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Journalism of Courage
With the American elections around the corner, immigration has emerged as the most burning issue in the country’s electoral debates. It has been discussed widely by both candidates in presidential debates, ad campaigns and speeches. While some may think it’s an issue popularised by Donald Trump, immigration has dominated the American political discourse since its founding in 1492. A country built by immigrants, America has had two distinct periods of immigration history. In this two part series, we first explored the initial period from 1492 to 1996. This period was largely defined by legislation designed to either promote or deter foreign entry. The second period is the era of deportation, where immigration became a national security issue and immigration from Latin America succeeded all waves before it. Throughout this time, there has always been the notion of the ‘other’ – an immigrant that is less desirable due to their customs, appearance or perceived differences, from the native population.
The students are asked to arrange the groups based on how closely they approximate the core of what it means to be an American. Whenever there are more than 25 people in the room, the average comes out the same. First comes the English, then either Irish or Swedish followed by the Polish and Jewish. At the middle end of the scale are black and Native Americans. Finally, rounding up the bottom, come the Mexicans, Japanese and Arabs. “Even though I emphasise that these are all American citizens, there is consistently a big divide between the white and the non-white,” he says in an interview with indianexpress.com.
As noted in part one of our series, America’s immigration policy has always had a racial undertone. From the Chinese being seen as dirty in the late 1800s, the Germans as uneducated in the early 20th century, and Central Americans as unpatriotic following the Second World War, immigrant groups have been ‘otherised’ in American history, particularly those who fail to look the part. However, no group has been faced as much discriminatory backlash as Mexicans.
The debate today centres primarily around undocumented migrants, with discussions on their arrival dominating both Donald Trump’s and Kamala Harris’ election campaigns. The last significant piece of legislation to address illegal immigration was signed by Bill Clinton in 1996. The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) revised the deportation provisions for every class of immigrant.
These policies imbued the Immigration and Customs Department (INS) with the power to arrest, detain and deport unauthorised immigrants while also curtailing or eliminating the immigrant’s right to appeal. Under the legislation, immigration departments were allowed to summarily detain immigrants for crimes that would otherwise be considered misdemeanours. As Kevin Johnson, Dean of UC Davis School of Law, states, the 1996 IIRIRA act is “one of the most draconian pieces of immigration legislation ever passed.” Moreover it disproportionately affects “poor people and people from the developing world.”
According to Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of law at Cornell, the legislation has done little to address undocumented immigration. Due to the lack of temporary visas, and the backlog in immigration courts, “people are willing to take the chance of remaining in the US illegally, rationalising that if they do get caught, they would at least be able to send 5-6 years worth of wages back home,” he says to indianexpress.com.
After 9/11, the correlation between immigration and crime was further strengthened in the public consciousness. As Stanford economist Ran Abramitzky, writes in a 2022 book, while immigrants on average are less likely to commit crimes, since 2001, increased security measures overwhelmingly targeted immigrant communities. In The Criminalisation of Immigrants (2013), historian Karen Douglas writes that “though the path of the immigrant in the United States has never been easy, the costs of being an undocumented immigrant are higher today than ever before.” She adds that the attitude of US natives towards immigrants, particularly those from Latin America, “is increasingly hostile and inhospitable.”
This has been true across parties. While Republicans increasingly focused on enforcement and Democrats on legalisation, hopes of reaching a legislative bargain seem more and more unlikely. Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both attempted to restrict immigration with varying degrees of success. Under Obama, while pathways to citizenship were expanded, so too were the number of deportations. Part of the reason is due to the complexity of immigration reform.
According to Yale-Loehr, immigration law is the second most complex area of law in the United States. The difficulty is between balancing humanitarian considerations with a mass justice system. Compounding the problem is that immigration law has not been amended in 34 years even though the needs of the country have changed.
According to several polls, including one by Gallup in February 2024, the majority of Americans consider immigration to be the largest problem facing the country. “There’s a populist strand to this movement where people embrace all kinds of claims about immigration that are simply untrue,” says Johnson.
This is particularly prominent amongst Republicans, especially Trump. As Tom Gjelten, correspondent for NPR states, “Trump contently uses ambiguous language, painting ‘us’ versus ‘them’ without ever specifying who the other is.” Yale Loehr adds that while the labour coalition of the Republican party acknowledges the need for cheap workers, they struggle to “square that reality against those who are opposed to foreign migration.”
On the other hand, some like Mark Krikorian, Director of the Centre for Immigration Studies, argue that immigration should be a privilege, not a right, and that Trumpism is not the cause of anti-immigrant sentiment, but the reaction to it.
All of this gives rise to the question, if America needs immigrants, but not too many of them, who should the country admit? That in turn leads to a debate over who is a good or bad immigrant.
According to Spickard, there has always been an American notion “that there are certain types of good immigrants and bad immigrants.” One lot are celebrated at the Statue of Liberty, while the other are considered a burden on limited resources. “There is a long history of both embracing the immigrant and excluding certain nationalities that is worth both complementing and condoning,” adds Johnson.
When considering the ideal immigrant, South Asians are often the first to come to the forefront. According to US migration statistics, not only are they the most likely to enter legally, but they are also the most likely to be highly educated. On average, over 50 per cent of immigrants in the US have the educational qualifications of a high school degree or under. Eighty-one per cent of Mexicans have less than a high school degree, 12 per cent a bachelor’s degree, and only 6.2 per cent, a master’s degree or higher. In contrast, only 30 per cent of South Asians have less than a high school degree and 52 per cent have a master’s degree or higher.
As Spickard notes, “Our South Asian population has been better educated and more entrepreneurial than other types of immigrants… therefore, in the popular imagination, they kind of get a pass.”
However, while South Asians are favoured for their presumed educational status, the question of legality still remains paramount. As Spickard states, while there was always the notion of legal against illegal immigration, the “assumption today is that everyone is an illegal immigrant.”
While many may assume that this conceptualisation is a product of the right, in fact, the brunt of illegal immigration is faced by low-class labourers, significant numbers of whom are immigrants themselves. According to Gjelten, “People who come here legally can be very resentful of those who have come without documents.” They believe that there is some sort of zero-sum game in which new immigrants take away opportunities from those who were there before. This notion is not unfounded with several studies indicating that low-wage workers are most at risk of adverse economic consequences from illegal immigration.
That being said, the current narrative against illegal immigration has less to be with state sovereignty, the rule of law and economic ramifications. Instead, illegal immigrants are accused of committing a disproportionate number of crimes, of being more likely to abuse drugs, and of compromising public safety. None of those charges stand against statistical evidence.
Another charge often levied against immigrants is their failure to assimilate. In the 19th century, Protestant Irish were accused of having more loyalty towards the Pope than the US government and German immigrants were accused of flaunting cultural traditions and creating homogenous enclaves. As Gjelten observes, “People tend to feel more comfortable with immigrants of their own background, the types who themselves, or their children and grandchildren are more likely to integrate.”
This is particularly an issue amongst Mexican immigrants. As famed political scientist Samuel Huntington remarked in a 2009 article for Foreign Policy Magazine, “Demographically, socially, and culturally, the reconquista (re-conquest) of the Southwest United States by Mexican immigrants is well underway.” Huntington’s argument, echoed by several prominent scholars, is that because Mexico shares a land border with the US, and is a relatively much poorer country, the influx of Mexican immigrants is unprecedented and untameable. As they are arriving in large numbers, and tend to concentrate in certain geographical areas, they have less of an incentive to assimilate. To make this point, Huntington refers to two critical instances, where Mexican communities have demonstrated more loyalty to their home country than the US. One is when they seemed to support Mexico instead of the US in a national football game. The other is their response to Proposition 187.
Proposition 187 was a 1994 California ballot initiative that aimed to deny undocumented immigrants access to public services, including healthcare and education. Its passage sparked widespread protests, particularly among California’s Mexican population, and though later ruled unconstitutional, signalled a shift towards anti-immigrant sentiment. According to Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute, a leading think tank, Republican support for Proposition 187 was so denounced amongst California’s immigration community that it actually succeeded in turning the state into a Democratic stronghold. The ability of Mexican immigrants to influence public policy in ways that are favourable to other Mexican immigrants is a source of much controversy and fuels the allegations that they are more loyal to their home country than their adopted one.
According to Kirkorian, while the phenomenon certainly exists, the blame should be accorded to US institutions. Citing the example of his mother, a daughter of immigrants, he states that while his grandparents had little knowledge of American culture, schools and public institutions taught his mother what it meant to be an American. “That is not what they are teaching immigrant families today in Los Angeles Schools,” he says, and that in turn is hindering successful integration.
However, others, such as Gjelten, view it in terms of the long as opposed to the short term. He states that back in the early 20th century, there were enclaves of immigrants but as time passed, their children and grandchildren assimilated into American society. He notes that it’s wrong to assume that people from a certain part of the world are less likely to integrate, but that in order to do so, there must be some sort of compromise. For him, that includes adopting basic values, such as those pertaining to women’s rights.
When Krikorian was asked what ‘American values’ entailed, he struggled to define it. However, he did provide an example of what an integrated immigrant looks like. He spoke about a Chinese American who was running for the New York State Senate. The person spoke with a blended accent, a mix of Chinese and Eastern American. The accent, however, along with his position on abortion or taxes, or foreign policy was secondary. According to Krikorian, what was important was the man’s commitment to America. Some people want America to be a sort of Yugoslavia, he states, a mixture of different ethnic groups and cultural values. To be an American, Krikorian states, “one has to adopt America’s past as their past, and assume a moral attachment to their fellow Americans.”
For all the conversation about assimilation, some, like Spickard, still believe it comes down to race. “There has always been a hierarchy of whiteness,” he says, “and it is all eventually linked to race.” Krikorian on the other hand believes that the narrative of white versus non-white across American history is “objectively false.” Perhaps the nuances are more subconscious.
As Atristide Zolberg, author of A Nation by Design (2008) writes, American immigration has involved, from the outset, “a combination of disparate elements designed to facilitate or even stimulate the entry of immigrants deemed valuable while deterring those considered undesirable.” As to who qualifies under each category, the decision rests amongst the American voter
