People used to think of Mexico City as the mecca, as "the" city. Now it's Los Angeles. California offers jobs. Not glamorous jobs, but the young people believe that there are jobs there. And California, to a young Indian from Oaxaca, or to people with no real possibilities of jobs in Mexico, offers also and especially a new way of life, a freer and smarter way of life they don't have in the countryside or in the slums.
Carlos Monsivais, 199948
The end of the bracero program in 1965 essentially moved the same people, or their fellow villagers, from the category of bracero to unauthorized entrant. In 1964, 86,597 deportable aliens (the term used by the U. S. government) were located, while by 1970 that number had increased to 345,353. These increased numbers reflect the low number of jobs created in Mexico, as well as the enormous gap between U. S. and Mexican per capita income. In 1970, U. S. per capita income was more than $5,000, compared to about $700 in Mexico. The 1982 economic crisis led to increased immigration to the United States as wages and job creation declined in Mexico.49
Before 1986, border enforcement to deter illegal crossings was largely a ritualized performance. All parties understood that after being repatriated would-be migrants would attempt to cross the border again and that on the next or subsequent attempt they would probably enter the United States successfully. In 1974, Commissioner of Immigration Leonard F. Chapman virtually decreed the border to be open when he declared that unauthorized workers apprehended outside the border area would no longer be detained or returned to their homelands.50
Between 1965 and 1986, an estimated 28.0 million Mexicans entered the United States as unauthorized immigrants, compared to just 1.3 million legal immigrants and a mere 46,000 contract workers. Of the 28.0 million, 23.4 million worked for a short period and then voluntarily returned to Mexico.51
As a result of the U. S. recession that began in 1973, the presence of so many unauthorized workers became a source of preoccupation, just as had occurred during earlier recessions. Washington Post reporter Lou Cannon commented that the presence of so many Hispanic immigrants posed “a threat to the American melting pot ideal greater than ever faced from the Irish, the Czechs, the Italians and the Poles.” While concern was expressed about the issue, there was no immediate legislative response due to the political and economic influence of those who profited from employing unauthorized workers.52
Interest groups favoring high levels of immigration included Hispanic organizations, growers, service providers, and border state industrialists who had come to rely on immigrant labor. The AFL-CIO, the main U. S. labor federation, sought to end temporary worker programs and illegal entry, as well as to increase tariff protection against Mexican imports. Joining labor in opposing immigration was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).53
This Hispanic support for high levels of immigration reflected a shift in the immigration dynamic within the United States. During the middle of the century self-identified Mexican—Americans dominated the discourse. By the 1980s, the media began to use the term “Hispanic.” Mexican— American interest groups coalesced with the large number of arrivals from other Latin American nations, especially Cuba and Central America, who arrived after their homelands were wracked by social upheaval. As Mexican immigrants increasingly worked in urban settings, they were frequently co-workers, employees, or customers of long-established Mexican—Americans. New arrivals were viewed as economic assets who conferred added political clout to the Hispanic population.54
As early as 1981, the Reagan administration raised the prospect of immigration reform in response to perceived problems that included: 1) the number of immigrants exceeding the economic and demographic limits U. S. society could absorb, 2) the non-European origin of the bulk of immigrants, and 3) the exercise of national sovereignty and upholding of the law. This last notion was often summarized by the phase, “take control of our borders.”55
Finally, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). The main provisions of the bill were: 1) economic sanctions against U. S. employers who “knowingly employed” unauthorized workers, 2) permanent amnesty for unauthorized workers who could prove continuous unlawful residence in the United States since January 1, 1982, 3) an additional amnesty for agricultural workers who had worked at least ninety consecutive days between May 1, 1985 and May 1, 1986, 4) and sharply increased border enforcement.56
IRCA reflected the diverse pressures on Congress as it considered the bill. Proof necessary for amnesty as an agricultural worker, a provision that favored agribusiness, was so lax that a U. S. government commission declared its implementation to have been “one of the most extensive immigration frauds ever perpetuated against the U. S. government.” The ease with which the provision was used fraudulently reflects its being drafted in haste and appended to IRCA as a political necessity to garner needed votes from members of Congress representing agribusiness constituencies.
IRCA granted amnesty to more than 3 million previously unauthorized workers, 75 percent of whom were estimated to be from Mexico. Once legalized, beneficiaries of IRCA legally brought in close relatives and offered a base to millions of friends and fellow villagers who immigrated illegally. Those who had arrived after 1982 remained as unauthorized workers.58
For several years, IRCA did convince the U. S. public that it had regained control of its borders. It also decreased apprehensions for illegal entry from 1.77 million in 1986 to 0.95 million in 1989 as those who had been apprehended crossing illegally now crossed the border legally.59
After 1989, this trend reversed, and illegal immigration, as reflected in the number of apprehensions, began a steady increase. This resulted from job creation in Mexico languishing and immigrant networks providing jobs, housing, and economic support for the newly arrived. In addition, the 1994 economic crash resulted in Mexican wages plummeting, which more than offset wage gains attributable to NAFTA. This surge in illegal immigration also reflected the almost total absence of the enforcement measures mandated by IRCA. In 1990, only fifteen firms were fined more than $5,000 for hiring unauthorized immigrants. The number of sanctioned firms subsequently declined, reaching zero in 2004, even as illegal immigration surged.60
One reason for IRCA’s failure to limit the flow of unauthorized workers during the 1990s was Congress’s unwillingness to include in the law a reliable method for employers to verify the legal status of those whom they were hiring. As a result, more than two dozen different kinds of documents could be used to prove legal residence. Most of these documents were easy to counterfeit, and not surprisingly, a cottage industry producing fake IDs soon sprang up. IRCA’s failure to mandate a readily verifiable national ID system reflected pressure exerted by growers, other employers, Latin American rights groups, and church organizations. This failure also reflected Americans’ generalized fear that a national ID card would create a Big Brother state.61
During the 1990s and into the next decade, Mexican immigrants departed from more varied locations, including Mexico City and the southern Mexican states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Guerrero. At the same time, Mexican immigrants spread out from the traditional receiving states. For the first time the big five destination states—New York, California, Illinois, Texas, and Florida— received fewer than 60 percent of Mexicans. Increasingly immigrants settled in “new destination” areas, often small towns that offered an increasing supply of poorly paid, difficult, dirty, and sometimes dangerous jobs.62
President Clinton (1993—2001) was confronted with both push and pull forces in immigration. The U. S. economy was generating many low-wage (by U. S. standards) low-status jobs that the native-born were generally unwilling to fill. At the same time, Mexicans born in the 1970s and 1980s were coming of age and finding Mexico offered either no jobs or low-wage (even by Mexican standards) jobs. Millions of Mexicans responded by crossing the border to work. The U. S. government in turn responded with an escalation of law enforcement activity.63
This escalation began with Operation Blockade, which was launched in El Paso, Texas in 1993. To implement this new strategy, later known as Operation Hold the Line, the Border Patrol stationed 400 officers along the border on an around-the-clock basis. As a result of this increased Border Patrol presence, between October 1, 1993 and February 7, 1994, apprehensions in the El Paso sector declined to 22,156, compared to 84,119 the previous year. On closer inspection it became apparent that migrants simply detoured around the end of the Border Patrol line to cross the border
Figure 26.1 Protest rally where border fence reaches Pacific Source: John Nelson/San Diego Union-Tribune
And those who had commuted to El Paso from Ciudad Juarez on a daily basis took up residence north of the river. Despite these flaws in the plan, which came to light later, the measure proved highly popular. Silvestre Reyes, the El Paso Border Patrol sector chief who devised the plan, was subsequently elected to the U. S. Congress by the largely Hispanic City of El Paso.64
Even before a serious evaluation of Operation Blockade was made, the model was extended to the fourteen westernmost miles of the border just south of San Diego. This was the area where the most illegal crossings—as many as 10,000 a night—occurred. Some $300 million was spent to station 2,000 Border Patrol agents along this sector of the border and to install fences, motion detectors, infrared scopes, trip wires, and high-intensity lights. to this measure, known as Operation Gatekeeper, or informally as the “tortilla curtain,” illegal entry in this area plummeted.65
The theory behind Operations Blockade and Gatekeeper was that heightened enforcement would force unauthorized entrants into more dangerous areas, which in turn would lead to an increase in fees charged by smugglers. This, so the reasoning went, would cause unauthorized entry to decline as the cost increased. As it turned out, the most significant result of heightened enforcement in urban areas such as El Paso and San Diego was that unauthorized immigrants began crossing the border in isolated desert regions.66
Even though it did not deter illegal entry, heightened enforcement in urban areas did have several significant effects. Rather than simply walking across the border on their own, those seeking unauthorized entry into the United States increasingly hired smugglers at a cost ranging from $1,200 to $1,500 a person. As would-be entrants were scattered over a broader area, the cost to the Border Patrol for each unauthorized entrant it apprehended increased from $300 in 1992 to $1,700 ten years later. Given isolation, rugged terrain, and temperature extremes in the areas where unauthorized entry was attempted, the number dying increased and has remained high ever since, averaging 413 a year between 2004 and 2006. Finally, given the increased cost and danger of illegal entry, unauthorized Mexican workers, once they arrived in the United States, remained. Before IRCA, 25 to 30 percent of unauthorized workers returned annually on a voluntary basis. However, after 1998 only 10 percent did. As sociologist Douglas Massey noted, “Paradoxically, the principal effect of border militarization has been to reduce the odds of going home, not of coming in the first place.”67
By FY 2001, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) budget had reached $4.3 billion, triple the amount appropriated at the beginning of the Clinton administration. The INS had more officers authorized to carry guns and make arrests than any other federal agency. The U. S. military was brought in to assist border enforcement. Even though the military was prevented from making arrests, they assisted the INS by operating communications and surveillance equipment and by building and maintaining roads and fences.68
Despite the deployment of increased manpower and equipment, the number of those apprehended crossing the border illegally rose inexorably, reaching 1.81 million in 2000. The chief accomplishment during the Clinton years, as political scientist Peter Andreas noted, was “symbolically reaffirming the state’s territorial authority” and drawing attention “away from the more politically awkward and divisive task of formally recognizing and regularizing a well-entrenched clandestine cross-border labor market.” Enforcement along the border proved to be more politically palatable than workplace enforcement, which not only damaged vested economic interests but led to separation of families, many of which included U. S.-born children.69
Soon after his 2000 election, Vicente Fox began to vigorously promote the one foreign policy initiative sure to play well at home—calling for European-style open borders within the NAFTA region. Early in 2001, Presidents Bush and Fox both seemed to be moving toward an agreement on the management of Mexican labor migration to the United States. The Mexicans’ proposals, which became known as the “whole enchilada,” included: 1) an amnesty for Mexicans already in the United States, 2) a temporary work program to address U. S. labor market demands and the needs of potential Mexican migrants, 3) more visas for family reunification, 4) heightened border security, and 5) regional development plans for areas in Mexico that traditionally sent migrants. The likelihood of progress toward at least some of these goals appeared so high that, as then-Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge G. Castaneda later observed, “Fox’s resounding state visit to Washington on the eve of the September 11 terrorist attacks further lifted the new initiatives and underscored both leaders’ commitment to them.”70
The year 2001 was not propitious for immigration reform. Had the 9/11 terrorist attacks not occurred, it is far from clear that a substantial portion of the whole “enchilada” would have been enacted by the Republican-dominated Congress, which was inclined much less favorably toward substantial reform than was President Bush. After the September 11 attacks occurred, the U. S. government shifted its attention to security matters. As Fox later commented, “Immigration reform was dead for now, as the United States turned inward and isolationists in Washington began talking about building a fortress America.” Furthermore, recession in the United States reduced the demand for immigrant labor.71
Even though none of the “enchilada” was enacted into law, there were significant changes affecting unauthorized Mexican residents in the United States. Fox embraced the expat Mexican population as no other president before him had. He created a cabinet-level position to attend to the needs of Mexicans living abroad and instructed Mexican consulates to intensify their support of hometown associations within the United States. Increased competition and pressure from the Fox administration drastically lowered the cost of sending remittances across the border. Mexican consulates began issuing IDs called matricalas consulares which could be used in transactions such as opening a bank account. Finally, for the first time Mexicans living abroad were allowed to vote absentee in Mexico’s 2006 presidential election.72
Offsetting these gains was the inability of the Mexican economy to create jobs that would retain labor in Mexico. As political scientist Wayne Cornelius noted, Mexico’s neoliberal capital-intensive development model “has much less capacity to create employment than the old import-substituting industrial model that it replaced. Indeed, the new model’s goals of efficiency and global competitiveness are inversely related to job creation.” Nor could the Fox administration address other causes of migration such as degradation of cropland and low-cost grain imports.73
As former U. S. ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey Davidow observed, “At base the emigration phenomenon is largely the product of a massive increase in national population during the second half of the twentieth century.” Even though millions of jobs were created in Mexico between 1950 and 2000, the job market was overwhelmed by a population increase of 72 million during this period. Many chose to move north across the border. In 2006, the U. S. government estimated the number of unauthorized residents, the majority of whom were from Mexico, at 11 million, up from 8.5 million in 2000.74
In a 2007 publication, Cornelius concluded that “tightened border enforcement since 1993 has not stopped, nor even discouraged unauthorized migrants from entering the United States. . . . even with an unprecedented level of border enforcement, the vast majority of unauthorized migrants are able to enter without being detected.”75
Cornelius’s observation was based on data collected in previous years. However, after years of steady increase there was a distinct decline in Mexican immigration to the United States beginning in roughly 2007. The number detained by the Border Patrol for illegal entry was 705,000 in the twelve-month period ending in September 30, 2008, down from 858,638 during the previous twelve months. Similarly, after rising for years, the remittances sent to Mexico peaked at $24.0 billion in 2007, and then began to decline—the first such decline since remittance data began to be compiled in 1995. There was a similar decline in the number of illegal entries in 2001 as the U. S. economy slowed down. It remains to be seen if the number of illegal entries will increase again with U. S. economic recovery, or if increased enforcement and lower job growth in the United States has produced a long-term decline in illegal entry.76
Immigration policy involves many complex decisions, including how many to admit, whether to criminalize unauthorized entry, whether to give preference by skills or by relationship with current U. S. residents or by refugee status, whether to admit permanent immigrants or guest workers or both, and whether Mexico is to be given special consideration. Finally, the most complex question is how to deal with the millions of unauthorized residents currently living in the United States. Legalization of their presence, while it infuriates conservatives who view it as an amnesty, is vital for allowing them to upgrade their skills and thus make an increased contribution to the economy, just as occurred with those legalized under IRCA.77
Progress on immigration legislation is glacially slow since not only must Congress decide each of these questions, but each of these questions attracts vociferous interest groups that cut across party lines. Actors changing sides on the issue further slows progress. In 2000, the AFL-CIO shifted from opposing immigration to favoring legalization of undocumented workers so that management could not use the threat of deportation to prevent low-wage workers from organizing. The U. S. population remains firmly divided on the immigration issue, with 52 percent responding to a 2007 poll by saying that immigration hurts the United States, while 39 percent declared it helped. As Texas Monthly writer Michael Ennis noted: “There’s a reason why immigration policy never works: It’s hard to find solutions when we aren’t, as a nation, sure about the problem.”78
The immigration issue is complicated by competing interest groups within the political parties and outside them and by the difficulty of allocating scarcity (the opportunity to work in United States). By definition, scarcity means some win and some lose. Even free marketers such as Nobel-prize winning economist Gary Becker feel the United States cannot admit unlimited numbers of immigrants as it did in the nineteenth century since government spending per resident is now far higher than it was in the nineteenth century. The implications of no limits are indicated by a 2009 Pew Research Center poll that indicated that a third of Mexicans wanted to move to the United States.79
Studies published during the Fox administration emphasized that it was not joblessness or extreme poverty that caused individuals to emigrate from Mexico to the United States. Rather it was the widening gap between Mexican wages and U. S. wages. The ironic implication of this finding is that alleviating poverty in Mexico may actually increase emigration, since as individuals leave poverty, they become able to afford travel and the costs of hiring someone to smuggle them across the border.80
World History
