The Immigration Industrial Complex: Why We Enforce Immigration Policies Destined to Fail

This article provides a genealogy of the idea of an immigration industrial complex. The immigration industrial complex is the confluence of public and private sector interests in the criminalization of undocumented migration, immigration law enforcement, and the promotion of ‘anti‐illegal’ rhetoric. This concept is based on ideas developed with regard to the prison and military industrial complexes. These three complexes share three major features: (a) a rhetoric of fear; (b) the convergence of powerful interests; and (c) a discourse of other‐ization. This article explores why Congress has not passed viable legislation to deal with undocumented migration, and instead has passed laws destined to fail, and has appropriated billions of dollars to the Department of Homeland Security to implement these laws. This has been exacerbated in the context of the War on Terror, now that national security has been conflated with immigration law enforcement. This is the first in a two‐part series on the immigration industrial complex.     

A Confluence of Interests in Immigration Enforcement: How Politicians,the Media,and Corporations Profit from Immigration Policies Destined to Fail

The concept of an immigration industrial complex draws from previous work on the prison industrial complex and the military industrial complex. All three of these complexes point to the ways that the interests of government bureaucracies, corporate elites, and politicians shape laws and policies. This article explains how the undocumented status of migrants provides advantages to at least three groups: (a) media pundits who make their careers railing against ‘illegal aliens’; (b) politicians who use undocumented migrants as scapegoats; and (c) contractors who profit from massive immigration enforcement expenditures. The disenfranchised status of undocumented migrants enhances the ability of each of these groups to benefit from their presence. This confluence of interests explains why Congress has not enacted viable immigration policies that effectively deal with the ‘problem’ of illegal immigration. This is the second in a two‐part series on the immigration industrial complex.     

Troubling the ‘Happy Family’: US Liberalism and Narratives of Transnational Adoption and Immigration from China

This essay connects adoption and immigration from China by considering the relationship between the adoptee and the Chinese nanny hired to care for her. I examine news media alongside Wendy Lee’s 2008 novel, Happy Family, which portrays the adoptive family through the perspective of a Fujianese immigrant domestic worker. Transnational adoption from China emerged in the early 1990s as undocumented immigration from the Fujian province rose, representing a major shift in Chinese immigration. These practices have been apprehended divergently in mainstream discourses. This essay approaches the family as a site of neoliberal privatization that frames adoption in terms of inclusion into US national ideologies of race, gender, and class, while undocumented immigration from China has been framed through exclusion. I argue that the nanny destabilizes the construction of the family as a space of depoliticized inclusion through her labor, revealing the neoliberal inequalities that shape both adoption and immigration.     

Whom Should We Serve? A Discourse Analysis of Social Workers’ Commentary on Undocumented Immigrants

We present a discourse analysis of social work practitioners’ commentaries on undocumented immigrants that were collected from a survey of practicing social workers’ attitudes toward immigration and immigrants. Analyzing 198 open-ended comments, we explore the discursive mechanisms practitioners employ to construct undocumented immigrants, and their professional responsibilities toward them. These views are illustrative of the ways in which the profession determines inclusion and exclusion, writ large in national immigration policies and laws and played out in the arenas of social work and social services. Disparate views of practitioners highlight tensions in the profession's relationships to law and social policies as well as to its own ethics and identity.     

Fiction Over Facts: How Competing Narrative Forms Explain Policy in a New Immigration Destination1

U.S. immigration has changed dramatically in the last 20 years: immigrants have increasingly gravitated toward “new destinations” and a growing portion are undocumented. In the absence of federal comprehensive immigration reform, states are proposing a patchwork of laws. While some laws encourage immigrant integration, most seek restriction. To understand this trend, this article analyzes Utah as a new immigration destination, exploring its transformation from an inclusive to a restrictive state. It focuses on a major debate: whether to allow unauthorized residents legal driving privileges. Because Utah initiated this law earlier than most, it leads this debate. To explain its evolution, this article analyzes 10 years of legislative debates and articles published on this law. Building on the narrative studies literature, I find that both sides of the immigration debate utilized a public safety and well‐being narrative. However, supporters of the driver license law relied on a “lower mimetic” narrative, characterized by logic and factual arguments. In contrast, their opponents wove a compelling, “apocalyptic” narrative to criticize the law. This narrative indelibly linked immigration to the dangers of crime and terrorism and thus paved the way for the passage of one of the most restrictive immigration laws in the United States.     

French immigration policy since May 1981

Examining the immigration policy changes undertaken by Socialist President Francois Mitterand between May 1981 and September 1982, this discussion provides backgroung information for the study of immigration policy reform in France, discusses the institutional and historical contexts within which recent policy changes have occurred, and examines the initial measures taken, the new immigration legislation adopted in October 1981, the "Exceptional Regularization" carried out in 1981-82, and various other immigration measures announced during the period under study. The discussion also identifies some of the problems which arose and are likely to arise as a result of the new policies. The French government has historically taken great pains to track the movement of both foreigners and natives within its territory. All citizens are issued a national identity card, and all foreigners residing in the country for longer than 3 months must obtain a residence permit from their local prefecture of police. The entry of some 347 million people annually into France must contribute to the problem of exercising strict control at entry. French measures to enforce immigration laws within its borders have not prevented the development of clandestine immigration nor the employment of undocumented foreigners. French law requires that all employers and employees contribute to the system of the Securite Sociale and to a variety of other government programs providing social and economic assistance to workers and their families. The year 1932 marks the date of the first French laws limiting immigration. On July 5, 1974 the French government closed the country's borders to immigration and have not reopened them since. Following that date a more severe attitude towards clandestine immigration became evident. Despite the anti-immigration policies of the 1974-81 period the number of foreigners residing in France did not diminish. 3 basic goals guided the new government in the development of its policies: to limit the entry of new foreigners; to end the precariousness which has characterized the existence of many immigrant families in France; and to examine immigration problems through bilateral negotiation with various sending countries. The immigration policy developed and carried out by the Mitterand administration during its first 15 months in office expressed an attitude of generosity towards established immigrants and external rigor vis-a-vis new immigration. The generosity of the new government is evident in the limitations placed on expulsion and detention, the guarantee of due process of law and all job-related rights for undocumented foreigners, the reaffirmation of family reunification, easier access to "privileged" immigrant status, the extension of the right of employment to foreign students and to Polish and Lebanese refugees, and new legislation guaranteeing the right of association to immigrants. The government's desire to control immigration more effectively is evident in the tightening of control at France's borders and in the substantial increases in sanctions against employers of clandestine workers.     

The status and rights of undocumented aliens in the United States

At the most general constitutional level, American immigration law contains 3 structural features that directly affect the rights of aliens, including undocumented ones: 1) the plenary power of the national government over immigration and aliens, 2) the federal system per se, and 3) the separation of powers at the national level. 4 factors that affect the rights of undocumented aliens are 1) the possibility of formal relief from deportation, 2) the possibility of procedural challenges to deportation, 3) the possibility of delay and the resulting ineffectiveness of formal immigration enforcement, and 4) the informal system of enforcement to which the Immigration and Naturalization Service has been forced to resort. Undocumented aliens in the US have full acccess to state and federal courts, possess extensive procedural rights, and have acquired important substantive rights. Recent developments concerning the rights of undocumented aliens under domestic American law raise a number of questions that have not yet been squarely faced, much less resolved in satisfactory ways. These include: 1) the actual utilization by undocumented aliens of public benefits to which they are not legally entitled, 2) the appropriate criteria for determining which rights should be established, 3) the barriers that preve nt undocumented aliens from asserting those rights, and 4) the implications for an effective and fair US immigration policy of expanding undocumented aliens' rights.     

Labour Migration Policy in Russia: Considerations on Governmentality

The authors argue that Russian migration policy reflects the functioning of contemporary Russia's entire bureaucratic machine. The bureaucracy's Soviet‐era governance techniques on the one hand and the material interests of particular pressure groups on the other, shape the manipulation of immigration regulation that has occurred since the early 2000s. Therefore, attempts to liberalize migration regulation, i.e., to simplify the legalization of foreign workers, have always been incoherent, accompanied by reservations and limitations. Additionally, Russian actions are riddled with conflict between ‘geopolitical’ and domestic policy rationales. The authorities’ occasional attempts to use immigration regulation as a foreign policy tool acquire primarily symbolic value in the ‘domestic political market’ rather than serving any instrumental purpose. The effort to enhance Russian influence in the post‐Soviet space through the ‘reintegration project’ (Eurasian Economic Union) collides with the goal of national labour market protection, since integration entails the removal of barriers to labour movement.     

Mexican Migration for Dummies: What Social Workers and the Public Need to Know

SUMMARY

Amid the derisive, post-911 political debate about border control, national security, and “illegal aliens,” nobody, not even immigrant advocates and protesters, is articulating the macro-level, global economic root cause of undocumented labor migration to America. In simple terms, this essay describes how the contradictory policies of an open border for trade (i.e., NAFTA) and a closed border for immigration result in a predictable undocumented migration bridge between the U.S. and Mexico that must be sensibly regulated for the good of neighboring countries that now share formally integrated economies, yet informally integrated populations. Implications for policy and immigrant serving social workers and other human service providers are discussed.     

Illegals and expulsion in Africa: the Nigerian experience

The persistence and widespread nature of undocumented migration in Africa is due to 1) the absence of barriers or the arbitrariness of national frontiers, 2) the large stretch of unpoliced borders, 3) ignorance about the existence of borders, and 4) the absence or inadequacy of migration laws and regulations in both the countries of origin and destination. The free movement of persons in Africa has a long tradition. Over a large part of Africa, international migration is regarded as an extension of internal migration. The free movement of persons across frontiers in Africa historically has been facilitated by the cultural affinity of communities divided by international boundaries and the colonial policies of both the French and British. The "migration" of nomads pays little regard to international borders and is largely undocumented, even in national censuses. The frontier workers along the borders of Uganda and Kenya where members of the same extended family live on both sides of the borders and commute daily are statistically regarded as international migrants, without regard for the sociocultural realities of the African situation. Political independence substantially altered the erstwhile free movement of persons across African countries as national governments enacted immigration laws and regulations. The newly independent countries wanted to reserve employment for nationals. The Sahelian drought, internal strife in Chad, the deteriorating economic situation in Ghana, the oil-lead economic boom in Nigeria, and the treaty on the free movement of people in the community accelerate the tempo of undocumented migration in West Africa. Also, migration laws and regulations are not always rigorously enforced. Expulsion and deportation are common policy measures directed at illegal migrants resident in African countries. In Nigeria, the events leading to the expulsion of aliens were gradual, but in all cases, the actual expulsion--or decisions to expel--are usually sudden and dramatic.     

Narratives of ‘mixed race’ youth in South Korea: racial order and in-betweenness

South Korea has long been regarded as a country with a single ethnicity. Honhyeol, which literally means ‘mixed blood’ in Korean, exemplifies this orientation. In recent years, the number of ‘mixed race’ children in the country has been on the rise due to the increase in international marriages, particularly between Korean men and foreign women. Drawing on the personal narratives of 56 youths (aged between 9 and 17) obtained from three essay contests, this article examines how, why, and in which contexts the racial hierarchies of ‘mixed race’ children in Korea are constructed. Narratives of ‘mixed race’ children and their peers show that a ‘hierarchical racial order’ – characterized by a color-coding system that simultaneously operates along the lines of national origin – is channeled into ‘mixed race’ people’s everyday lives, thus shaping their identity constructions.     

Overlooking/Looking Over Neoliberal Immigration: Amnesty Policy in the ‘Nation of Immigrants’

In the self-proclaimed ‘nation of immigrants’, a struggle for power plays out in US immigration law. This article examines such a struggle in the context of rising neoliberalism. As president Ronald Reagan set out to revolutionize America with the deregulation of the economy, privatization, and the globalization of capitalist democracy, pundits claimed that the country was experiencing a Mexican illegal immigration crisis that pivoted on Mexican women's fecundity and abuse of social services. Yet along with punitive provisions, the first US law to directly address undocumented migration, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) included an amnesty programme widely praised as a democratic watershed for the undocumented. Consequently, ‘multicultural’ immigrant men and women seemed to be embraced, while in the same breath disciplined through discourses of respectability and criminality that secured both a pool of cheap immigrant labourers and minoritized citizens. More specifically, two strains of ‘nation of immigrants’ discourse that circulated around amnesty during the law-making process affectively (and effectively) framed America as the globally exceptional guarantor of democratic rights, inclusivity, and equal access to economic opportunity for citizens. On one hand, discourse that welcomed and celebrated an abstracted immigrant subject who was free to succeed on the basis of individual hard work was coded as the epitome of Americanism. On the other hand, discourse that welcomed explicitly racialized and gendered immigrants who were free to succeed on the basis of their hard work was coded as emblematically American. In this case respectable tokens of multiculturalism (i.e. immigrants of colour and especially immigrant women of colour who upheld traditional family values) evidenced American inclusivity. This article argues that both strains of ‘nation of immigrants’ discourse naturalized a relationship between citizenship, freedom, and free markets and thus powerfully masked the exploitative social relations key to neoliberal economic arrangements.     

Attitudes of Mexican Americans toward irregular immigration

This inquiry focuses on the attitudes of 314 Mexican Americans toward issues relating to current US immigration policy. Telephone and personal interviews were conducted in Hidalgo and Travis counties, Texas, with Mexican-Americans. Virtually all respondent groups oppose an increased rate of immigration, consider illegal immigration to be an important problem, support stricter enforcement of immigration laws, and believe that undocumented workers take jobs no one else wants. Half of the respondents identify illegal immigration as a regional rather than a personal problem. At the same time, the data suggest significant differences in both direction and intensity of attitudes between Mexican Americans of different generations, income, occupational levels, and region. There is general opposition to the requirement of a national identity card, but widespread support for penalizing employers of undocumented workers and for granting amnesty to undocumented workers. These findings allow an examination of the extent to which the Mexican American leadership, which has been overwhelmingly opposed to the Simpson-Mazzoli bill, accurately reflects the views of the Mexican American people. The leadership and the population at large agree on 2 of the 3 issues, amnesty and the national identity card, but disagree on employer sanctions. 1st, it may be that the leadership holds the kinds of jobs for which undocumented workers are unlikely to compete, so they may not feel threatened. 2nd, they may feel that instituting employer sanctions will create incentives for employers to discriminate in their hiring practices against all Latino-looking job applicants. Non-elite Mexican Americans who support employer sanctions may believe that the only way they can compete for jobs is to make it impossible for elites to be hired. Both groups appear to fear that, regardless of the specifics of immigration reform, Mexican Americans are likely to encounter increased discrimination in the job market.     

Multigenerational Punishment: Shared Experiences of Undocumented Immigration Status Within Mixed‐Status Families

Estimates suggest that approximately 16.6 million people in the United States are members of mixed‐status families composed of undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens or documented immigrants. Drawing on interviews with 32 undocumented 1.5‐generation parents, the author explores how immigration laws affect undocumented parents and their citizen children. She finds that U.S. citizen children and their undocumented parents often share in the risks and limitations associated with undocumented immigration status. She conceptualizes this phenomenon as multigenerational punishment, a distinct form of legal violence wherein the sanctions intended for a specific population spill over to negatively affect individuals who are not targeted by laws. Though not restricted to familial relationships, multigenerational punishment tends to occur within families because of the strong social ties, sustained day‐to‐day interactions, and dependent relationships found among family members. This sheds light on how laws can further the reproduction of inequality within families and over generations.     

Rethinking law from below: experiences from the Kuna people and Rojava

ABSTRACT

This article presents a modest summary of the vivid discussions around the role of law and human rights that took place during the workshop ‘Seeking answers from below to the contemporary crisis of democracy’ in Siena in October 2018. Representatives from social movements, CSOs and academic considered law as one of the central issues to be discussed in order to better grasp and counter the global power structures. Law historically serves national and global elites’ interests, being applied to maintain the status quo of social injustice and inequalities. Therefore, this article presents some ideas and provokes some fundamental questions on how law and human rights can be part of an emancipatory project. Based on concrete experiences of the participants, from Rojava to the Kuna people, we critically discuss how legal instruments can be used to strategically defend people’s rights, strengthening the use of law from below.     

When Do Papers Matter? An Institutional Analysis of Undocumented Life in the United States

This article assesses how two key institutions differentially shape immigrants’ relationship to their rights in American society. We draw on over 200 in‐depth interviews to argue that there is a stark difference between how schools encourage undocumented youth to view themselves as equal members of US society and how undocumented workers are marginalized in the workplace. We find that even as schools track and stratify students, they also foster a culture of meritocracy between documented and undocumented youth. Schools ultimately render immigration status irrelevant as undocumented youth learn to navigate the primary institution of this stage of their lives. Conversely, immigration status is central to the experience of undocumented workers, who develop a particular set of survival skills that help them live and work successfully in the United States without being detected while also erecting a barrier between themselves and any additional rights they may be afforded.     

The expansion of “crimmigration,” mass detention,and deportation

In recent years, the deportation and detention of immigrants has become a common phenomenon around the world. In this article, we shed light on the global expansion of crimmigration (the increasingly blurring of lines between immigration and criminal laws) and examine in depth the United States as an example of this trend. Crimmigration scholarship has largely focused on the processes in which laws, media narratives, and political discourses criminalize undocumented immigrants. We summarize the literature that demonstrates how these processes are predicated on the racialization and gendering of certain immigrants, in the United States and elsewhere. Using the US case as an example, we discuss how criminalization practices are closely tied to for profit prison interests. Finally, we provide suggestions for future research to critically examine the criminalization of immigration and immigrants.     

Undocumented residents in the United States in 1990: issues of uncertainty in quantification

"Uncertainties are abundant about the measurement of net undocumented migration [to the United States] and change over the past two decades. This analysis presents possible upper and lower boundaries on components for estimating legal migration in 1980-1989 and on the foreign-born population in 1990. Positing ranges for net undocumented immigration, between 2 million and 4 million undocumented residents may have been counted in the 1990 census. The total number of undocumented residents may have been as high as 6 million."     

The British,Persecuted Foreigners and the Emergence of the Refugee Category in Nineteenth-Century Britain

For most of the nineteenth century, there were no barriers to immigration into Britain, and hence little need for the British to distinguish one foreigner from another. Despite this fact, philanthropists, officials and public commentators identified some foreigners as ‘refugees’, a designation that called for national sympathy. How and why did this category emerge? What were its inclusions and exclusions? This essay traces the expansion of the refugee category in the context of British commitments to European liberals and foreign slaves in the second quarter of the century. It argues that, by the 1840s, would-be refugees and their British supporters established a standard narrative from which audiences were meant to recognise particular foreigners as refugees and respond accordingly.