, seemed to be the raid’s real target. 23 The “success” of the operation can be explained by the employer’s position. Alarmed by the tide of protest that rose in the spring of 2006 and panicked by the collective union activity that was developing, Smithfield managers enrolled in the IMAGE program (ICE Mutual Agreement between Government and Employers.)24
16 The federal program, designed to enforce employer sanctions, was publicized in 2006 by Michael Chertoff who stated that the government “must partner with employers, educate them, and provide them with the tools they need to develop a stable, legal labor force.”25 The agreement requires that employers verify the immigration status of their employees, checking their documents against the ICE database. In the event of mismatches, employers must set up protocols for responding to no-match letters from the Social Security Administration and “establish a tip-line for employees to report violations and mechanisms for companies to self-report violations to ICE.” As David Bacon underscores, Smithfield managers probably saw an opportunity to get rid of union organizing at their plant, but they may not have expected the huge loss in labor force in the days following the raid.26
17 Advocacy groups such as immigrant rights, labor and human rights organizations consistently denounce the use of raids as intimidation tactics to discourage workers from organizing (in an attempt to fight exploitation at work and to protect themselves from employer harassment), and increasingly document abusive immigration policy to alert public conscience. In 2008 the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR), a nationwide network with a solid reputation of independent analysis, reported the Postville raid, in Iowa, with alarm. The personal account one NNIRR. member gave of the treatment reserved to undocumented workers caught by ICE agents during the operation is more evocative of a spectacular arrest of criminals than a regular inspection / procedure of status checking: On May 12, 2008, at 10 a.m., in an operation involving some 900 agents, ICE executed a raid of Agriprocessors Inc., the nation’s largest kosher meatpacking plant, located in Postville, Iowa. The raid –officials said– was “the largest single-site operation of its kind in American history.” At that same hour, 26 federally certified interpreters from all over the country went to the neighboring city of Waterloo, having no idea what their mission was about. Echoing (…) the general feeling, my fellow interpreter would later exclaim: “When I saw what it was really about, my heart sank…” Then began the saddest procession I have ever witnessed, which the public would never see, because cameras were not allowed past the perimeter of the compound…. Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignment, sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before marching out again to be bused to different county jails, only to make room for the next row of 10.”27
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 45
18 No less preoccupying is the increase in detention – often subsequent to raids - and deportation proceedings targeting noncitizens. The Patriot Act of 2001, which expanded the government’s authority to detain immigrants, contained several exclusionary measures. It gave the attorney general “unprecedented power to detain foreign nationals indefinitely without a hearing and without showing that they pose a threat to national security or a flight risk,”28 as legal expert David Cole reminds us. A more extreme provision of the act made it possible for noncitizens to be deported “for wholly innocent associational support of a ‘terrorist organization’, whether or not there is any connection between the individual’s conduct and any act of violence, much less terrorism.”
19 Alongside legislation that facilitates detention proceedings, additional funding has been made available to provide for the creation of new detention facilities “in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S.”29 That detention and deportation devices should have come to constitute the new U.S. immigration policy raises major concerns. In an essay entitled “The Deportation Terror”, Rachel Ida Buff analyzes the recent wave of deportation raids carried out by ICE since 2005, placing them in their historical context as a racialized system of social control.30 Using the work of legal scholar Daniel Kanstroom, who traces the antecedents of the deportation of the foreign-born, Buff draws a link between the Cold War period and the current moment, looking at how immigrants have become the central focus of deportation. The terror imposed on immigrant communities is not new, she says. Acknowledging Kanstroom’s argument that “deportation law has always had two facets: control of the borders, and ‘post-entry social control’”, she contends that terror is now almost entirely defined by the Homeland Security State, making raids and the threat of deportation “a crucial technology of the state.”31
20 The attempt at making unauthorized migrants legally vulnerable (in the sense of a putative “illegality”32), facilitating their subordination, was confirmed with the advent of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In 2003, immigration authorities in the DHS’s Office of Detention and Removal announced a 10-year “strategic enforcement plan” called Endgame with the mission to promote “national security by ensuring the departure from the United States of all removable aliens.”33 The scholarship correlating immigration and detention/deportation consistently insists on how racialized immigration policies have been created in order to turn certain undesirable immigrants (Chinese in the 19th century, Japanese and Mexicans in the first half of the 20th century) into “removable aliens”. The figure of the “illegal alien” has long been racialized as Mae Ngai argues in her book, Impossible Subjects. The category itself was created in 1924 with the numerical restriction implemented by the Johnson-Reid Act. The ensuing quota laws combined with the creation of the Border Patrol in 1924 and the subsequent criminalization of undocumented crossings in 1929 came to constitute a “racialized Mexican Identity.”34 In turn, the “illegal alien” emerged as a racialized category, hence transforming already deportable categories (including anarchists and other groups appearing as politically subversive.)35 Scott Michaelsen, who has probed the continuities between the jurisprudence justifying the internment of Japanese Americans in the 1940s and the USA Patriot Act of 2001, shows how the recurrent attempts at militarizing the border between Mexico and the U.S. has enabled what he calls “the permanent state of racial emergency.”36 Today, the migrants from Mexico,
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 46
Central and Latin America are the targeted populations: they constitute the majority of “illegal aliens” the government can legally deport.
21 Legal analyst Natsu Taylor Saito has long investigated the impact of counterterrorism in the emergent Homeland Security State and the rationale of political subversion used to turn them into “deportable aliens.”37 In an essay published in 2006, she reflects on what the US-Mexico Border (an increasingly militarized zone) has produced: “the border now also connotes the imaginary line between safe and unsafe associated with the prevention of terrorism,” she writes and, as a result, “has moved onto the bodies not only of persons presumed to be undocumented but also those who look like potential terrorists, regardless of their legal status.”38
22 Inter-disciplinary scholarship has widely documented the construction of the figure of the “enemy alien” in history. In comparison, the literature dealing with the impact of the current Homeland Security State is only emerging. Yet, it is already providing us with an insightful understanding of the situation. While legal experts and policy organizations have explored the legal and constitutional ramifications of the “war on terror”, others have used different approaches to scrutinize the increasing criminalization of the foreign-born. In We are All Suspects Now, Tram NGuyen documents the human drama behind policies implemented in the name of national security. Her book is a perfect illustration of the literature examining the racial impact of post 9/11 policies on immigrants. Her documentarist approach reveals what, according to her, is hidden for many Americans: “the real effects of such policies on their neighbours.39 Likewise Lisa Flores examines the way in which racialized portrayals of immigrants have fed anti-immigrant sentiment over time, leading to federal deportation programs. She looks at the rhetoric used to target certain populations at specific moments in history, tracing “a uniformity in the public vocabulary surrounding immigration and criminality”40. Flores’s argument is crucial: the deportation terror is not just a technology of the state; it is also “an ongoing rhetorical practice”. The combination of act and speech (policies and rhetoric) makes the device a masterful instrument of power. 5. Who Controls and Manages Immigration, Anyway? 23 As the possibility of immigration reform resurfaces, and given the remarkably high number of bills introduced in state and local legislatures since 2006, the fundamental question of who controls U.S. immigration and who manages it on a daily basis should be tackled. The sometimes contradictory initiatives taken at different levels of government raise serious problems pertaining to immigration management, highlighting the existing tension between federal and state/local policies and the subsequent conflicts the lack of consensus brings about.
24 Just in March 2008 a package of bills were presented in Congress (fifteen of them in the Senate), including measures to make English the nation’s official language and to withhold federal money from cities with sanctuary policies.41 Among the bills introduced in the house was H.R. 4088, known as the Save Act (Secure America through Verification and Enforcement), sponsored by Heath Schuler, a democrat from North Carolina, and the fierce anti-immigrant Republican Tom Tancredo from Colorado. Among other things, it called for additional Border Patrol agents with technological support, increased investigation activities and more immigration detention centers at the Border, and it mandated the use of an existing government worker verification database (SAVE/E-Verify worker verification system).
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 47
25 The E-Verify system exemplifies the attempt by the Bush administration to impose its control over the employment of unauthorized workers. Already in August 2007 it was announced that it would address “immigration challenges”, starting with “a rule- making process to require all federal contractors and vendors to use E-Verify.”42 In June 2008, President Bush issued Executive Order 13465 requiring (not just recommending this time) that executive departments and agencies include a provision in contracts mandating use of “an electronic employment eligibility verification system to verify the employment of all new hires.”43 The rule was scheduled to take effect in January 2009 but business groups who strongly opposed the measure filed a lawsuit in the U.S. district court of Maryland, asking for relief.44 If implemented, they argued, the Federal Acquisition Program (FAR) would have a devastating impact on the economy. The rule was postponed a number of times but, in August 2009, the court decided in favor of the government and dismissed the case, making the final (amended) rule effective on September 8, 2009.45 Workers will pay a high price, the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) reports: the Social Security Administration (SSA) has estimated that if the program were to become mandatory and the databases were not improved, “SSA database errors alone could result in 3.6 million workers a year being misidentified as not authorized for employment.”46 The verification component of the Save Act is the one that has drawn the most controversy as it would not only force employers to rely on an admittedly inaccurate verification system for all employees, but it would do so “without any safeguards against racial profiling, misuse, privacy, or error.”47
26 Republican congressmen have made other proposals. One in particular (H.R.4056, the Border Enforcement, Employment Verification, and Illegal Immigration Control Act) is effectively the revived December 2005 bill (re-introduced by representative Sensenbrenner) which would have made the mere fact of working in the U.S. without documents a felony offense. A correlated bill has been introduced in the Senate (S.B. 2294, the Immigration Enforcement and Border Security Act) which would expand the so called “aggravated felony” definition. By withholding up to 50 percent of the DHS funds from the cities, the proposed legislation was evidently targeting sanctuary cities whose policies are seen as protecting immigrant rights. Despite the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 that requires local governments to cooperate with DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, many cities have adopted formal or informal sanctuary policies which, as stated earlier, instruct city employees not to notify the federal Government of the presence of undocumented immigrants (de facto blurring the distinction between legality and illegality).
27 Sanctuary policies are an interesting example of what legal scholar Cristina Rodriguez refers to as an accommodationist posture (in contrast, Romero speaks of an assimilationist approach). Depending heavily on low-skilled immigrant labor in key sectors of their economy, whether hotel/restaurant industries or construction, global cities such as New York, Los Angeles or Chicago have a keen interest in recruiting and incorporating immigrants “at both the high end and the low end of the labor market”, she says.48 Consequently, policymakers in urban settings tend to take stronger pro-immigrant positions than do lawmakers at the national level.”49 In her work, Rodriguez refers to New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg as a strong proponent of legalization programs, and recalls how, following the 2006 mobilizations, he emphasized in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that immigration was inevitable and
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 48
produced economic dynamism.”50 Accommodationist impulse, though, is not limited to large cities. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New Haven, Connecticut, to mention only a few, are prime examples of how some small towns have adopted sanctuary policies. By granting all residents municipal identification cards, thus helping the unauthorized to access public (and even some private) sector services, New Haven encourages all immigrants to trust public officials and helps them and the new Haven community at large to live safely.51 Cambridge, as Rodriguez points out, has gone even further by filing petitions with the state on immigrant rights issues, “including seeking voting rights for non-citizens in local elections.”52
28 Another bill, introduced in Congress by Republican senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson from Georgia, raises the recurrent and contentious issue of immigration enforcement power as it would authorize state and local police to enforce immigration law. Should the bill become law, immigration enforcement would not be under the sole control of the federal government any longer, undermining a principle (known as the ‘exclusivity principle’) entrenched in constitutional and political rhetoric, according to Rodriguez: in other words, the constitution assigns “exclusive and nondevolvable power over immigration to the federal government.”53
29 In fact, the line of separation of powers between federal and state/local authorities has long been blurred. It started with the passing of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) in 1996 which addressed the relationship between the federal government and local governments (also attacking sanctuary policies by outlawing cities’ bans against municipal agents who would report persons’ immigration status to federal authorities). Section 287g of the Act made it possible for state and local law-enforcement persons, such as police officers, to enter into agreements with the federal government to be trained in immigration enforcement, and, subsequent to the training, to enforce immigration law. However, it provided no general power for immigration enforcement by state and local authorities. Several local and state officials have accepted to enroll into the program and are, as a result, authorized to arrest and detain individuals for immigration violations and to investigate immigration cases.
30 Since its implementation, the program has drawn sharp criticism, not only from immigrant rights advocates and local community groups but also from federal officials. A February 2009 report by Justice Strategies, a non-partisan research firm, found “widespread use of pretextual traffic stops, racially motivated questioning, and unconstitutional searches and seizures by local law enforcement agencies granted 287(g) powers.”54 Abuses have been widely reported: in Davidson County, Tennessee, the Sheriff’s Office has notoriously used its granted power to intensify the apprehensions of undocumented immigrants on their way to work or at day labor sites. The case of Maricopa County, Arizona, is even clearer: in March 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation into County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to determine whether he was using his power to target Latino immigrants55: Arpaio, who is known for working hand in hand with ‘minutemen’, entered the program under the Bush administration (he has since been able to build the highest number of officers trained to enforce federal immigration laws - 3000 people.)56
31 At the other end of the chain of discontent, injured migrants and Arizona community- based organizations, represented by the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, have brought a lawsuit against Maricopa County’s policy of arresting and
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 49
prosecuting non-smuggler migrants for “felony conspiracy” to transport themselves through the County.57 As the federal district court refused to hear the case (on the grounds that migrants should raise their claims before the Arizona state courts), the Center appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, interestingly arguing that “the federal courts are best-suited to deciding whether the County’s policy amounts to an unconstitutional state program to regulate international migration.”58
32 It is now common knowledge that the program encourages civil rights abuses and has resulted in the wrongful detention of lawful permanent residents and even U.S. citizens.59 Yet in July 2009, despite numerous abuses and in the absence of oversight, DHS secretary Janet Napolitano announced her plan to expand the 287(g) program to eleven new jurisdictions around the country, raising general concern - even among police and police chiefs associations - that “deputizing local law enforcement officers to enforce civil federal immigration law undermine the trust and cooperation of immigrant communities.”60 It is quite instructive to highlight what Napolitano said of the program just over a year ago, at a time when she was governor of Arizona. In July 2007 she signed a law in favor of employer sanctions, threatening to suspend their activity. Under surrounding pressure, she later took a step back by vetoing a bill requiring all police and sheriffs’ departments in the state to join the federal immigration posse. She dismissed the bill as impractical and expensive: “the cost of training officers under the 287(g) program”, she said then, “could total 100 million dollars with no guarantee that the government would pay.”61
33 The NILC has strongly reacted to the DHS Secretary’s announcement of the extension of the 287(g) provisions: “the White House has responded to documented violations within the program by expanding it”, the executive director laments. By embracing this notoriously problematic experiment, the new administration is not in line, to say the least, with the reform it has promised, and is already facing serious protest.
34 The existence of the 287g program (and the willingness of some police departments to enter into it) is particularly interesting when it is understood in contrast to the sanctuary phenomenon. It underscores the wide range of views held by public officials and local communities on the subject of immigration management and the way they interact with unauthorized populations in particular.62 Views and initiatives are not always in accordance with one another, they may even be contradictory. Yet, the very fact they co-exist is indeed the living proof of a de facto “integrated policy.” 6. The State/Federal Divide Over Immigration Power 35 It is appropriate, at this stage, to tackle the issue of “who” is legally in charge of immigration matters. With a view to discerning the powers of the federal and state governments over noncitizens, Victor Romero examines what constitutional lawyers consider as the two sources that give authority to the federal government: the text of the Constitution and the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court interpreting that text.63 He acknowledges the fact that the Constitution has something to say about immigration (in terms of who may enter/must leave the country) and about citizenship (who gets to be a U.S. citizen). Only, he admits, “what it says is not entirely clear nor does it specify how national laws regarding migrants coexist with local laws affecting the same.”64 Article I of the Constitution establishes that both houses in Congress are responsible for drafting laws that allow “qualified” noncitizens to attain full U.S. citizenship (thus seemingly giving the legislative branch authority), Romero highlights. As for the Fourteenth Amendment, it guarantees citizenship to “all born within U.S.
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 50
territory” but stipulates nothing about congressional power to regulate the movement of noncitizens into and out of the country. The Constitution says even less about the power of the states over noncitizens.65
36 With such “textual ambiguity”, Romero explains, it has been useful to turn to the Supreme Court as the interpreter of the Constitution for guidance: in most cases, the Court has deferred to Congress and the President in the development of federal immigration policy, creating what has been called the “plenary power doctrine.”66 In the 19th century, it consistently held that the federal government had exclusive power over immigration.67 Over time, it has placed limits on congressional power “by interpreting immigration statutes in ways favorable to the noncitizen, and by requiring that other federal laws outside the immigration rules (the so-called alienage laws affecting benefits) make reasonable sense.”68
37 Despite a few exceptions, the Court still tends to defer to the federal government. In contrast, it strictly reviews state and local laws on the (theoretical) basis that noncitizens do not migrate to an individual state, but to the United States as a country. Such contrast in the deference granted to the federal government over noncitizens and the systematic review states have been subjected to, Romero contends, is likely to be scrutinized in the coming years as more and more states and localities try to extend their immigration power. Considering the difficulties the federal government encounters to “physically” control the flow of noncitizens into the country, and the fact that states are the first to be affected by – hence to adapt to - the realities of such flows, a shift from the national to the local has occurred. It is thus likely, indeed, that state and local governments will only legislate more.
38 States have long been active in immigration policy but, as stated earlier, efforts designed to control immigration movement (the movement of unauthorized immigrants in particular) have intensified in recent years. The numerous measures do not speak with one voice, accounting for the diversity of (sometimes conflicting) positions: on the one hand, they may express growing nativist sentiments of local communities with a large influx of immigrants or the uneasiness of local/state governments in regions which have had little or no experience of managing new immigrants; at the other end of the spectrum, they tend to reflect immigrant-friendly positions held for practical reasons and/or political convictions. State laws evidence such diverging views. A significant number of them tend to reduce “illegal” immigrants’ access to employment (Mississippi has made it a felony for workers without proper documents to hold a job,) and deny them identification (Oklahoma laws have been enacted to force undocumented immigrants further underground by denying them driver’s licences, and sheltering or transporting them has become a felony.)69 Yet, not all states penalize employees, and several lawmakers have legislated in ways to support and integrate unauthorized immigrant communities. These states have probably decided “to learn to live with the new demography,” as Cristina Rodriguez puts it.
39 Such a wide range of views coupled with Congress’ inability to pass comprehensive reform seemingly reflects the “unsuitability of a strictly federal response to immigration.”70 Given the combined activity of local/state governments and legislatures, Rodriguez argues for a compromise which would reconcile the contradiction between rhetoric and reality, “calling for a modus vivendi regarding immigration regulations by all levels of government.”71 What is essential about her
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 51
argument is the information she provides to back this up. Her ensuing proposition draws on her understanding of the intricacy of the situation:
40 “The federal government, the states, and localities form part of an integrated regulatory structure that helps the country as a whole to absorb immigration flows and manage the social and cultural change that immigration inevitably engenders. The primary function states and localities play in this structure is to integrate immigrants, legal and illegal alike, into the body politic. By demonstrating how states play this role, I establish the proposition that immigration regulation should be included in the list of … state interests, such as education, crime control and the regulation of safety and welfare, not just because immigration affects each of those interests, but also because managing immigrant movement is itself a state interest.”
41 Rodriguez does not see that the federal exclusivity principle could be inconsistent with her proposition (that states help immigrants integrate), but she demonstrates that the integration challenge sometimes requires states/localities to take decisions that resemble immigration controls.72 While admitting that state and local regulation may be seen as intrusive from a pro-federalist perspective, and that it may produce tension and contradictory results, she insists that it provides local communities with advantages that federal authorities are not in a position to offer. “The uniformity called for by actors on both sides of the debate”, she concludes, “is not only difficult to achieve, it is also often counter-productive.”73 Taking into account what today’s realities suggest (namely different imperatives), she advocates the need for “subfederal regulation.”
42 As she traces the history of the concept of exclusive federal control over immigration through Supreme Court decisions, Rodriguez contends that the principle has developed into “a formal doctrine for functional reasons, without strong constitutional justification.” While there is no reason for abandoning the exclusivity principle, she reckons, it should not necessarily apply to all immigration matters. Surely, strong federal leadership is needed (for coherent admission and removal processes, and to prevent states from imposing “externalities” on their neighbors,74) but state and federal governments should cooperate, in particular in law-making processes. For the system to be functional, new lawmaking norms should be defined, giving lawmakers incentives to engage in possible federal-state-local cooperation, and Congress should be restrained as much from “explicitly preempting” state and local legislation as from “over-regulating with respect to integration issues, such as the rights and benefits states can accord immigrants within their jurisdictions.”75 7. Conclusion: Immigrants as Emergent Political Subjects 43 Immigration regulation cannot be thought of in the sole context of the nation-state. The control of immigration may remain a federal issue (nation-states decide who to admit) but “questions of who should belong to a political community, and who should be allowed to cross borders, are also both global and local in scope.”76 As she moves the debate to the question of how to integrate immigrants into the body politic, Rodriguez suggests that conceptions of popular sovereignty should now be injected into the discourse on immigration regulation (the rise of local/state initiatives signaling a change in that direction). Those most affected by immigration controls should have a say in the design and implementation of those controls, she contends, “which will require including not only the residents of states and localities but also the voices of
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 52
immigrants themselves.”77 Such a contention (re)places immigrants at the center of both action and thought, as much from a political as a philosophical point of view.
44 In The Rights of Others, political scientist Seyla Benhabib focuses on ‘political membership’ which she considers, unlike most theorists, as an aspect of domestic or international justice (by political membership she means the “principles and practices for incorporating aliens and strangers, immigrants and newcomers, refugees and asylum seekers into existing polities.”78) Contrary to political boundaries which include some while excluding others, membership is meaningful under certain conditions. Benhabib challenges membership as defined by the doctrine of state sovereignty: in other words, when regulated in terms of national citizenship only. To her, such modalities are no longer adequate. She argues that transnational migrations (and the policies suggested by peoples’ movement across boundaries) are “central to interstate relations and therefore to a normative theory of global justice.” Aware of the philosophical dilemma liberal democracies are faced with (maintain their sovereignty through the control of migration on the one hand, adhere to universal human rights principles on the other), Benhabib does not call for the demise of the state system nor for world citizenship. Rather, she stresses the significance of political membership “within bounded communities” (not within nationally bounded spaces), defending the need for “democratic attachments” that need not be directed toward existing nation- state structures alone.79 Subnational and supra-national spaces for such democratic attachments are emerging in today’s world, she asserts, and they should be advanced along with existing political entities.”80 Interestingly, Monisha Das Gupta, who writes of the conceptions of rights in a transnational era, recently discussed what the immigrant rights marches of 2006 have revealed. Focusing on emerging rights claims (whether migrant, civil or indigenous), she makes a similar stand: the need for rights, she says, should be thought outside of citizenship, “within transnational flows and not within nationally bounded spaces.”81
45 In a similar vein, Saskia Sassen’s essay entitled “The Repositioning of Citizenship and Alienage”82 in global cities discusses the crucial changes the alien and the citizen - whom she identifies as the foundational subjects for membership - are undergoing in the modern nation-state. The changes which she sees as primarily taking place in large cities are not formalized yet, she states, but they have definitely led to “a partial blurring of each the citizen subject and the alien subject.”83 The changes, which range from economic deregulation to the growing prominence of an “international rights regime,” have resulted in globalization-linked policies. Consequently, urban settings - global cities in particular - have become spaces where political practices have actively developed. Among the multiple actors who have emerged in such productive spaces are the unauthorized migrants. Though unauthorized, she says, they have become “recognized.” Engaged in numerous informal practices at both local and transnational levels (United States immigrants are a good illustration of such activism), they constitute new types of political actors, actors she refers to as “emergent subjects.” Crucial to Sassen’s argument is that such dynamics “signal the possibilities for a politics of membership that is simultaneously localized and transnational,” a contention strongly supported by Seyla Benhabib. 84 In the current period, political membership increasingly exists at both levels, local and transnational, and immigrants have been leading agents of the occurring transformation. It will be interesting to observe how, through daily practices such as strong community ties and participation in civic
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 53
activities, these emerging “subjects” - many of which being “impossible subjects” by law - get recognition as full social beings.
NOTES
1. Victor Romero, “Who Should Manage Immigration –Congress or the States?,” Rachel Ida Buff, ed., Immigrant Rights in the Shadows of Citizenhip (New York: New York University Press, 2008). 2. Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens (Cambridge University Press, 2004). 3. Saskia Sassen, “The Repositioning of Citizenship and Alienage: Emergent Subjects and Spaces for Politics,” Globalizations 2.1 (2005): 79-94. 4. Didier Bigo, Laurent Bonelli, Thomas Deltombe, eds., Au nom du 11 septembre… Les démocraties à l’épreuve de l’antiterrorisme (Editions La Découverte, 2008). 5. Ibid., 7. 6. Ibid., 17. The term “illiberal” means that it threatens fundamental liberties. 7. Ibid., 33. 8. Nicholas de Genova, “The Production of Culprits: Deportability and Detainability in the Aftermath of Homeland Security,” Citizenship Studies 11.5 (2007): 423. 9. Ibid., 422. 10. The National Strategy for Homeland Security (USOHS, 2002) quoted by De Genova in “The Production of Culprits,” 423. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., 423. De Genova quotes Amy Kaplan in “Homeland Insecurities: Reflections on Language and Space,” Radical History Review 85 (2003): 90. 13. Ibid., 424. 14. Enforcement measures in the Solve Act allowed the U.S. government to expand its use of secret evidence to deny citizenship based on a vague definition of “terrorist activity and security related grounds.” Eunice Hyunhye Cho, “Beyond the Day Without an Immigrant,” in Buff, Immigrant Rights, 103. 15. David Bacon, Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008), 153-155. It is interesting to see how the AFL-CIO which, until the late 1990s, showed little concern for foreign-origin workers, is now at the forefront of the defense of immigrant rights. The organization has seemingly overcome its anti-immigrant sentiments, now acknowledging the presence of immigrant workers – even the undocumented ones - in major sectors of the American economy, and the necessity to address their needs. 16. AFL-CIO, Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney on the Senate’s Immigration Bill (Washington, D.C.: AFL-CIO, 2006), quoted by E.H. Cho in “Beyond the Day Without an Immigrant,” 103.
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 54
17. The most recent estimate, 11.9 million, indicates that unauthorized immigrants make up 4 percent of the U.S. population. Jeffrey Passel, “Trends in Unauthorized Immigration,” Pew Hispanic Center, October 2, 2008. 18. Sandra Sanchez, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s Project Voice, quoted by Buff in Immigrant Rights, 106. 19. David Bacon, Illegal People, 150. 20. Ibid., 147. 21. Ibid., 153. 22. Ibid., 12. 23. Ibid., 14. 24. Ibid., 16. 25. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff ‘s statement quoted by Bacon, 16. 26. Ibid., 16. 27. Erik Camay-Freixas, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, July 11, 2008 (accessed August 23, 2009). Posted by Arnoldo Garcia. 28. David Cole, “Their liberties, Our security”, Immigrant Rights, 353-54. 29. KBR, a company now famous for its war profits in Iraq, and a subsidiary of Halliburton, the corporation once directed by former U.S. Vice President Dick Chesney, was awarded a $385 million contingency contract in January 2006. De Genova, “The Production of Culprits,” 425.. 30. Rachel Ida Buff, “The Deportation Terror,”American Quarterly 60.3 (September 2008): 525. 31. Ibid., 545. Here, Buff quotes Kanstroom. 32. De Genova, “The Production of Culprits,” 426. 33. USDHS-ICE, 2003, 2 quoted by De Genova, 426. For an overview of the scholarship dealing with the formation of racialized identities, see both De genova’s and Buffs ’s essays, as well as the magisterial work done by historian Mae Ngai in Impossible Subjects. 34. Rachel Ida Buff, “The Deportation Terror,” 528. 35. Ibid. 36. Scott Michaelsen, “Between Japanese Internment and the USA Patriot Act: the Borderlands and the Permanent State of Racial Exception,” Aztlan 30.2 (Fall 2005). Michaelsen is quoted by Rachel I. Buff in “The Deportation Terror”, 38. 37. Natsu Taylor Saito, “Whose Liberty? Whose Security? The USA Patriot Act in the Context of COINTELPRO and the Unlawful Repression of Political Dissent,” Oregon Law Review 81 (2002). 38. Natsu Taylor Saito, “Reflections on Homeland and Security, “ CR: The New Centennial Review 6.2 (2006): 246-47. 39. Tram Nguyen, We Are All Suspects Now (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005): xxiii. 40. Lisa Flores, “Constructing Rhetorical Borders,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 20.4 (December 2003). Quoted by Buff, “The Deportation Terror,” 528. 41. Sanctuary cities have a tradition to direct local officials - whether city employees or police agents - not to check the immigration status of residents using city services, and not to report undocumented immigrants (when aware of their presence) to federal authorities. Proponents of such policies argue that
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 55
they promote efforts of police and health departments to cooperate with immigrant communities in order to reduce crime and improve public health in those communities. A New York Times article dated November 29, 2007 listed 32 cities or counties with such policies. Some cities implemented sanctuary as early as the 1970s, others more recently. Sanctuary policies may be formal and written (in the form of a local ordinance) or informal. When mayors-elect inherit them, they may retreat or decide to reaffirm their support of unauthorized immigrants – such is the case of Gavin Newsome in San Francisco. They may also continue adopting them - this was the case of former New York City mayor Rudolf Giuliani who inherited Executive Order 41 from the previous mayoral administration. 42. The National Immigration Law Center, (hereafter quoted as NILC) “Summary of Final Rule,” Federal Acquisition Regulation: Employment Eligibility Verification,” August 2009, 1. Accessed September 1, 2009. 43. Ibid., 2. 44. NILC, July 2009, 1. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Luis Rumbaut, “Wave of Immigration Bills Hits Congress,” The Washington Independent, March 14, 2008. 48. Cristina Rodriguez, “The Significance of the Local in Immigration Regulation,” Michigan Law Review, vol. 106 (February 2008): 577. 49. Ibid. 50. Michael Bloomberg did not initially embrace his predecessor’s position, as Rodriguez points out (a position inherited by mayor Rudolph Giuliani from former mayor Ed Koch in 1989). In 2003, under pressure from interest groups, Bloomberg repealed the City’s policy on the grounds that it conflicted with the 1996 federal immigration laws. Instead, he issued Executive Order 34 which instructed city employers not to ask about an individual’s status “but permitting employers to transmit status information to federal authorities.” The ensuing opposition of immigrant advocates led him to issue a more “immigrant-friendly” order (E.O.41) which sets out a general city privacy policy, limiting the extent to which city officials can collect and report information regarding immigration status. For a more detailed account of New York City’s sanctuary policy history, see Cristina Rodriguez‘s essay, 602-603. 51. Ibid., 579. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid., 570. 54. “Advocates issue statement condemning Obama’s Administration’s expansion of DHS’s failed 287(g) program,” NILC, July 17, 2009 (accessed August 23, 2009). 55. Ibid. 56. “Immigration, Outsourced,” New York Times, April 9, 2008. 57. “Detained Migrants and CBOs continue to press challenge Maricopa County criminal ‘conspiracy’ policy”, Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, accessed August 28, 2009. 58. Ibid.
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 56
59. “Letter to the White House,” NILC, August 27, 2009 (accessed September 2, 2009) 60. NILC, July 17, 2009. 61. “Pulling Back the Immigration Posse,” New York Times, April 30, 2008. 62. Rodriguez, “The Significance of the Local In Immigration Regulation,” 603. 63. Romero, “Who Should Manage Immigration –Congress or the States?”, in Buff, Immigrant Rights, 287. 64. Ibid., 287. 65. For a more detailed examination of the so-called post-civil war amendments, see Romero’s essay, 288. 66. Ibid. 67. Three decisions formed the basis for constitutional immigration law: Chae Chan Ping v. United States, Fong Yue Ting v. United States and Yick Wo v. Hopkins. 68. Romero, “Who Should Manage Immigration,” 291. 69. “The Road to Dystopia,” New York Times, March 13, 2008 70. Rodriguez, “The Significance of the Local in Immigration Regulation,” 580. 71. Ibid., 570. 72. Ibid., 571. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid., 573. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid., 641. 77. Ibid. 78. Benhabib, The Rights of Others, 1. 79. Ibid., 2-3. 80. Ibid., 3. 81. Monisha Das Gupta, “Rights in A Transnational Era,” in Buff, Immigrant Rights, 406-7. 82. Saskia Sassen, “The Repositioning of Citizenship and Alienage.” 83. Ibid., 79. 84. Ibid.
ABSTRACTS
In the likely event that immigration reform will be discussed again in the U.S. Congress in the year 2010, the circumstances and events that have led to the current state of affairs will here be analysed: firstly, the immigration policies implemented from 9/11 until the failed attempt at reforming immigration legislation; secondly, the complex array of recent local and state initiatives which have increasingly served as a substitute for federal immigration control and management. As I examine this evolution and the conflict it has generated, I will devote special attention to undocumented immigrants: from the harsh treatment to which they were subjected during the Bush presidency to the conditions in which they have come to mobilize and have
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009 57
emerged as political actors, even to the point of transforming ideas of citizenship and related rights.
AUTHOR
CATHERINE LEJEUNE Catherine Lejeune, Université Paris Diderot – Paris 7, France
European journal of American studies, 4-3 | 2009