tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/mexican-immigrants-19675/articlesMexican immigrants – The Conversation2023-06-23T12:28:45Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2043502023-06-23T12:28:45Z2023-06-23T12:28:45ZMigrants often can’t access US health care until they are critically ill – here are some of the barriers they face<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530681/original/file-20230607-17-ztqs74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C4832%2C5202&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'We heal alone,' a migrant to the U.S. told a researcher.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/immigrants-walking-for-hope-in-better-future-royalty-free-image/1179649822?phrase=Immigrants+walking+for+hope+in+better+future&adppopup=true">Jasmin Merdan/Moment via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Can you tell me about cancer care for the undocumented?” I asked Henry during <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113676">an interview</a>. He was a doctor who volunteered his time at a community-based clinic designed exclusively for low-income undocumented migrants. </p>
<p>I use pseudonyms throughout this story to protect migrants’ identities.</p>
<p>“It’s bad,” Henry said. “Cancer care for the undocumented is not there. It’s just not there for the most part. They’re dying of cancer. Period.”</p>
<p>“So where do they go?” I asked.</p>
<p>“They don’t,” he responded solemnly. “They either go back to their home countries or they just live with it until they die. That’s what happens.”</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.rit.edu/directory/amjgss-anthony-jimenez">medical sociologist</a> and expert in health care disparities between noncitizens and citizens, my research explores the many ways that health care and immigration collide. </p>
<p>Though most migrants have some form of legal documents like passports, visas and identity cards, I use the term “undocumented” in this article to refer to those whose documents are expired, invalid or otherwise missing. I feel the term is useful because it captures a heightened sense of insecurity and instability that many migrants face in their daily lives. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/us-immigration-policy-program-data-hub/unauthorized-immigrant-population-profiles">Migration Policy Institute estimates</a>, more than 11 million undocumented migrants are living in the United States, and many of them are ineligible for health coverage. Though <a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-business/states-push-to-expand-medicaid-to-undocumented-immigrants">some states are working to challenge this</a>, undocumented migrants remain one of the largest uninsured populations in the country. </p>
<p>For low-income undocumented migrants, navigating the U.S. health care system involves a number of risks, challenges and consequences that often make them sicker. My <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113676">research is designed to shed light</a> on these experiences.</p>
<h2>Chilling effects: Self-denied care</h2>
<p>In their <a href="https://go.exlibris.link/m5dZNG43">2020 article</a> in the “Journal of Health and Social Behavior,” sociologists Andrea Gómez Cervantes and Cecilia Menjívar shared the story of a 30-year-old undocumented Mexican woman they called Amelia, who was apprehensive about taking her husband to the hospital for care. During an interview with the researchers, Amelia said she was afraid the hospital would check their immigration status. </p>
<p>“We decided that when we get sick, it’s better if we don’t go [to the hospital],” Amelia told the researchers. “We heal alone, we heal ourselves at home, or we would go to the Mexican store asking about medicines that we knew from Mexico or here in the stores.”</p>
<p>Restrictive immigration policy and a fervent anti-immigrant environment creates what <a href="https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.02356">immigration scholars</a> call “chilling effects” for undocumented migrants. It makes safe spaces like hospitals and clinics feel unsafe. Fearing that health practitioners will out them for their legal status, many migrants decide to forego seeking care altogether. </p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.nilc.org/issues/immigration-enforcement/healthcare-provider-and-patients-rights-imm-enf/#">National Immigration Law Center</a>, most health care providers are not obligated to ask about their patients’ legal status. Legally, the institutions of health care and immigration are supposed to operate separately, but this could change. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533561/original/file-20230622-15-m769d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Latino teen hoists a harvesting bucket market with the words " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533561/original/file-20230622-15-m769d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533561/original/file-20230622-15-m769d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533561/original/file-20230622-15-m769d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533561/original/file-20230622-15-m769d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533561/original/file-20230622-15-m769d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533561/original/file-20230622-15-m769d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533561/original/file-20230622-15-m769d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 16-year-old protests against Florida Senate bill 1718 in Immokalee, Fla., an area known for its tomato-growing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/FloridaDayWithoutImmigrants/501122da6476404184d7931dfc59dec5/photo?Query=Senate%20Bill%201718&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=13&currentItemNo=10">Rebecca Blackwell/AP</a></span>
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<p>For example, in early May 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 1718, which, among other things, <a href="https://www.aila.org/advo-media/aila-practice-pointers-and-alerts/fl-1718-florida-anti-immigrant-legislation">requires hospitals to ask their patients about their immigration status.</a>. Though migrants will have the option to “decline to answer,” questions about legal status will likely be enough to deter many from seeking care. It’s still yet to be determined whether other states will follow suit. </p>
<h2>Why IDs matter: Waiting for care</h2>
<p>Adrian, an undocumented Mexican man, needed to see a doctor to have his hernia surgery scheduled. He handed his ID – a consular identification card issued by the Mexican government - and insurance card to the check-in staff member, who responded with a smile and gestured toward the waiting area: “They’ll call you in shortly.” </p>
<p>Adrian’s surgery was scheduled later that afternoon.</p>
<p>That same day, Rodney, an undocumented Honduran man, arrived at a different clinic, also in need of a hernia surgery. However, two things distinguished Rodney from Adrian. The first was that Rodney’s pain was far more intense. Small movements caused Rodney severe pain in his abdomen, and if he pushed himself too far, his intestines could become <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/inguinal-hernia/symptoms-causes/syc-20351547">strangulated, leading to a cutoff in blood flow and death</a>. The second distinction was that Rodney had no ID. </p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” the staff member said. “Without an ID, I can’t check you in.”</p>
<p>Disheartened, Rodney left the clinic with a hand pressed to his stomach. The pain continued, and the waiting game began.</p>
<p>Like other low-income undocumented migrants without an ID, Rodney was unable to legally access a primary care provider and obtain a referral to surgically fix his hernia. This meant that Rodney had no other choice than to wait for his hernia to turn into a life-threatening situation, at which point he would be eligible for emergency care under the <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/guidance/document/emergency-medical-treatment-labor-act-emtala-0">1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act</a>.</p>
<p>Rodney’s case was one of many that emerged in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113676">my study</a> about how low-income undocumented migrants navigate today’s health care system. Checking for IDs is a routine practice in medical settings. For health practitioners, IDs are necessary for medical reimbursement claims. </p>
<p>When undocumented migrants cannot provide an ID, they are often denied care and begin a trajectory of exacerbated suffering. For some, this means having their long-term care needs relegated to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113676">private, medically unaccredited personal care homes</a>. For others, this means an involuntary waiting game where, for many, death seems like the only possible way out.</p>
<p>Under the current system, emergency care becomes possible for low-income undocumented migrants without an ID only after their bodies fail. For Rodney, care was only possible if he let his hernia worsen. In another case in my study, Pedro, an undocumented Mexican man with a urinary tract abnormality, had to wait for his kidneys to completely shut down before he could seek emergency room services.</p>
<p>“I’m just tired,” Pedro told me. “Waiting all the time. And now, I’m waiting to die.”</p>
<p>Health practitioners vow to “do no harm,” but when it comes to immigrant health care, the system is set up in way that legally inhibits them from “doing good.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530683/original/file-20230607-19-czv5x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A medic, dressed in blue garb and wearing a mask, takes a patient's blood pressure." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530683/original/file-20230607-19-czv5x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530683/original/file-20230607-19-czv5x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530683/original/file-20230607-19-czv5x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530683/original/file-20230607-19-czv5x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530683/original/file-20230607-19-czv5x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530683/original/file-20230607-19-czv5x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530683/original/file-20230607-19-czv5x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A medic from Houston EMS takes the blood pressure of a Mexican immigrant with possible COVID-19 symptoms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/medic-from-the-houston-fire-department-ems-takes-the-blood-news-photo/1334885143">John Moore via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Medical deportation: Repatriated by hospitals</h2>
<p>Legal scholar Lori Nessel opened <a href="https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol19/iss1/3">her article</a> in the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies with the story of a 20-year-old undocumented Mexican migrant construction worker she called Quelino. After accidentally falling over 20 feet to the ground, Quelino became comatose for three days and woke up with severe spinal injuries. The hospital treated Quelino for a few months but could not seek reimbursement for ongoing care because of his legal status. </p>
<p>Just before Christmas, and without obtaining Quelino’s consent or notifying the Mexican Consulate, the hospital put Quelino on a private plane to a Mexican hospital that was ill-equipped to care for him. After a year of suffering in this hospital, Quelino died.</p>
<p>Quelino experienced what immigration scholars call <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642221083540">“medical deportation.”</a> Also referred to as “medical repatriation,” medical deportation refers to the practice of forcibly removing low-income, uninsured, undocumented patients to other countries, often without their consent.</p>
<p>While the term “deportation” might suggest involvement from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, border patrol officials are not involved in medical deportation. Hospitals facilitate medical deportation without any government oversight. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/guidance/document/emergency-medical-treatment-labor-act-emtala-0">1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act</a> requires hospitals to treat everyone – citizens and noncitizens – in emergency cases. After patients are stabilized, the law also requires hospitals to transfer or discharge patients to “appropriate” medical facilities. Hospitals want to accomplish this quickly because they are not reimbursed for post-emergency care. Ongoing care is expensive, and undocumented migrants’ ineligibility for health coverage makes it nearly impossible for migrants to cover costs. </p>
<p>Consequently, hospitals – recognizing that it is cheaper to transfer low-income undocumented migrants to another country than to continue caring for them in their own facilities – sign off on medical deportations to save money. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642221083540">This happens to hundreds, if not thousands, of migrants</a>, according to sociologist Lisa Sun-Hee Park of the University of California, Santa Barbara. </p>
<p>This is what immigrant health care looks like today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204350/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony Jimenez received funding from the Ford Foundation.</span></em></p>More than 11 million migrants who lack papers live in the United States, and many of them are ineligible for health coverage.Anthony Jimenez, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Rochester Institute of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1026272018-09-18T22:11:36Z2018-09-18T22:11:36ZAmerica needs more, not fewer, migrant workers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236225/original/file-20180913-177968-gieigo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In this June 2016 photo, a border patrol agent walks near the secondary fence separating Tijuana, Mexico, from San Diego.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Gregory Bull)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Under President Donald Trump, the United States has taken a tough stance against migrant workers from Mexico crossing the U.S.-Mexican border. Trump’s <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/06/politics/border-wall-waste-gao/index.html">efforts to build a longer and better wall</a>, so far unsuccessful, are based on the premise that the U.S. economy is better off with fewer migrant workers, regardless of whether such migrants are documented.</p>
<p>But is it true?</p>
<p>Two decades after the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the economy of North America is closer than ever to being completely integrated prior to the <a href="https://www.thestar.com/business/2018/09/13/plenty-of-players-and-cards-still-on-table-in-nafta-game.html">ongoing renegotiations</a>. The current deal is supposed to prevent a further decline in America’s competitive advantage, as well as to reduce the need for migrant workers from Mexico. </p>
<p>However, there are now more, rather than fewer, migrant workers in the United States. More than <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/04/25/undocumented-immigrant-population-united-states/100877164/">10 million are undocumented</a>. Many obtained false papers with the help of U.S. employers. </p>
<p>I spent 15 years <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100107410">researching the experiences</a> of Indigenous (Nahuatl-speaking) people from the <a href="http://unpo.org/members/20842">Alto Balsas region</a> of Guerrero, Mexico. During that time, I heard many stories about the hardships migrant workers are willing to endure for the chance of employment in the United States. </p>
<p>Many Americans who may support Trump in his efforts to build a wall may not know about the conflicted feelings many of these migrant workers experience, reflecting the contradictions of a system that demands the free movement of goods and capital — but not of workers. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236237/original/file-20180913-177953-1xceff8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236237/original/file-20180913-177953-1xceff8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236237/original/file-20180913-177953-1xceff8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236237/original/file-20180913-177953-1xceff8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236237/original/file-20180913-177953-1xceff8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236237/original/file-20180913-177953-1xceff8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236237/original/file-20180913-177953-1xceff8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this 2014 photo, detained immigrant children line up in the cafeteria at the Karnes County Residential Center, a temporary home for immigrant women and children detained at the border in Karnes City, Texas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)</span></span>
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<p>Imagine, for example, if you had no other choice but to move to a neighbouring country as the only way to make a decent living, and then being cut off from your family even though they live nearby.</p>
<p>Imagine if you had to make the choice between going back home to attend your father’s funeral or keeping the job you need to support your children. </p>
<p>Imagine going to a bus terminal in Mexico and only realizing after two hours that the stranger pacing back and forth is actually your father who is supposed to meet you and bring you and your baby back to the place you were born after being away for 20 years. </p>
<h2>Living in fear</h2>
<p>I heard many such stories during my research.</p>
<p>One young man told me he finds it difficult to juggle different identities using other migrants’ documents. He does not always know which name to use in which situation. </p>
<p>A woman working as a cashier for a donut shop was worried what might happen if she were ever stopped by the police when driving to work; her Mexican driver’s licence was about to expire and she was not eligible to apply for an American one. </p>
<p>I mention these and many other stories <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100107410">in a book written in the spirit of what is called public anthropology.</a> I wrote it for a broad American readership in the hopes of having some influence over how people think about the many undocumented Mexican migrant workers who live in their midst. </p>
<p>In my opinion, America needs more — lots more — migrants. NAFTA, in fact, did not go far enough. And getting rid of or watering down NAFTA will only make things worse.</p>
<h2>Free trade needs free movement of workers</h2>
<p>Some people think that freer trade is a good thing while other see it as an evil menace. Regardless of the merits or defects of the current neo-liberal philosophy behind NAFTA, the ideals of neoliberalism have not been implemented in a systematic way when it comes to the trade pact.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-exactly-is-neoliberalism-84755">What exactly is neoliberalism?</a>
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<p>Trump is against free trade in that he claims NAFTA has been a bad deal for the U.S. He’s also against immigration, yet he wants the U.S. to have a prosperous economy and to have a competitive advantage in the global economy. </p>
<p>But he cannot have his cake and eat it too.</p>
<p>It doesn’t make much sense to <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4446347/donald-trump-nafta-usmc/">promote economic competition and the elimination of tariffs</a> but not the free movement of workers across borders. The huge demand for cheap, reliable labour, combined with a hypocritical and dysfunctional system of immigration in the United States, has resulted in those millions of undocumented workers. </p>
<p>If the economy needs them, why doesn’t the government issue sufficient work permits? Why treat migrant workers like criminals? In my opinion, if you want free trade and a more integrated continental economy, you also need a free labour market. </p>
<p>It has become increasingly difficult for Mexicans to cross the border, yet only recently have even stricter border controls made a dent in the influx of undocumented Mexicans.</p>
<p>At the same time, a large proportion of Mexican undocumented migrants are less likely to return home for frequent visits, resulting in the birth of many more children whose mothers would have stayed in Mexico if they or their husbands had been allowed to more easily travel across the Rio Grande, as I mention in my book.</p>
<h2>Vicious circle</h2>
<p>Those children, now U.S. citizens who expect better-paid jobs, are not likely to continue to take the same kind of jobs as their parents, resulting in the need for more migrant workers, because their labour is essential. It’s a vicious circle.</p>
<p>Since having a competitive economy in the current global economy will require more migrant workers, not less, they should be able to travel freely across the border. That would be better for both Mexico and the United States. </p>
<p>That’s because Mexican migrant workers prefer to make some money in the U.S. but raise their families in Mexico, and set up small businesses in Mexico, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/World-Mexican-Migrants-Rock-Place/dp/159558448X">as shown in Judith Hellman’s book <em>The World of Mexican Migrants</em>.</a></p>
<p>The only way to prevent a further decline of the U.S. economy is a dual policy that combines the legalization of current undocumented workers with a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2018/02/04/new-bipartisan-immigration-plan-to-be-introduced-in-the-senate/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.865fcb24001c">bigger and better migrant workers’ program</a> along the lines suggested in a bipartisan proposal originating in the U.S. Senate in 2017. </p>
<p>Doing one without the other does not solve the problem, <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Beyond_Smoke_and_Mirrors.html?id=V25EPCC-6ecC&redir_esc=y">economists</a> and <a href="https://www.lfbscholarly.com/product-detail/mexican-labor-migrants-and-us-immigration-policies-from-sojourner-to-emigrant">immigration experts</a> agree. </p>
<p>How can politicians of all stripes be convinced to fix the system? What is the best way to persuade more American citizens of the need for immigration reform? </p>
<h2>Put a human face to the crisis</h2>
<p>One way to get the message across is to put a human face to the dry facts and technical reports of the experts. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236234/original/file-20180913-177968-15s3bzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236234/original/file-20180913-177968-15s3bzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236234/original/file-20180913-177968-15s3bzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236234/original/file-20180913-177968-15s3bzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236234/original/file-20180913-177968-15s3bzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236234/original/file-20180913-177968-15s3bzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236234/original/file-20180913-177968-15s3bzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A father and his three-year-old son are detained in the back of a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol vehicle in July 2018 in San Luis, Ariz.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Matt York)</span></span>
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<p>In my book, I do not dwell on the unfairness of the current U.S. immigration system, which results in millions of migrant workers not getting paid for overtime work and never getting holiday pay. </p>
<p>Nor do I present the argument that undocumented workers do not earn enough money and are being exploited. </p>
<p>Instead, I want to make this clear: North America will never have a truly competitive economy, nor will the gap in standards of living between Mexico and the United States ever be bridged, unless more migrant workers can go back and forth across the border with ease.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102627/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frans J. Schryer receives funding from SSHRC. </span></em></p>Free trade requires not just the free movement of goods, but of people too. If Donald Trump really wants the U.S. to have a competitive advantage, he should be encouraging more, not fewer, migrants.Frans J. Schryer, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/998092018-07-16T19:16:19Z2018-07-16T19:16:19ZIn Trump’s America, immigrants are modern-day ‘savage Indians’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227408/original/file-20180712-27045-1aklch3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2030%2C1422&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">_Trail of Tears_, a painting of a scene in Golconda, illinois. First Nations were forcefully displaced in huge numbers throughout America.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/coyotecreek/181814105">Kevin Schraer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>“One of the reasons we lead the free world today is that we are a nation of immigrants.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These words were delivered by <a href="https://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=947">Harry Truman to the US Congress in 1952</a> when he addressed the problem of aid for refugees who were fleeing “the oppressed countries of Eastern Europe.” Since then, US presidents have widely defined the United States as “a nation of immigrants,” regardless of their political ideology.</p>
<p>Donald Trump has broken this long-held tradition by running on an anti-immigration platform. He set the tone in his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/06/16/theyre-rapists-presidents-trump-campaign-launch-speech-two-years-later-annotated/">presidential announcement speech</a> when he associated Mexican immigrants with drugs, crime and rape.</p>
<p>His anti-immigrant stance has been reflected in the policy of his administration since he became president. In February 2018, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the federal agency in charge of immigration, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/us/uscis-nation-of-immigrants.html">eliminated the phrase “America’s promise as a nation of immigrants” from its mission statement</a>.</p>
<h2>Recreating the savage “Other”</h2>
<p>Even more significantly, President Trump has completely transformed presidential discourse on immigration by making immigrants the new face of a threatening “Other,” a primitive savage that has many of the features of the “Indians” of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_frontier">American frontier myth</a>.</p>
<p>Scholars such as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03637758009376037">Robert Ivie</a>, <a href="https://books.google.fr/books/about/Facing_West.html?id=wrexPiqKo58C&redir_esc=y">Richard Drinon</a>, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00335630601076326?journalCode=rqjs20">Mark West and Christ Carey</a>, <a href="https://books.google.fr/books/about/Gunfighter_Nation.html?id=zap1AAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Richard Slotkin</a>, or <a href="https://books.google.fr/books/about/Defining_Americans.html?id=GqntAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Mary Stuckey</a> have long demonstrated the relevance of the imagery of the savage “Other” in portraying America’s enemies in presidential rhetoric, during the Vietnam war, the Cold War, or the War on Terror, to name just the most recent ones.</p>
<p>It is the first time, however, that a modern US president has characterised immigrants as the enemies of an America ravaged by war on its own soil.</p>
<h2>Frontier myth rhetoric</h2>
<p>Just like the word <em>Indian</em> in the frontier myth, the term <em>immigrant</em> conflates an immense variety of individuals from different nations, situations, locations and with different motivations into a single undifferentiated mass constantly associated with crime, drugs and violence. Pennsylvania State University professor <a href="https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.fr/&httpsredir=1&article=1031&context=communication_facpub">Mary Stuckey notes</a> how during the Indian Wars, all native people were treated like enemies. It is the same for the immigrants today in Trump’s America.</p>
<p>In one of his <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-border-security-immigration-enforcement-improvements/">first executive orders</a>, just five days after his inauguration, President Trump linked undocumented immigration to “a significant threat to national security and public safety,” a threat of “acts of terror or criminal conduct” and a “clear and present danger to the interests of the United States.”</p>
<p>It does not matter that <a href="http://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/gov-undocumented-immigrants-crime-pew.html">statistics</a> did support his claims. For Trump and many Republicans, there is no distinction between killing and breaking the law. Committing <a href="https://factba.se/search#the%2Bfederal%2Bcrime%2Bof%2Billegal%2Bentry">“the federal crime of illegal entry”</a> makes undocumented immigrants potential dangerous criminals.</p>
<p>This view reflects a conservative ideology that tightly intertwines law and morality: <a href="https://factba.se/search#weak%2Blaws">“Weak laws”</a> mean weak morality. This threat is not limited to undocumented immigration: even asylum seekers at legal ports of entry have been treated like criminals, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/inside-the-governments-frantic-scramble-to-locate-migrant-parents-separated-from-their-children">PBS recently reported</a>. This ambiguity and confusion is also part of the <a href="https://youtu.be/sS2OpY9tSDo">president’s rhetoric</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sS2OpY9tSDo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>A racialised enemy</h2>
<p>Like the “Indian” in the Old West, the immigrant today is all the more feared by white America that he is cast as a racialised Other. President Trump has been called the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/">“first white president”</a>, and has a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/15/opinion/leonhardt-trump-racist.html">long history of racist comments</a>.</p>
<p>The racist subtext of his immigration policy is clearly understood by his base, especially since it often comes to the surface. In January of 2018, for instance, Trump asked at a meeting with lawmakers why the United States should be accepting immigrants from Haiti and other <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-attacks-protections-for-immigrants-from-shithole-countries-in-oval-office-meeting/2018/01/11/bfc0725c-f711-11e7-91af-31ac729add94_story.html">“shithole countries”</a> in Africa and elsewhere, and not more from nations such as Norway. This view is a return to the <a href="https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1959&context=ilj">19th-century American immigration system</a>, which viewed immigration through the lens of a racial hierarchy.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/X86DhwFXHUE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Responses to Trump comments about ‘shithole countries’, <em>Time</em> magazine.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Domestic war and the lone hero</h2>
<p>Like the frontier-era Indians, or the communists or the terrorists in more recent times, the immigrants represent the double threat of being both inside and outside the country, a country that is, according to Trump, ravaged by war.</p>
<p>From the mention of the <a href="https://factba.se/search#American%2Bcarnage">“American carnage”</a> in his inaugural address to his numerous references to towns, cities, communities <a href="https://factba.se/search#communities%2Bunder%2Bsiege">“under siege”</a> by a <a href="https://factba.se/search#has%2Bviolated%2Bour%2Bborders">“ruthless gang [MS-13] that has violated our borders”</a>, his favourite example of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/central-american-gangs-like-ms-13-were-born-out-of-failed-anti-crime-policies-76554">criminal organisation supposedly made of foreigners</a>, the president offers a gruesome view of a war being waged on the American soil. As with most metaphors employed by Trump, the war one is not subtle.</p>
<p>On June 31 he claimed on Twitter that he watched members of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/us/trump-ms13-immigration-fact-check.html">“liberating towns”</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I have watched ICE liberate towns from the grasp of MS-13 & clean out the toughest of situations.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Trump’s war narrative includes classic elements of <a href="https://books.google.fr/books?redir_esc=y&hl=fr&id=-9XOsW7YwJ4C&q=captivity#v=snippet&q=captivity&f=false">“captivity” and “rescue”</a> from the frontier myth. In his retelling, the heroic cavalry liberating the captives is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement service, and the solitary, heroic figure is Donald Trump himself.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ed4ynXdFal8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Both the frontier narrative and Trump’s depiction of America are characterised by the absence of “safe zones” because the enemy is perceived as fluid, a perception illustrated by the president’s use of liquid metaphors: illegal immigrants are <a href="https://factba.se/search#immigrants%2Bpouring%2Binto%2Bour%2Bcountry">“pouring into our country”</a>, refugees have <a href="https://factba.se/search#refugees%2Bflooded%2Bin">“flooded in”</a> and their <a href="https://factba.se/search#people%2Bflowing%2Bthrough">“flow”</a> must be stopped. This warrants the construction of a flood wall and the implementation of restrictive immigration policy.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227386/original/file-20180712-27042-1dm21h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227386/original/file-20180712-27042-1dm21h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227386/original/file-20180712-27042-1dm21h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227386/original/file-20180712-27042-1dm21h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227386/original/file-20180712-27042-1dm21h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227386/original/file-20180712-27042-1dm21h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227386/original/file-20180712-27042-1dm21h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227386/original/file-20180712-27042-1dm21h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Map of the route of the ‘Trails of Tears’, depicting the route taken to relocate Native Americans from the South-eastern United States between 1836 and 1839. Background map from the <em>Handbook of North American Indians</em>, Vol. 4.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears#/media/File:Trails_of_Tears_en.png">Nikater/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Tricksters</h2>
<p>The immigrants resemble the frontier Indians in another important respect, both are considered inferior in technology; it is not their weaponry that constitutes a threat, but their sheer number. Without strong borders, <a href="https://factba.se/search#millions%2Band%2Bmillions%2Bof%2Bpeople%2Bpouring">warns the president</a>, “millions and millions of people [would be] pouring through our country with all the problems that would cause with crime and schools.”</p>
<p>These baseless high numbers increase the fear effect by making immigrants an indistinguishable yet threatening mass. And like the <a href="https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.fr/&httpsredir=1&article=1031&context=communication_facpub">First Nations</a>, their potential conquest is possible through deception and trickery.</p>
<p>The American people, the president goes on, must be on guard against immigrants because those who <a href="https://factba.se/search#they%2Blook%2Bso%2Binnocent">“look so innocent” are “not innocent”</a>. He further warns that <a href="https://factba.se/search#bring%2Bin%2Bvirtually%2Bunlimited%2Bnumbers%2Bof%2Bdistant%2Brelatives">“a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives”</a> and put <a href="https://factba.se/search#great%2Bstrain%2Bon%2Bfederal%2Bwelfare">“great strain on federal welfare”</a>.</p>
<h2>Barbaric practices</h2>
<p>But the most important link between the mythical figure of the <a href="https://books.google.fr/books?redir_esc=y&hl=fr&id=-9XOsW7YwJ4C&q=victims#v=snippet&q=mutilation&f=false">Native American</a> and today’s American immigrants is their alleged savagery and violence through numerous accounts of massacres, torture, rape and mutilations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227389/original/file-20180712-27039-19a3ty5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C12%2C1182%2C797&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227389/original/file-20180712-27039-19a3ty5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227389/original/file-20180712-27039-19a3ty5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227389/original/file-20180712-27039-19a3ty5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227389/original/file-20180712-27039-19a3ty5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227389/original/file-20180712-27039-19a3ty5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227389/original/file-20180712-27039-19a3ty5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>The Vanishing Race</em>, by Joseph Dixon (1914). In Trump’s rhetoric, the presence of today’s migrants on American soil echoes the threats posed by ‘hordes’ of yesterday’s First Nations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/photo-tractatus/4797019060/">Tractatus/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Trump is particularly fond of <a href="https://factba.se/search#decapitating">horrific descriptions</a> of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3ZgvsUy1Ww">acts committed</a> by the MS-13 gang. By giving graphic details of their killings, exaggerating their numbers, remaining vague about their origins, and conflating them with undocumented immigrants, Donald Trump makes the dehumanisation of all immigrants acceptable by a large segment of the population.</p>
<p>He calls them an <a href="https://factba.se/search#infest">“infestation”</a> and <a href="https://factba.se/search#animals">“animals”</a> that are <a href="https://factba.se/search#preying%2Bon%2Bchildren">“preying on children”</a>.</p>
<p>If the viciousness of MS-13 is a reality, it is also noted, according to a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/27/opinion/trump-ms13-immigration.html"><em>New York Times</em> article</a>, that “MS-13 members make up less than 1% of the gang members in the United States”, “their numbers are stagnant” and more generally “few immigrants commit violent crimes”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SWC8obW2DMg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>President Trump has also <a href="https://factba.se/search#the%2Bsnake">repeatedly used</a> black radical singer Oscar Brown Jr.’s song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd82HxYyHZg">“The Snake”</a> to illustrate the supposedly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/24/the-snake-how-trump-appropriated-a-radical-black-singers-lyrics-for-refugee-fearmongering/?utm_term=.37cdde345b3b">evil nature of immigrants</a>. It refers to a snake, freezing in the cold, who persuades a woman to take him into her house and then ends up biting her.</p>
<p>Trump uses this allegory to suggest that immigrants – and not just undocumented ones – will end up hurting their host country because they are like a <a href="https://factba.se/search#reptile%2Bwith%2Ba%2Bgrin">“reptile with a grin”</a>.</p>
<p>This constant amalgam allows the president to deny any charge of anti-immigrant racism and play the victim of the “fake-news media”:</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227214/original/file-20180711-27015-s4amy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227214/original/file-20180711-27015-s4amy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227214/original/file-20180711-27015-s4amy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227214/original/file-20180711-27015-s4amy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227214/original/file-20180711-27015-s4amy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227214/original/file-20180711-27015-s4amy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227214/original/file-20180711-27015-s4amy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227214/original/file-20180711-27015-s4amy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Victimization</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227387/original/file-20180712-27030-tvy58g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227387/original/file-20180712-27030-tvy58g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227387/original/file-20180712-27030-tvy58g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227387/original/file-20180712-27030-tvy58g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227387/original/file-20180712-27030-tvy58g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227387/original/file-20180712-27030-tvy58g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227387/original/file-20180712-27030-tvy58g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Settlers escaping the Dakota War of 1862, when Dakota tribes systematically attacked German farms in an effort to drive out the settlers. Such events fuelled the ‘white victim’ narrative.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_frontier#/media/File:Dakota_War_of_1862-stereo-right.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the promotion and acceptance of immoral policies, dehumanization is an important but insufficient step. It also requires victimization, or “victimage”, to use <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CqEQgf9N5fgC&pg=PA146&lpg=PA146&dq=victimage+burke&source=bl&ots=oKvXLnhktv&sig=m0X4IU-1h3ZHRuMosUZhTVeYcEA&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwibi9WDyIrcAhVlneAKHR__DzkQ6AEINTAB#v=onepage&q=victimage%20burke&f=false">Kenneth Burke’s term</a>.</p>
<p>In the heroic tale of the frontier, the <a href="https://books.google.fr/books?redir_esc=y&hl=fr&id=-9XOsW7YwJ4C&q=captivity#v=snippet&q=victimization&f=false">victimisation of the white settlers</a> served to alleviate any guilt that might have existed regarding the treatment of the natives. This process has been very clearly been at play with Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Just two days after signing an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/politics/trump-immigration-children-executive-order.html">executive order</a> that would hold families of immigrants together instead of separating them, Trump held a meeting for the American families of victims killed by illegal immigrants. Their victimisation was necessarily greater: not only were they permanently separated from their loved ones, Trump insisted, but they also victims of the media, which he asserted did not report on their tragedy:</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/__WBoDljkzE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>By pitting the grief of one family against that of another, Trump downplayed the tragedy of the immigrant children and toddlers forcibly separated their parents. At the same time, his <a href="https://pennstate.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/the-politics-of-resentment-and-the-tyranny-of-the-minority-rethin">victimage rhetoric</a> offers redemption by relieving his supporters of any guilt they might possibly feel for the mistreatment of immigrants, which may explain why his policy remains <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/392802-poll-majority-of-republicans-back-family-separation-policy">popular for a majority of Republicans</a>.</p>
<p>This analysis highlights the cruel irony of this racialised vision: the brown skin of these immigrants from Central America is the visible sign that they belong to the same indigenous peoples of the Americas.</p>
<p>Trump’s attitude toward contemporary migrants also reveals his contempt for history when he is seen “honouring” Native American tribes in front of a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/11/28/andrew-jackson-was-called-indian-killer-trump-honored-navajos-in-front-of-his-portrait/">painting of president Andrew Jackson</a>, who was known as an “Indian killer”, or when Trump’s administration proposes to <a href="https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Trump-Wants-to-Classify-Native-Americans-as-Race-Not-Nations-20180423-0015.html">classify Native Americans as a race</a>.</p>
<p>Their treatment today – and those of immigrants – echoes that of their cousins in the past, <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/for-native-people-the-trauma-of-family-separation-is-nothing-new/">including the trauma of family separation</a>. They too were denied the right to move freely in a continent their ancestors had settled long before the white man, and certainly long before <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_of_Donald_Trump#Ancestry">Donald Trump’s grandparents emigrated to America</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99809/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The leader of the United States has made immigrants the new face of a threatening “Other,” a primitive savage who has many of the features of the “Indians” of the American frontier myth.Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy, Assistant lecturer, Université Paris Nanterre – Université Paris LumièresLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/935212018-04-10T13:25:05Z2018-04-10T13:25:05ZImmigration and crime, is there a link?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213259/original/file-20180404-189824-k4hniw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/success?src=wl7m8b56KkzEHcGY9hnI6A-1-3">shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I am an immigrant. Many people worry about those like me, and those from other countries who might follow in my footsteps. </p>
<p>Bold newspaper headlines either blame immigrants for <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2102895/Immigrant-crimewave-warning-Foreign-nationals-accused-QUARTER-crimes-London.html">a whole host of issues</a> or <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/immigration-uk-economy-what-are-the-benefits-stats-theresa-may-amber-rudd-tory-conference-speeches-a7346121.html">portray them as saintly helpers</a> in the struggle for economic well-being. </p>
<p>Political parties use immigration policies as key selling points, driving a division in public opinion – with either fear and hostility towards immigrants, or with unnecessary overwhelming praise. Both are equally undeserved.</p>
<p>And in this politically charged atmosphere, discussion of immigration has become the poster child of an era in which expertise is vilified and inconvenient truths become “fake news”. And the fewer facts we have, the more outrage there is.</p>
<h2>A mixed picture</h2>
<p>The reality is that as researchers, we know little about the relationship, if any, between immigration and crime. This is in part because lowbrow journalistic obsession with immigration and crime has made it somewhat a taboo topic for research. As evidenced by the <a href="http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/15718174-02503002">limited academic literature available</a>, a consensus simply does not exist. </p>
<p>In the US, areas with higher concentrations of recent immigrants have been found to actually have <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122413491964">reduced levels of homicide and robbery</a>. Using police recorded data in Chicago, researchers also found that first generation Mexican immigrants are 45% <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/11/opinion/open-doors-dont-invite-criminals.html">less likely to commit a violent offence</a> than third generation Americans.</p>
<p>Similarly, a <a href="https://econpapers.repec.org/article/sprjopoec/v_3a28_3ay_3a2015_3ai_3a3_3ap_3a697-736.htm">large scale European study</a> on the effects of immigration on crime concluded that while an increase in immigration generally does not affect crime levels, it does go hand-in-hand with increased public anxiety and anti-immigration stances. </p>
<h2>It’s all about culture</h2>
<p>Research also shows that immigrants who come from culturally similar backgrounds to their new area, are likely to commit fewer crimes than the native population. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19856706">Research on Los Angeles</a>, for example, found that a higher number of Latino immigrants who were from culturally similar regions to the current residents, reduced the rates of violence in the area. </p>
<p>Similarly, research in Spain showed that Spanish speaking immigrants had a much more benign impact on crime <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230886154_Does_Immigration_Cause_Crime_Evidence_from_Spain">than those of other origins</a>. Such immigrants undoubtedly have an easier time moving to a new country where the culture reflects something like their own. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213260/original/file-20180404-189795-147zs8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213260/original/file-20180404-189795-147zs8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213260/original/file-20180404-189795-147zs8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213260/original/file-20180404-189795-147zs8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213260/original/file-20180404-189795-147zs8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213260/original/file-20180404-189795-147zs8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213260/original/file-20180404-189795-147zs8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Similar cultures can make it easier for immigrants to fit in.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/success?src=QAUNDxBqx9DoKJVladMZeg-1-64">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And yet, people from <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Foreigners-European-Prisons-van-Kalmthout/dp/9058509753">ethnic minority groups in Western countries</a> are disproportionately likely to be <a href="http://home.iscte-iul.pt/%7Eapad/ACED/bibliografia/WACQUANT%20Suitable%20Enemies.pdf">arrested and imprisoned for most crime types</a>. And asylum seekers are over-represented in the crime figures in <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Horst_Entorf/publication/254403085_Immigration_and_crime_in_Germany_and_Denmark/links/0c9605214af31ea603000000/Immigration-and-crime-in-Germany-and-Denmark.pdf">Germany and Denmark</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly in the UK, the impact of two waves of immigration has been <a href="http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/59323/1/CEP_Bell_Fasani_Machin_Crime-and-immigration_2013.pdf">examined by researchers</a>, specifically looking at the relationship between a rise in immigration and crime levels. The analysis found that when workers from Eastern European states (that joined the EU in 2004) came to the UK, the impact on crime was minimal. But the research also found that the wave of asylum seekers who came to the UK in the 1990s – mainly from war torn countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia – coincided with a slight increase in the total number of property crimes at the time. This was thought to be down to the fact that employment rates for this wave of immigrants was much lower than those of the average Briton.</p>
<h2>What about multicultural areas?</h2>
<p>Immigrant populations tend to be very concentrated, with people tending to reside in areas with existing communities. <a href="http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/34401/">My recent research</a> shows that throughout England and Wales, areas where immigrants from one single background make up a significant majority of the immigrant population, tend to be low in crime. Nearly as low in crime as the areas with small immigrant populations. </p>
<p>It doesn’t make a difference what the background of the immigrant population is, what appears to be key is that there is a cultural similarity among the immigrant population within an area. My research also found that areas with very high numbers of immigrants that are low in crime – or below the nation’s average – tend to be areas with either European or African immigrants. </p>
<p>But my research also showed that areas where two or more cultures (other than that of the indigenous population) are prevalent, tend to be very high in crime. This is specifically the case in areas with the highest proportions of immigrants from Asia and Europe. In these areas violent crime is 70% higher, property crime is 92% higher and vehicle crime increases by 19% compared to national average. </p>
<h2>What to do about it</h2>
<p>The research I have carried out shows the need to view culture as invaluable in the examination of the impact immigration has on crime. </p>
<p>It must also be considered that immigrant communities are less inclined to contact police and more likely to “self police” – which inevitably can result in more crime. So, policing of immigrant communities, which are becoming increasingly more concentrated, needs to be done with <a href="http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/31244/">cultural differences in mind</a>.</p>
<p>Social housing and other affordable housing initiatives must also be thought through carefully to avoid creating cultural clashes where possible. Some recent advances such as the UK government’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/integrated-communities-strategy-green-paper">Integrated Communities Strategy</a> already try to address language barriers that preclude integration. But ultimately, more calm discussion with a view towards a safer and more cohesive world would not hurt either.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93521/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dainis Ignatans receives funding from the British Academy. </span></em></p>Does immigration lead to more crime? Here’s what the research says.Dainis Ignatans, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, University of HuddersfieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/766862017-05-30T01:39:52Z2017-05-30T01:39:52ZThe US and Mexico: Education and understanding<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171146/original/file-20170526-6402-1eubcmv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The University of California-Mexico Initiative Education Working Group created Project SOL, an online curriculum program that teaches students in their native language.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/30308/teacheredithissakhanian-helps-bryanlima">University of California, Riverside</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last week, officials from the U.S. and Mexico revitalized their commitment to fight cross-border smuggling of drugs, arms and money. U.S. officials recognized America’s demand for drugs as “<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/18/politics/tillerson-mexico-drug-trade/">the magnet</a>” that feeds drug smuggling, and Mexico committed to tackle jointly the elements of the cartels’ business model.</p>
<p>While illegal immigration and drugs dominate much of the public discourse around U.S.-Mexico relations, the partnership between these countries is vital and dynamic in many other ways. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/growing-together-economic-ties-between-the-united-states-and-mexico">two neighbors</a> trade over US$1 million a minute, employ many millions in good jobs on both sides of the border, have over a million legal border crossings each day and have over 35 million citizens of shared heritage.</p>
<p>We have devoted years of our professional lives (in government, academic and social sectors) to developing and implementing strategies for improving our countries’ relationship. As such, we’ve been taken aback by the sharply critical U.S. rhetoric about Mexico in recent months and the anti-American sentiment that quickly rekindled in Mexico.</p>
<p>Our most recent work, however, shows that educational and research exchanges can bridge the widening divide, while also building workforces that can help the two nations thrive in the technological revolutions ahead.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171046/original/file-20170525-23251-1hxzabl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171046/original/file-20170525-23251-1hxzabl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171046/original/file-20170525-23251-1hxzabl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171046/original/file-20170525-23251-1hxzabl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171046/original/file-20170525-23251-1hxzabl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171046/original/file-20170525-23251-1hxzabl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171046/original/file-20170525-23251-1hxzabl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Attendees of the Anaheim Convention Center rally in 2016 show support for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/anaheim-california-may-25-2016-thousands-426989245?src=1lXnivognR_nJxudfQwQJg-1-2">Mike Ledray/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Academic exchanges as long-term bridges</h2>
<p>We have seen firsthand the impact of programs on young Mexicans who returned from U.S. stays with pride, enthusiasm and improved English. We’ve also witnessed how American students interacting with their counterparts in Mexico enhance the appreciation and respect for each others’ countries.</p>
<p>Yet, <a href="https://www.iie.org/en/Research-and-Insights/Project-Atlas/Explore-Data/United-States">student exchange numbers</a> are not encouraging. Mexico ranks 10th for the number of full-time students studying in the U.S., placing it far behind China and India, and also trailing Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Vietnam, and northern neighbor Canada. The story is worse in <a href="http://www.iie.org/Research-and-Publications/Open-Doors/Data/US-Study-Abroad/Leading-Destinations/2013-15">the other direction</a>: Only 4,712 U.S. students were studying in Mexico in 2014-15, 12th among destinations for U.S. students.</p>
<p>There are many reasons for the low numbers, but here is the bottom line: Two such interconnected neighbors should be doing better.</p>
<p><iframe id="OFTy7" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/OFTy7/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>In 2013, we were a part of launching an initiative aimed at tackling this problem. The <a href="https://mx.usembassy.gov/education-culture/education/the-u-s-mexico-bilateral-forum-on-higher-education-innovation-and-research/">Bilateral Forum on Higher Education, Innovation and Research</a> (known by its Spanish acronym, FOBESII) gathers educators, private citizens, companies and officials from universities and government. Their aim is to expand long-term investments in education and research partnerships between the U.S. and Mexico.</p>
<p>In the <a href="https://mex-eua.sre.gob.mx/images/stories/PDF/AchievementsUSMexicoBilateralForumonHigherEducationInnovationandResearchFOBESII.pdf">past four years</a>, FOBESII has fostered more than 115 new agreements between Mexican and U.S. universities.</p>
<p>Mexico’s federal government allocated an unprecedented $42.9 million for these programs during 2014-16. More than 100,000 Mexican students – many of them from low income families – came to the U.S. as full-time graduate students, as single-semester researchers or in summer programs designed to improve English proficiency. These experiences changed the way students (and their families) viewed <a href="https://comexusfulbright-garciarobles.tumblr.com/">their future potential</a> and, importantly these days, their opinion about the United States was greatly improved.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the U.S. public funds to support these exchanges were more limited than the investments made by Mexico. Private sector sponsors, however, have worked with the U.S. government to develop <a href="http://www.100kstrongamericas.org/">32 academic projects with Mexican universities</a>, ranging from engineering, physics, geology and health to environmental sciences.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171037/original/file-20170525-23245-1nw93ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171037/original/file-20170525-23245-1nw93ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171037/original/file-20170525-23245-1nw93ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171037/original/file-20170525-23245-1nw93ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171037/original/file-20170525-23245-1nw93ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171037/original/file-20170525-23245-1nw93ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171037/original/file-20170525-23245-1nw93ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 2015, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Earl Anthony Wayne visits students, who participated in the Fulbright-Garcia Robles program in the U.S., from The Technological University Retoño.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.facebook.com/USCGGuadalajara/photos/pcb.10153205193770129/10153205192465129/?type=3&theater">Consulate General of the United States Guadalajara</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Building things together</h2>
<p>While targeting such exchanges provides opportunities to young scholars and promotes cultural understanding, it can also produce better educated workforces.</p>
<p>Mexico and the United States literally and figuratively <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/growing_together_economic_ties_between_the_united_states_and_mexico.pdf">build things together</a>, with pieces crossing the border many times before a finished product emerges. American parts and products make up, on average, about <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/growing_together_economic_ties_between_the_united_states_and_mexico.pdf">40 percent of the value</a> of a finished manufactured product from Mexico. That’s much more than the U.S. contributes to other countries’ manufacturing and positively impacts U.S. jobs and profits.</p>
<p>The “<a href="https://theoutline.com/post/1316/fourth-industrial-revolution-developing-economies">fourth industrial revolution</a>” is unfolding: digital technologies are leading to faster and more complex advances in practically all facets of life. Both countries are going to need better equipped labor forces to maintain this highly integrated production network and to compete with others in the world.</p>
<p><iframe id="lRaMG" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/lRaMG/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Several ongoing initiatives within the framework of FOBESII will support the goal of better-equipped labor forces. The University of California has raised around $15 million to support <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uc-napolitano-mexico-20170323-story.html">programs linking their universities with Mexican institutions</a>. Universities in <a href="http://www.contex.utsystem.edu/">Texas</a> and <a href="https://global.arizona.edu/unam-ua">Arizona</a> have developed similar programs, focusing on research in energy, the environment and other common topics in science and technology. The U.S. <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/">National Science Foundation</a> and Mexico’s <a href="http://www.conacyt.mx/">National Council of Science and Technology</a> have created 12 more joint projects.</p>
<p>Michael M. Crow, President of Arizona State University, described the rationale behind <a href="https://mexico.asu.edu/">his school’s partnerships</a> this way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We share a border and many common interests with Mexico. It’s natural that we seek stronger ties through education, research and innovation so we can help each other prepare for the challenges and the changing nature of the advanced workforce of the 21st century.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Every year, we’ve seen many more students and universities who want to participate than the current funding allows.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171045/original/file-20170525-23241-far5e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171045/original/file-20170525-23241-far5e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171045/original/file-20170525-23241-far5e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171045/original/file-20170525-23241-far5e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171045/original/file-20170525-23241-far5e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171045/original/file-20170525-23241-far5e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171045/original/file-20170525-23241-far5e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 2016, The University of Texas and Mexico’s National Council of Science and Technology launched ConTex as a collaborative effort to foster scientific training and research between the U.S. and Mexico.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/university-texas-ut-against-blue-sky-221247628?src=Zs_09zwewWXn9z1ZcvH_ww-1-14">f11photo/shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Investing in the future of North America</h2>
<p>Historically, other neighbors in the world have made similar strategic decisions to invest in educational partnerships. The <a href="http://www.erasmusprogramme.com/">European Erasmus</a> program, for instance, has been supported by billions of dollars of funding since it was established in 1987. Over <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-1110_en.htm">three million students</a> have studied in other countries at over 4,000 post-secondary institutions. Aside from the academic value of the program, it has contributed to crafting <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2016.1210911">a more robust European vision</a> among the youth.</p>
<p>As with European cooperation, the comparatively modest U.S.-Mexico efforts are not about charity – or even just education. They concern the strategic interests of neighbors in the face of global competition, technological revolutions, and persistent prejudices that strain relations between neighbors.</p>
<p>Mexico and the United States will remain neighbors. Their shared challenges will not disappear, but shared opportunities could be missed. We should double down on overcoming our misunderstandings and solving concrete problems together. Learning and researching together will definitely help.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76686/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Earl Anthony Wayne is affiliated with the Wilson Center, the Atlantic Council, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the American Foreign Service Association. He is an advisor to HSBC bank on countering illicit finance.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sergio M. Alcocer is affiliated with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), México Exponencial, the Mexican Council for International Affairs (COMEXI), the US National Academy of Engineering and the Mexican Academy of Engineering. </span></em></p>Despite hard work by both governments to overcome mistrust, more is needed to build mutual understanding between Americans and Mexicans. Educational partnerships may hold the answer.Earl Anthony Wayne, Visiting Professor of International Affairs, Hamilton CollegeSergio M. Alcocer, Research Professor, Institute of Engineering, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/771412017-05-12T02:00:57Z2017-05-12T02:00:57ZBefore Trump, Mexicans really liked the US<p>Donald Trump’s antagonistic rhetoric toward Mexico has caused an increase in anti-American sentiment among Mexicans.</p>
<p>Today, many in Mexico reject Trump’s policies and fear his administration, citing it as fascist, <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/entrada-de-opinion/articulo/jorge-camil/nacion/2015/11/20/la-gestapo-de-trump">authoritarian</a>, populist, dictatorial, xenophobic, misogynist or simply <a href="http://www.excelsior.com.mx/opinion/jose-cardenas/2015/06/19/1030279">an aberration</a>.</p>
<p>It wasn’t always this way. Since the mid-1980s, Mexican politicians, intellectuals, journalists and business professionals promoted a positive view of the U.S. Pro-American sentiment was handed down through generations.</p>
<p>As a scholar of how other countries view the United States, I believe Mexican anti-Americanism is bad news for bilateral relations. Considering the U.S. exported more then US$19 billion to Mexico just <a href="https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c2010.html">in January 2017</a> and 1 million people <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/07/19/opinion-million-people-cross-border-legally-every-day-and-that-good-thing.html">legally cross the border</a> every day, this political and social turbulence should be concerning. A return to the pre-Trump Mexican sentiment regarding the U.S. could take many years, if not decades.</p>
<h2>Relations and trust in decline</h2>
<p>In January 2015, the Mexican polling company Parametria <a href="http://www.parametria.com.mx/carta_parametrica.php?cp=4933">published a survey</a> showing that 49 percent of Mexicans considered U.S.-Mexican relations to be either good or very good. Two years later, only 21 percent considered relations to be good or very good. And, 49 percent of Mexicans said U.S.-Mexican relations were either bad or very bad.</p>
<p>A poll by the Mexican newspaper Reforma conducted <a href="https://gruporeforma-blogs.com/encuestas/?s=trump">in August 2016</a> revealed that 86 percent of Mexicans had an unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump. Only 5 percent maintained a favorable one. In the same poll, 95 percent of the Mexicans rejected Trump’s position on immigration and the proposal of building a wall along the Mexican border.</p>
<p>Likewise, 85 percent of Mexicans agreed that if Trump implements the changes he has been advocating, Mexico will be at least somewhat affected. About 73 percent showed significant concern for the future of Mexico. And, 62 percent of the population agreed with the statement that Mexico should strongly defend its own interests, even if that leads to a confrontation with Trump.</p>
<h2>Mexico’s once-stable view</h2>
<p>A positive view of the United States among the Mexican people has, in recent history, actually been quite stable. Starting in 2004 the Center for Teaching and Research in Economics in Mexico conducted <a href="http://libreriacide.com/librospdf/DTEI-156.pdf">a series</a> of <a href="http://www.libreriacide.com/librospdf/DTEI-257.pdf">surveys</a> every two years, with help from the Mexican Council on Foreign Affairs in 2004 and 2006. They asked Mexicans to rate how favorably they viewed the U.S. and 24 other countries on a scale from 0 to 100. Countries were then ranked most to least favorable by their scores. Results from 2016 will be released in June.</p>
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<p>For 10 years – from <a href="http://www.libreriacide.com/librospdf/DTEI-257.pdf">2004</a> to 2014 – the United States, with the exception of 2008, remained the first or second most favorable country for Mexicans. The only year the U.S. fell <a href="http://libreriacide.com/librospdf/DTEI-188.pdf">below second place</a> was 2008, but even then it scored 62 out of 100. The lower ranking was likely related to low approval ratings of the American invasion to Iraq and Afghanistan, in Mexico and around the world.</p>
<p>Several forces contributed to a pro-American perspective. Officially, the government promoted a pro-American agenda in order to highlight the benefits of an economic alliances with the U.S. </p>
<p>Unofficially, the presence of <a href="http://www.jstor.org.zeus.tarleton.edu:82/stable/pdf/2567048.pdf">American culture</a> in music, TV and cinema is also contributed. The constant movement of Mexican immigrants to and from the United States brought not only American goods to Mexico, but also American traditions, practices and ideals.</p>
<p>Affinity toward the U.S. <a href="https://www.frbatlanta.org/-/media/documents/filelegacydocs/Jwhi811.pdf">also grew</a> with the success of the American economy during the 1980s and 1990s. At the time, Mexico was <a href="https://economics.rabobank.com/publications/2013/september/the-mexican-1982-debt-crisis/">experiencing economic crisis</a> and devaluation of the peso. In 1992, Mexico formalized the integration of their economy with the United States by signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).</p>
<h2>Beyond reaction?</h2>
<p>The change in numbers solidify the deteriorating relationship between the U.S. and Mexico. Mexicans have protested in front of the American Embassy in Mexico City. Walks have been <a href="http://www.animalpolitico.com/2017/01/mexico-embajada-protesta-trump/">organized</a> to <a href="http://www.excelsior.com.mx/nacional/2017/02/13/1145977">disavow Trump</a> and his policies. Many in the <a href="http://www.milenio.com/firmas/hector_aguilar_camin_dia-con-dia/donald_trump-100_dias-politica_interna-comercio_internacional-frontera-muro_18_849095110.html">intellectual community</a> have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2017/01/04/mexico-stood-up-to-reagan-it-can-stand-up-to-trump-too/?utm_term=.27be643ccf48">condemned Trump’s views</a>. </p>
<p>Enrique Krauze, a Mexican intellectual, has <a href="http://aristeguinoticias.com/0203/entrevistas/donald-trump-es-un-perfecto-fascista-enrique-krauze-en-cnn/">repeatedly called Trump</a> “a perfect fascist” and has <a href="http://elpais.com/elpais/2017/02/03/opinion/1486142760_089776.html">declared Mexico</a> to be at war, though not militarily, with the United States. </p>
<p>For Mexicans, being immune to the offensive statements of Trump is difficult. Unfortunately, their reactive resentment may obscure a thoughtful critique of the United States, its policies, constituents and the structural reasons for Trump’s ascent to the White House. </p>
<p><em>Author’s note: Research assistant Bailey Ross contributed to the writing of this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77141/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jesus Velasco is Joe and Teresa Endowed Chair is Social Science at Tarleton State University and Non-Resident scholar of the Mexican Center at Rice University.</span></em></p>Can the U.S. recover its once positive image among Mexicans? Trade, immigration and cultural ties stand to suffer.Jesus Velasco, Joe and Teresa Endowed Chair in Social Sciences, Tarleton State University, Tarleton State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/746042017-05-01T02:00:36Z2017-05-01T02:00:36ZHow crossing the US-Mexico border became a crime<p>It was not always a crime to enter the United States without authorization. </p>
<p>In fact, for most of American history, immigrants could enter the United States without official permission and not fear criminal prosecution by the federal government.</p>
<p>That changed in 1929. On its surface, Congress’ <a href="http://people.sunyulster.edu/voughth/immlaws1929_48.htm">new prohibitions</a> on informal border crossings simply modernized the U.S. immigration system by compelling all immigrants to apply for entry. However, in my new book “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q28Q5NGlASY">City of Inmates</a>,” I detail how Congress outlawed border crossings with the specific intent of criminalizing, prosecuting and imprisoning Mexican immigrants.</p>
<p>Knowing this history is important now. On April 11, 2017, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced his plan to step up prosecutions of unlawful entries, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-jeff-sessions-delivers-keynote-remarks-international-association-chiefs">saying</a> it’s time to “restore a lawful system of immigration.” This may read like a colorblind commitment to law and order. But the law Sessions has vowed to enforce was designed with racist intent.</p>
<h2>The Mexican immigration debate</h2>
<p>The criminalization of informal border crossings occurred amid an immigration boom from Mexico. </p>
<p>In 1900, about 100,000 Mexican immigrants resided in the United States.</p>
<p>By 1930, nearly 1.5 million Mexican immigrants lived north of the border. </p>
<p>As Mexican immigration surged, many in Congress were trying to restrict nonwhite immigration. By <a href="http://www2.fiu.edu/%7Erevellk/pad3802/Ngai.pdf">1924</a>, Congress had largely adopted a “whites only” immigration system, <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-immigration-order-is-bad-foreign-policy-72053">banning all Asian immigration</a> and cutting the number of immigrants allowed to enter the United States from anywhere other than Northern and Western Europe. But whenever Congress tried to cap the number of Mexicans allowed to enter the United States each year, southwestern employers fiercely objected.</p>
<p>U.S. employers had eagerly stoked the era’s Mexican immigration boom by recruiting Mexican workers to their southwestern farms, ranches and railroads, as well as their homes and mines. By the 1920s, western farmers were completely dependent on Mexican workers. </p>
<p>However, they also believed that Mexican immigrants would never permanently settle in the United States. As agribusiness lobbyist <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/seasonal-agricultural-laborers-from-mexico-hearings-before-the-committee-on-immigration-and-naturalization-sixty-ninth-congress-first-session-january-28-and-29-february-2-9-11-and-23-1926-on-hr-6741-hr-7559-hr-9036/oclc/82498588"> S. Parker Frisselle explained to Congress in 1926</a>, “The Mexican is a ‘homer.’ Like the pigeon he goes home to roost.” On Frisselle’s promise that Mexicans were “not immigrants” but, rather, “birds of passage,” western employers successfully defeated proposals to cap Mexican immigration to the United States during the 1920s.</p>
<p>The idea that Mexican immigrants often returned to Mexico contained some truth. Many <a href="https://academic.oup.com/maghis/article/23/4/25/935227/Mexican-Immigration-to-the-United-States">Mexican immigrants</a> engaged in cyclical migrations between their homes in Mexico and work in the United States. Yet, by the close of the 1920s, Mexicans were settling in large numbers across the Southwest. They bought homes and started newspapers, churches and businesses. And many Mexican immigrants in the United States started families, raising a new generation of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Mexican-American-Ethnicity-1900-1945/dp/0195096487">Mexican-American children</a>. </p>
<p>Monitoring the rise of Mexican-American communities in southwestern states, the advocates of a whites-only immigration system charged western employers with recklessly courting Anglo-America’s racial doom. As the work of historian <a href="http://nataliamolinaphd.com/">Natalia Molina</a> details, they believed Mexicans were racially unfit to be U.S. citizens.</p>
<p>Western employers agreed that Mexicans should not be allowed to become U.S. citizens. “We, in California, would greatly prefer some set up in which our peak labor demands might be met and upon the completion of our harvest these laborers returned to their country,” Friselle told Congress. But western employers also wanted unfettered access to an unlimited number of Mexican laborers. “We need the labor,” they roared back at those who wanted to cap the number of Mexican immigrants allowed to enter the United States each year. </p>
<p>Amid the escalating conflict between employers in the West and advocates of restriction in Congress, a senator from Dixie proposed a compromise.</p>
<h2>Blease’s law</h2>
<p><a href="https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=hO1gAAAAIBAJ&sjid=uWMNAAAAIBAJ&pg=3029,5898411**">Senator Coleman Livingston Blease</a> hailed from the hills of South Carolina. In 1925, he entered Congress committed, above all else, to protecting white supremacy. In 1929, as restrictionists and employers tussled over the future of Mexican immigration, Blease proposed a way forward.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165929/original/file-20170419-2410-1u3u9tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165929/original/file-20170419-2410-1u3u9tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165929/original/file-20170419-2410-1u3u9tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165929/original/file-20170419-2410-1u3u9tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165929/original/file-20170419-2410-1u3u9tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165929/original/file-20170419-2410-1u3u9tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165929/original/file-20170419-2410-1u3u9tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Senator Coleman Blease.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c05189">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to U.S. immigration officials, Mexicans made nearly one million official border crossings into the United States during the 1920s. They arrived at a port of entry, paid an entry fee and submitted to any required tests, such as literacy and health. </p>
<p>However, as U.S. immigration authorities reported, many other Mexican immigrants did not register for legal entry. Entry fees were prohibitively high for many Mexican workers. Moreover, U.S. authorities subjected Mexican immigrants, in particular, to kerosene baths and humiliating <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2006/feb/27/opinion/oe-romo27">delousing</a> procedures because they believed Mexican immigrants carried disease and filth on their bodies. Instead of traveling to a port of entry, many Mexicans informally crossed the border at will, as both U.S. and Mexican citizens had done for decades.</p>
<p>When the debate stalled over how many Mexicans to allow in each year, Blease shifted attention to stopping the large number of border crossings that took place outside ports of entry. He suggested criminalizing unmonitored entry. </p>
<p>According to Blease’s bill, “unlawfully entering the country” would be a misdemeanor, while unlawfully returning to the United States after deportation would be a felony. The idea was to force Mexican immigrants into an authorized and monitored stream that could be turned on and turned off at will at ports of entry. Any immigrant who entered the United States outside the bounds of this stream would be a criminal subject to fines, imprisonment and ultimately deportation. But it was a crime designed to impact Mexican immigrants, in particular.</p>
<p>Neither the western agricultural businessmen nor the restrictionists registered any objections. Congress passed Blease’s bill, the Immigration Act of March 4, 1929, and dramatically altered the story of crime and punishment in the United States. </p>
<h2>Caged</h2>
<p>With stunning precision, the criminalization of unauthorized entry caged thousands of Mexico’s “birds of passage.” By the end of 1930, the U.S. attorney general <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000521490">reported</a> prosecuting 7,001 cases of unlawful entry. By the end of the decade, U.S. attorneys had prosecuted more than 44,000 cases.</p>
<p>According to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, the vast majority of immigrants imprisoned for breaking Blease’s law were Mexicans. Throughout the 1930s, Mexicans never comprised fewer than 85 percent of all immigration prisoners. Some years, that number rose to 99 percent. By the end of the decade, tens of thousands of Mexicans had been convicted of unlawfully entering or reentering the United States. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons built three new prisons in the U.S.-Mexico border region: La Tuna Prison in El Paso, Prison Camp #10 in Tucson and Terminal Island in Los Angeles.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167300/original/file-20170501-12994-1ily4ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167300/original/file-20170501-12994-1ily4ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167300/original/file-20170501-12994-1ily4ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167300/original/file-20170501-12994-1ily4ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167300/original/file-20170501-12994-1ily4ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167300/original/file-20170501-12994-1ily4ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167300/original/file-20170501-12994-1ily4ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167300/original/file-20170501-12994-1ily4ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">La Tuna detention farm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/129.html">U.S. Bureau of Prisons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Only the outbreak of World War II halted the Mexican immigrant prison boom of the 1930s. The war turned the attention of U.S. attorneys elsewhere, and Mexicans workers were desperately needed north of the border.</p>
<p>With <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1c90/a990eaacc1547420ce3c7dad9d58c39dca71.pdf">few exceptions</a>, prosecutions for unlawful entry and reentry remained low until 2005. As a measure of the war on terror, the George W. Bush administration directed U.S. attorneys to adopt an <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/04/23/iv-u-s-immigration-enforcement/">“enforcement with consequences”</a> strategy. In 2009, U.S. attorneys prosecuted more than <a href="http://grassrootsleadership.org/sites/default/files/reports/indefensible_book_web.pdf">50,000 cases</a> of unlawful entry or reentry. The <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2686276">Obama</a> administration continued the surge, betting that aggressive border enforcement would help bring a recalcitrant Congress to adopt comprehensive immigration reform. It did not. </p>
<p>By 2015, prosecutions for unlawful entry and reentry accounted for 49 percent of all federal prosecutions and the federal government had spent at least <a href="http://grassrootsleadership.org/sites/default/files/reports/indefensible_book_web.pdf">US$7 billion</a> to lock up unlawful border crossers. </p>
<p>Throughout this most recent surge, the disparate impact of criminalizing unlawful entry and reentry has endured. Today, Latinos, led by Mexicans and Central Americans, make up <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4392">92 percent</a> of all immigrants imprisoned for unlawful entry and reentry. </p>
<p>Attorney General Sessions still wants more. Traveling to southern Arizona to announce his plan to even more aggressively prosecute unlawful entry, he signaled that, in the years to come, most prosecutions will happen on the U.S.-Mexico border and will target <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/25/as-mexican-share-declined-u-s-unauthorized-immigrant-population-fell-in-2015-below-recession-level/">Mexicans and Central Americans</a>. </p>
<p>When the number of Mexicans as well as Central Americans imprisoned on immigration charges soon booms, there will be nothing unwitting or colorblind about it. Congress first invented the crimes of unlawful entry and reentry with the purpose of criminalizing and imprisoning Mexican immigrants and it has delivered on that intent since 1929. The Sessions plan will bear a similar result and, in the process, discharge the racist design of Blease’s law.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74604/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kelly Lytle Hernandez does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Trump’s administration plans to ramp up prosecution of unauthorized border crossings. Here’s the story of how it became illegal in the first place.Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Associate Professor, History and African-American Studies, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/734262017-02-27T00:43:36Z2017-02-27T00:43:36ZAmerica’s mass deportation system is rooted in racism<p>A rowdy segment of the American electorate is hell-bent on banning a specific group of immigrants from entering the United States. Thousands upon thousands of other people – citizens and immigrants, alike – oppose them, choosing to go to court rather than fulfill the electorate’s narrow vision of what America should look like: white, middle-class and Christian. </p>
<p>Soon a series of U.S. Supreme Court rulings could grant unrestrained power to Congress and the president over immigration control. More than 50 million people could be deported. Countless others might be barred from entering. Most of them would be poor, nonwhite and non-Christian.</p>
<p>This may sound like wild speculation about what is to come in President Donald Trump’s America. It is not. It is the history of U.S. immigration control, which is the focus of my work in the books <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Migra-History-Border-American-Crossroads/dp/0520266412">“Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol</a>” and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/City-Inmates-Conquest-Rebellion-1771-1965/dp/1469631180">“City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles</a>.” </p>
<p>Historically speaking, immigration control is one of the least constitutional and most racist realms of governance in U.S. law and life.</p>
<h2>Made in the American West</h2>
<p>The modern system of U.S. immigration control began in the 19th-century American West. Between the 1840s and 1880s, the United States government warred with indigenous peoples and Mexico to <a href="http://invasionofamerica.ehistory.org/">lay claim</a> to the region. Droves of Anglo-American families soon followed, believing it was their <a href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3b52137/">Manifest Destiny</a> to dominate land, law and life in the region. </p>
<p>But indigenous peoples never disappeared (see Standing Rock) and nonwhite migrants arrived (see the state of California). Chinese immigrants, in particular, arrived in large numbers during the 19th century. A travel writer who was popular at the time, <a href="https://archive.org/stream/visittoindiachin00taylrich#page/354/mode/2up/search/debased">Bayard Taylor</a>, expressed the sentiment settlers felt toward Chinese immigrants in one of his books:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The Chinese are, morally, the most debased people on the face of the earth… their touch is pollution… They should not be allowed to settle on our soil.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>When <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520029057">discriminatory laws</a> and <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520256941">settler violence</a> failed to expel them from the region, the settlers pounded Congress to develop a system of federal immigration control.</p>
<p>In response to their demands, Congress passed the <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=47">1882 Chinese Exclusion Act</a>, which prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the country for 10 years. The law focused on Chinese laborers, the single largest sector of the Chinese immigrant community. In <a href="http://www.fjc.gov/history/home.nsf/page/tu_exclusion_doc_3.html">1884</a>, Congress required all Chinese laborers admitted before the Exclusion Act was passed to secure a certificate of reentry if they wanted to leave and return. But, in <a href="http://www.fjc.gov/history/home.nsf/page/tu_exclusion_doc_4.html">1888</a>, Congress banned even those with certificates from reentering.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158359/original/image-20170224-22981-34v6zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158359/original/image-20170224-22981-34v6zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158359/original/image-20170224-22981-34v6zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158359/original/image-20170224-22981-34v6zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158359/original/image-20170224-22981-34v6zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158359/original/image-20170224-22981-34v6zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158359/original/image-20170224-22981-34v6zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158359/original/image-20170224-22981-34v6zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustration, ‘How John may dodge the exclusion act’ shows Uncle Sam’s boot kicking a Chinese immigrant off a dock.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.25972">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Then, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was set to expire in 1892, Congress passed the <a href="http://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1892GearyAct.pdf">Geary Act</a>, which again banned all Chinese laborers and required all Chinese immigrants to verify their lawful presence by <a href="https://calisphere.org/item/4d59c4cfdf78dc205399f14a1f0e53a1/">registering</a> with the federal government. The federal authorities were empowered by the law to find, imprison and deport all Chinese immigrants who failed to register by May 1893. </p>
<p>Together, these laws banned a nationally targeted population from entering the United States and invented the first system of mass deportation. Nothing quite like this had ever before been tried in the United States.</p>
<p>Chinese immigrants rebelled against the new laws. In 1888, a laborer named Chae Chan Ping was denied the right of return despite having a reentry certificate and was subsequently confined on a steamship. The Chinese immigrant community hired lawyers to fight his case. The lawyers argued the case up to the U.S. Supreme Court but lost when the court ruled that “the power of exclusion of foreigners [is an] incident of sovereignty belonging to the government of the United States” and “cannot be granted away or restrained on behalf of anyone.” </p>
<p>Simply put, <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/130/581/case.html">Chae Chan Ping v. U.S.</a> established that Congress and the president hold “absolute” and “unqualified” authority over immigrant entry and exclusion at U.S. borders.</p>
<h2>Chinese exclusion cases</h2>
<p>Despite this loss, Chinese immigrants refused to comply with the 1892 Geary Act, submitting themselves for arrest and risking both imprisonment and deportation rather than registering with the federal government.</p>
<p>They also hired some of the nation’s best constitutional lawyers. Together, they swarmed the courts with challenges to the Geary Act. In May 1893, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear its first deportation case, <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/149/698/case.html">Fong Yue Ting v. U.S.</a> and quickly ruled that deportation is also a realm of “absolute” authority held by Congress and the president. The court wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The provisions of the Constitution, securing the right of trial by jury and prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures, and cruel and unusual punishments, have no application.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, the U.S. Constitution did not apply to deportation. Immigration authorities could develop practices to identify, round up and deport noncitizens without constitutional review. </p>
<p>It was a stunning ruling even by 19th-century standards. So stunning that three of the justices issued scathing dissents, arguing that the U.S. Constitution applies to every law enforced within the United States. As Justice Brewer put it: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The Constitution has potency everywhere within the limits of our territory, and the powers which the national government may exercise within such limits are those, and only those, given to it by that instrument.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But such dissent held no sway. Six years later, the U.S. Supreme Court tripled down on immigration control as exempt from judicial review. In that 1896 ruling, <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/163/228/case.html">Wong Wing v. U.S.</a>, which was issued on the same day as the court upheld racial segregation laws in its infamous <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/163/537/case.html">Plessy v. Ferguson</a> decision, the court held that the Constitution does not apply to the conditions of immigrant detention.</p>
<p>By 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court had granted Congress and the president nearly unrestrained power over excluding, deporting and detaining noncitizens, both at U.S. borders and within the national territory. To date, they have used that authority to deport and forcibly remove more than <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15653.html">50 million people</a> and ban countless others from entering the country. Most of them are nonwhite, many of them poor and a disproportionate share non-Christian.</p>
<h2>Making America great again</h2>
<p>Over time, Congress and the courts placed several limits on what is allowable in immigration control. For example, the <a href="http://library.uwb.edu/Static/USimmigration/1965_immigration_and_nationality_act.html">1965 Immigration Reform Act</a> prohibits discrimination on the basis of “race, gender, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence.” And several court <a href="http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/uploads/immigration/immig_west/E.pdf">rulings</a> have added a measure of constitutional protections to deportation proceedings and detention conditions. </p>
<p>But, in recent weeks, Trump and his advisers have tapped into the foundational architecture of U.S. immigration control to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-live-updates-9th-circuit-arguments-judge-rebuke-administration-claim-that-1486683892-htmlstory.html">argue</a> that the president’s executive orders on immigration control are “unreviewable” by the courts. As Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/12/trump-administration-considering-narrower-travel-ban">put it</a>: The president’s executive powers over immigration control “will not be questioned.” </p>
<p>On <a href="http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2017/02/09/17-35105.pdf">Feb. 9</a>, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit turned down the administration’s “unreviewable” argument regarding the so-called Muslim ban. But Trump’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/25/presidential-executive-order-enhancing-public-safety-interior-united">immigration enforcement order</a> still stands. This includes a provision that subjects even those unauthorized immigrants who are simply suspected of crime to immediate removal. It also denies many of the immigrants who unlawfully cross our borders the due process protections recently added to deportation proceedings. </p>
<p>If implemented as promised – that is, with a focus on “<a href="http://time.com/4657474/donald-trump-enrique-pena-nieto-mexico-bad-hombres/">bad hombres</a>” and the U.S.-Mexico border – Trump’s immigration plan will exacerbate the already <a href="https://nyupress.org/books/9781479843978/">disproportionate impact</a> of U.S. immigration control on Latino immigrants, namely Mexicans and Central Americans. U.S. immigration may no longer target Chinese immigrants, but it remains one of the most highly racialized police projects within the United States.</p>
<p>Trump’s executive orders are pulling U.S. immigration control back to its roots, absolute and racial. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit pushed back against this interpretation, affirming the reviewability of the seven-country ban. But the decisions made during the Chinese exclusion era are likely to protect many of the president’s other orders from judicial review. That is, unless we overturn the settler mentality of U.S. immigration control. </p>
<p><em>To learn more about the history of U.S. immigration control, see <a href="http://editions.lib.umn.edu/immigrationsyllabus/">#immigrationsyllabus</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73426/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kelly Lytle Hernandez currently receives funding from the John Randolph and Dora Haynes Foundation, the UCLA Institute on Democracy and Inequality, and the UCLA Social Sciences Division.</span></em></p>From Chinese laborers to ‘bad hombres,’ the US settler mentality has perpetuated an immigration system that pushes out unwanted groups and bypasses the Constitution.Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Associate Professor, History and African-American Studies, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/723212017-02-08T04:26:02Z2017-02-08T04:26:02ZWho will pay for Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ wall?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155976/original/image-20170207-30940-1epg0lb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A wall to nowhere?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mexico border via www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Donald Trump’s <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/donald-trump-immigration-address-transcript-227614">scheme to build a “big, beautiful, impenetrable” wall</a> on the southwestern border – and force Mexico to pay for it – is wildly unrealistic and won’t be effective in keeping undocumented migrants out. </p>
<p>There are good reasons to be so emphatic. </p>
<p>Construction of the wall <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/20/us/politics/donald-trump-immigration.html?_r=0">will inevitably be plagued</a> by a swarm of daunting engineering, environmental and legal obstacles. And even if Trump succeeds somehow in pouring concrete from sea to shining sea, such a physical barrier would not prevent undocumented migrants from entering the United States, as <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/13271/budgeting-for-immigration-enforcement-a-path-to-better-performance">decades of fieldwork-based research have demonstrated</a>. </p>
<p>A formidable obstacle course of pedestrian and vehicle barriers covering about 700 miles of the border has already been built during the last 24 years. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/New-Face-Mexican-Migration-Transnational/dp/1519767862/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1451603935&sr=8-1">Ten surveys conducted by me and my field research team</a> in Mexico and California from 2005 to 2015 found that these existing fortifications prevent fewer than one in 10 would-be unauthorized migrants from gaining entry into the U.S.</p>
<p>Inevitably, people-smugglers would take clients over, around or under Trump’s new wall, or guide them through legal ports-of-entry using false documents or concealed in vehicles, charging higher fees for their trouble.</p>
<p>Mexico understandably refuses to fork over a dime for a border wall, yet <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-mexico-border-wall-schedule-construction-234170">President Trump has ordered</a> construction to begin while he figures out how to get Mexico to pay. </p>
<p>The administration has proposed several different indirect ways that it says could accomplish that. After considering the wall’s likely cost, let’s examine each of these financing options in turn. </p>
<h2>Price tag for a wall</h2>
<p>Independent estimates from <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602494/bad-math-props-up-trumps-border-wall/">MIT researchers</a> and <a href="http://fronterasdesk.org/sites/default/files/field/docs/2016/07/Bernstein-%20The%20Trump%20Wall.pdf">others</a> of initial construction costs run from US$25 billion to $40 billion – a far cry from the $12 billion to $15 billion <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/politics/border-wall-costs-republican-retreat/">claimed by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell</a> – plus $500 million to $750 million per year to keep the barrier repaired. </p>
<p>Most of these estimates, however, also exclude the costs of land acquisition (nearly all of the affected land is in private or state hands), technological upgrades like seismic sensors to detect tunneling, temporary housing for a construction crew of 1,000 workers (if the project is to be completed in Trump’s first term) and litigation to resolve suits brought by landowners, environmental groups, Indian tribes and others affected by the project. </p>
<p>If Trump insists on building a a solid wall, rather than fencing of the type currently used along the U.S.-Mexico border, it will cost much more. </p>
<p>But for the moment, let’s assume that Congress agrees, as <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/mcconnell-ryan-congress-pay-trumps-12b-border-wall/story?id=45063195">its leaders say they will</a>, and appropriates whatever funds are necessary to put up a wall. And let’s also assume Mexico won’t pay, as President Enrique Peña Nieto <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/11/politics/pena-nieto-donald-trump-mexico-wall/">has repeatedly declared</a>. What can be done to keep U.S. taxpayers from footing the bill? </p>
<h2>Taxing remittances</h2>
<p>Trump has <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/25/news/economy/mexico-remittances-trump/">frequently suggested</a> that the U.S. could tax the funds migrants working in the U.S. send to their relatives back home, in the form of money orders or other types of electronic transfers.</p>
<p>Remittances by Mexican migrants, who typically send $150 to $300 per month, <a href="https://www.bbvaresearch.com/en/category/regions-en/emerging-economies-en/latin-america/mexico-en/">reached a record of about $29 billion</a> in 2016. That’s been stimulated by fear about possible restrictions on such transfers and the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/ac6b0350-d752-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e">fall in the peso</a>, which has made dollar remittances worth more when converted into pesos. Some of the largest U.S. companies including major banks, Visa and Western Union are involved in this highly lucrative business.</p>
<p>Trump has offered no details about how this tax would be administered or what the rate would be. It would have to be very high to pay for his border wall – at least 5 percent of the funds transferred. But first, Congress would have to enact a law requiring U.S. financial institutions to verify the immigration status of customers wishing to send them. </p>
<p>Most importantly, taxing remittances isn’t feasible because undocumented migrants have other means to send money back home that don’t involve disclosing their immigration status (or paying a tax). Mexican workers could turn to informal means to get their money into Mexico-based relatives’ hands, such as by using cargadores (mules) to carry funds directly to their home communities, sending gift cards or simply asking a family member who is a U.S. citizen or green card holder to send the money for them. <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/DrebyImmigrationFamilies_execsumm.pdf">There are 16.6 million people</a> living in mixed-legal-status families in the United States.</p>
<p>Given these readily available options for avoiding a remittance tax, its yield would not come close to paying for Trump’s wall. </p>
<h2>Border adjustment tax</h2>
<p>Trump’s latest proposal to finance the wall involves levying a 20 percent “border adjustment tax” (BAT) on all imports from Mexico as part of a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/politics/donald-trump-mexico-import-tax-border-wall/">broader tax reform</a> plan advocated by Republicans in Congress. </p>
<p>It is not at all clear that Trump has the authority to impose such a tax on Mexican imports. The <a href="https://legcounsel.house.gov/Comps/93-618.pdf">Trade Act of 1974</a> permits a president to impose a 15 percent tariff to address balance-of-payments deficits, but only for 150 days. Beyond that, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/01/trump-tariff-mexico-border-wall/514766/">congressional legislation is required</a>.</p>
<p>Moreover, a BAT <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonynitti/2017/01/26/the-border-adjustment-tax-for-dummies-who-will-pay-for-the-wall/#36dd466215b6">cannot be imposed</a> on just one of our trading partners, or only on countries with which the United States has a trade deficit, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/themexicoinstitute/2017/01/18/the-view-from-mexico-border-adjustment-tax-economic-impact-wto-consistency/#7fbf8459b706">without running afoul of World Trade Organization rules</a>.</p>
<p>Furthermore, were these obstacles somehow overcome, companies that sell products or components imported from Mexico would pass the cost of a BAT on to American consumers. In other words, the BAT becomes a sales tax. How will the average American like that $23,868 made-in-Mexico Ford Focus, up from the current recommended price of $19,890? Or <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/business/economy/importers-tax-mexico.html">paying about $2 for an avocado</a>, 93 percent of which are imported from Mexico?</p>
<h2>Bargaining chip in NAFTA</h2>
<p>There has been <a href="http://fortune.com/2017/01/31/donald-trump-border-wall-mexico-paying-nafta-negotiations/">speculation</a> that Trump is threatening to force Mexico to pay for his wall as a bargaining chip in coming renegotiation of NAFTA. </p>
<p>In other words, if Mexico were to make significant concessions on a new trade deal with the United States (for example, a change in “rules of origin” governing what counts as a finished good produced within the NAFTA area, benefiting U.S. manufacturers and reducing competition with China), Trump might scale back his demand that Mexico pay in full for the wall. Or he might withdraw his proposal to tax remittances. Thus, revamping NAFTA could be another backdoor approach to making Mexico pay. </p>
<p>But this negotiation strategy has no credibility in Mexico. After more than a year of unrelenting threats by Trump to scrap or radically renegotiate the treaty, Mexicans <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/world/americas/mexico-donald-trump-nafta.html">increasingly view NAFTA</a> as already dead, likely to be replaced by a bilateral trade agreement or nothing at all. </p>
<p>It’s true that Nieto has an extremely weak hand to play. He began this year with <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-18/mexico-s-pena-nieto-approval-falls-to-12-after-gasoline-soars">an approval rating</a> of 12 percent – the lowest for any Mexican president since systematic opinion polling began. The <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-latam-economy-poll-idUSKBN15220A">Mexican economy is weak</a> – projected to grow less than 2 percent this year – and inflation is rising. But knuckling under to Trump would only further erode what remains of Nieto’s public support and make Mexico ungovernable for the remainder of his term, which expires in 2018.</p>
<p>It is delusional to think that Nieto or any other Mexican president could withstand the <a href="http://theconversation.com/the-truth-about-the-u-s-relationship-with-mexico-72350">political firestorm</a> that would be touched off by caving in to Trump’s pressure. Mexico now has a highly competitive electoral system. The president’s party must stand for reelection every three years for congressional seats and every six years for the presidency. Backing Nieto on such an emotionally charged capitulation would be tantamount to political suicide for the his Institutional Revolutionary Party. </p>
<h2>The bottom line</h2>
<p>Trump’s executive order to begin construction of a new border wall and his continued insistence that Mexico pay for it are political theater, intended for consumption by his U.S. base. </p>
<p>The ways he has suggested he’d make Mexico pay aren’t likely to work and, if implemented, could cause serious economic damage on both sides of the border. Nearly five million U.S. jobs <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/growing-together-how-trade-mexico-impacts-employment-the-united-states">depend on trade with Mexico</a>. If Mexico’s economy is weakened, either by a trade war or a sharp decline in remittance income, pressures for migration to the U.S. will increase. </p>
<p>One way or another, it is U.S. taxpayers who will pay for Trump’s border wall – not Mexicans. And we are unlikely to get our money’s worth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72321/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wayne Cornelius is Director Emeritus of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies and of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, both at UC San Diego. </span></em></p>President Trump signed an executive order to get construction started and ask Congress to pay up front, but good luck getting Mexico to foot the bill.Wayne Cornelius, Professor of Political Science and U.S.-Mexican Relations, University of California, San DiegoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/723502017-02-08T04:17:06Z2017-02-08T04:17:06ZWhy US should treat Mexico as a vital partner, not a punching bag<p>Mexico is one of the most important countries in the world for the United States. It’s the <a href="https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/americas/mexico">second-largest buyer of U.S. goods</a>, the third-biggest consumer of U.S. agricultural products and America’s third-most-important trading partner, after China and Canada. We trade over a million dollars of stuff every minute. </p>
<p>So as we <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/22/politics/trump-renegotiate-nafta/">prepare to sit at a negotiating table</a> across from our southern neighbor, we should recognize that treating Mexico as a respected partner would be a good start if we hope to favorably resolve serious issues over trade, immigration or fighting crime. The U.S. will be safer and stronger if we can forge even closer cooperation with Mexico while finding solutions to the problems each side wants to fix. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/67077fd8-e4a3-11e6-9645-c9357a75844a">sharp, critical rhetoric</a> coming out of the new U.S. administration, however, is undermining a mutually beneficial relationship that has taken decades to build. It’s generating intense public anger, suspicion and fear in Mexico and fueling anti-Americanism. There is a real risk of returning to the deep distrust that characterized past U.S.-Mexico ties. That would be very harmful to U.S. strategic interests.</p>
<p>As the U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 2011 to 2015, I saw firsthand the strength of the relationship and the benefits of collaboration, even as I recognize that many improvements can be made in our bilateral ties. It would be a shame to throw those benefits away, which would seriously harm the U.S.</p>
<h2>From foe to friend to foe?</h2>
<p>The United States is blessed to have two large neighbors willing to work with us to foster mutual security and prosperity. While Mexico may not be a NATO ally like Canada, it is no less vital to U.S. interests and no less willing to be a partner. To get here, the two countries have spent the past 25 years overcoming a troubled history. </p>
<p>The Mexicans still remember vividly the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/mexican-american-war">war that began in 1846</a> that ceded much of their country to the U.S., including modern-day Texas and California. Every year, they celebrate “<a href="http://www.mexonline.com/history-ninosheroes.htm">Los Niños Héroes</a>,” referring to the teenagers who threw themselves off a cliff rather than surrender to U.S. marines invading Mexico City and those who fought the U.S. occupation of Veracruz in 1914. </p>
<p>The mistrust lingered through the 1980s, when Americans still characterized Mexicans as “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Distant-Neighbors-Portrait-Alan-Riding/dp/0679724419">distant neighbors</a>.”</p>
<p>Change began with the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Negotiating-NAFTA-Mexican-Envoys-Account/dp/027595935X">negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement</a> (NAFTA) in the early 1990s and continued when the U.S. helped Mexico recover from a <a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9056792/12-101.pdf?sequence=1">major economic crisis in 1995</a>. </p>
<p>Especially since 2008, the <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41349.pdf">U.S. and Mexico have formed strong cross-border collaborations</a> on security, law enforcement, migration, foreign policy and many other issues that are profoundly in the strategic interests of the United States. </p>
<p>Simultaneously, under NAFTA, the private sector was building vast interconnected networks and manufacturing production chains across North America that brought added wealth to each country and turned the region into a <a href="http://www.joc.com/international-trade-news/trade-data/mexico-trade-data/nafta-20-transformational-force-continues-evolve_20140124.html">global economic powerhouse</a> that could compete effectively with China and others in Asia. </p>
<p>Public rhetoric from the Trump administration is putting much of this in jeopardy. It has <a href="http://www.global.nationalreview.com/article/444226/mexico-trump-backlash-brewing-south-border">generated serious backlash</a> among Mexico’s public and politicians and put much pressure on the government to resist vehemently Trump’s demands, especially over who pays for a border wall. But the potential treatment of undocumented Mexican nationals in the U.S. also remains a serious and emotional concern. </p>
<p>The Mexican <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/26/news/economy/trump-mexican-peso/">peso has plunged</a> – ironically making its exports less expensive for American companies and consumers to buy. And Mexico’s <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-could-really-mess-up-mexicos-economy/">economic outlook has weakened considerably</a> – a weaker economy actually increases the likelihood residents will try to find a better life north of the border at a time when net immigration flows of Mexicans are moving south. </p>
<p>The growing popular anger means a generation of Mexican politicians, officials and experts who favored promoting closer ties with the U.S. are now on the defensive. The Mexican dailies and radio programs are filled with calls for the government to get tougher with the U.S., even if it’s costly to Mexico. This limits room for serious negotiations. Worse still, this is <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-03/mexico-has-its-own-fiery-populist-trump-may-put-him-in-power">giving a lift</a> to the most anti-American presidential candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, running to replace the current president in 2018. </p>
<p>The costs to the U.S. of continuing on this path would be enormous.</p>
<h2>A closer look at NAFTA</h2>
<p>Let’s start with NAFTA, since that’s the source of some of the <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/23/trump-to-sign-executive-order-to-renegotiate-nafta-and-intent-to-leave-tpp.html">biggest complaints from both Trump</a> and politicians from the left such as Bernie Sanders. </p>
<p>First, NAFTA is not the cause of the great economic woes or job losses as portrayed. Rather, it has spurred <a href="https://piie.com/publications/briefings/piieb14-3.pdf">U.S. economic growth</a>, <a href="http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/24/14363148/trade-deals-nafta-wto-china-job-loss-trump">produced millions of new jobs</a> (including <a href="http://www.bancomext.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/ceb8ingles.pdf">higher skilled ones</a>), lowered costs for consumers and helped us overcome enormous <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42965.pdf">trade competition</a> from Asia. </p>
<p>Total U.S.-Mexico trade has surged almost 600 percent since NAFTA was negotiated in 1993 to reach <a href="https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/americas/mexico">US$584 billion</a> in 2015. That supported <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/growing-together-economic-ties-between-the-united-states-and-mexico">4.9 million U.S. jobs</a> spread across the country in 2016. Some 57,000 U.S. companies sell to Mexico. </p>
<p>Plus, Mexico is an essential partner in <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-trump-protectionism-alters-supply-chain/">U.S. production chains</a>, where inputs for a final product <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/growing_together_how_trade_with_mexico_impacts_employment_in_the_united_states_2.pdf">regularly cross the border</a> several times. Up to <a href="https://www.bea.gov/about/pdf/NBER%20working%20paper_1.pdf">40 percent of the final value</a> of a product manufactured in Mexico comes from U.S. suppliers. That is far more than in any other country.</p>
<p>In sum, according to a 2013 study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the U.S. “is <a href="https://piie.com/sites/default/files/publications/briefings/piieb14-3.pdf">$127 billion</a> richer each year” because of NAFTA. </p>
<h2>Improve it, don’t rip it up</h2>
<p>Yes, there are problems with <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-dreier-roundtable-20161027-story.html">NAFTA</a>. It was the first trade deal of its kind and is 24 years old. It can, and should, be improved. And workers and communities harmed by it and other trade and industry transformations should be helped with active assistance. </p>
<p>Still, NAFTA <a href="http://conexus.cberdata.org/files/MfgReality.pdf">is not</a> the main source of U.S. job losses that <a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies/trade">President Trump</a> claims it be. The introduction of new technologies and trade with <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w21906">China</a> are much larger causes of manufacturing job losses. </p>
<p>And it is not NAFTA’s fault that the U.S. government <a href="https://theconversation.com/want-to-help-free-trades-losers-make-adjustment-assistance-more-than-just-burial-insurance-67036">did not have a sufficient strategy</a> to help those left behind find new jobs, develop new skills or attract investment to their communities. </p>
<p>Disrupting our trade with Mexico by <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-nafta-tpp-trade-speech-2016-6">withdrawing from NAFTA</a> or by adding <a href="http://wpo.st/PKGY2">new taxes, tariffs or fees</a> would <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/opinion/building-a-wall-of-ignorance.html?smid=tw-share">raise prices</a> for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/31/the-hottest-tax-idea-in-washington-right-now-would-cost-average-families-1000-a-year/?utm_term=.9aa739af48ca&wpisrc=nl_wonk&wpmm=1">U.S. consumers</a> and could <a href="http://www.cargroup.org/?module=Publications&event=View&pubID=148">endanger many of the millions of U.S. jobs</a> tied to North America’s production chains and sales to <a href="https://insidetrade.com/daily-news/wto-could-authorize-unprecedented-trade-retaliation-border-adjustable-tax-dispute">Mexico</a>. </p>
<p>So let’s have a clear-eyed look at how <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/trump-to-announce-plans-for-renegotiation-nafta-five-ways-to-improve-the-agreement">we can improve and update NAFTA</a> to create more jobs and prosperity. </p>
<p>For example, we could add new areas like e-commerce where the U.S. is very strong. We could get better treatment for U.S. service providers. Significantly, we could change the “rules of origin” that determine if a manufactured product has enough “North American” input to be tariff-free. We could eliminate nontariff barriers that add costs at the borders and could strengthen labor standards.</p>
<p>But let’s not publicly distort NAFTA or blame it for trends whose causes and remedies are elsewhere. </p>
<h2>A wall of facts</h2>
<p>Let’s also be honest about the <a href="http://theconversation.com/who-will-pay-for-trumps-big-beautiful-wall-72321">border wall</a>, migration and public security, starting with key questions that still don’t have adequate answers from the administration.</p>
<p>Why should Mexico have to pay for a wall that it does not think is needed and when <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-than-coming-to-the-u-s/">more Mexicans are returning</a> to Mexico than heading north? Where is the cost-benefit analysis that demonstrates that a full wall is the best way to assure border security? What will the <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602494/bad-math-props-up-trumps-border-wall/">real cost</a> be? Is it <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/06/building-trumps-wall-6-things-to-know-about-the-u-s-mexico-border/">really needed</a> or <a href="http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/01/border-officers-real-security-more-complicated-building-wall/134872/">even feasible</a>?</p>
<p>I visited the border a good number of times – including during the surge in migrants from Central America – as ambassador and talked regularly with our homeland security personnel and border business and political leaders. Some certainly spoke in favor of additional walls or fences in some places and about the need for better surveillance and more rapid response capacity in others, but many also argued that walls don’t make sense along big chunks of the border. </p>
<p>Trump’s Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/10/general-john-kelly-senate-homeland-security-confirmation-hearing/96346782">at his confirmation hearings noted</a> that a physical barrier itself would not be sufficient. He argued for a layered defense with sensors and patrols and emphasized the need for cooperation with other governments. </p>
<p>Alienating the Mexicans over who pays for our wall puts that cooperation at risk. We need Mexican aid to stop <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2016/09/20/overall-number-of-u-s-unauthorized-immigrants-holds-steady-since-2009/">undocumented immigrants</a>, to confront drug traffickers and other criminals and to have the best defense against any potential terrorists trying to enter via Mexico. </p>
<p>Most of my Mexican interlocutors agreed that border security could be improved and we should work better together to stop illicit trafficking of drugs, guns, money and people as well as potential terrorists – in both directions. Current U.S.-Mexico cooperation ranges from sharing names of suspicious individuals and detaining suspicious travelers far from the border to coordinating efforts against criminals, like drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/19/us/el-chapo-guzman-turned-over-to-us/">who was just extradited</a> to the U.S. </p>
<p>Mexico is also already seriously cooperating on migration. Both countries have agreed upon and implemented protocols for smoothly handling deportations from the U.S. and for avoiding border violence. The Mexicans are stopping many Central American migrants before they even reach the U.S. border. In 2015, Mexico deported over 165,000 migrants <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/27/us-mexico-mass-deportations-refugees-central-america">apprehended along its border with Guatemala</a>, more than the 135,000 that U.S. officials apprehended at <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/14/mexico-us-border-apprehensions/">our border</a>. Without Mexico’s help, many more migrants would have arrived in the U.S. </p>
<p>The broad opinion in Mexico, however, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/01/27/reasons-mexico-hates-border-wall/97128754">views the wall plan</a> and the accompanying rhetoric about Mexicans as affronts to Mexico’s dignity. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mexican-response-backlash-to-trumps-wall-and-president-2017-1">They bridle</a> at the <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-outrageous-comments-mexicans-article-1.2773214">public characterizations of Mexicans</a> during the campaign as criminals and shudder at talk of mass deportations. </p>
<p>Mexican officials tell me that if the U.S. wants to build it on U.S. territory, that is our choice. Trying to force Mexico to pay for it, however, is rekindling resentment about past U.S. abuses of Mexican sovereignty, they argue. </p>
<h2>The real danger</h2>
<p>When Trump <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/25/politics/mexico-president-donald-trump-enrique-pena-nieto-border-wall/">publicly tweeted</a> that Mexican President Pena Nieto should not visit Washington if he will not pay for the wall, he painted his counterpart into a corner with the Mexican public, forcing him to cancel his trip.</p>
<p>Subsequently, the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/02/politics/mexico-foreign-minister-anderson-cooper/">two presidents spoke by phone</a> – with <a href="http://time.com/4657474/donald-trump-enrique-pena-nieto-mexico-bad-hombres">Trump reportedly suggesting</a> he could help by sending the U.S. military south to take on the drug cartels, setting off alarm bells in Mexico. Talks between Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his counterpart and other officials have since calmed things down. </p>
<p>But the public attacks have created a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-border-wall-announcement-builds-more-resentment-in-mexico-1485364860">strong sense</a> that Mexico must resist U.S. pressure and be prepared to respond firmly. Some social groups <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/02/news/economy/mexico-boycott-america-trump/">are already calling for boycotts of U.S. goods</a>. </p>
<p>The real danger is that U.S. words and actions will revive the old sense of hostility in a country very important to our security and prosperity. That would be very costly for U.S. workers, companies, consumers and farmers, not to mention the security of our homeland.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72350/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Earl Anthony Wayne consults for and is affiliated with the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center and with HSBC. In my biographic note, I disclose that I work for the Wilson Center as a Public Policy Fellow. That is connected with the Center's Mexico Institute. The Mexico Institute would likely have some minor reputational benefit from this article being published. I work as a part-time advisor to HSBC in Mexico and Latin America, specifically on ways to improve systems for preventing illicit finance from going through the bank. That advisory work is not tied to this article, but it is work associated with Mexico, so I wanted to specifically disclose it. </span></em></p>A former ambassador to Mexico explains how Trump’s rhetoric is sparking a backlash that could endanger U.S. economic and national security.Earl Anthony Wayne, Visiting Professor of International Affairs, Hamilton CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/719722017-02-06T10:22:48Z2017-02-06T10:22:48ZDonald Trump has thrown Mexico’s shockingly unpopular president a lifeline<p>As US president Donald Trump presses on with his personal crusade against us Mexicans, he’s finding out at last that the realities of government are quite different from the realities of life on the campaign trail. </p>
<p>Trump has now made his plan for a wall on the Mexican border official by way of an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/25/executive-order-border-security-and-immigration-enforcement-improvements">executive order</a> but, in a democratic system, formulating a “policy” (if this one deserves the name) is completely different to implementing it. Building a concrete wall in the middle of the desert isn’t just a huge practical challenge; it’s a <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/09/this-is-what-trumps-border-wall-could-cost-us.html">multi-billion-dollar</a> vanity project – and one that would do little to stop illegal immigration or drug trafficking. </p>
<p>Unlike almost any other infrastructure project, there is simply nothing to be gained financially from a 2,000-mile wall in the middle of the desert – and, just as it was before the election, the real issue is less the wall itself and more who will end up paying for it. Trump has already conceded that the US will have to <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/05/politics/border-wall-house-republicans-donald-trump-taxpayers/">put up the money</a> and get some sort of reimbursement from Mexico; now he must work out how. None of the available options are appealing. </p>
<p>A levy on <a href="http://dailysignal.com/2016/02/25/the-challenge-of-tracking-money-sent-to-other-countries-from-illegal-immigrants/">remittances by illegal migrants</a> is unrealistic, and would be hugely costly to implement. A blanket levy on all financial transactions to Mexico would punish millions of American citizens with families south of the border and the millions more Americans who either live there or own holiday homes there – to say nothing of the thousands of American companies that sell their products in the 15th-largest economy in the world, or the many multinationals (from Coca-Cola to Volkswagen) that have operations in both countries. </p>
<p>A likelier strategy, therefore, is that Trump will want to turn the wall into some sort of condition for renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). </p>
<p>This is where our two countries will reach an impasse. Renegotiating the deal would be a hugely unpopular measure – not only are we a very proud nation particularly sensitive to slights (real or imagined) from our northern neighbour, there are also political realities that cannot be ignored. There is simply no way that Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto´s government can accept to pay – in any way, shape or form – for that wall.</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that Peña Nieto’s <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/mexican-president-enrique-pena-nieto-loses-support-poll-finds-1484774725">approval ratings</a> are the lowest of any president since the transition to democracy, and in <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-election-factbox-idUSKCN0YS2B1">recent elections</a> the Mexican electorate decided punished Peña Nieto’s party, the PRI, with a severe drubbing.</p>
<h2>Plumbing the depths</h2>
<p>After initially being lauded by Time Magazine as his country’s “<a href="http://content.time.com/time/covers/europe/0,16641,20140224,00.html">saviour</a>”, Peña Nieto is now facing an urgent crisis of legitimacy. His support has plummeted, the Mexican peso is <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/26/news/economy/trump-mexican-peso/">near an all-time low</a>, the case of <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-mexico-ayotzinapa-20160926-snap-story.html">43 students who disappeared</a> in Guerrero state in 2014 is still unsolved, and a <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/01/gasolinazo-protests-petrol-price-170106080100849.html">sudden spike in petrol prices</a> at the start of 2017 led to fuel shortages, protest and riots.</p>
<p>These are not happy times for the most unpopular president in generations. But then again, nothing brings us Mexicans together like some good old gringo-bashing. In Trump, Peña Nieto has both a useful distraction and the perfect scapegoat – he simply has to work out how to best deploy it. </p>
<p>Initially, he simply declined to react to Trump’s pronouncements; he then reached out, inviting the then-candidate to Mexico. It was a big mistake. Trump turned the visit to his advantage, while Peña Nieto was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/01/enrique-pena-nieto-donald-trump-public-relations-disaster">slated</a> at home for what was seen as a major miscalculation. Mexicans decried him as a weak figure unable to stand up to a bully. And above all, the encounter simply failed to placate Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric – all this before Trump was even elected.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, after the election, Peña Nieto continued reaching out. He appointed a new foreign secretary, Luis Videgaray, who has <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/luis-videgaray-key-to-donald-trump-visit-named-mexico-foreign-minister-1483556976">strong personal ties to the Trump family</a>, and organised a quick meeting with Trump in the White House.</p>
<p>But all that changed with a couple of tweets. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"824615820391305216"}"></div></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"824616644370714627"}"></div></p>
<p>Once Trump dared Peña Nieto to cancel their meeting if Mexico wasn’t willing to pay for the wall, there was no going back. Trump only added insult to injury by signing the executive order on the same day as a Mexican delegation was flying to Washington to meet with his advisers, making it even easier for Peña Nieto to take the moral high ground. </p>
<p>Peña Nieto had no option but to call Trump’s bluff. Had he kept their appointment he would have implied he was at least willing to discuss the possibility of footing the bill. That would have been far more unpopular than the peso devaluation, the spike in petrol prices, and even the end of NAFTA. </p>
<p>The Trump administration apparently fails to understand that cancelling this meeting is the single most popular thing Peña Nieto has ever done. Suddenly, politicians across the spectrum, business leaders and society at large are all behind him. For all Peña Nieto’s travails – and for all his administration’s ineptitude when confronted with the new US president – Trump has managed to make a president with approval ratings in the low double digits look good. </p>
<p>Back, then, to who will pay for the wall. The Trump administration may be betting that Mexico has more to lose from a trade war than the US does and that it therefore has no alternative but to bow to pressure. </p>
<p>Perhaps – but we Mexicans have stood our ground through many other crises. Yes, most of them were of our own making – and no doubt a trade war would be painful. But we would get over it eventually and Trump might not. After all, if we’ve survived more than four years of Peña Nieto, we can surely manage four years of Trump.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71972/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pablo Calderon-Martinez does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It takes a lot to make a president with a 12% approval rating a hero. Trump may yet manage it.Pablo Calderon-Martinez, Lecturer in Spanish, Aston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/718152017-01-29T16:40:33Z2017-01-29T16:40:33ZTrump’s ‘America first’ pledge has echoes of Rhodesia’s racist white nationalists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154202/original/image-20170125-23858-jxjcvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">US President Donald Trump stamped his inaugural speech with the promise of 'America First' -- a slogan with an ominous past. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Kevin Lamarque</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/20/trumps-inaugural-address-was-demonstrably-bleak/">bleak inauguration speech</a> has attracted attention for, among other things, employing the phrase “America first”. </p>
<p>The term was popularised by the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/america-first-for-charles-lindbergh-and-donald-trump">famed aviator Charles Lindbergh</a> and is associated with anti-Semitic and Nazi sympathisers who sought to keep the US out of World War II. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/trump-america-first/514037/">Lindbergh and the America First Committee</a> are not the only 20th century white nationalists to use the term. The small band of racist whites in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, employed a version of it as protest against the onset of decolonisation and the spread of black rule across Africa. </p>
<p>In the late 1950s, <a href="http://www.bbm.org.uk/airmen/Harper.htm">William J. Harper</a>, who was also known for his daring aviation exploits in World War II, made waves by using the slogan </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Rhodesia first, last, and always.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A few years later, Harper struck one of the most dramatic blows for white supremacy as a signatory to Rhodesia’s <a href="https://global.britannica.com/topic/Unilateral-Declaration-of-Independence">Unilateral Declaration of Independence</a>. He served as Minister of Internal Affairs in the first cabinet of Prime Minister Ian Smith. Smith famously vowed that the tiny white minority would rule for <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1569980/Ian-Smith-Man-whose-folly-unleashed-Mugabe.html">1 000 years</a>.</p>
<p>But when Harper first popularised the slogan, which was generally shortened to “Rhodesia first”, he was leading the opposition Dominion Party. The party sought full independence from British rule. It was also at the vanguard of resistance against any movement for reform or genuine integration between settlers and colonial subjects. </p>
<p>The term was particularly controversial as Southern Rhodesia was then governed within the larger <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/federation-rhodesia-and-nyasaland-collapses">Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland</a>. This also included contemporary Zambia and Malawi. By advocating for Southern Rhodesian primacy, Harper not only made it clear that he was opposed to majority rule, but also to the federal structure of governance to which Southern Rhodesia was constitutionally bound. </p>
<p>The slogan prompted a split in 1960 between the territorial branch of the Dominion Party, of which Harper was the leader, and the federal branch, led by Winston Field, who became Southern Rhodesia’s prime minister two years later. Field was subsequently booted aside in 1964 for being too moderate. </p>
<h2>Echoes of an inglorious past</h2>
<p>Harper and his far-right allies sought to appeal to the white Rhodesian electorate by taking a stand against African liberation and the winds of change sweeping into the colony. Similarly, Donald Trump has appealed to an American electorate that feels overwhelmed by the forces of globalisation. The Trump administration’s <a href="https://kenopalo.com/2017/01/14/answers-to-some-of-team-trumps-questions-on-foreign-aid-to-africa/">sceptical approach to aid</a> in Africa and antagonism of China is a throwback to the Dominion Party’s protest against providing social services for Africans and its strident warning of a communist onslaught in newly independent countries.</p>
<p>The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/rhodesia-central-african-federation.htm">inaugurated in 1953</a> with the encouraging, albeit vague goal of promoting <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1405201">racial partnership</a> enshrined in its constitution. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1358&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1358&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1358&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Rhodesian PM Ian Smith.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Juda Ngwenya</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The same year, the moderate, albeit highly paternalistic missionary <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/oct/14/guardianobituaries.obituaries1">Garfield Todd</a> became Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia’s territorial government. (The Federal government was led by the vastly more conservative Godfrey Huggins who reportedly defined “partnership” in the sense of a <a href="http://www.thepatriot.co.zw/old_posts/godfrey-huggins-partnership-of-horse-and-rider-zimbabweans-must-be-vigilant/">horse and its rider</a>.)</p>
<p>The country’s violent liberation struggle of the 1970s, which saw about 20,000 deaths as the whites refused to accept majority rule, seemed a distant prospect at the time.</p>
<p>But the Federation dissolved in 1963 and the southward march of independence, particularly the chaotic transfer of authority in the Belgian Congo, rapidly radicalised the small white population. Much as Trump promised to his followers the security of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38740717">a wall on the Mexican border</a>, whites in southern Africa saw the Zambezi river on Zimbabwe’s northern border as <a href="https://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2013/07/26/the-1962-state-department-paper-the-white-redoubt-demonstrates-myriad-of-problems-with-crafting-policy-towards-apartheid-era-south-africa/">a fortress</a> to protect what they called “responsible government” and <a href="http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/23rd-august-1975/9/rhodesia-1%22">“civilised standards”</a>.</p>
<p>In 1962 the Dominion Party merged with several smaller conservative parties to form the Rhodesian Front. In the elections that December, the Front, like Trump, defied popular predictions and emerged to <a href="https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Southern%20Rhodesian%20general%20election,%201962">form the next government</a>. The Front set about increasing its stranglehold on the government and engaged in widespread censorship of the media. No candidate running on the all-white voter’s roll was ever able to defeat it.</p>
<p>Its key strategy was to position itself as the lone guarantor of white security. A propaganda pamphlet – Rhodesia and You in the Super 70s, available at the University of York’s <a href="https://www.york.ac.uk/borthwick/holdings/what-we-hold/southern-african/">Borthwick Institute</a> – proudly stated, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In 1962 the people of Rhodesia made their historic decision to stand and fight on the Zambezi; this was in contradistinction to existing trends of surrender and appeasement to the evils of pan-Africanism. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1965 the small band of Rhodesians defied world trends and declared their <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/11/newsid_2658000/2658445.stm">own independence</a> from British rule. Harper, Smith and 10 other white men signed the declaration. Its opening lines contained many similarities of both syntax and content to that of the United States’. Both referred to an “entitlement of separate and equal” rights that were in reality only accorded to a minority.</p>
<h2>The past in the present</h2>
<p>While Trump may not be directly inspired by white Rhodesian political strategy, many white American nationalists are. The Charleston church shooter, Dylann Roof, a young white supremacist, posed for pictures while <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/dylann-roof-charleston-shooting-suspect-had-rhodesia-south-africa-apartheid-jacket-1506881">wearing apparel</a> with the Rhodesian flag. He <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/website-surfaces-with-disturbing-photos-and-manifesto-purportedly-written-by-dylann-roof">owned a website</a> with the url lastrhodesian.com. According to the <a href="http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=801">historian Gerald Horne</a>, hundreds, if not thousands of white Americans, served as mercenaries in the Rhodesian military in the 1970s.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dylann Roof with Rhodesian and apartheid South Africa flags.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Harper and Trump’s political careers share another crucial similarity. Both were dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct. While The Donald has been able to deflect the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/20/donald-trump-sexual-misconduct-tenth-woman-accuser">claims against him</a>, Harper was forced to resign from the Rhodesian cabinet in 1968 over claims of an affair with his secretary, a reputed British agent.</p>
<p>As Trump tweets with the hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/822502450007515137">#AmericaFirst</a>, he may not be aware of the Rhodesian antecedent of the term. But it seems to be no coincidence that his campaign tone is not out of line with the sentiments of Harper and Rhodesia’s white nationalists.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71815/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brooks Marmon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rhodesia’s white supremacists appealed to the white electorate by taking a stand against African liberation. Similarly, Donald Trump appealed to white Americans who feel overwhelmed by globalisation.Brooks Marmon, PhD Student, Centre of African Studies, The University of EdinburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/704672017-01-26T00:44:51Z2017-01-26T00:44:51ZTrump’s policies will affect four groups of undocumented immigrants<p>On Jan. 25, Donald Trump signed a sweeping <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/25/presidential-executive-order-enhancing-public-safety-interior-united">executive order</a> on immigration, expansively defining the “criminal aliens” he intends to target. He has eliminated old immigration enforcement priorities. Now, discretion will be exercised by immigration agents with little guidance from the executive branch beyond sweeping anti-immigrant pressures.</p>
<p>However, terms like “criminal aliens” and “illegal immigrants” gloss over the various immigration statuses and histories of millions of individuals. We’d like to offer a more nuanced description of the individuals who may be targeted by President Trump’s immigration enforcement plans.</p>
<p>Our discussion is informed by our research. Since 2014, we have <a href="http://www.russellsage.org/research/reports/navigating-liminal-legalities-along-pathways-to-citizenship-immigrant-vulnerability-and-role-mediati">followed the lives</a> of some 50 Southern California immigrants, many of whom either lack or never had legal status in the United States. Each of these individuals has a different story of how and when they came to the United States. Some are related to U.S. citizens and some are not. They have had unique experiences studying, working and living in this country. </p>
<p>And now, these differences could play a major role in how individual immigrants are impacted by the new administration’s enforcement of immigration laws. </p>
<h2>Immigrants with criminal convictions</h2>
<p>Administrations <a href="https://www.ice.gov/doclib/secure-communities/pdf/prosecutorial-discretion-memo.pdf">prioritize</a> the removal of some immigrants over others because immigration enforcement resources are limited. Since the mid-1990s, previous administrations have focused on removing immigrants with <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-immigration-policies-will-pick-up-where-obamas-left-off-70187">criminal convictions</a>, regardless of whether they have legal residency. </p>
<p>Trump’s order prioritizes anyone who has been charged with a crime, whether or not convicted. This includes anyone who has committed “acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense,” whether or not the person has been convicted, charged or even arrested. It also suggests that the Administration intends to rely much more heavily on state and local law enforcement for making such enforcement determinations.</p>
<p>Trump has pledged that his administration will rapidly deport 2 to 3 million “criminal aliens.” His <a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies/immigration">website</a> cites a 2013 Center for Immigration Studies <a href="http://cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/Deportation-Numbers-Unwrapped.pdf">report</a> for this figure. Immigration scholars have suggested the actual number is significantly lower. For example, in 2015, the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute <a href="http://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/understanding-potential-impact-executive-action-immigration-enforcement">reported</a> there are 820,000 unauthorized immigrants with criminal convictions in the U.S. Many were charged with misdemeanors or unlawful entry. </p>
<p>This is unsurprising. Research from <a href="http://socpro.oxfordjournals.org/content/56/3/447.abstract">criminologists</a> shows that immigration actually lowers the rates of violent crimes. </p>
<p>Trump, however, has signaled that the category of “criminal aliens” may be much broader than individuals convicted of serious crimes. It may include individuals arrested, but not convicted, or individuals with unsubstantiated gang affiliations. But even this incredibly broad definition of criminal aliens does not cover all immigrants.</p>
<p>There are three other broad groups of individuals who generally fall outside of this priority deportation category.</p>
<h2>Immigrants who arrived as children</h2>
<p>About <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Reports%20and%20Studies/Immigration%20Forms%20Data/All%20Form%20Types/DACA/daca_performancedata_fy2016_qtr4.pdf">750,000</a> young people qualified for the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which grants two years of permission to work and protection from deportation to certain undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154331/original/image-20170125-23851-poib7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154331/original/image-20170125-23851-poib7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154331/original/image-20170125-23851-poib7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154331/original/image-20170125-23851-poib7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154331/original/image-20170125-23851-poib7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154331/original/image-20170125-23851-poib7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154331/original/image-20170125-23851-poib7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mexican farm worker Maria Amalia Ruiz shares ‘Faces of DAPA/DACA+’ exhibit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Edwin Tamara</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In order to qualify for DACA, the children must have arrived in the United States before June 15, 2007, completed high school or its equivalent and have a criminal record that is clear of anything more than minor misdemeanors. </p>
<p>Most individuals who received or were eligible for DACA will not likely be among those prioritized for enforcement. Trump <a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies/immigration/">pledged</a> to rescind DACA immediately. But, after being elected, he <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-daca-dreamers_us_58481963e4b0d0df18372021">expressed sympathy</a> for these young people and suggested he might be willing to find a solution to their problems. </p>
<p>If DACA were rescinded, those young people, who are culturally Americans, would face numerous challenges, including unemployment, the inability to go to college and the risk of deportation. To alleviate these burdens, senators Dick Durban and Lindsey Graham introduced the <a href="https://www.nilc.org/issues/daca/faq-bridge-act/">BRIDGE Act</a> in December 2016. This legislation would provide DACA recipients and similarly situated young people with “provisional protected presence” – temporary permission to remain in the country but no path to citizenship.</p>
<p>In the current highly polarized political context, it’s unclear if the bill will have majority support in the House, and President Trump has made no promise to sign it.</p>
<h2>Immigrant parents of Americans</h2>
<p>Another <a href="http://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/mpi-many-37-million-unauthorized-immigrants-could-get-relief-deportation-under-anticipated-new">4 million</a> immigrants would potentially have qualified for the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) program, or an expansion of DACA known as DACA+. President Obama announced these programs in 2014.</p>
<p>DACA+ broadened the DACA Program to allow more young people to qualify. <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/ExecutiveActions/EAFlier_DAPA.pdf">DAPA</a> would have enabled undocumented parents of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent resident children to qualify for permission to work and a temporary protection from deportation with two conditions: They had to be in the country continuously since Jan. 1, 2010, and not be convicted of any disqualifying crimes. </p>
<p>But, due to a <a href="https://theconversation.com/deadlocked-what-a-nine-word-decision-means-for-five-million-undocumented-immigrants-61550">lawsuit</a>, the programs were never implemented.</p>
<p>Trump promised to immediately rescind DAPA and DACA+, and he may do so before their legality is resolved in court. With the possible exception of those who have committed minor misdemeanors, individuals who would have been covered by these programs likely will remain a low enforcement priority.</p>
<p>Some undocumented parents of U.S. citizens might qualify for residency through their children. However, they will still face steep barriers to legalization. For example, wait times for these <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/family/family-us-citizens">family visas</a> stretch for years. Even when visas become available, those who have spent more than one year in the country without lawful status face a 10-year bar on being able to enter the country legally. Many cannot afford legal counsel to assist in this process. And some of these individuals may have missed prior immigration court hearings and been ordered deported without being present.</p>
<h2>Workers and recent arrivals</h2>
<p>A third group consists of several million adults who are not parents of U.S. citizens or permanent residents, do not have criminal records and are currently working in the country. These individuals are unlikely to be a named priority for deportation. But if the new administration engages in an enforcement strategy of high-profile workplace raids, as were common under <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/us/illegal-immigrants-raids-deportation.html?_r=0">President George W. Bush</a>, these individuals could still be vulnerable.</p>
<p>Even if they are not apprehended and deported, it seems unlikely that they will receive authorization to work in the United States or legal protection from deportation. </p>
<p>Immigrants who have recently entered the U.S., such as unaccompanied minors fleeing violence in Central America, had already been prioritized for removal by the Obama administration. Trump’s promises to stiffen border enforcement will likely ensure their continued prioritization for deportation.</p>
<h2>Other factors</h2>
<p>The groups identified above are further affected by legal histories that can create opportunities or barriers. </p>
<p>For example, close relatives of U.S. citizens, certain crime victims and those with a well-founded fear of persecution in their country of origin may be able to qualify for visas or asylum. On the other hand, those who failed to attend an immigration court hearing, left and reentered the country without authorization or previously claimed to be U.S. citizens may be at heightened risk of deportation.</p>
<p>Trump’s rhetoric about building a wall with Mexico also suggests that immigrants from Mexico are perceived to be a problem, even though Mexicans constitute a <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2016/09/20/overall-number-of-u-s-unauthorized-immigrants-holds-steady-since-2009/">declining</a> share of the unauthorized population. Individuals perceived to be Mexican nationals therefore may be particularly at risk for enforcement efforts, including those that target individuals based on their racial or ethnic <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/422/873.html">appearance</a>.</p>
<p>It is still unclear how priorities set by Trump will trickle down to the officers who are actually carrying out enforcement practices. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and Customs and Border Protection agents who felt constrained by Obama’s policies and programs may feel more empowered to engage in aggressive and racially targeted enforcement efforts.</p>
<p>The new Department of Homeland Security secretary, retired General <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/john-kelly-homeland-security-chief-confirmed/">John Kelly</a>, has no legal training. He could either serve as a check on overly zealous enforcement efforts or devise policies that facilitate them.</p>
<p>Trump’s focus on deporting “criminal aliens” and his suggestion that he might offer reprieve to certain immigrant youth suggest there could be some continuity between his <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-immigration-policies-will-pick-up-where-obamas-left-off-70187">enforcement priorities</a> and those of Obama. But the new president’s emphasis on mass deportation promotes <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-trumps-immigration-enforcement-could-affect-families-and-communities-69019">fear</a>. This, in turn, may make noncitizens less likely to apply for naturalization, attend school, seek medical care or challenge violations of labor laws. </p>
<p>Despite fear, however, some immigrants have expressed renewed commitment to activism. As one interviewee told us, “The struggle continues.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70467/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Bibler Coutin research on this topic was supported by funding from the Russell Sage Foundation, the National Science Foundation's Law and Social Science program (Award #1535501), and the UC Irvine Schools of Law and of Social Sciences,</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Chacón receives funding from the National Science Foundation. The research that is referenced in the article is funded by grants from the the National Science Foundation & and UC Irvine Schools of Law and of Social Sciences.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sameer Ashar receives funding from the National Science Foundation and Russel Sage Foundation. He also works with various community grassroots groups that advocate for the rights of immigrants in California.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Lee receives funding from the Russel Sage Foundation and National Science Foundation. He is also a member of the nonpartisan American Law Institute. </span></em></p>A team of legal scholars breaks down the factors that will determine which immigrants are most vulnerable for deportation under the new administration.Susan Bibler Coutin, Professor of Criminology, Law and Society and Anthropology, University of California, IrvineJennifer Chacón, Professor of Law, University of California, IrvineSameer Ashar, Clinical Professor of Law, University of California, IrvineStephen Lee, Professor of Law, University of California, IrvineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/690192016-11-30T03:04:17Z2016-11-30T03:04:17ZHow Trump’s immigration enforcement could affect families and communities<p>When immigration officers forcibly remove individuals from their homes, it impacts the psychological, emotional and economic well-being of their families and communities.</p>
<p>President-elect Donald Trump stated throughout his campaign that he wanted to leverage a “<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/11/politics/donald-trump-deportation-force-debate-immigration/">deportation force</a>” to deport all <a href="https://theconversation.com/counting-11-million-undocumented-immigrants-is-easier-than-you-think-67921">11 million</a> undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S. In <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-donald-trump-family-melania-ivanka-lesley-stahl/">an interview</a> on “60 Minutes” after the election, Trump narrowed his initial target to about two to three million immigrants, similar to Obama’s eight-year deportation record of <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/31/u-s-immigrant-deportations-declined-in-2014-but-remain-near-record-high/">two million people</a>. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/us/politics/donald-trump-deport-immigrants.html">growing</a> <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/11/13586156/trump-deport-immigrants">chorus</a> of <a href="http://interlochenpublicradio.org/post/we-already-have-deportation-squads-place-michigan-says-immigration-attorney">voices</a> has warned about the possibility of increased immigration raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security. <a href="http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/nyuls33&div=22&g_sent=1&collection=journals">Legal research</a> describes immigration raids as swift, violent, traumatic and often <a href="http://cardozo.yu.edu/sites/default/files/Constitution%20On%20ICE--A%20Report%20on%20Immigration%20Home%20Raid%20Operations%20-%20Cardozo%20Law%20School_0.pdf">in violation</a> of Fourth Amendment rights.</p>
<p>Though it is unclear how often immigration raids occur, their use is reported to have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/us-plans-raids-to-deport-families-who-surged-across-border/2015/12/23/034fc954-a9bd-11e5-8058-480b572b4aae_story.html">intensified</a> in 2016, despite arguments that such raids are <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/white-house-immigration-raids-218344">inhumane</a>.</p>
<p>Lawyers working with clients involved in raids have collected <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20160128/families-fear-atlanta-immigration-raids">details</a> of what these raids look like. Raids often occur in early morning hours by agents clad in body armor carrying assault rifles. Residents of raided facilities are forced to sit in a central location, and others who are suspected of being undocumented are also arrested – a legal practice rooted in and leading to <a href="http://crs.sagepub.com/content/32/2-3/447.short">racial profiling</a>. There are often witnesses, many of whom are children. </p>
<p>The potential for trauma is immense. Our work serves as an example.</p>
<p>In November 2013, one such raid happened a few miles from the University of Michigan where researchers and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237000870_Grassroots_Responsiveness_to_Human_Rights_Abuse_History_of_the_Washtenaw_Interfaith_Coalition_for_Immigrant_Rights">activists</a>, myself among them, were working with the local Latino community. ICE collaborated with the local police department in a full day of immigration enforcement actions that targeted a single individual who had previously been deported and allegedly possessed a weapon. This culminated in the raid of the individual’s automobile workshop, as well as his apartment on the floor above it. Multiple community members, including some who were picking up their cars from his workshop, were arrested and deported, and mothers and children were in the apartment when it was raided.</p>
<p>This immigration enforcement action occurred three months into a five-month <a href="http://wemu.org/post/washtenaw-county-conducts-first-latino-health-survey#stream/0">survey of Latinos in Washtenaw County</a>, Michigan, which my colleagues were conducting. Because the raid occurred about halfway through the data collection, about two-thirds of the survey participants completed the survey before the raid and about one-third after. This provided an opportunity to quantitatively measure the <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10903-016-0390-6#Tab2">effects of immigration enforcement</a> on a Latino community. </p>
<h2>Families living in fear</h2>
<p>Participants who completed the survey after the raid reported feeling less free to interact with their social networks, less able to use government services and more fearful of the consequences of deportation. These findings are consistent with <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953611003522">other emerging research</a> that shows that <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1748-0361.2003.tb00539.x/abstract">fear of deportation</a> affects access to <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01459740.2016.1259621?journalCode=gmea20">health services</a>.</p>
<p>These findings suggest that the impact of raids mirrors that of anti-immigrant legislation, which also causes a decrease in service utilization. For example, after the passage of the Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act, which required proof of citizenship to receive public benefits, Latinas were less likely to <a href="http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301560">utilize health services</a>, even when those services did not require legal residency. Similarly, after the passage of Arizona Senate Bill 1070, which empowered police to detain individuals who could not verify citizenship status, Mexican-origin mothers were <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24354823">less likely</a> to use public assistance regardless of their immigration status. </p>
<p>We also interviewed many of the individuals detained in the raid. Interviewees described a range of physical, psychological and economic impacts that affected people throughout the community, whether they were undocumented or U.S. citizens. Some who were detained said that the most emotional, challenging aspect of the incident was the feeling that they had abandoned their families. (The names of the interviewees are withheld to protect their identity.) One interviewee said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It’s so hard because my sister, my nephew and nieces, my wife, my children, all were under my care, as I took care of everything that they needed… What I earned I earned for diapers, milk, food for the house… I would ask myself, ‘Now who is going to help them? Who is going to give them what is needed?’”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even after release from detention, families were affected by the temporary removal of spouses and partners. As one man who was not deported because of his extensive ties to the U.S. said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[My wife] gets sick, I mean like sick, sick like a dog. Like for the first month [after I was released from detention], she just wasn’t the same, like we can’t even carry a conversation for more than five minutes before we both start crying.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Insecure children</h2>
<p>Parents described profound effects on their children. Some children were present in the raided apartment, while others learned their parents had been detained afterwards. A mother who was in the raided apartment with her infants described the effects that persisted long after the day of the raid: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“My daughter cried for a long time. She was crying for like three or four months [after the raid]. She tried to sleep but she would cry and cry. She did things that she didn’t do before.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A growing <a href="http://webarchive.urban.org/publications/411566.html">body of research</a> illustrates the damaging and often <a href="http://search.proquest.com/openview/59e61e7ca3c5fb3aabae28a28e927cbb/1?pq-origsite=gscholar">long-term effects</a> of immigration enforcement <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/forgotten-citizens-9780190211127?cc=us&lang=en&">on children</a>, regardless of their immigration status. For some children, the removal of their parents may result in their placement in <a href="https://www.raceforward.org/research/reports/shattered-families">foster care</a>. Children have also returned home from school to <a href="http://webarchive.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411566_immigration_raids.pdf">empty homes</a> after parents were removed and they were not notified, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-oe-guerrero-immigration-family-separation-20141116-story.html">an experience</a> described by “Orange Is the New Black” actress Diane Guerrero. </p>
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<p>Children of those detained also became fearful any time they saw law enforcement vehicles. One mother shared: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[My son] says, ‘It scares me when you leave the house, when you drive, because I don’t want the police to take you like they took my dad… or like they took my uncle.’”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Fraying trust within communities</h2>
<p>This reaction was common for adults as well. As other <a href="http://www.policylink.org/sites/default/files/INSECURE_COMMUNITIES_REPORT_FINAL.PDF">emerging work</a> has reported, interviewees describe the collaboration between local police and ICE as damaging relationships between Latinos and law enforcement. As one interviewee shared, “People were afraid to call the sheriff or the police and report any kind of crime. I think that in and of itself is pretty tragic because it’s just revictimization after revictimization.”</p>
<p>The raid also caused members of the community to become more suspicious of each other. They feared that the people who were targeted by ICE would likely be targeted again. As a community-based outreach director told us: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If I’m not part of [the raid] and my neighbor is, I try to distance myself from him and not speak to him. So it shatters the community. It tears at the well being of the neighborhood and of friendships. Many friendships were fractured because people don’t want to be close to someone who is at risk of being deported, at risk of being arrested.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The immigration enforcement actions of November 2013 targeted one single individual, yet evidence shows the ripple effects of these actions throughout the community. Should President-elect Trump increase the use of immigration raids in pursuit of his deportation goals, the negative effects of this enforcement would deeply penetrate the families, homes and communities where immigrants live.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69019/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Lopez is affiliated with the University of Michigan and volunteers with the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights. </span></em></p>A public health researcher and advocate explains how immigration raids can impact mental and physical health, and trigger a breakdown of trust and safety in communities across the US.William D. Lopez, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/689592016-11-28T01:25:59Z2016-11-28T01:25:59ZMexicans are migrating, just not across the US border<p>Mexican migration to the U.S. is <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-mexicans-are-leaving-the-us-than-coming-across-the-border-51296">in decline</a>. The <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-than-coming-to-the-u-s/">Pew Hispanic Research Center</a> has found that since 2009, more than one million native-born Mexicans living in the U.S. returned to Mexico. But many other Mexicans never crossed the U.S.-Mexican border in the first place.</p>
<p>Why are some Mexican migrants choosing to stay home? What does it mean for the U.S. border with Mexico? </p>
<p>The decline in migration to the U.S. is not simply linked to building more <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-crumbling-wall-plan-1460320010">barriers at the border</a>. Changing demography, economy, the difficulties of living in the U.S. and a growing sense of <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ff-mexican-immigration-20151118-story.html">opportunity at home</a>, among many other factors, are <a href="http://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1246&context=carsey">shifting Mexican migration to the U.S.</a></p>
<p>Every year millions of Mexicans travel from their hometowns to other parts of the country for work, education and personal freedoms that domestic life and traditional expectations often limit. Migrants who decide to travel to Mexican cities, tourist sites like Cancun, factories and farms may not earn the wages that lie just across the border. Yet, they also avoid the difficulties that often come with adapting to the U.S.</p>
<p>Internal migration is not new, and moving within Mexico <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2011/08/drug-war-refugees-violence-asylum-mexico.html">has a rich history</a>. It is something that rural folks have done for generations, while migration to the U.S. grew only in the 1980s and 1990s.</p>
<p>Based on <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00207659.2016.1197721">our research</a> published in the International Journal of Sociology, we argue that internal migration is an important and viable alternative for people who are in search of security and opportunity and will not or cannot cross the U.S. border.</p>
<h2>Oaxacan migrants in Mexico</h2>
<p>We spent time with families in rural villages in the southern Mexican state of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaxaca">Oaxaca</a>, and learned that internal migration has a long history in the region. Through the mid-20th century, Oaxacans found opportunities as itinerant vendors traveling throughout the region and working on coastal plantations during the harvest season. </p>
<p>Don Betto, who lives in the Sierra Madre del Sur, told us about his trips to southern Mexico in the 1950s and 1960s. (Our study was designed to ensure our subjects remained anonymous, so Don Betto is not his real name. All subjects’ names have been changed.) Following the planting season, he carried cookware on his back, selling door-to-door to earn the cash that his family could count on during the year.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146844/original/image-20161121-4528-7uex0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146844/original/image-20161121-4528-7uex0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146844/original/image-20161121-4528-7uex0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146844/original/image-20161121-4528-7uex0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146844/original/image-20161121-4528-7uex0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146844/original/image-20161121-4528-7uex0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146844/original/image-20161121-4528-7uex0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Oaxacan vendor selling wares.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeffrey Cohen</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>By the later half of the 20th century, many Oaxacans ventured a bit farther from home and settled in Mexico City. They found jobs, opportunities for education and, for at least a few men, brides. Through the 1990s and into the 21st century, Oaxacans <a href="https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/cohcul">continued to migrate</a>. And while many Oaxacans sought opportunities in the U.S., a minority stayed in Mexico and settled in tourists cities like Cancun, or the agricultural fields of Baja California.</p>
<p>The incomes earned by migrants who stay in Mexico do not compete with the wages paid in the U.S. Nevertheless, many Mexicans are quite clear as to why they prefer to stay close to home. Don Alejandro, a young Oaxacan from the state’s central valleys region, described why he traveled to find work in the resort town of Cabo San Lucas in Baja California rather than crossing into the U.S.:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Up north you work then pay bills, then work more to pay more bills… it’s okay here; it’s not much but it’s mine.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Don Maurico, an older wood carver from the village of San Miguel, was even clearer, balancing his critique with a bit of sarcasm: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Look, if I go over there [the U.S.] I’ll make a lot of money, but it is so expensive. If I stay here, well that’s okay. Why would I want to go and have to pay hundreds of dollars for a toaster? I’m happy earning a little right here.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Migrating without leaving home</h2>
<p>The Oaxacans we worked with during our research are a few of the many Mexicans who migrate within national boundaries. The National Institute for Statistics, Geography and Information <a href="http://www.inegi.org.mx/default.aspx">estimates</a> these migrants are 4 to 5 percent of the nation’s total population of about 130 million people. In other words, about six million Mexicans are moving within the nation’s borders. And while some of these migrants might elect to cross into the U.S. in the future, it’s unlikely given the legal challenges of border crossing, as well as what <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/a-lonely-life-for-immigrants-in-americas-rust-belt/394082/">Alana Semuels</a> of The Atlantic describes as a lonely life for immigrants. Mexicans travel within the boundaries of their nation to find opportunity and to keep the stresses of crossing into the U.S. at arm’s length. </p>
<p>In Mexico, they are not questioned over the status of their citizenship. They share a common language, culture and history. Staying within Mexico does not lead to riches, but as Don Valeriano described his situation, “he can be a leader at home” and participate fully in the civil life of his village.</p>
<p>Migrants balance risk and opportunity as they decide to move. Fostering the continued growth of those possibilities within Mexico, and the continued strengthening of the Mexican economy can help build a future without building a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/business/economy/the-crumbling-case-for-a-mexican-border-wall.html?_r=0">wall</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68959/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffrey H. Cohen received fieldwork and research funding from The National Science Foundation for some of the data reported on here.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bernardo Ramirez Rios does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>US elections surfaced fears of Mexicans crossing into the US. But their numbers are actually in decline. Why are they choosing to stay in Mexico? Two migration experts went there to find out.Jeffrey H. Cohen, Professor of Anthropology, The Ohio State UniversityBernardo Ramirez Rios, Professor of Anthropology, Skidmore CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/658392016-09-21T23:00:36Z2016-09-21T23:00:36ZRefugees, migration addressed in first-time UN summit: What was accomplished?<p>This week the United Nations General Assembly held the first-ever <a href="http://refugeesmigrants.un.org/summit">Summit for Refugees and Migrants</a>.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2016-09-19/remarks-opening-session-high-level-plenary-meeting-address-large">U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon</a>, the summit represented “a watershed moment to strengthen governance of international migration and a unique opportunity for creating a more responsible, predictable system for responding to large movements of refugees and migrants.”</p>
<p>The Obama administration and U.S. State Department organized a parallel program on Sept 20. The <a href="http://www.state.gov/p/io/c71574.htm">Leaders’ Summit on Refugees</a> emphasized similar themes.</p>
<p>The shared goals of the summits focused on the increase in the number of refugees. Refugees are a subset of the more than <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html">65.3 million displaced people</a> worldwide and include approximately <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/576408cd7.pdf">21 million</a> men, women and children. </p>
<p>In response, the General Assembly and its 193 member states <a href="http://refugeesmigrants.un.org/sites/default/files/un_press_release_-_new_york_declaration_-_19_september_2016.pdf">adopted an agreement</a> committed to developing standards of care that include providing better educational opportunities for refugee children; improving the working conditions for displaced adults and fighting to counter xenophobia, fear and what British Prime Minister <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/19/theresa-may-united-nations-right-claim-asylum-migration-refugees">Theresa May</a> has described as the “liberal” rules of the Geneva Conventions. </p>
<p>Ban <a href="https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2016-09-19/remarks-opening-session-high-level-plenary-meeting-address-large">declared</a> the results of the summit were “a breakthrough in our collective efforts to address the challenges of human mobility.” </p>
<p>Nevertheless, critics of the summit said it did not go far enough. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/09/19/world/ap-un-united-nations-refugee-summit.html?_r=0">Philipe Bolopion</a>, the deputy director for Human Rights Watch, said the U.N. General Assembly fell short. “We’re facing an historic crisis and the response is not historic,” Bolopion said.</p>
<p>Based on our work with migrants and refugees in Europe and the U.S., we believe the main issues that remain unaddressed are the root causes – that is, insecurities – uprooting millions around the world.</p>
<h2>The UN summit on refugees and migrants</h2>
<p>First, the summit participants spent little time addressing the <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9515.2005.00458.x/full">root causes of forced displacement</a> and insecurities that drive refugees to flee and encourage migrants to set off for new destinations. Refugees and migrants do not simply appear, as we argue in our book <a href="http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/cohmig">“Cultures of Migration.”</a> Rather, they are a response to unrest and insecurity. Insecurity can take many forms and range from small-scale, interfamilial disputes to large-scale violence and clashes that threaten life. Insecurity defines both what is lacking as well as how someone is motivated or forced to leave home.</p>
<p>Programs that address unrest and tackle insecurity, such as the <a href="https://www.wfp.org/countries/uganda">World Food Program in Uganda</a>, may not always stop a civil war, counter displacement or foster economic growth, but they can help. Nevertheless, a focus on the root causes of displacement and migration can also expose the ways in which political regimes and state systems, among other players, manipulate their citizens, take advantage of marginal groups, <a href="http://time.com/4116633/paris-attacks-syrian-refugees/">including religious minorities</a>, and <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/07/11/euaf-j11.html">build relief programs around despots</a>.</p>
<p>Second, too often programs like the ones discussed in the summit and meant to address the status of refugees and migrants, portray refugees as victims suffering from insecurities. This approach does not acknowledge the costs of displacement for refugees and other movers nor the insecurities they may face.</p>
<p>Furthermore, it describes migrants in contrast to refugees. The implication is that migrants are motivated by the pull of well-paying jobs, do not suffer and may be a threat. This is evident in the <a href="http://www.iza.org/highlights/manage_highlights/docs/083_ManagingMigrationintheEuropeanWelfareState_Oxford2002.pdf">xenophobic characterizations</a> of North Africans in Europe and Mexicans in the U.S. These distinctions can only fuel anti-immigration sentiments.</p>
<h2>The Leaders’ Summit on Refugees</h2>
<p>Participants in the leaders’ summit convened by the U.S. State Department and Obama administration focused on building material support for <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/20/fact-sheet-white-house-announces-commitments-call-action-private-sector">refugee resettlement</a> programs globally. </p>
<p>In the meeting, 11 countries including the US doubled their financial contributions to refugee assistance programs. Also, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/20/private-sector-participants-call-action">51 U.S.-based companies</a> committed millions of dollars in support. The support ranged from direct financial contributions to contributions of goods, services and expertise to support resettlement, education and workforce participation while fighting xenophobia.</p>
<p>Money for resettlement is certainly a critical and important need. But there needs to be more emphasis on efforts to facilitate integration and recognition of the two-way nature of the adaptation process. Better programming including projects to rebuild and <a href="https://www.iom.int/news/iom-usaid-support-rehabilitation-services-conflict-affected-colombian-municipalities">resettle refugees in their former homes</a> may help avoid another crisis in the future. </p>
<h2>What happens next?</h2>
<p>The response to refugees and migrants is often <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/16/european-opinions-of-the-refugee-crisis-in-5-charts/">xenophobic nationalism</a> and fear. In the minds of many citizens, terrorists masquerade as Syrian refugees, while Mexican migrants engage in criminal activity. And in nearly every case, there is a <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/04/refugees-crime-rumors/480171/">fear</a> that refugees and migrants will access public assistance at the cost of citizens’ welfare.</p>
<p>To be fair, the General Assembly and the Obama administration are aware that the future of refugees and migrants is far from settled, and that it is critical to respond to xenophobia if solutions are to be found. </p>
<p>Resolving the causes and challenges of the refugee crisis will not be easy. Nevertheless, the U.N. and U.S. State Department summits are an important, if imperfect, start as we engage migrants and refugees, listen to their stories and confront the insecurities that drive them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65839/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The U.N. and other leaders met to discuss coordinating an international response to unprecedented numbers of refugees and migrants. Two migration experts examine issues the summits left unresolved.Jeffrey H. Cohen, Professor of Anthropology, The Ohio State UniversityIbrahim Sirkeci, Professor of Transnational Studies and Marketing & Director of Regent's Centre for Transnational Studies, Regent's University LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/646562016-09-01T03:22:27Z2016-09-01T03:22:27ZImmigration: Five essential reads<p><em>Editor’s note: The following is a roundup of archival stories related to immigration and the presidential campaign.</em></p>
<p>Donald Trump took a last-minute trip to Mexico on Wednesday. He met with President Enrique Peña Nieto before appearing at a rally in Arizona, in which he sought to clarify his positions on immigration. </p>
<p>Those who were hoping to hear him soften his tone in an attempt to expand his base were disappointed. Trump talked tough:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We will break the cycle of amnesty and illegal immigration. We will break the cycle. There will be no amnesty. Our message to the world will be this: You cannot obtain legal status or become a citizen of the United States by illegally entering our country.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But, do his ideas about immigration make sense in light of what experts say? Here are highlights of The Conversation’s coverage of immigration issues.</p>
<h2>The wall, the ban</h2>
<p>If elected, Trump said he will build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and make Mexico pay for it. But a wall may not be necessary, according to migration data. <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/david-cook-martin-144025">David Cook Martín</a>, a professor of sociology at Grinnell College, writes that thousands of Mexicans are leaving the U.S. of their own accord and <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-mexicans-are-leaving-the-us-than-coming-across-the-border-51296">returning to Mexico for a variety of reasons</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The study shows a net loss of 140,000 Mexican immigrants from the United States. One million Mexican migrants and their children left the U.S. for Mexico, while just over 860,000 left Mexico for the United States.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, Mexicans are certainly not the only people crossing the U.S. border. <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/caitlin-fouratt-292248">Caitlin Fouratt</a>, a professor of international studies at California State University, Long Beach writes about the thousands of Central Americans <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-u-s-wants-costa-rica-to-host-refugees-before-they-cross-the-border-heres-why-63989">fleeing violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador</a> – a region known as the Northern Triangle.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“In the first six months of the current fiscal year, the U.S. border patrol apprehended 120,700 people from the Northern Triangle countries attempting to enter the U.S. Some of those who cross the border will apply for asylum, but the majority will be sent back to their countries of origin and the violence they were fleeing.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Trump has also previously called for a ban on Muslim immigrants. Scholars <a href="https://theconversation.com/scholars-trumps-call-to-ban-muslims-is-un-american-52065">deemed this position un-American</a>, as <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/sahar-aziz-191351">Sahar Aziz</a>, professor of law at Texas A&M University writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“At a time when most Americans are taught that our nation is post-racial and that we have moved beyond Japanese internment or Chinese exclusion laws, Trump’s statements and consequent rise in the polls remind us that our nation has not advanced as much as we’d like to believe.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The 11 million here</h2>
<p>Another major focus of U.S. immigration debate has been finding a solution for the estimated 11 million immigrants who already live in the U.S. without a visa or a pathway to citizenship.</p>
<p>Trump criticized President Obama’s use of executive action to create a program to shield immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation. Obama also created a similar program for parents of children who are U.S. citizens in 2014 – Deferred Action for Parents of Americans.</p>
<p>In U.S. vs. Texas, 26 states refused to enforce the program and challenged Obama’s use of executive action. The case went to the Supreme Court, and in June, the Court reached a 4-4 deadlock decision. <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/shana-tabak-205983">Shana Tabak</a>, professor of law at Georgia State University <a href="https://theconversation.com/deadlocked-what-a-nine-word-decision-means-for-five-million-undocumented-immigrants-61550">writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Now, the millions who would have been eligible remain stranded, fearful of deportation and unable to legally work… This executive action represented an opportunity for many to finally come out of the shadows. President Obama’s previous executive action, DACA, has dramatically improved the lives of many who were brought to the U.S. as children, allowing them to attend college, work, hold driver’s licenses – to contribute to the societies of which they are a part.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Trump’s plan also highlighted enforcing deportation of undocumented immigrants by tripling the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and creating a special deportation taskforce. What would be the effect of such a policy?</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/miliann-kang-203360">Miliann Kang</a>, professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst points out that mass deportation has and would have continued negative effects on millions of <a href="https://theconversation.com/deportations-punish-children-most-50648">children who are born in the U.S. and are legal U.S. citizens</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Sammy is a teenager I recently met who was born and raised in the Southwest. His parents were living in the U.S., working and raising their children, until they were stopped for a traffic violation, or audited for taxes, or turned in by a teacher or medical provider, or any of the mundane ways that undocumented status gets uncovered. Now Sammy is living with foster parents.”</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64656/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Donald Trump gave a major speech on immigration this week. This roundup looks at some of his ideas for reform and explains what the experts have to say about this complex issue.Danielle Douez, Associate Editor, Politics + SocietyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/546822016-02-22T10:22:14Z2016-02-22T10:22:14ZHarsh Republican immigration rhetoric is invigorating Latino voters<p>Donald Trump has said Mexicans “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/16/donald-trump-mexico-presidential-speech-latino-hispanic">are bringing drugs, and bringing crime</a>” to the US, while his fellow Republican presidential hopefuls are also talking up hawkish anti-immigration policies as the primary season unfolds. </p>
<p>That they feel confident doing so says something about American Latinos’ surprising history of not showing up at the ballot box in big numbers. But based on the data we have, it seems the anti-immigration right may have finally gone too far.</p>
<p>Latinos are the largest ethnic minority group in the US, making up <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html">17.4% of the population</a>, yet the Latino electorate has so far underperformed at the ballot box. The Pew Research Centre projects that a record 27.3m Latinos will be eligible to vote in 2016. That’s 4m more than in 2012, but still only about half of the US’s Latino population. </p>
<p>Expanding the size of the electorate through voter registration and naturalisation campaigns is undoubtedly an important step towards augmenting the political influence of the Latino community. But the impact of a larger electorate will be mitigated if half of eligible Latino voters continue to stay home on election day. </p>
<p>At the 2012 election, an alarming <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/06/03/inside-the-2012-latino-electorate/">12m eligible Latinos chose not to vote</a>, and the Latino turnout rate dropped from 49.9% in 2008 to 48%. Conversely, 66.6% of African Americans and 64.1% of non-Hispanic whites voted.</p>
<p>While mobilising unlikely voters in Chicago in 2014, I witnessed how misinformation and a lack of understanding of how the government functions fuels public disillusion with the political process, a major reason many voters, not just Latinos, opt to reject the ballot box.</p>
<p>But the viciously anti-immigrant rhetoric promulgated by Republican candidates is forcing Latino voters to pay attention. </p>
<h2>Waking up</h2>
<p>A 2015 <a href="http://publications.nclr.org/handle/123456789/1422/">survey</a> of registered Latino voters jointly conducted by the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) and Latino Decisions found that 43% of respondents felt more interested in this year’s presidential election than in 2012. The same survey found that immigration reform, deportations and Barack Obama’s recent interventions via <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/19/politics/supreme-court-to-take-up-obama-immigration-actions/">executive actions</a> are the most important issues for 39% of respondents, tied with job creation and the economy – whereas immigration issues ranked only fourth among Latino voters’ priorities in 2012.</p>
<p>This doesn’t make good reading for the Republican presidential front-runners, who claim to recognise the importance of the Latino vote to their campaigns but repeatedly alienate voters with their xenophobic rhetoric and unrealistic immigration policies. </p>
<p>On some themes, Donald Trump is in a league of his own: at the start of his campaign in the summer of 2015, he described Mexicans, by far the US’s largest Latino subgroup, as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/16/donald-trump-mexico-presidential-speech-latino-hispanic">criminals and rapists</a>. But <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/11/politics/donald-trump-deportation-force-debate-immigration/">all</a> <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/01/08/ted_cruz_to_illegal_immigrant_youth_yes_i_will_deport_you.html">three</a> <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/259932-rubio-people-will-have-to-be-deported">candidates</a> have called for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and have promised to end <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/deferred-action-childhood-arrivals">Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals</a> (DACA), an administrative policy that allows certain undocumented youth the ability to temporarily live and work in the US.</p>
<p>These promises alarm me since I’m a DACA beneficiary. DACA, among other things, made it possible for me to gain employment after graduating from Amherst College and to continue my graduate education. I am currently a Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge, and a future Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University in China. </p>
<p>If Trump, Cruz or Rubio reach the White House, the other 660,000 beneficiaries and I would return to living under fear of deportation without access to legal employment.</p>
<h2>From the ground up</h2>
<p>Deporting all 11m of us is not realistic and will hurt the economy. The cheap labour of undocumented workers subsidises the standard of living of every American. Undocumented immigrants also pay billions in taxes which help support public programs. The <a href="http://www.itep.org/immigration/">Institute on Taxation and Economy Policy</a> that undocumented residents paid an estimated $11.84 billion in state and local taxes in 2012 – and that legalising undocumented people would add $2.2 billion a year to state and local taxes. </p>
<p>Republican candidates know their immigration proposals are unrealistic, but they chose to ignore the facts to score political points with their conservative base.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the American people are on our side. A <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/184577/favor-path-citizenship-illegal-immigrants.aspx">2015 Gallup poll</a> found that 65% of US adults and 77% of Latinos favour a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. While I can’t vote, most of my extended family members, my colleagues and my friends can, and they will not vote for a candidate who wants to deport my mother and me.</p>
<p>Cruz and Rubio, both Cuban Americans, are perhaps hoping Latinos will ignore their stance on immigration and support them in the general election by virtue of their last names. But, if nominated, their ethnicity alone will not endear them to Latino voters. In the aforementioned NCLR survey, only 4% of respondents said they would blindly vote for a Latino candidate; 55% of Latinos listed the candidates’ positions as the most important factor influencing their vote.</p>
<p>This will only matter if Latinos vote in numbers that can make a real difference. Raised turnout and greater political representation are not the catalysts for political empowerment, but the products of it. If those who stand up for Latino interests want to sustain political participation in a meaningful way, civic engagement at the grassroots level must be their focus. </p>
<p>If they can be brought to the ballot box in representative numbers, they could dramatically change American politics. But without a sustained grassroots organising effort, a significant number of Latinos will remain political bystanders in the US.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54682/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carlos Adolfo Gonzalez Sierra is affiliated with the Latino Caucus of the Lancaster County Democratic Party. </span></em></p>All the anti-immigrant rabble-rousing appears to be backfiring.Carlos Adolfo Gonzalez Sierra, Gates Scholar in Latin American Studies, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/460522015-08-21T09:44:39Z2015-08-21T09:44:39ZFor Asian-American students, stereotypes help boost achievement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92619/original/image-20150820-7231-m66oe9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What is behind Asian-American success?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/quatar/10102090525/in/photolist-goFRyz-j9QQpv-j9RKTf-j9PmMa-jDiTdL-4ynR9Q-kY9ADt-58irSr-bCJzUA-PdvqJ-sb5Fy-4WKfzA-5zvhUB-4WKfgN-byqRgF-5zzwAS-5zzRBs-5zzbuG-5zAi9S-5zvULt-5zzkkS-5zuWke-5zzTqq-5zuUYK-5zvPzz-5zzZ8G-5zvw46-5zvRU2-5zvYLt-5zv4nH-5zuXBV-5zvpVg-5zvmqn-5zviMz-5zve8z-5zvgFv-5zv7a2-5zvXY6-5zzP7A-5zzpVL-5zA4zf-5zvfEz-5zvagc-5zAbwj-5zv7Ez-5zAh4y-5zvyzF-5zvQtz-5zuR8z-5zzC1s">Nicola Sapiens De Mitri</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Conventional wisdom is that all stereotypes are negative and damaging. </p>
<p>African Americans are <a href="http://web.stanford.edu/%7Eeberhard/downloads/2004-SeeingBlackRaceCrimeandVisualProcessing.pdf">stereotyped</a> as violent and threatening. Employers stereotype <a href="http://gender.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/motherhoodpenalty.pdf">mothers</a> as less competent and less committed. And undocumented immigrants are <a href="http://conf.som.yale.edu/obsummer07/paperleefiske.pdf">stereotyped</a> as incompetent and untrustworthy. </p>
<p>Each of these stereotypes has negative consequences for members of these groups. But is there such a thing as a positive stereotype, and, if so, can positive stereotypes have positive consequences?</p>
<p>In our new book, <a href="http://www.russellsage.org/asian-american-achievement-paradox">The Asian American Achievement Paradox</a> – based on a <a href="http://www.russellsage.org/research/Immigration/IIMMLA">survey</a> of 4,780 adult children as well as 140 in-depth interviews of Chinese, Vietnamese and Mexican immigrants – fellow sociologist Min Zhou and I found ways in which positive stereotypes can be advantageous. </p>
<p>We found that racial stereotypes and implicit biases could actually be helping Asian Americans achieve their much-touted academic success. </p>
<h2>The Asian ‘advantage’</h2>
<p>Studies have shown how teachers’ <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brown-center-chalkboard/posts/2015/08/18-teacher-expectations-gershenson">expectations</a> impact achievement. Traditionally disadvantaged students have been known to perform poorly as a result of low expectations from teachers. But when teachers perceive their students as smart, their academic performance can improve. </p>
<p>In the case of Asian Americans, it contributes to their success.</p>
<p>In spite of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-there-an-asian-disadvantage-in-higher-ed-44070">tremendous diversity</a> of the US Asian population, Asian immigrants are perceived as smart, high-achieving and successful. This is largely due to the influence of some highly educated immigrant Asian groups. </p>
<p>Take, for instance, the Chinese immigrants in the US. Our study found that over 60% of Chinese immigrant fathers and over 40% of Chinese immigrant mothers had a bachelor’s degree or higher. We found this population to be even more highly educated than the general US population – only 28% of whom have graduated from college. </p>
<p>The Chinese and Vietnamese respondents in our study revealed that their teachers and guidance counselors perceived them as smart and promising. They expected them to excel and attend four-year universities.</p>
<p>Mexican students, by contrast, were perceived as low achievers who did not value education and were tracked for two-year community colleges. The children of Mexican immigrants had the lowest levels of educational attainment of any of the groups in our study. Only 86% graduated from high school, and even fewer – 17% – graduated from college. </p>
<h2>How expectations work</h2>
<p>Perception – regardless of validity – has consequences. Or as the American sociologist W I Thomas aptly <a href="http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/merton/thomastheorem.pdf">noted</a>, “if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” </p>
<p>We found that expectation can enhance the academic performance of even some of the most mediocre Asian-American students. </p>
<p>Take the case of Trang, a 24-year-old, second-generation Vietnamese woman, who was placed into honors classes in high school, even though she admits she was not an outstanding junior high student.</p>
<p>Even more surprising is that Trang has no idea why or how she was placed in honors classes.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92620/original/image-20150820-7231-bqxoag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92620/original/image-20150820-7231-bqxoag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92620/original/image-20150820-7231-bqxoag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92620/original/image-20150820-7231-bqxoag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92620/original/image-20150820-7231-bqxoag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92620/original/image-20150820-7231-bqxoag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92620/original/image-20150820-7231-bqxoag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When teachers expect more from their students, students are motivated to perform better.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/brainchildvn/3004689743/in/photolist-5zvPzz-5zvpVg-5zvmqn-5zviMz-5zve8z-5zvyzF-5zvwYF-5zzSgQ-5zzKs5-5zuToc-5zzCuL-5zzhcm-5zzgfb-5zv7a2-5zzYA5-5zzpVL-5zvHWX-5zzTWs-5zzsHu-5zz9wh-5zvoRZ-5zzJKU-5zvdua-5zAh4y-5zzqVW-5zuR8z-5zvL4x-5zzWhw-5zvYLt-5zv4nH-5zuXBV-5zv6vi-5zA2F5-5zuSsa-5zvJsB-5zvXY6-5zzP7A-5zvg7n-5zv2HF-5zzsh9-5zA4fL-5zuWUt-5zzZwm-5zvngK-5zzuwd-5zuUp2-5zzfKb-5zzN2Q-5zvmQT-5zv7Ez">Charlie Nguyen</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But once Trang was placed into the honors track, she began taking her schoolwork more seriously, spending more time doing her homework and studying hard for tests to keep up with her high-achieving peers. </p>
<p>Trang graduated with a GPA (grade point average) above 4.0 and was admitted to all the University of California schools to which she applied.</p>
<p>Ophelia, a 23-year-old, second-generation Vietnamese woman, also benefited from being positively stereotyped. </p>
<p>She described herself as “not very intelligent” and recalls nearly having to repeat second grade because of her poor academic performance. By her account:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I wasn’t an exceptional student; I was a straight C student.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ophelia took the AP (advanced placement) exam at the end of junior high school, but failed. Despite that, she was placed into the AP track in her predominantly white high school.</p>
<p>Once there, something “just clicked,” and Ophelia began to excel in her classes.</p>
<p>When we asked, she elaborated, “I wanted to work hard and prove I was a good student,” adding, “I think the competition kind of increases your want to do better.” </p>
<p>She graduated from high school with a 4.2 GPA and was admitted into a highly competitive pharmacy program.</p>
<p>In contrast, Mexican students were <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/academic-profiling">academically profiled</a> as low achievers who did not value a college education and found themselves having to actively vie for the attention of their teachers and guidance counselors. </p>
<h2>Stereotype promise yields results</h2>
<p>In both Trang’s and Ophelia’s cases, self-fulfilling prophecies were at work in the precise definition of the term. As sociologist Robert K Merton has defined, <a href="http://entrepreneurscommunicate.pbworks.com/f/Merton.+Self+Fulfilling+Profecy.pdf">a self-fulfilling prophecy</a> begins with a false definition of the situation, evoking a new behavior that makes the original false conception come true. </p>
<p>And this is what happened in the case of Trang and Ophelia when they were favored by their teachers’ high expectations. It resulted in a change in both students’ behavior, and ultimately, a boost in their academic performance. </p>
<p>This also went into reinforcing prevailing stereotypes. Because Trang’s and Ophelia’s academic outcomes matched their teachers’ expectations, the teachers pointed to these students’ stellar academic achievement as proof of their initial assessment about Asian-American students (that they are smart, high-achieving, and deserving of being placed into the most competitive academic tracks so that they can reach their potential). </p>
<h2>A double-edged sword</h2>
<p>However, it is important to note that these same positive stereotypes and biases also have negative consequences.</p>
<p>First, those who do not attain high academic outcomes feel like failures and ethnic outliers. As we found in our study, some rejected their ethnic identities, claiming that they were not really Chinese or Vietnamese because they linked their ethnic identity to exceptional academic achievement.</p>
<p>Adam, a 21-year-old second-generation Vietnamese, identifies as “American Asian” rather than as Vietnamese or Vietnamese American because he dropped out of college. Adam also compares himself to his brother, who he described as “much more Vietnamese than me” because he attends a prestigious university and is on the path to medical school. Similarly, Paul, a 36-year-old second-generation Chinese American, described himself as “the whitest Chinese guy you’ll ever meet” because he attended art school rather than an elite university.</p>
<p>Second, the biases can also disadvantage Asian groups such as Cambodians, Laotian and Hmong, who have higher high school dropout rates than African Americans and Latinos – underscoring the extreme diversity among Asian Americans. </p>
<p>Additionally, the very same stereotypes that can boost Asian-American students’ academic performance can operate against them as they vie for leadership positions in the workplace. </p>
<p>Asian American students may be perceived as lacking leadership skills, creativity and managerial bravado. A <a href="http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/ascendleadership.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/Research_NEW/The_Failure_of_Asian_Success.pdf">recent study</a> of Silicon Valley’s tech industry showed that while Asian Americans make up 27.2% of the professionals in tech, they comprise only 13.9% of executives. </p>
<p>Much like the glass ceiling that women face, a <a href="http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2015/06/09/why-asian-americans-shouldnt-chuck-affirmative-action-out-the-window/ideas/nexus/">“bamboo ceiling”</a> keeps Asian Americans from rising to the top leadership positions.</p>
<p>These are the burdens that come with stereotypes. Positive stereotypes can also be double-edged swords.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46052/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Lee received funding from the Russell Sage Foundation to conduct the research on which her book with Min Zhou, The Asian American Achievement Paradox, is based.</span></em></p>Asian-American kids are often viewed as high-achieving and smart. Does such a stereotype contribute to their academic success?Jennifer Lee, Professor of Sociology , University of California, IrvineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.