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The Political Dynamics of Unauthorized Immigration: Conflict, Change, and Agency in Time

  • Symposium Article
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Polity

Abstract

There is no shortage of historical and sociological works tackling the long-term development of U.S. policies on unauthorized immigration. This essay highlights several key conceptual and empirical gaps for understanding the politics of immigration policy history, and spotlights the meaning and implications of conflicts over problem definition, reform impasses, “strange bedfellow” compromises, and immigrant agency. The study underscores the increasing intensity and texture of struggles over “illegal” immigration over time. This essay also highlights how rare shifts from gridlock to major policy change have been driven by unexpected alliances, the necessity of painful compromises to appease disparate actors, and the contradictions produced by immigration reform packages. Finally, this essay highlights the role of immigrants as transformative agents in immigration politics, who employ strategies of litigation, civil disobedience, protest, and electoral mobilization.

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Notes

  1. “Alleged Illegal Entry Into the United States of Chinese Persons,” Senate Document No. 120, 55th Congress, 1st Session, 2, 4–9, and 11–13.

  2. “German Spies Infest Mexico,” Los Angeles Times July 31, 1917, 12; “German Spies in Canada,” The New York Times February 11, 1918, 4; “Plot to Invade Canada and Mexico,” The New York Times July 23, 1918, 8.

  3. Leo Chavez, The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008).

  4. Perry Charamante, “Border Crisis Could Provide Cover for ISIS Operatives,” FoxNews.com July 7, 2014; Sahil Kapur, “The Rise of a GOP Conspiracy Theory: ISIL Infiltrates the Mexican Border,” Talkingpointsmemo.com September 23, 2014.

  5. Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

  6. Aviva Chomsky, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal (Boston: Beacon Press, 2014).

  7. John H. Senter, U.S. Attorney, to Joseph McKenna, U.S. Attorney General, December 30, 1896, reprinted in “Alleged Illegal Entry Into the United States of Chinese Persons,” Senate Document No. 120, 55th Congress, 1st Session, 6.

  8. See, for example, “Coolies Come from Mexico,” Los Angeles Times, March 6, 1907, 14; “Travel in Bond to Smuggle In,” Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1911, 11; and “Chinks Head for Border,” Los Angeles Times, July 14, 1911, 17.

  9. Daniel Tichenor, Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

  10. Lina Newton, Illegal, Alien, or Immigrant: The Politics of Immigration Reform (New York: NYU Press, 2008), 36–37.

  11. Senter to McKenna, December 30, 1896.

  12. Los Angeles Times, September 4, 1927, 1.

  13. John H. Senter, U.S. Attorney, to Joseph McKenna, U.S. Attorney General, December 30, 1896, reprinted in “Alleged Illegal Entry Into the United States of Chinese Persons,” Senate Document No. 120, 55th Congress, 1st Session, 16.

  14. Patrick Ettinger, Imaginary Lines (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2010), 7.

  15. Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 89.

  16. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965. Volume II, entry 546, 1037–40 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1966).

  17. Christian Joppke, Selecting by Origin: Ethnic Migration in the Liberal State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 91.

  18. Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 252–56.

  19. Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects.

  20. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 176–218.

  21. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 19631964. Volume I. November 27, 1963 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1965).

  22. Hart is quoted in Nationalities Services Center, “A New Immigration Proposal: A Fact Sheet on S.3043,” copy in the author’s files.

  23. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 214–15.

  24. Michael Feighan, “Highlights of the Immigration Issue,” January 18, 1965, copy on file with the author.

  25. Congressional Record, July 23, 1963, 13132–33.

  26. Congressional Record, January 8, 1964, 115; Abba Schwartz, The Open Society (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1968).

  27. David Reimers, Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 69–74.

  28. The Washington Post, October 4, 1965, 16.

  29. Reimers, Still the Golden Door.

  30. Deane Heller and David Heller, “Our New Immigration Law,” American Legion Magazine 80 (February 1966): 8–9.

  31. William S. Stern, “H.R. 2580: The Immigration and Nationality Amendments of 1965—A Case Study,” Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1974.

  32. Nazgol Ghandoosh and Roger Waldinger, “Strangeness at the Gates,” International Migration Review 40 (Fall 2006): 719–34.

  33. Lina Newton, Illegal, Alien, or Immigrant.

  34. For example, see Cristina Beltrán, “Going Public: Hannah Arendt, Immigrant Action, and the Space of Appearance,” Political Theory 37 (2009): 597–21; Janelle Wong, S. Karthick Ramakrishnan, Taeku Lee, and Jane Junn, Asian American Political Participation (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011); Mark Overmyer-Velazquez, Beyond la Frontera (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Tonya Golash-Boza, Immigration Nation (New York: Paradigm, 2012); Alfonso Gonzales, Reform Without Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Walter Nicholls, The DREAMers (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2013).

  35. Gary Freeman, “Modes of Immigration Politics in Liberal Democratic States,” International Migration Review 24 (1995): 881–902.

  36. Douglas Massey, Jorge Durand, and Nolan Malone, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002), 2.

  37. Preliminary Report of the Domestic Council Committee on Illegal Immigration, December, 1976, 241, copy obtained from the Lawrence Fuchs Papers, Brandeis University.

  38. “Illegal Aliens,” Hearings before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and International Law of the Committee on the Judiciary, February 4, 26, 1975, House of Representatives, 94th Congress, 1st Session, 34–35.

  39. Ibid., 91.

  40. Stephen Skowronek and Matthew Glassman, eds., Formative Acts (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).

  41. See, for example, Paul Pierson, Politics in Time (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Rogers Smith, Civic Ideals (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992); Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, The Search for American Political Development (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

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The author would like to thank Cybelle Fox, Rebecca Hamlin, Anna Law, Hiroshi Motomura, Rogers Smith, Cyrus “Ernie” Zirakzadeh, and Polity’s anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

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Tichenor, D. The Political Dynamics of Unauthorized Immigration: Conflict, Change, and Agency in Time. Polity 47, 283–301 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2015.11

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