“Comic-book superheroes have an alter ego, and so do immigrants in the United States.”
Depending on the commentator, America is “under attack,” in danger of being overwhelmed by the “flood/tide/invasion” of illegal Mexican “aliens,” or even “terrorists.” These loaded terms, independent of historical context, give the impression that American culture, property, and livelihood are in a state of siege and constant threat, and that the nation should be on high alert. Mexican immigrants are one of the most visible and largest of the immigrant populations that reside in America today. But are they a threat? And have we always considered them as such?
Mexican immigration to the United States didn’t begin with a flood, but with the disenfranchisement of approximately 100,000 Mexican nationals living in what was to become the southwestern United States, effectively transforming them from residents to semi-authorized aliens, living in limbo. The 1848 Treaty of Guadulupe Hidalgo had given the United States sovereignty over Mexicans living in the newly conquered western territories. The ones who stayed were given the choice of “removing” themselves back to Mexico, or continuing to live in the United States as permanent outsiders. Yet another option was a species of default citizenship, if they didn’t publicly declare themselves to be American. However, this wasn’t by any means an automatic grant of citizenship; in fact, the United States altered the original terms of Guadalupe Hidalgo to allow for an indefinite deferral of citizenship for those who remained. Instead of becoming naturalized American citizens or retaining Mexican citizenship, in effect the 100,000 Mexican nationals became a multitude of undesirables, permanently unwelcome non-citizens, much as the Native American tribes that had been confined to reservations before them to make space for the burgeoning American nation-state.
Over the intervening century, the legal status of Mexicans who migrated to the United States in search of work underwent many changes, but at the outset no real government effort was made to limit Mexican immigration. As railroads were built and agricultural production was expanded in the late 19th century, Mexican laborers were vigorously recruited from across the border to replace the Chinese immigrant laborers who had been displaced by Congress’ passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. Further illustrating the United States’ ambivalence towards Mexican migrants at this time was the passage of the 1924 Johnson-Reed Immigration act, which imposed a quota system on European immigrants, but imposed no restrictions whatsoever on migrants in the Western Hemisphere, including Mexico.
The Border: Interactive Timeline
The Border Patrol’s establishment in 1924 (under the umbrella of the Department of Labor) marked a change in the United States’ attitude towards Mexican migrants and initiated the inane commentary that passes for “facts” by most Fox News pundits. The revolving door policy essentially provided for both mass deportation and simultaneous importation of Mexican migrants according to the seasonal requirements of agricultural interests. This was a neat trick, and one still very much in evidence today. You don’t really think the Border Patrol exists to keep out ALL Mexican migrants, do you?
Later during World War II, with a shortage of labor at home, the United States instituted the Bracero Program, a bilateral agreement with the Mexican government that allowed the legal importation of Mexican laborers to fill the American labor gap. But after the end of the war, the United States again decided that it didn’t really need all those surplus Mexican laborers; so Operation Wetback was launched in 1954 and more than 1 million Mexican immigrants were deported.
About-faces in policy decisions continued to mark the United States’ relationship with the migrants who crossed its borders. Major stops along the way included:
1964: Bracero program formally ended.
1965: Immigration legislation places limits on the number of legal immigrants allowed from the Western Hemisphere, making legal immigration extremely difficult.
1986: IRCA (Immigration Reform and Control Act) criminalizes employment of unauthorized immigrants by American companies, and increases funding for the Border Patrol.
1990: Immigration Act further curtails immigration quotas
2005: Sensebrenner Act seeks to make unauthorized crossing, employment, and provision of humanitarian services to unauthorized migrants felonies, but is not passed by the Senate.
2005: a version of the Real ID Act, also sponsored by Representative Jim Sensebrenner, provokes controversy over its requirement that state-issued IDs conform to a set of minimal federal standards, raising controversy over the implications of a national ID card. Representative Sensebrenner states that the bill’s purpose was to make mobility within the United States difficult for “terrorists and criminal aliens.”
This is where the altered identities of unauthorized Mexican migrants stands today; at the juncture of terrorist and alien, categorized in the American consciousness in the same class as Al Qaeda or the Taliban.
