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The Politics, Economics, and Culture of Mexican-U.S. Migration

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The Politics, Economics, and Culture of Mexican-U.S. Migration Both Sides of the Border Edited by Edward Ashbee, Helene Balslev Clausen, and Carl Pedersen

THE POLITICS, ECONOMICS, AND CULTURE OF MEXICAN-U.S. MIGRATION

Copyright © Edward Ashbee, Helene Balslev Clausen, and Carl Pedersen, eds., 2007. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS. Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978-1-4039-8478-4 ISBN-10: 1-4039-8478-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The politics, economics, and culture of Mexican-U.S. migration : both sides of the border / edited by Edward Ashbee, Helene Balslev Clausen, and Carl Pedersen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-4039-8494-8 1. United States—Emigration and immigration. 2. Mexico—Emigration and immigration. 3. Mexican-American Border Region—Emigration and immigration. 4. Mexicans—United States. 5. Alien labor, Mexican—United States. I. Ashbee, Edward. II. Clausen, Helene Balslev. III. Pedersen, Carl. JV6465.P65 2007 304.8’73072—dc22 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: December 2007 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

2007021996

Contents List of Illustrations Introduction Part I

vii 1

American Identities

1 Somos Americanos: Mexican Immigration and U.S. National Identity in the Twenty-first Century Carl Pedersen 2 Mexican Mestizo Identity in the Twenty-first Century Helene Balslev Clausen

9 25

Part II Capital and Labor 3 The Other Side of the Migration Story: Mexican Women in the United States Silvia E. Giorguli Saucedo, María Adela Angoa Pérez, and Selene Gaspar Olvera

39

4 From Precarious, Low-paying Jobs in Mexico to Precarious, Low-paying Jobs in the United States Elaine Levine

63

5 Sending Money Home: The Dynamics of Mexico-U.S. Remittances Mario Villarreal and Megan Davy

91

6 The Impact of NAFTA on the Mexican-U.S. Border Region Elena Labastida-Tovar

107

7 Transnational Social Networks and International Trade Magdalena Barros Nock

133

vi • Contents

Part III The Border Region 8 Beyond Border Crossing and Soulless Places: The Role of Mexico’s Northern Border Cities in the Construction of Transnational Social Spaces Cristóbal Mendoza

149

9 Changing Representations of the Border Mario Alberto Velázquez

163

10 Boundaries in Border Films: The Other as Our Redemption Jan Gustafsson

177

11 Baldwin Park: Historical Narratives and American Identities Anne Magnussen

189

12 Textual Representations of the Border and Border Crossers: Constructing Latino Enemies in the New York Times Ken Henriksen

201

13 Mexican Immigration and the Question of Identity in the United States Rafael Goméz

215

Part IV Politics and Public Policy 14 Immigration and the 2006 U.S. Midterm Elections Edward Ashbee

233

15 Immigration, Social Policy, and Politics in the United States Alex Waddan

257

16 From the Margin to the Middle? The Origin, Transformation, and Direction of the Minutemen Pia Møller 17 Migrants, Votes, and the 2006 Mexican Presidential Election Helene Balslev Clausen and Mario Alberto Velázquez 18 Sovereignty along el Río Bravo / the Rio Grande: Changes in U.S. Immigration Law and Mexican Foreign Relations Law Ernesto Hernández-López

271 295

305

Contributors

317

Index

321

List of Ilustrations Figure 3.1 Figure 3.2 Figure 3.3

Table 3.1

Table 3.2

Table 3.3

Table 3.4 Table 3.5

Table 3.6

Age distribution of Mexican women living in the United States, 1995 and 2005

44

Specific female Mexican labor participation rates in the United States, 1995 and 2005

47

Household heads’ income relative to total household income, Mexican household heads in the United States, 2005

52

Selected sociodemographic characteristics of Mexican immigrant women in the United States, 1995 and 2005

43

Selected labor participation variables for Mexican women sixteen to sixty-four years old in the United States, 1995 and 2005

46

Ten main occupations of economically active Mexican women in the United States, 2005 (volume and relative distribution)

49

Selected characteristics of Mexican households in the United States by sex of household head, 2005

51

Composition of the Mexican households in the United States by sex of income earners and sex of household head, 2005

53

Relative contribution of female income earners to total income in Mexican households in the United States by sex of household head and income earners’ composition, 2005

54

viii • List of Ilustrations

Table 3.7

Citizenship and period of arrival in the United States of Mexican immigrant women, 1995 and 2005

57

Figure 4.1

U.S. labor force participation rates, 2005

73

Figure 4.2

U.S. unemployment rates, 2005

73

Figure 4.3

Median income for all males ages sixteen and over, 1970–2005 (in 2005 dollars)

83

Median income for all males working full time, 1970–2005 (in 2005 dollars)

83

Median income for all women ages sixteen and over, 1970–2005 (in 2000 dollars)

84

Median income for all women working full time, 1970–2005 (in 2005 dollars)

84

Figure 4.7

Median family income, 1970–2004 (in 2004 dollars)

85

Figure 4.8

Median household income, 1970–2005 (in 2005 dollars)

85

Figure 4.9

Per capita income for various groups, 1970–2005 (in 2005 dollars)

86

Figure 4.4 Figure 4.5 Figure 4.6

Figure 4.10 Percentage of Mexican-origin Latinos without high school diploma, 2003

87

Figure 4.11 Percentage of Mexican-origin Latinos with college degree or higher, 2003

87

Table 4.1

Occupational structure in Mexico (in thousands)

68

Table 4.2

Occupational structure in Mexico (percentages)

69

Table 4.3

Workers employed in major occupation groups in the United States by national origin and gender, 2006

74

Employed persons in the United States by occupation, race, and ethnicity, 2005 (in thousands)

76

Employed persons in the United States by occupation, race, and ethnicity, 2005 (percentages)

77

Occupations with the highest percentages of Latino employees

79

Table 4.4 Table 4.5 Table 4.6

List of Ilustrations • ix

Table 4.7

Occupations with the highest numbers of Latino employees

80

Industries with high percentages of Latinos, 2005 (in thousands)

81

Median earnings compared (1990 to 2005) in occupations with high percentages of Latinos, 2005

82

Total remittances and average amount of remittance, 1995–2006

93

Figure 5.2

Remittances as a percentage of state GDP, 2006

95

Table 5.1

Composition of remittance flows to Mexico, 1997–2006

94

Table 5.2

Remittance amounts by income quintile, 2005

96

Figure 6.1

Average percent changes in real GDP in Mexico and the Mexican border states, 1993–2004

110

Average percent change in real GDP in the United States and the U.S. border states, 1990–2005

111

Mexican active economic population occupied by activity sector, 1895–2000 (percentages)

120

Table 6.1

Mexican border states population

109

Table 6.2

U.S. border states population

109

Table 6.3

The export of goods to the United States from Mexican border cities

112

Table 6.4

The export of goods to Mexico from U.S. border cities

113

Table 6.5

U.S. investment in the Mexican border states

115

Table 6.6

Mexican investment in the United States

115

Table 6.7

Soft infrastructure and economic growth: Starting a business and registering property in Mexican states

117

Mexican active economic population by occupation (percentages)

119

Migrants from inland Mexico with family and friends in border cities, 1996–2001 (percentages)

153

Table 4.8 Table 4.9 Figure 5.1

Figure 6.2 Figure 6.3

Table 6.8 Figure 8.1

x • List of Ilustrations

Table 8.1

Assistance provided by family and friends in their last migration to the border city, 1996–2001 (percentages)

154

Logistic regression models: Probabilities of emigration to the United States

156

Table 8.3

Migrants’ demographic profiles by final destination

158

Table 14.1

Status of foreign-born population, 2004 (percentages)

235

Table 14.2

Attitudes toward legal immigration, February–March 2006 (percentages)

238

Table 14.3

Issues and parties, October 2006 (percentages)

244

Table 14.4

Most important issue, November 2006 (percentages)

245

Table 14.5

Attitudes toward ways of reducing illegal immigration from Mexico, February–March 2006 (percentages)

246

Attitudes toward identity checks and provisions for illegal immigrants, February–March 2006 (percentages)

247

Policy toward illegal immigrants, February–March 2006 (percentages)

247

Attitudes towards the “legalization” of illegal immigrants, May 2006 (percentages)

247

Table 14.9

Voting patterns by race and ethnicity, 2002–6 (percentages)

249

Table 17.1

The 2006 election: Mexicans living outside of Mexico (votes by party and state)

301

The 2006 election: Mexicans residing in the United States (votes by party)

301

Table 8.2

Table 14.6 Table 14.7 Table 14.8

Table 17.2

Introduction

“Nuestro Himno” (“Our Anthem”) was the Spanish-language version of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The recorded version featured artists such as Wyclef Jean, hip-hop star Pitbull, and Puerto Rican singers Carlos Ponce and Olga Tanon. It was released at the end of April 2006 and played on many of the U.S. Spanishlanguage radio stations during the mass protests against congressional efforts to restrict illegal immigration. The altering of particular words, the irreverent chords that broke with the anthem’s customary solemnity, and the use of Spanish all provoked controversy. For his part, President George W. Bush said those who wanted to be U.S. citizens should learn English and “ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English.”1 “Nuestro Himno” was only in the news for a short period. It had significance because it was tied to a much more sustained controversy about the economic and political consequences of migration and the changing character of both U.S. and Mexican identity. It is a controversy that has led to significant divisions within the United States. Whereas President Bush backed reforms that opened the way for “guest workers” and held out the promise of eventual U.S. citizenship to many who were in the United States illegally, other Republicans sought the imposition of restrictions on the number of legal immigrants allowed in the country and a rigorous clampdown on illegal immigration. Although there was more agreement about the need for greater border security, supported by Democrats as well as Republicans, some were concerned about the impact a fence would have on the relationship between the United States and Mexico. According to Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, “What we have here has become a symbol for the right wing in American politics . . . our relationship with Mexico would come down to a barrier between our two countries.”2 There was greater unanimity in Mexico, and few dissented when President Vicente Fox, like other Mexican politicians, compared the proposed U.S. barrier to the Berlin Wall: “Building walls, constructing barriers on the border does not offer an efficient solution in a relationship of friends, neighbors and partners. . . . We will go on defending the rights of our countrymen without rest or respite.

2 • Edward Ashbee, Helene Balslev Clausen, and Carl Pedersen

With passion we will demand the full respect of their human rights.” Fox’s comments are not just a critique of U.S. policy. They embrace Mexican emigrants as “our countrymen,” thereby evoking notions of a Mexican nation-state that extends beyond the country’s borders.3 All of this is tied to broader questions about the future of the North American economy, the border region (which is acquiring an economic and social character that is distinct from both the United States and Mexico), and national identity. For some in the United States, mass immigration and the weakening of assimilative mechanisms threaten the established identity of the United States. There are also continuing fears about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its impact on blue-collar jobs within “heartland” America. Polling data suggest that while NAFTA has majority backing within Mexico, there are also anxieties. Nearly all believe that the United States has gained much more than Mexico. Furthermore, the mass movement of capital and labor is “opening up” the politics and culture of the country in ways that seem to threaten the integrity of the Mexican nation. Others, however, have embraced the lowering of trade barriers and regard NAFTA as a spur to growth that is bolstering the Mexican and Central American economies, developing the border region, and will, at least in the long-term, curb migratory pressures. In contrast with many other books and compendiums, The Politics, Economics, and Culture of Mexican-U.S. Migration: Both Sides of the Border is multidisciplinary in character. It draws on the approaches and methodologies associated with cultural studies, politics, economics, history, and law and seeks to bring them together in studies of particular events, themes, and processes. The book incorporates different and contrasting political perspectives. Some of the essays stress the gains that have accrued from the process of economic integration while others point to the hardships faced by migrant workers and those they leave behind. Both Sides of the Border: The Politics, Economics, and Culture of Mexican-U.S. Migration not only considers developments in both Mexico and the United States, but has recruited contributors from Mexico, the United States, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. The book is divided into four parts. The two chapters in Part I (“American Identities”) look at the future of national identity on both sides of the border. In Chapter 1, Carl Pedersen discusses how demographic changes in the United States have given rise to debates about what it means to be an American in the twenty-first century. He traces the history of nativist and cosmopolitan narratives of national identity in the United States and argues that, in an age of transnational identities, reinforced by dual citizenship, the cosmopolitan narrative is on the ascendant. Helene Balslev Clausen suggests in Chapter 2 that notions of Mexican nationhood were traditionally structured around a founding mestizo myth based on the integration of European and Native American traditions. Mexicans living in the United States were, however, excluded from notions of the Mexican nation. She examines the reasons why, from the time of Vicente Fox’s administration, this began to change.

Introduction • 3

Part II (“Capital and Labor”) considers the process and social impact of economic integration between the United States and Mexico. In Chapter 3, Silvia E. Giorguli Saucedo, María Adela Angoa Pérez, and Selene Gaspar Olvera assess the position of Mexican women in the United States. Such women have traditionally been largely invisible in both migration studies and commentaries. They are largely confined to the lowest rungs on the socioeconomic ladder. There may, nonetheless, have been changes within migrant households. Through participation in the labor market, Mexican women have gained greater personal leverage contributing to a shift away from rigid patriarchal structures. Elaine Levine seeks to explain in Chapter 4 why so many Mexicans are willing to leave their homes and families to seek employment in the United States, in spite of all the risks and hardships involved. Levine points to the policies pursued by Mexican governments as well as to declining real wages and pervasive instability within the country’s labor market. In Chapter 5, Mario Villarreal and Megan Davy consider the migration process in a different way. Villarreal and Davy look at the remittances sent by Mexican migrants to their families and communities of origin. They stress the hardships that are often entailed in the migration process: “Behind remittance income there are stories of struggling rural communities, divided families, illegal immigrants dying while crossing the border, and a country’s struggle to provide the means of prosperity for its own citizens.”4 However, they also emphasize the ways in which remittance income plays a part in alleviating economic problems in many Mexican communities. In contrast with traditional foreign aid and assistance programs, remittances are sent directly to families and individuals and thereby bypass government agencies. Elena Labastida-Tovar also stresses the positive features of economic integration in Chapter 6. She considers the extent to which NAFTA offers opportunities for investment and economic growth. She points to growth rates in the U.S.-Mexican border region, particularly during the latter half of the 1990s as testimony to NAFTA’s importance and value. However, she argues that there is a strong case for further liberalization if the full potential of NAFTA is to be realized. There are still trade barriers between member countries and, as the current U.S. debate about immigration and border security has highlighted, substantial obstacles to the free movement of labor. In the final chapter of this section, Magdalena Barros Nock provides a detailed survey of the networks that have emerged among small-scale market traders in Los Angeles and Tijuana and considers the ways that these networks now extend across both sides of the border. The chapters in Part III (“The Border Region”) look at the border between the United States and Mexico and its impact from different perspectives. In Chapter 8, Christóbal Mendoza argues that the role of “place” has been neglected in transnational migration studies and needs to be reasserted. He focuses attention on the northern cities in Mexico. Mario Alberto Velázquez considers the border in another way. Using risk theory, he shows how U.S. representations of the border are suffused with fears of “contamination” from Mexico. He draws on U.S. films to examine changes in these representations over the past sixty years.

4 • Edward Ashbee, Helene Balslev Clausen, and Carl Pedersen

Jan Gustafsson elaborates on these cinematic representations of the border in Chapter 10. Focusing on a Tommy Lee Jones film, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, from 2006, he argues that the border can be seen not only as a site of separation and division, but also as a site of dialogue and encounter. As Anne Magnussen emphasises in Chapter 11, differing representations of Mexican immigration inform and structure political processes in the United States. She examines one site of contention—the monument Danzas Indígenas (Indigenous Dances) in Baldwin Park outside of Los Angeles. She shows how two inscriptions on the monument have generated two narratives about the meaning of Mexican presence in the United States that have historical antecedents. Ken Henriksen and Rafael Gomez take another medium, U.S. newspapers, as their point of departure for a discussion of how Mexican immigrants are represented. Both Chapters 12 and 13 focus on the period after the passage of the U.S. House of Representatives bill that proposed to reclassify undocumented immigrants as felons and sought to build a seven-hundred-mile fence along the border. Henriksen takes a sample of articles from the New York Times to examine the discursive dimensions of Latino immigrant representations that portray these immigrants as a threat not only to U.S. national identity, but to national security. Rafael Gomez looks at Salinas Valley and Monterey peninsula in California and argues that residents of the area are, through letters to, and “op-ed” columns in, local newspapers, forging a new narrative of identity and immigration. The final section of the book, Part IV (“Politics and Public Policy”), looks at the impact of border issues and migration on the political process in both the United States and Mexico. In Chapter 14, Edward Ashbee considers the attempts by many Republican candidates and strategists to make illegal immigration a defining theme of the congressional elections in November 2006. He argues that these efforts failed not only because illegal immigration was overshadowed by other concerns, but also because public opinion was pulled in different directions. There was no clear majority for a policy that involved the removal of illegal immigrants from the United States. In Chapter 15, Alex Waddan examines the ways in which immigration has shaped the direction of social policy at both a federal and state level. Waddan stresses the need to move beyond broad generalizations. Pia Møller looks in Chapter 16 at the ways border security came to the fore among some sections of U.S. opinion. Møller focuses on the Minutemen and argues that although the organization was initially on the fringes of mainstream conservative thinking and President Bush himself described the Minutemen as “vigilantes,” it was increasingly accepted by mainstream conservative periodicals and organizations. What of Mexican migrants themselves? Helene Balslev Clausen and Mario Velázquez look at the shift in Mexican electoral law during Vicente Fox’s presidency extending the franchise to emigrants. However, only a handful cast a vote. They consider the reasons for this. In Chapter 18, Ernesto Hernández-López suggests that although national and international law have traditionally rested on representations of countries that had absolute sovereignty, there has been a shift. The

Introduction • 5

migration process has led to a recognition that there are limits to the sovereign authority of individual countries. The Politics, Economics, and Culture of Mexican-U.S. Migration: Both Sides of the Border brings together different and often divergent perspectives. We hope that it will add to contemporary debate. Edward Ashbee Helene Balslev Clausen Carl Pedersen Center for the Study of the Americas, Copenhagen Business School, March 2007

Notes 1. The White House, “President Discusses the Economy, Participates in Press Availability,” April 28, 2006, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/04/ 20060428-2.html. 2. Fox News, “Senate Votes to Build 370 Miles of Fence along Border with Mexico,” May 17, 2006, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,195791,00.html. 3. CBS News, “Neighbors Slam U.S. Fence Plan,” May 19, 2006, http://www.cbsnews .com/stories/2006/05/19/world/main1633210.shtml. 4. See page 91 of this volume.


PART I

American Identities


CHAPTER 1

Somos Americanos: Mexican Immigration and U.S. National Identity in the Twenty-first Century Carl Pedersen

n the Spring of 2001, at a Summit of the Americas held in Quebec City, Canada, President George W. Bush laid out his vision of “a fully democratic hemisphere bound together by goodwill and free trade” for the new century. He concluded his remarks by urging the delegates to use the summit “to launch the century of the Americas.”1 Bush made brief mention of the cultural ties uniting the nations of the Americas and, in a nod to the Latin American delegates, even quoted the Cuban revolutionary José Martí in Spanish. The bulk of his remarks, however, were devoted to the link he saw between the expansion of open trade, free markets, and liberty. The Bush administration viewed the economic integration of the Americas promised by the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) as the lynchpin of his vision of a united hemisphere in the twenty-first century. The twenty-first century may indeed turn out to be the century of the Americas, although not quite in the way Bush anticipated. By the end of 2005, the FTAA initiative was moribund at best.2 Recent elections in Latin America have led to a leftward turn in a number of countries that has widened the rift with the United States. Five years after Bush launched the century of the Americas in Quebec City, a series of events marked what could be seen as an emerging new American identity in the Western Hemisphere for the twenty-first century. Starting in February

I

10 • Carl Pedersen

with a small gathering in the streets of Philadelphia and culminating on May 1, with massive crowds in cities across the United States, pro-immigrant demonstrations called for a recognition of the contribution that immigrants, both documented and undocumented, have made to American society. Spanish-language media in the United States, including radio, television, and newspapers, urged Latinos to participate in the demonstrations and provided massive coverage of the events. Some of the signs at these demonstrations read simply, “We are America,” to broadcast a message of inclusiveness and diversity. In order to underscore the role that immigrants play in contemporary American society, the last mass demonstration that attracted over one million people was dubbed The Great American Boycott: A Day Without an Immigrant.3 The intention of the demonstrations was clear: to show that U.S. society would grind to a halt without the labor of the immigrant population. Two days before the May demonstrations, a Spanish-language version of the American national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” was released. Reaction to the new version was not long in coming. Speaking at a press conference shortly after the release, President George W. Bush made clear that the national anthem “ought to be sung in English.”4 The Washington Post noted that critics of the Spanish-language version argued that “translating the words sends the opposite message: We are not Americans.”5 Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice offered a more neutral comment on the CBS news program Face the Nation: “I’ve heard the national anthem done in rap versions, country versions, classical versions. The individualization of the American national anthem is quite underway.”6 On May 30, a number of musicians, including the Puerto Rican R&B singer Tony Sunshine and and the Latino kids group Reggaeton Ninos, performed the anthem on Ellis Island to mark the release of a CD entitled Somos Americanos that also contained other Spanish-language songs. The demonstrations and the anthem came about as a reaction to a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in December 2005.7 The bill, supported by leading restrictionists such as James Sensenbrenner (Republican from Wisconsin) and Tom Tancredo (a fellow Republican from Colorado), sought to reclassify all undocumented immigrants as felons and mandated construction of a seven-hundred-mile fence along the two-thousand-mile border between Mexico and the United States. The restrictive and draconian House bill and the mass demonstrations and singing of the national anthem in Spanish mark two sides of the debate of not only the future of immigration, but the very nature of American national identity in the twenty-first century. Two narratives—one neonativist, one cosmopolitan and transnational—inexorably opposed to one another, have emerged to make sense of what this immigration means for the future of U.S. national identity. Both have deep roots in the American past. Both envision an entirely different future for the United States. One side proposes rigid and impermeable borders, both mental and physical, while the other side acknowledges fluidity of identity and celebrates diversity. The mere utterance of “somos americanos” (we are Americans) reflects this fluidity by claiming rights of belonging in a language other than English.

Somos Americanos • 11

The current battle over national identity is not without precedent. In the wake of massive waves of immigration in the past, nativists who feared a dissolution of a core national identity and cosmopolitans who sought to embrace diversity engaged in a conflict over the future of the American nation. The current dispute over immigration is no different in that respect and should be seen in the context of the culture wars that have been raging in the United States at least since 1992, when the conservative Republican candidate Patrick Buchanan mounted the podium at the Republican National Convention to issue an ideological call to arms in a struggle for the future of the United States: “My friends, this election is about much more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe. It is about what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the cold war itself.”8 Buchanan has since fomented fears of national and cultural dissolution by issuing tracts with ominous sounding titles like The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization and State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America.9 Cultural conservatives raise the spectre of Balkanization and call for walls and fences to shield the American nation from certain decline and death. Their arguments against immigration are couched in terms of rampant contamination and impending conquest. Morevoer, the cultural politics of identity in the early twenty-first century are seeped in post-9/11 trauma. Opposition to Mexican immigration unfolds against a backdrop of the post-9/11 global war against terror—part and parcel of the clash of civilizations that Samuel Huntington already in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union predicted would characterize the geopolitics of the post–cold war era—as well as of the internal cultural war for the future of the American nation taking place between the relativists on the left and the genuine patriots of the right. Cultural conservatives see the reinvigorated patriotism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in a positive light and conversely view the continuing influx of immigrants, from Latin America in particular, as a threat to this newfound national cohesion. Paradoxically, the public discourse of pro-immigrant groups also bears the mark of post-9/11 patriotic sentiment. Thus, the video for “Nuestro Himno” is replete with American flags and red, white, and blue iconography.10 Demonstrators in Los Angeles and other western cities were asked by organizers of the spring demonstrations to refrain from waving the flags of foreign nations.11 However, in New York City no such request was made, and media coverage of the event showed flags of many nations appearing alongside the U.S. flag. The New York City demonstration on May 1 was perhaps the most accurate reflection of the direction that U.S. national identity will take in the twenty-first century—simultaneous allegiance to more than one nation. The hopes of cultural conservatives and immigration restrictionists for a sustained revival of American nationalism centered around a narrow cultural core is no longer viable in an age of transnational labor and capital mobility. In this sense, the predictions that the


demonstrations of early 2006 marked the emergence of a new civil rights movement carry some weight. The demonstrations were more than a display of the power of immigrants within the U.S. labor market. They also signaled the emergence of new notions of citizenship and belonging in the twenty-first century. Comparing the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s to the current immigration rights movement, Julian Bond, head of the civil rights organization, the NAACP, observed, “The first group was expecting the citizenship their birth gave them. The second group is insisting on citizenship by virtue of their being here.”12 Immigration has captured headlines and prompted legislation for at least the last quarter of a century. The intensity of public attention to immigration in this period is of course a product of the profound demographic changes that occurred in the wake of the 1965 Immigration Act. At the signing of the act, President Lyndon B. Johnson sought to reassure the public of the benign character of the legislation: “This bill we sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not restructure the shape of our daily lives.”13 One of the most ardent supporters of immigration reform at the time, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, agreed wholeheartedly, predicting that “first, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. . . . Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset.”14 Subsequent flows of immigrants have shown these predictions to be way off the mark. As neonativists never tire of pointing out, during the period of immigration restriction from 1924 to 1965, only around five million legal immigrants came to the United States. Since 1965, over twenty million have arrived, and this number does not include the estimated eleven million illegal immigrants now residing in the United States.15 Often cited projections by the Census Bureau predict that if immigration continues unabated, the United States will by mid-century, for the first time in its history, be evenly divided between the current majority (categorized as non-Hispanic whites) and minority groups (classified as Hispanics of any race, African Americans, American Indians or Alaska natives, Asians, native Hawaiians, or other Pacific islanders). Four states already have majority-minority populations (Hawaii, New Mexico, California, and Texas) with another five (Maryland, Mississippi, Georgia, New York, and Arizona) expected to join them shortly.16 In the 1980s and 1990s, these demographic changes gave rise to anti-immigrant legislation, for example, Proposition 187 in California, and neonativist arguments that saw in the very composition of the new immigrants, whose primary origins were from Latin America and East Asia, a threat to both the interests of the U.S. taxpayer and to national identity. The border between Mexico and the United States has become the most visible battleground for this conflict over the future of the American nation-state in part because of the changing character of immigration. In a world that operates on many levels without borders, the physicality of a border takes on symbolic meaning.


Neonativism and Borderline History At the end American Crucible, a study of race and nation in the United States in the twentieth century, historian Gary Gerstle made a prediction about the course of national identity in the new century: “The future will witness either the resurgence of a strong, solidaristic, and exclusionary national idenitity of the sort that has existed in the past; or, in the interests of tolerance and diversity, we will continue to opt for a weaker identity, one that makes fewer claims on us, that allows us to cultivate strong ethnic, religious, regional, or transnational identities, but that is capable of generating only thin loyalty to nationalist ideals and limited ties of feeling and obligation to Americans outside our core identity groups.”17 Gerstle’s study was published before the 9/11 attacks, but it would seem that, six years after the attacks, both strains of national identity are vying for dominance. The resurgence of an exclusionary national identity can, however, be linked both to the pre-9/11 culture wars as well as the revival of a more muscular conception of nationalism in the wake of the attacks. As the mass demonstrations show, the other option in Gerstle’s paradigm has not receded in significance. Both models have far-reaching implications not only for the construction of national identity in the twenty-first century, but for the formation and implementation of public policy. As Mae M. Ngai has observed, these options for national identity do not operate in a vacuum. It is important to see them in a cultural and historical context. As Ngai points out, illegal migration and notions of citizenship “flowed directly from the histories of conquest, colonialism, and semicolonialism that constituted the United States’ relationship with Mexico and in Asia.”18 Exclusionary notions of national identity are bound up in interpretations of the American past that are, in a word, obsolete. They willfully ignore the work of contemporary historians and social scientists that has offered new perspectives on American history. In the case of the border region, these new interpretations have mapped out the hidden history of the border. The neonativist narrative sees Latin American immigration as a threat to the very coherence of the American nation-state. Samuel Huntington is by far the most prominent intellectual voicing this view. In The Clash of Civilizations, a global analysis of the forces transforming the geopolitical world order, Huntington emphasizes the significance of history and demography for the fate of nations. In historical terms, the world during the twentieth century has moved from the dominance of the West to a more chaotic world order of “multidirectional interactions among all civilizations.”19 Huntington includes series of maps depicting phases of twentieth-century development that show Latin America independent of the West in 1920, unaligned during the cold war, and constituting a separate civilization in the post–cold war era, standing separate from “the West” (defined as the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand). Much has been made of Huntington’s analysis of the conflict between Western and Islamic civilizations. However, Huntington also views population movements as potential


threats to Western civilization. “Demography is destiny,” he states emphatically and goes on to discuss the “problem” that Muslim immigration poses for Europe and Mexican immigration poses for the United States.20 In The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington devotes only a few pages to the risk of a “cleft” United States in the face of Latino immigration. His most recent book, Who Are We? includes an entire chapter on Mexican immigration as the single most salient threat to U.S. national identity, and by implication, the future of the American nation. In Huntington’s view, Mexican immigration is unique because of a variety of factors: the fact that Mexico shares an almost two-thousand-mile border with the United States; the sheer number and persistence of Mexican immigrants crossing the border, including many who do so illegally; the concentration of these immigrants in the Southwest; and finally, the role that awareness of the historical past of the Southwest has on patterns of assimilation.21 The chapter on Mexican immigration has received the most attention, particularly from critics. However, it is important to see Huntington’s anxiety about Mexican immigration in a larger context. Who Are We? discusses at length what Huntington sees as a “crisis” of identity in the United States that has come about because of a flawed immigration policy since 1965 that has given rise to “subnational, dual-national, and transnational identities [that] began to rival and erode the preeminence of national identity.”22 Huntington links the current crisis of identity to the fluctuating fortunes of the robust nationalism he deems necessary to hold the United States together. The core Anglo-Protestant culture that Huntington sees as the progenitor of American national identity had its origins in the Northeast and was a determining factor in maintaining national coherence even in the face of massive immigrant streams from southern and eastern Europe from the 1880s to the 1920s. However, this immigration did pose a potential threat. Consequently, the JohnsonReed Act of 1924, which John Higham regarded as the highwater mark of a “Nordic victory” that, aided by the Depression and World War II, effectively slowed immigration to a trickle, provided a necessary breathing space for national regeneration.23 The 1965 Immigration Act, on the other hand, precipitated the current crisis in identity by facilitating massive immigration from the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. The terrorist attacks of 9/11, as horrendous and tragic as they were, had, in Huntington’s view, the positive side effect of causing citizens to rediscover their nation. The symbol of this rediscovery was the presence of the American flag. Former secretary of education under President Ronald Reagan and a leading conservative partisan in the culture wars, William Bennett, makes a similar point in Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism: “Suddenly flags were flying everywhere, and everywhere we were singing the national anthem and ‘America the Beautiful.’”24 It is therefore important to see the current anxiety over immigration and the future of U.S. national identity in the context of the culture war that Patrick Buchanan declared in 1992. In this sense, Buchanan and Huntington complement


each other. Political scientist Alan Wolfe has gone so far as to claim that Huntington’s Who Are We? is simply “Buchanan with footnotes.”25 Huntington and Buchanan can be classified as “declinists” who contend that the influence of the West is on the wane globally.26 They draw on an intellectual strain that dates back to ancient Greece and that experienced a revival in the first decades of the twentieth century as a response to increased immigration from southern and eastern Europe—the fear of civilizational death from invading alien hordes. Madison Grant in The Passing of the Great Race (1916) and Lothrop Stoddard in The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy (1920) bemoaned the effects of global migration and predicted the imminent decline of the West. Congressman Albert Johnson met with both Grant and Stoddard when he was working on the restrictionist legislation that became law in 1924.27 Buchanan and Huntington avoid the overt racist discourse of Grant and Stoddard, but nevertheless view the threat posed by immigration in similar terms. Neonativism of this stripe promotes a fortress or seige mentality because the stakes are so high—the very survival of the nation. Mexican immigrants constitute the most dangerous threat because they stand literally at the gates of the United States. Declinism and neonativism are of course more than intellectual exercises speculating on the future of U.S. national identity. They appear in media and political debates as well. The popular CNN journalist Lou Dobbs has a segment of his daily program devoted to “Broken Borders.”28 Dobbs is widely regarded as an influential spokesman for the anti-immigration movement. A number of members of Congress support draconian measures for immigration restriction. HR 4437, introduced by James Sensenbrenner in 2005, calls for the reclassification of illegal immigrants as felons and mandates building a seven-hundred-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexican border. As of this writing, the only provision of the bill that has been signed into law is the Secure Fence Act. President George W. Bush, whose views on immigration reform set him at odds with restrictionist members of his own party, nevertheless signed the Secure Fence Act in October 2006, right before the midterm elections, in what many saw was a politically motivated gesture to anti-immigrationists. Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado, an avowed admirer of Huntington, made good on his promise to run for president in the 2008 contest if Bush continued to pursue what Tancredo perceived as a wrong-headed and overly lenient immigrant policy.29 Organizations like the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) and Web sites like VDARE.com, edited by Peter Brimelow, author of an early neonativist tract, Alien Nation, also form an integral part of neonativist sentiment. The Minuteman Project provides the footsoldiers of the anti-immigration movement. Led by Chris Simcox, its members patrol the borders “doing the job Congress won’t do,” as the organization’s Web site would have it.30 Simcox has undergone a makeover, both in terms of his political statements and his appearance, that is clearly designed to make his views more palatable to a wider audience.31


For the neonativists, the border is the physical representation of the dividing line between a U.S. national identity based on an Anglo-Protestant core and weak, transnational identities that will lead to the dissolution of the United States. Consciously or not, these opponents of Latin American immigration long for a return to what they see as a golden age for U.S. nationalism—the period from 1924 (after the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act) to 1965, when immigration slowed to a trickle through a combination of legislation, economic depression, and war. Huntington sees the idea of an American national identity being formed from the end of the American Revolution to the end of the Civil War. The fully formed idea of national identity was, in Huntington’s words, “preeminent” for a century—from 1865 to the turbulent 1960s. Somos Americanos and Borderlands History It was also during this period that alternative views of what constituted U.S. national identity were being articulated. These views in turn built on ideas formulated by what Jonathan Hansen has called “cosmopolitan patriots” between 1890 and 1920. According to Hansen, intellectuals like Jane Addams, William James, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Horace Kallen sought to maintain a “critical tension between local, national, and international affiliations” and did not subscribe to the coercive Americanization then in vogue.32 Their intellectual legacy, and the more recent concern with mapping out the myriad cultures that make up the United States that emerged in the wake of the civil rights movement and the rise of identity politics in the 1970s, anticipated the current vogue for looking at the development of the United States from a global perspective.33 As Alan Taylor put it in his introduction to American Colonies, a book that challenges the Anglocentric focus of colonial history: “In recent years, the escalating integration of North America—by treaty, investment, trade, migration, travel, mass media, and environmental pollution—renders our national boundaries more porous. As a result, we may now be prepared to broaden our historical imagination beyond the national limits of the United States, to see more clearly a colonial past in which those boundaries did not yet exist. In attempting a more North American perspective on our history, this book is also a half step toward a more global (and less national) sensibility for our place in time.”34 Perspectives such as Taylor’s are not confined to the academy. The factors that have made the border more porous have had an enormous impact on the lives of people on both sides of the border. Attempting to eliminate these factors by constructing physical barriers is doomed to failure. Many immigrants, not only from Mexico, but from Latin America and the Caribbean (and from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia for that matter) are living transnational lives, oblivious to borders, returning periodically from the United States to their native homes, even having businesses in both places or running for political office in the country of their birth.


In 1981, journalist Joel Garreau introduced his The Nine Nations of North America with the provocative statement, “Forget about the borders dividing the United States, Canada, and Mexico, those pale barriers so thoroughly porous to money, immigrants, and ideas.”35 Garreau was both prescient and, perhaps unconsciously, drawing on past conceptualizations of pan-American or hemispheric identity that have looked at borders as social fictions rather than as rigid lines of demarcation. Garreau’s views were in the 1980s and 1990s supplemented by the emerging field of border and Chicano/a studies. The search for a more usable past to explain the roots of present demographic trends and changes in cultural identity has revealed deep-seated continuities in the borderlands region that have spread outward across the United States as the dispersal of Latinos into the Deep South, the Northeast, and the upper Midwest has unfolded in the last decade. Mexicans can be found as far north as Maine and Alaska. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Latino immigrants have flocked New Orleans in sizeable numbers. The boundaries of Garreau’s MexAmerica, which in the main follow those of the pre-1846 division between the United States and Mexico, are frayed at the edges and now resemble more of a spray pattern, with blotches in major U.S. cities and suburban areas. What Mike Davis calls the “magical urbanism” of Latinos is transforming the United States and reaches beyond the Southwest and California to northern cities like New York and suburbs like Farmingdale on Long Island.36 To speak of reconquista, as do Huntington, Buchanan, and minutemen vigilantes, is to perpetuate an antiquated and misleading notion that ignores cultural continuities in the Southwest extending back to the era of New Spain in the seventeenth century and underestimates the extent to which Latinization is more than a southwestern phenomenon. John Sayles’s 1996 film Lone Star is, as he put it in an interview, “a story about borders.”37 Set in the imaginary town of Frontera, Texas, the film offers a history of the border region at odds with current neonativist views. Sayles’s intricate plot shifts seamlessly between past and present in order to underscore their intimate connectedness. In one early scene, parents and teachers at the local high school’s school board meeting debate the teaching of border history. Several object to the way one of the teachers, Pilar Cruz, represents the past of their region. One irate parent claims that “the winners get the bragging rights,” but acknowledges that “the other side” undoubtedly sees border history in a different light. Pilar counters this triumphalist outburst by saying that her intention is to complicate and provide nuance to a border region comprised of a number of different cultures: Anglo, Latino, African American, and Native American. The film as a whole seeks to interweave these various strains.38 Lone Star thus reflects the new Western history that seems to have escaped the attention of neonativists who acknowledge the past of the border only to the extent that it raises the issue of reconquista—a payback for what they perceive to be a wrong-headed attempt to take back lands appropriated by the United States after the Mexican-American War. As Pilar Cruz would say, the history and culture of the border are way too complex to be confined to a question of revenge.


These considerations are not new. Writing in 1949, journalist Carey McWilliams anticipated Sayles (and for that matter, Garreau) with his portrayal of the border region in North From Mexico. The very title is a reminder that the shaping of the American character did not proceed exclusively from east to west. As McWilliams put it: Mexico is not France or Italy or Poland: it is geographically a part of the Southwest. Residing in the Mexican states immediately south of the border are approximately 2,500,000 Spanish-speaking people; in the American border states approximately the same number of Spanish-speaking reside. Essentially these are one people, occupying a single cultural provence, for the Spanish-speaking minority north of the border (a majority in some areas) has always drawn, and will continue to draw, support, sustenance, and re-enforcements from south of the border. Our Spanishspeaking minority is not, therefore, a detached fragment but an integral part of a much larger population unit to which it is bound by close geographical and historical ties.39

The new Western history has its own antecedents, particularly in the work of Herbert Eugene Bolton. In his address to the American Historical Association in 1932, Bolton began by calling for “a broader treatment of American history, to supplement the purely nationalistic presentation to which we are accustomed.”40 He went on to sketch the broad contours of the history of the Americas for the last three hundred years, a history of colonization, expansion, and imperial rivalry from the northernmost regions of Canada to Tierra del Fuego on the southern tip of Chile. Bolton constructed an argument for what he called “the essential unity of the Western Hemisphere.” Toward the end of his address, he speculated on what the future might hold: “The Americas have developed side by side. In the past their relations have been close; in the future they may or may not be closer. In the colonial period Latin greatly outweighed Saxon America. In the nineteenth century the balance tipped decisively in the other direction. But it is swinging back. The importance of Hispanic America as an economic unit and as a political factor is becoming greater from day to day.”41 His remarks went largely unheeded in subsequent decades (with perhaps the exception of McWilliams and Louis Adamic), as postwar conceptualizations of American national identity became tied to a core New England culture—the Puritans—spreading westward, tempered but not substantively changed by the frontier experience. New scholarship of the borderlands has attempted to refute this linear conception with a history that recognizes cultural continuities in a region that was part of the Spanish empire until Mexican independence in 1821, part of Mexico until 1848, and has relied heavily on Mexican labor in the twentieth century.42 The transnationalist and cosmopolitan narrative that could be called, in light of the demonstrations of 2006, the narrative of “somos americanos,” tells another story of the future of the United States. The very utterance “somos americanos” goes against the grain of this exclusionist view. It recognizes that immigrants can maintain dual allegiances and still be regarded as belonging to American society.


As one of the leading anti-immigrationists in Congress, Tom Tancredo sees the meaning of citizenship in narrow terms. He thus calls for an end to birthright citizenship for illegal aliens through a constitutional amendment and the elimination of dual citizenship.43 Similarly, Huntington rails against “the rise of powerful political forces promoting dual loyalties, dual identities, and dual citizenship.”44 “Somos americanos,” on the other hand, accepts dual identities as a reflection of the transnational dimension of current immigration. The transnational or cosmopolitan narrative recognizes the impurity of all cultures, as Anthony Kwame Appiah so vividly describes it in Cosmopolitanism.45 In Identity and Violence, the Nobel Prize–winning economist Amartya Sen argues against the reductionism of civilizationist thinking and makes a case for looking at the plurality of affiliations that constitute identity.46 The identity of Mexican immigrants in the twenty-first century is comprised of any number of affiliations. And they are, together with new immigrants from the rest of Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, contributing to the cultural contamination that Appiah sees as the true meaning of cosmopolitanism. No wall or fence however sophisticated can stop this cosmopolitan future. In his study of the history of Latinos, Juan Gonzalez agrees with Huntington that the migration of Latin Americans from south to north differs from European immigration across the Atlantic Ocean, but places Latin American immigration in an entirely different social and political context. He argues that Latin American immigration is intimately bound up with the political and economic needs of the United States. The historical experience of Latinos in the United States transformed them from immigrants searching for a better life to a population of linguistic and racial caste status. Contemporary immigrants enter a postindustrial society sorely lacking in the kinds of unskilled jobs that European immigrants could fill at the beginning of the last century.47 The demonstrations in the spring of 2006 brought attention primarily to immigrants, both documented and undocumented, working in major cities across the United States. However, many Mexicans find themselves working under slavelike conditions in the agricultural sector. A report released by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in March 2007 revealed the extent of the practice of binding guest workers to a single employer without access to legal resources or medical benefits.48 Just as with the neonativists, there exist organizations, politicians, and media outlets that can be regarded as pro-immigrant. In the Spring of 2007, a coalition of civil rights and immigrant rights organizations, including the NAACP and the National Council of La Raza, were working on a proposal to improve labor conditions for undocumented immigrants like those in the SPLC report.49 In 2005, anti-immigration legislation in Congress sparked the mass demonstrations in the spring of 2006. In 2007, a new bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. It bore the optimistic name “Citizenship Promotion Act” and would allow undocumented immigrants to become citizens if they first accepted guest-worker status.50


Yet what is perhaps most significant is that legal and undocumented immigrants in the United States are making citizenship claims by virtue of their daily practices. As sociologist Saskia Sassen has pointed out, “Individuals, even when undocumented immigrants, can move between the multiple meanings of citizenship. The daily practices by undocumented immigrants as part of their daily life in the community where they reside—such as raising a family, schooling children, holding a job—earn them citizenship claims in the U.S. even as the formal status and, more narrowly, legalization may continue to evade them. There are dimensions of citizenship, such as strong community ties and participation in civic activities, which are being enacted informally through these practices.”51 These dimensions of citizenship are being played out in cities, suburbs, and rural areas all across the United States. In their fervor to shore up traditional notions of American nationalism to prevent the unraveling of the United States, antiimmigrationists see the border as the physical battleground for their version of identity politics. Events, however, have overtaken them. The dispersal of Latino and particularly Mexican immigrants has been gathering momentum for well over a decade. The border is, in the words of Marc Lacy of the New York Times, not only “blurry”; it is expanding.52 The “somos americanos” narrative takes into account both the historical continuities and recent changes that together make up an emerging new national identity for the twenty-first century. Cultural and financial ties are blurring the borders between the United States and Mexico. Remittances sent to Mexico by immigrants in the United States, border cities melding, and dual nationality are contributing to the formation of transnational, cosmopolitan identities that cannot be contained within the narrow confines of Huntington’s core Anglo-Protestant culture. Nor have they been in the past. As I have attempted to show, the history of the borderlands offers a much more complex picture than that promulgated by neonativists. The contours of a U.S. national identity for the twenty-first century is not an either/or, but a both/and proposition. The new global cities contain immigrants from all over the world who maintain ties with the countries of their birth. In 1927, Ford Madox Ford published a tract with the revealing title New York is Not America. Now, the global cities of the United States are America. Tamar Jacoby maintains that American identity is both “minimal yet transformative.”53 However, she also points out that identity can not live on ideals alone. The oft-cited notion that the United States, unlike so many other nations, derives its identity from a set of ideas recorded in the founding documents of the nation is not sufficient for Jacoby. She argues that newcomers to the United States construct their identity not only by expressing allegiance to ideas of liberty and democracy, but by finding a way into the history of the United States and by doing so, feeling a sense of true belonging. Finding a way into U.S. history does not, in other words, entail blind allegiance to a set of precepts chiseled in stone. It means understanding how the abstract ideals of the American nation—democracy, liberty, and the rule of


law—originated and how they have been contested, expanded, and unfortunately at times diminished over time. In the case of the border region, being here (as Julian Bond would have it) means that claims of belonging that can be voiced by legal as well as illegal immigrants operate on several levels—from the vagaries and mundane problems of daily life (holding down a job, sending children to school) to the recognition of the ideals of liberty and democracy that in no way preclude an awareness of the darker sides of the past, from the conquest of the West and the preemptive Mexican-American War to the resilient prejudices against Chicanos and Mexican immigrants. The minimal but transformative American identity that has absorbed so many immigrants in the past will likely survive well into the twentyfirst century, even as it is itself transformed and modified by the transnational lives of the new immigrants. Conclusion In March 2007, President Bush embarked on what was the longest Latin American trip of his presidency. He visited six countries in an attempt to stave off the increasing influence of leftist nations in the region, in particular Venezuela. His last stop was Mexico. There he met with Mexico’s newly elected President Felipe Calderón. Inevitably, the issue of immigration and the border came up. Even though Calderón had responded to Bush’s signing of the Secure Fence Act by comparing the planned barrier to Mexican immigration to a Berlin Wall, he is currently promoting a set of policies designed to keep Mexicans from emigrating northward in the first place. In other words, Bush and Calderon have the same goal in mind: to stem the tide of Mexican movement across the border. Despite these shared goals, absent from Bush’s statements on the trip was any rhetoric about the “century of the Americas.” The trip itself was more intended to demonstrate that the United States cared about Latin America in the face of the leftward turn that has produced governments openly hostile to U.S. interests. Bush’s trip ended by underscoring the political differences and the conflicts over economic policy that will likely plague the relations among the thirty-four nations in the Organization of American States for some time to come. The century of the Americas is being created not by the decisions made by governments, but rather the movement of peoples across borders. Keeping Mexicans out of the United States by building fences is no longterm solution. The future of Mexican immigration to the United States and, by extension, the future of American national identity will probably take a different turn than that envisioned by the restrictionists. The Mexican American writer Richard Rodriguez summarized the extent to which the narrative of “somos americanos” will determine the future of U.S. national identity when, in the aftermath of the pro-immigration demonstrations in the spring of 2006, he wrote, “To placate the nativist flank of his Republican


Party, President Bush has promised to brick up the sky. But that will not prevent the coming marriage of Mexico and the United States. South and north of the line, we are becoming a hemispheric people—truly American—in no small part because of illegal immigrants. . . . Because of the illegal immigrant, we are all entering the hemisphere. There are now too many Mexicans in ‘America’ and too many ‘Americans’ in Mexico for any of us to avoid the New World: the united states of Americas.”54 At the turn of the last century, Latin American writers such as José Enrique Rodó and José Martí articulated a pan–Latin Americanism that “drew on the unique mixture of African, Indian, mestizo, and mulato traditions of the region.”55 In the beginning of the 1930s, Herbert Eugene Bolton recognized the deep historical roots that connected Mexico and the United States, irregardless of the physical border between the two nations. Now, at the beginning of the twentyfirst century, their vision of the melding of the Americas is becoming reality. Notes 1. “Remarks by the President at Summit of the Americas Working Session,” April 21, 2001, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/04/20010423-9.html. 2. Colin McMahon, “Summit of Americas Ends in Deadlock,” Boston Globe, November 6, 2005, http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2005/11/06/ summit_of_americas_ends_in_deadlock/. 3. Gillian Flaccus, “One Million Immigrants Skip Work for Demonstration,” Associated Press, May 1, 2006, http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1911807. 4. The White House, “President Discusses the Economy, Participates in Press Availability,” April 28, 2006, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/04/ 20060428-2.html. 5. David Montgomery, “An Anthem’s Discordant Notes,” Washington Post, April 28, 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/27/AR200 6042702505_pf.html. 6. Condoleezza Rice, “Interview on CBS Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer,” April 30, 2006, U.S. Department of State, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/65493.htm. 7. The full text of the bill, H.R. 4437, can be accessed at THOMAS, Library of Congress, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.04437. 8. Patrick J. Buchanan, “1992 Republican National Convention Speech,” on Buchanan’s Web site, Right from the Beginning, http://www.buchanan.org/pa-920817-rnc.html. 9. Patrick Buchanan, The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2001); and State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2006). 10. The video of the song can be accessed on YouTube under the unfortunate title, “Illegal Anthem Video,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1-xh4RK9KU. 11. Keyonna Summers, “Latin American flags not welcome at upcoming immigration rally,” Washington Times, April 4, 2006, http://www.washtimes.com/metro/200604 03-110008-6935r.htm.


12. Richard Allen Greene, “U.S. Immigrants: Reviving a Dream,” BBC News, July 4, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5135572.stm. 13. “Three Decades of Mass Immigration,” Center for Immigration Studies, September 1995, http://www.cis.org/articles/1995/back395.html. 14. Ibid. 15. James T. Patterson, Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 293–94. 16. U.S. Census Bureau News, August 11, 2005, http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/ www/releases/archives/population/005514.html. 17. Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 373–74. 18. Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 8. 19. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 53. 20. Huntington, Clash, 198. 21. Samuel Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 221–57. 22. Huntington, Who Are We?, xv. 23. John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860–1925 (New York: Atheneum, 1985), 316–24. 24. William Bennett, Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2002), 10. 25. Alan Wolfe, “Native Son: Samuel Huntington Defends the Homeland,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2004, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040501fareviewessay83311/ alan-wolfe/native-son-samuel-huntington-defends-the-homeland.html. 26. Laura Secor, “That Sinking Feeling,” Boston Globe, September 14, 2003, http:// www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/09/14/that_sinking_feeling/. For a history of the idea of national decline, see Arthur Herman, The Idea of Decline in Western History (New York: Free Press, 1997). 27. Higham, 313. 28. Daphne Eviatar, “Nightly Nativism,” Nation, August 28, 2006, http://www.the nation.com/doc/20060828/eviatar. 29. Tom Barry, “Tom Tancredo: Leader of the Anti-Immigrant Populist Revolt,” Right Web, December 30, 2005, http://rightweb.irc-online.org/rw/3005. 30. Minuteman Project, http://www.minutemanproject.com. 31. Susy Buchanan, and David Holthouse, “Locked and Loaded,” Nation, August 28, 2006, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060828/buchanan. 32. Jonathan Hansen, The Lost Promise of Patriotism: Debating American Identity, 1890–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), xiv–xv, 122. 33. See Thomas Bender, A Nation among Nations: America’s Place in World History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006). 34. Alan Taylor, American Colonies (New York: Viking, 2001), xiv. 35. Joel Garreau, The Nine Nations of North America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), 1. 36. Mike Davis, Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the U.S. City (London: Verso, 2000). 37. Diane Carson, ed., John Sayles Interviews (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi), 210.


38. Lone Star, directed by John Sayles, produced by John Sloss (Castle Rock Entertainment, 1996, DVD). 39. Carey McWilliams, North From Mexico: The Spanish-speaking People of the U.S. (1949; repr., New York: Greenwood, 1968), 289. 40. Herbert E. Bolton, “The Epic of Greater America,” The American Historical Review 38, no. 3 (April 1933): 448. 41. Ibid., 472. 42. Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: Norton, 1987), 222–59. 43. Tom Tancredo, In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America’s Border and Security (Nashville, TN: WND Books, 2006), 188. 44. Huntington, Clash, 205. 45. Anthony Kwame Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006). 46. Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006). 47. Juan Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America (New York: Penguin Books, 2001). 48. Southern Poverty Law Center, Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States, March 2007, http://www.splcenter.org/pdf/static/SPLCguestworker.pdf. 49. Darryl Fears, “Immigration Reform Revisited,” Washington Post, March 23, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/22/AR20070322 01840.html. 50. For full text of bill H.R. 1379, see THOMAS, Library of Congress, http://thomas.loc .gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.1379. 51. Saskia Sassen, “The Repositioning of Citizenship: Emergent Subjects and Spaces for Politics,” Berkeley Journal of Sociology 46 (2002), http://transnationalism.uchicago .edu/RepositioningCitizenship.pdf. 52. Marc Lacy, “Cities Mesh Across Blurry Border, Despite Physical Barrier,” New York Times, March 5, 2007. 53. Tamar Jacoby, ed., Reinventing the Melting Pot (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 300. 54. Richard Rodriguez, “What a Wall Can’t Stop,” Washington Post, May 28, 2006, http:// www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/05/26/AR2006052601613 .html. 55. Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire, 219.

CHAPTER 2

Mexican Mestizo Identity in the Twenty-first Century Helene Balslev Clausen

he former Mexican president, Vicente Fox (2000–2006), a member of the National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional [PAN]), was not only the first president to be elected from a party other than the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional [PRI]) that had ruled Mexico since 1929 but was also the first president to recognize the importance of Mexicans living abroad. Indeed, he contributed to a marked change in the character of Mexican national discourse by referring, during his first weeks in office, to emigrants in the United States as “heroic paisanos,” heroic patriots, and “true heroes.”1 This chapter illustrates how, during much of the twentieth century, PRI governments and Mexican intellectuals used symbols and myths so as to try and create a homogeneous nation-state and a single common national identity on the basis of the mestizo (a person of mixed European and American Indian ancestry). It then looks at the shifts brought about by the Fox administration and argues that these changes will have profound implications for the future of the country’s identity.

T

The Nature of the Mestizo The mestizo is the result of the encounter between Spanish and Indian cultures—the so-called dual heritage—and was a reality in what became Mexico from the beginning of Spanish colonization. The mythic figure of the mestizo has had to conquer his history through a series of battles, most notably the war

26 • Helene Balslev Clausen

of independence (1810–21) and the Mexican revolution (1910–21). The mestizo is not however only a man, but a culture and, as such, draws on the foreign invasions of the country and, in particular, the United States’ conquest of Mexican territory after the Mexican-American War (1846–48).2 This makes the mestizo profoundly suspicious toward the Other, especially the United States. When the PRI came to power after the revolution, the government revitalized representations of the mestizo and the notion of a dual European-Indian heritage. With the mestizo the PRI sought to unify a Mexico that as a result of the revolution was deeply socially, culturally, and economically divided. As Karen Lehmann has noted, the mestizo “refers not only to the process of racial mixture, but rather to the process of cultural syncretism or acculturation, whereby the two great cultural traditions that clashed in the sixteenth century have become meshed in a single emerging global culture that . . . is now considered to be the national culture. At least so goes the argument wielded by those who see in the figure of the mestizo the kernel of nationalism and national unity.”3 This post-revolutionary mestizo ideology was promoted by successive PRI governments. According to historian Richard Morse, the mestizo held distinct political attractions for the PRI: “Whatever the new mythology may lack in sociological accuracy is compensated by the vigor of its political appeal.”4 The renowned anthropologist Bonfil Batalla has summarized post-revolutionary mestizo ideology: “The nation is rooted in its Indian past, a glorious period that ends with the conquest in 1519. Hereafter, the mestizo figure represents the true Mexican.”5 Constructing a National Identity Successive PRI governments drew on different strategies to establish the mestizo figure as the incarnation of Mexican national identity. One method was to use existing clientelist structures so that the powerful and rich promised to provide the powerless and poor with jobs, protection, and infrastructural developments in exchange for votes and other forms of loyalty including labor. The PRI owed much of its power to its relationships with particular social groups. The intellectuals were one such group and were incorporated as “allies” in the power elite. Together with the political establishment, intellectuals propagated the view that el mestizaje (homogenization), understood as creating one common homogeneous culture and using one language (Spanish), was the only way to achieve national unity and thereby ensure development and progress.6 The PRI brought intellectuals like José Vasconcelos into the government. Vasconcelos, who served as secretary of state for education between 1920 and 1924, was the author of the nation’s new cultural and social project. It was described in his book La raza cósmica (The Cosmic Race).7 Vasconcelos’s notion of racial mixture, however, was not particularly balanced. He believed that the white race was superior in all respects to the Indian, and consequently the white part of the mixture had to be dominant.

Mexican Mestizo Identity in the Twenty-first Century • 27

The mestizo served as the ideological basis of the PRI. It was tied to visions of a civilized and modern future.8 Within the context of this governing ideology, Mexicans who decided to emigrate the United States were by implication unacceptable. They were ignored in the PRI’s discourse and narrative because including them would be tantamount to admitting that the national project as such had failed. It would have underscored the falsity of the ideology. A mestizo who abandoned Mexico was therefore regarded as a traitor or a poor person who did not show any interest in getting ahead in Mexico. Those who deserted the Mexican nation were seen as threats to a regime that based part of its power on its control of information and ideology. At the same time, the mestizo figure could not become a North American because of his dual heritage of cultural roots in Europe and Mesoamerica. The PRI governments’ policy of homogenization had consequences. Indian languages and cultures were seen as a fundamental obstacle to the policy’s implementation.9 The unassimilated Indian was viewed as a stranger and not a part of the mestizo identity. Indian culture was absorbed into national thinking through indigenismo. Although indigenismo sought a dominant social and political role for Indians it soon became another strategy to assimilate the Indian communities into the political, social, and cultural life of the nation-state.10 The main purpose of indigenismo was to homogenize the different Indian groups so they could form part of the mestizo figure.11 Incorporation not only included the assimilation of contemporary Indians, but had as its focus the glorious Indian past, which was integrated into the national culture. This occurred primarily through art which then shaped folkloric elements as representations of national identity.12 The PRI preferred to use Indian folklore to illustrate the mestizo figure’s Indian part of the dual heritage. These folkloric traditions reflected an idealized image of the Indians, and were often used to represent Mexican national identity toward the Other. The enormous influence that the mestizo self-image has had on the intellectuals also manifests itself today, though it is used in a more critical way.13 Bonfil Batalla is among those who now declare the homogenization project a failure. According to Batalla, the fundamental error of the project was the attempt to replace the variety of cultures with a single one, which necessarily must be artificially created. Furthermore, the culture that emerged claims to encompass all other cultures, while being at the same time the superior culture.14 However, Basave Benítez argues that Batalla does not in fact object to the cultural mestizaje itself, but merely its unequal classification of races.15 Unlike Batalla, Benitez sees a resolution to the Mexican crisis of identity in articulating a cultural synthesis that assigns equal value to Indian and Western culture. In his view, mestizo Mexico has not yet attained an equal cultural homogenization, despite the fact that racial mixture has long since taken place.16 Whereas Batalla emphasizes the Indian past as the only true Mexico, the renowned writer Carlos Fuentes underscores the importance of the Spanish cultural heritage.17 Benitez, on the other hand, believes that the mestizo must still be regarded the true Mexican. One


could legitimately ask whether Benitez’s attempt to combine el mestizaje, the essence of homogenization, with plurality is convincing. However, the idea of the mestizo as the essence of national identity is then still maintained despite the fact that the majority of intellectuals begin to question the idea of the mestizo figure as the only way to sustain a national identity. National Symbols and Myth Another strategy used by PRI administrations, which played a part in shaping Mexican national discourse and generating feelings of solidarity and shared destiny arose in connection with the celebration of national holidays, most notably Independence Day, and the promotion of national symbols and myths, such as the Virgen de Guadalupe (The Virgen of Guadalupe), in electoral campaigns, school history lessons, and the mass media.18 National discourse also drew on symbols found in the Indian world, something Greg Urban and Joel Sherzer called a process of folklorization.19 The nation-state was tied, for example, to the celebration of Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead), on November 1 and 2, as a typically Mexican celebration, despite the fact that the traditional way of marking the day only takes place in the Indian regions of the country. Many Mexicans follow the festivities on television or flock to these places as tourists. Día de Muertos is used to compare and contrast with “the Other” in confirmations of Mexican identity. One of the most important unifying symbols in Mexico is the Virgen de Guadalupe. In her figure, the homogenization ideology of the secular, national Mexico is combined with its religious version. She thus represents the syncretism between the Aztec goddess Tonantzin and the Catholic figure of Mary. In a commemorative volume celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of the Pope’s coronation of the Virgen de Guadalupe, the account of her story is used as a symbol of the independence of Spanish-speaking America and, specifically, shared Mexican identity. The importance of the Virgen de Guadalupe originates in the fact that she represents everyone, because she embodies Indian, Spanish, and mestizo elements even though the meaning of the Virgen de Guadalupe may be different for a peasant, a slum dweller in the city, or a university professor.20 She is also the principal symbol used by Mexican emigrants as a representation of their Mexican nationality. Indeed, she has become one of the most recognized and unifying symbols used by Latinos in the United States. The Role of the Intellectuals The nation-state led the effort to create a Mexican identity that would encompass the entire Mexican population living within the national boundaries. As noted above, intellectuals have played an influential part in defining the Mexican. Mexicano literature is a case in point. It is characterized by the essay


form in which writers such as Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, and others freely and without scholarly backing for their assertions attempt to lay bare the Mexican soul. The importance of this intellectual articulation of Mexican identity cannot be understated since it pervades all levels of Mexican society. An influential book from 1934 by writer Samuel Ramos, El perfil del hombre y la cultura en México (Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico) constitutes one of the first attempts at characterizing—some would say psychoanalyzing—the Mexican identity, especially in Ramos’s degrading characterization of the Mexican’s feeling of inferiority.21 This theme was developed in Octavio Paz’s El laberinto de la soledad (The Labyrinth of Solitude), which was written in 1950. Paz places other Mexican characteristics—such as loneliness, dissimulation, and denial—on the agenda. His collection of essays was enormously influential for discussions on identity in the decades to follow, and practically everyone who has subsequently addressed and considered Mexican identity has, in one way or another, been inspired by Paz’s essays, whether critically or in order to further develop them.22 Furthermore, these ideas now form part of everyday discourses on identity. As its starting point Roger Bartra’s book, La jaula de la melancolía (The Cage of Melancholy) (1987), takes the importance of this type of literature for Mexican national identity. He is highly critical of the intellectuals’ project with regard to both its negative influence and its lack of substance. Bartra’s book is one example of how intellectuals since the late 1980s have been focusing their attention much more on how they legitimize national myths such as the Virgen de Guadalupe or the Return of Quetzalcóatl.23 Claudio Lomnitz Adler points out that the success of the national myth is so great that even critics of the theory of the origin of the Mexicans only criticize specific, national myths. They do not, however, question the very foundation the national myths are attempting to legitimize. Despite their critique, the intellectuals still ignore the historical ideological construction of the national myth that legitimizes the established order.24 In other words, intellectuals, whether self-critical or critical of the government and nation, fail to see Mexican identity in a completely new light. Furthermore, in arguing that the post-revolutionary national ideology has failed at meaningfully describing the reality of the Mexicans, Bartra unwittingly opens up the possibility of analyzing national identity as something Mexicans may interpret, negotiate, and change through their social interactions, so that it makes sense in their own everyday life and reality.25 Representations of Mexican History Mexican identity is widely perceived as a product of Mexico’s historical development from the time of independent indigenous societies through the colonial era and independence to the revolution. However, it is noteworthy that the focus has been on internal factors. In order to reach a deeper understanding of Mexican identity, it is imperative to consider how Mexican history is represented in intellectual discourse.26 This discourse draws on stereotypes and clichés and at the


same time perpetuates them. Mexican identity today must be seen as a product of both the political and the intellectual elite’s traditional representation of history. This chapter will only consider the representation of history from the time of the revolution.27 Despite the more critical approach of contemporary intellectuals toward the Mexican Revolution, it is still seen as the single most important event in recent Mexican history. It is traditionally regarded as a symbol of the nation’s unity and used to legitimize the new ideology of pluralism. The revolution and the subsequent constitution of 1917 set out new objectives such as mestizaje, a strong centralized state, land reforms, improvements to the educational system, and the defense of national treasures from foreign exploitation. At the same time, the revolution meant a new discourse of power, namely revolutionary nationalism. Its most important goal was to legitimize the state and ensure a national feeling of unity based on shared national symbols and myths. Socialization through the educational system and artistic representations of these shared symbols and myths assisted in forging this national unity. Bonfil Batalla criticizes post-revolutionary ideology by outlining Mexico’s great dilemma—the conflict between the desire for a culturally homogeneous nation and the need for a shared history and shared national symbols. The former incorporates a desire to eradicate all cultural differences—for example, Indian traditions—because they are seen as an obstacle to national unity and the development of the nation. The latter implies a glorification of the Indian past through the preservation of certain Indian traditions, and in the process, making them national symbols.28 Another dilemma in Mexican society is that the quest for Mexican identity was both introverted, focusing on the Indian past, la patria íntima (The intimate motherland) that allowed for the construction of a strong nation-state that would resist foreign influence, and extroverted, looking toward Europe as the continuing ideal for Mexican development.29 The twenty years that followed the revolution witnessed politically motivated murders and instability, while the period from the late 1930s to the late 1960s are commonly referred to as a period of steady development and relative stability.30 The student revolt in 1968 is considered the first example of popular opposition to the government and its politics, whereas the 1970s are especially remembered for a booming oil industry and, paradoxically, for growing external debts that resulted in the economic crisis that culminated in the country’s suspension of payments in 1982.31 The revolutionary ideology has, then, since the 1920s supported the existence of a strong nation-state through a system based on clientelism that attempted to embrace all civil society. There were however significant stresses and strains from the 1980s onward. As Claudio Lomnitz Adler has put it, faith in the Indian soul, the mestizo body, and the pro-Western, civilized future was destroyed by neoliberal ideology. Until then, the PRI represented “the Mexican.”32 The legitimizing function of the discourse of revolutionary nationalism was weakened due to this new ideology of neoliberal modernization. This laid the basis for a confrontation


with traditional methods of production in agriculture, union-based populism, and protectionism. Against this background, however, some serious discussion of democracy and pluralism began. Indeed, there were the beginnings of a new vision, which took cultural pluralism as its starting point.33 Politically, this change saw the light during the government of President Miguel de la Madrid (1982–88) and took hold under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–94). Cultural pluralism and the Indian cultures were finally acknowledged with the change to Article 4 of the constitution in 1992.34 This fundamental change in the discourse also manifested itself among the intellectuals and in the Mexicano literature. The influence of the intellectuals on the creation of a Mexican identity has come about both through their internal discussions as well as through interaction with successive PRI governments. Discussions have taken place in different institutionalized fora, such as Las Consultas Populares (Assembly of Popular Opinion), where the intellectuals, as part of the electoral campaign of the PRI candidates, have had the opportunity to present their views to the next president or governor.35 However, intellectual participation in the discussion of Mexican identity has always taken place within the national discourse and on the premises of the nation-state. Shaping Images of the President The national discourse also forms an important part of various electoral campaigns on both the national level, the level of the constituent states, and on the municipal level. This holds especially true for the PRI. The party’s many years in power have ensured extensive participation in the creation of the image of the Mexican nation that is recreated and confirmed in the speeches of the electoral campaign and on other occasions.36 One of the most important purposes of PRI campaigns was to make the candidate a national symbol. Therefore his personal history was manipulated into the Mexican nation in general and into different groups or occupational sectors, both metaphorically and metonymically.37 In the speeches of electoral campaigns, one finds yet more examples of the folklorization process. On his campaign around the regions, the presidential candidate always opens his speech with a reference to famous personalities, important historical events, or other elements rooted in the specific region. This is represented as proof of the importance of the region for the nation and vice versa. In this way regional values are appropriated rhetorically and transformed into Mexican values, acknowledged by the nation. In this way the candidate contributes to giving new life to the national myths, simultaneously making them particularly relevant for the very region in which he stays, thus strengthening the region’s sense of belonging to the unity of the nation. Throughout the electoral campaign, the shared, national identity is confirmed. The candidate actually ends up being a national symbol. In short, the PRI uses national symbols, such as the colors of the flag for its party banner and the national discourse for its own purposes, so as to create a sense of belonging and of community in relation to the party.


Not a single PRI president addressed the Mexican emigrants living in the United States. Instead, the way the PRI interpreted and created the mestizo figure allowed succesive PRI governments to ignore them and define them as traitors. Even though the PRI governments implemented policies such as the Bracero Program that gave limited support to Mexican emigrants in the United States, it did not imply an acceptance of them as authentic Mexicans.38 They were considered pochos (people who renounced their Mexican heritage) and were therefore looked upon with distrust. Rhetorical Change Mexico’s neoliberal turn, which began in 1982 with the inauguration of President de la Madrid and continued by his successors was structured around a process of economic integration with the United States through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Post-revolutionary nationalism became less of a legitimizing factor for the PRI and its neoliberal policies after the rebellion on January 1, 1994, of Indian villages in the State of Chiapas in the Sourthern part of Mexico led by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) (El Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional). In the beginning of the same year the official presidential candidate for PRI, Luis Colosio, was killed and intellectuals started to question the legitmacy of the mestizo figure.39 The gap between post-revolutionary discourse and present policies and social reality simply became too wide. The PRI’s neoliberal policies were widely criticized, and many accused the party of abandoning Mexico and the poor. Against this background, both the PRI and its opponents became increasingly aware of the Mexican population in the United States at the end of the 1980s.40 Michael Smith and Luis Guarnizo argue that the government’s attempt to gain support from emigrant groupings Mexicans started with programs to assist migrants and “Mexican communities” organized as Home Town Associations (HTA) in the United States.41 These programs constituted an attempt by the PRI government to redefine its relationship with Mexicans residing in the United States. However, it was not until president Vicente Fox (2000–2006) took office that emigrants were acknowledged as genuine and authentic Mexicans. He was the first Mexican president to recognize officially the pivotal role that they played. In official statements made during his first weeks in office, Fox made it clear that he wanted to be president for the 118 million Mexicans living abroad and not only for the 100 million Mexicans within the country’s borders.42 This rhetoric was a very important symbolic gesture that he followed up with concrete actions. In 2005 the lobbying by Mexican emigrant organizations in the United States, HTAs in Mexico, and PAN finally resulted in making it legal for Mexicans in the United States to vote in Mexican presidential elections.43 Estimated at twelve billion dollars, the remittances Mexican emigrants send home have reshaped the popular image of Mexican Americans in Mexico. Remittances from the United States to Mexico have traditionally been exchanges


between individuals and households. In the last two decades, however, remittances have become increasingly organized through the involvement of HTAs.44 Their aim is to promote the well-being of their hometown communities of origin (in Mexico) by raising money to fund public works and social projects. The Mexican emigrants have gained social and political influence by virtue of their financial generosity. The many Mexican HTAs in Chicago, for example, reflect the growing influence of these organizations. Metropolitan Chicago has the second largest Mexican immigrant community in the United States, following Los Angeles. Current estimates place the area’s Mexican and Mexican ancestry population at between eight hundred thousand and one milliom people, of whom two-thirds were born in Mexico. There are currently more than six hundred Mexican HTAs registered in thirty cities in the United States. In Los Angeles alone, there are 218 Mexican HTAs.45 In his inaugural speech on December 1, Fox referred to them as “our beloved migrants, our heroic migrants.”46 Fox regarded Mexicans living in the United States as “heroic migrants,” even though they were “forced” to leave their country during the PRI governments mainly because of poverty. This discourse implies a more politically significant transborder nation that could potentially include the entire raza (race) of Mexican origin. Fox consciously deployed the language of nationalism based on an imagined community.47 In Fox’s first official act at the president’s compound, he honored two hundred Mexican emigrants and U.S.-born Mexican Americans: “We want your spirit to be contagious.”48 Fox had a clear vision of what Mexicans could achieve if they were given opportunities in their homeland. This rhetoric implied an expansion of the definition of being a Mexican by embracing Mexican Americans. Fox legitimized the American influence in Mexican life. In Fox’s Mexico then, the Americanized Mexicans are not traitors. On the contrary they are to be emulated. Unlike the rhetoric of the PRI governments, the Fox administration made it clear that Mexican emigrants who left their homeland for the United States would no longer be joining the enemy. The new national rhetoric and the policies tied to it reflect a concern for the welfare of Mexican migrants in the United States that has been continued by President Felipe Calderón (2006–) from PAN, even though migration has not been given as high a priority as during the Fox administration. These changes give the migrants a Mexico-based, institutionally embedded basis for strengthening their relations with the imagined community that constitutes the Mexican nation.49 Conclusion Unity and shared identity are central to national discourse and strengthen the sense of national belonging. This chapter has argued that the notion of the mestizo figure as the authentic Mexican, the unique result of the meeting and mixture of different cultures, has played a very significant part in the Mexican


construction of and belief in a national identity that distinguishes Mexico from other nations. The nation-state project developed during successive PRI administrations focused on creating an introverted identity, symbolized in the mestizo figure. It excluded Mexican emigrants living in the United States mainly because they “contaminated” Mexico with an Americanized lifestyle and therefore became a political liability to the PRI. One of the important allies for the PRI was the intellectuals. They not only accepted the national discourse centered on the notion of homogenization, they also took an active part in constructing the constituent elements of the national identity, namely the mestizo and the national symbols and myths. Mexico considered the colossus to the north its greatest burden. As the adage goes, “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.”50 However, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Fox refashioned the image of the United States in Mexico and recognized the reality of Mexicans living in the United States. This chapter has argued that this rhetorical change made it necessary to redefine Mexican national identity because as Bartra argues, national identity is something Mexicans may interpret, negotiate, and change through their social interactions, so that it makes sense in their own everyday life and reality. By incorporating Mexican migrants in the United States in Mexican public life and the national discourse, as well as making them a necessary part of the democratization process (by giving them right to vote), the government recognizes that foodways, customs, linguistic, and phenotypic traits once considered “foreign” gradually become part and parcel of broader regional culture. The emigrants then become socially and culturally important actors who further play an economically pivotal role in Mexico. In other words, the government is now taking steps to include the Other, who is no longer seen as “contaminated” by the United States and a threat to Mexico, but rather understood as the repository of new ideas, social practices, and lifestyles. Mexican emigrants will undoubtedly continue wielding greater economic and cultural influence on Mexico and have a profound influence on, and to a large extent shape, the future construction of Mexican national identity. Notes 1. Gregory Rodriguez, “Vincente Fox Blesses the Americanization of Mexico,” Los Angeles Times (December 10, 2000) http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/ 2000/vicente_fox_blesses_the_americanization_of_mexico. 2. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War. Mexico ceded 1.36 million square kilometers (525,000 square miles) (55 percent of its pre-war territory). 3. Karen Lehmann, Nationaliteter i sameksistens? En undersøgelse af etnicitet og nationalitet i Ecuador (Copenhagen: Romansk Institut 1995), 56. 4. Richard Morse, The Heritage of Latin America, vol. 1 of The Founding of New Societies: Studies in the History of the United States, Latin America, South Africa, Canada and Australia, by Louis Hartz (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), 131.


5. Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, México profundo. Una civilización negada (Mexico City: Editorial Grijalbo, 1987), 166–67. 6. Batalla, México profundo, 174; and Greg Urban and Joel Sherzer, Nation-States and Indians in Latin American (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), 6. 7. José Vasconcelos, La raza cósmica (Mexico City: Espasa Calpe, S.A., 1948), 47–51. 8. Agustín Basave Benítez, México mestizo: Análisis del nacionalismo mexicano en torno a la mestizofilia de Andrés Molina Enríquez (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992), 133. 9. Francisco Salazar Sotelo, “Nación y nacionalismo en México,” Sociológica 21 (1993): 43–63. 10. Lomnitz Adler, Exits from the Labyrinth. Culture and Ideology in the Mexican National Space (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 277. 11. Homogenization promotes ideals of equality, liberty, and fraternity, established in Europe in the eighteenth century, and afterward adopted as ideals in, for example, Mexico (Greg Urban and Joel Sherzer, Nation-States and Indians in Latin American [Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991], 14). 12. Batalla, México profundo, 166–67. 13. It should however be emphasised that the intellectuals do by no means constitute a homogeneous group; on the contrary, divergences are widespread. 14. Batalla, Nuevas identidades culturales en México (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional de Cultura y Arte, 1993), 19–20. 15. Batalla would hardly agree with this interpretation. 16. Benítez, México mestizo, 143–45. 17. Carlos Fuentes, El espejo enterrado (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992), 15. 18. La Virgen de Guadalupe is one of the numerous versions of the Virgin Mary. The figure of Mary plays a central part in the Catholic Church. 19. Folklorization is the process where different cultural symbols from indigenous groups are considered representative for the entire nation-state. 20. Adler, Exits from the Labyrinth, 312–13. 21. Batalla, México profundo, 93. 22. A fact you will see reflected in the numerous titles referring to the books, for example, Lomnitz Adler’s Exits from the Labyrinth; Bartra’s La jaula de la melancholia; and a chapter of Fuentes’s El espejo enterrado entitled, “Hacia la Independencia: múltiples máscaras y aguas turbidas” (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992), 245–53. 23. Fuentes, El espejo enterrado, 116–18. Quetzalcóatl is a god in the Mesoamerican mythology. According to myth he is a white man and he returns to found the World. This Indian prophecy became the symbol of the encounter between the two cultures when the Spanish conqueror arrived in Mexico. 24. Adler et al., Constructing Culture and Power in Latin America (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 384–85. 25. Bartra, La jaula de la melancholia, 196. 26. One of the most recent and highly acknowledged attempts is Fuentes’s El espejo enterrado (1992). 27. The Mexican Revolution, 1910–19. 28. Urban and Sherzer, Nation-States and Indians, 10. 29. Adler, Exits from the Labyrinth, 279.


30. Eduardo García Mondragón, “El proceso histórico como factor de identidad cultural y política,” Paper for the Segundo Simposium Inter-disciplinario: La mexicanidad de lo mexicano ¿Identidad cultural y/o política? (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma de Estado de México, 1989). 31. Sotelo, “Nación y nacionalismo,” 59–60. 32. Adler, Constructing Culture, 280–81. 33. Ibid., 11. 34. The new Article 4 reads as follows: “The Mexican nation has a pluricultural composition which is sustained in its indigenous villages. The law will protect and promote the indigenous languages, cultures, habits/traditions, resources and specific social organization; it will guarantee its integrants access to the State law” (Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, 1995), http://www.info4.juridicas.unam .mx/ijure/fed/9/5.htm. 35. Cf. for instance Foros de Consulta para la Integración del Plan de Desarrollo del Estado de México 1993, http://www.upepe.sep.gob.mx/cont_portada/pdf_foros/estado _de_mexico.pdf. 36. Adler, Constructing Culture, 283. 37. Ibid., 375–77. 38. Robert Smith, “Migrant Membership as an Instituted Process: Comparative Insights from the Mexican and Italian Cases,” paper given to the Conference on Transnational Migration: Comparative Perspectives, June 2001; and Luin Goldring, “The Mexican State and Transmigrant Organizations: Negotiating the Boundaries of Membership and Participation,” Latin American Research Review (2002): 3, 55–99. The Bracero Program, (after the Spanish word for ‘unskilled laborer’), which ran from 1942–64, allowed Mexicans to come to the United States as agricultural workers on temporary contracts. 39. Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, January 1, 1994, http://www.ezln.org.mx. 40. Michael Smith and Luis Guarnizo, “Transnationalism from Below,” Political Science Quarterly (Summer 1999): 2, 355–56. 41. Ibid., 355. 42. Smith, “Migrant Membership,” 19–21. 43. The first elections in which Mexican emigrants could vote were the presidential elections in July 2006. 44. Goldring, “The Mexican State,” 89–92. 45. Smith, “Migrant Membership,” 15–19. 46. Gregory Rodriguez, “Vincente Fox.” 47. Smith, “Migrant Membership,” 19–21. 48. Rodriguez, “Vincente Fox.” 49. Smith, “Migrant Membership,” 28–34. 50. Alan Riding, Vecinos Distantes: un retrato de los mexicanos (Mexico City: Editorial Joaquin Mortiz, 2006), 379.

PART II

Capital and Labor


CHAPTER 3

The Other Side of the Migration Story: Mexican Women in the United States Silvia E. Giorguli Saucedo, María Adela Angoa Pérez, and Selene Gaspar Olvera

exican migration to the United States has become a self-sustaining process that is based on a strong historical foundation. This process began nearly a century ago with a migration pattern that was predominantly male. These migrant male workers came from very specific communities in Mexico that had a strong traditions of circularity—which consolidated a model of temporary and repeated migration linked to a large extent to the seasonal agricultural cycles. Ever since then, the Mexican male workers who migrate to the United States in search of jobs have become an answer to the changes, needs, and demands of the U.S. labor market. Their inclusion into the American labor market has depended up until now on mutable economic cycles within the United States, diverse historical events (such as the world wars), or the shifts that develop within the structure of the working population of the United States. This working population within the United States has become increasingly more educated with the passage of time, leaving a number of unskilled and unpaid jobs vacant. As a result of the previous traditional migration pattern and also due to economic interdependency between both countries, we now have a complex, selfsustaining migration process that has grown, consolidated itself, and expanded across the receiving and sending regions of both countries.1 There is no reason to expect that the forces that motivate migrant workers to leave Mexico and enter the United States in search of a livelihood will change in the short term, given the

M

40 • Saucedo, Pérez, and Olvera

lack of job opportunities within Mexico, the growth of the aging population, and the growing demand for unskilled, low-paid workers in the United States. Despite their growing presence in the United States, Mexican women have been frequently absent from migration studies or research agendas, thus demonstrating that little was known about the role they played in the migration process until a couple of decades ago.2 This has been partially explained by the fact that the flow was dominated by men and that women were mainly seen as passive agents who were left behind to await their husbands’ return. While migration to the United States was previously seen as a rite of passage for Mexican young men who came from certain regions in Mexico where migration had become a tradition, for women it was considered an option only after a family member (a father, a husband, or another relative) had acquired some experience on the other side of the border. Back then, migrant women were seen as mere companions in male-led migration.3 Furthermore, women were practically excluded from any decision regarding men’s movements, even from the theoretical perspectives that considered migration a household strategy.4 In keeping with the traditional division of labor, migration was conceived of as an option by which men could fulfil their roles as breadwinners, given the context of restricted job or economic opportunities within their native communities and their country at large. At the same time, the role women played as homemakers was strengthened and continued, tying their decision to migrate to the United States to family reasons and linking their participation in American society to their traditional female roles. In this chapter, our aim is to evidence the active role Mexican women play as immigrants in the United States. We will analyze the changing profile of the Mexican female population within the United States during the past ten years and the active participation of these women in the labor market. From our perspective, the growing participation of Mexican women in nondomestic jobs, when compared to the situation they lived a couple of decades ago as well as their economic contribution to their households, clearly illustrates the role women are now playing in the migration process. Both aspects also create a great impact on gender relations as well as in the process of integrating first and second generation immigrants to the life of the country that hosts them. Mexican Women in Migration Studies: From Invisibility to Visibility The context in which migration studies are undertaken today has suffered great changes. On the one hand, measures have been taken to develop a systematic theoretical body of thought that responds to the specific characteristics of female migration.5 On the other hand, important changes have taken place in the flows and dynamics of migration that have caused women’s participation in this process to be more visible. It is a fact that women migrate in larger numbers today than in the past, thus leading to the so-called feminization of migration. Within the particular context of the migration movements between Mexico and the United States, during the recent decades there has been an increase in the

The Other Side of the Migration Story • 41

participation of women in the flow. Mexican women are migrating in greater numbers than before. Moreover, they are also being incorporated into the flows not only as “companions” of male relatives or spouses, but also as active migrants looking for better job opportunities on the other side of the border. The increased visibility and participation of women in the flow also corresponds to certain changes that occur on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border. These changes influence women to make the decision to migrate, and promote female migration. In the context of origin, the severe economic crisis of the 1980s and the subsequent period of economic stagnation forced families to diversify their survival options. While female participation rates had remained low in Mexico before 1980, over the subsequent years women were rapidly being incorporated into the labor market. Participation rates for women increased from 16.4 percent in 1970 to 31.5 percent in 1991, rising to 35 percent by 2000.6 Although the participation of women in the labor market in Mexico is still low compared to that of other countries with a similar degree of development, the greater participation of women in economic activities as income earners and providers constitutes a significant change within the country. Mainly, it is an urban phenomenon that has been described as a “feminization of household strategies,” which has been brought about by the growing male unemployment or underemployment that has pervaded in Mexico during the past two decades.7 The greater participation of Mexican women in the migration flow and the U.S. labor market was preceded by this change. To a certain extent, as household strategies diversify within the context of economic stagnation and setbacks, women’s entry into the labor market may eventually lead to a greater tolerance of their participation in other nontraditional activities, such as international migration.8 Meanwhile, the migration pattern has also changed. There has been a diversification of the types of flows, of the different regions of origin, and of the profiles of migrants. Some of these changes are the direct result of migration policies that have been implemented by the U.S. federal government over the past two decades.9 The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), for example, had the unexpected effect of encouraging the rapid increase of legal immigration into the United States through both amnesty as well as through the principle of family reunification that prevailed back then in U.S. migratory laws. This resulted in a rapid increase of foreign women and children migrating to the United States to live.10 Given the large stock of Mexican migrants that were already working in the United States by the time the IRCA was enforced, this population became the main beneficiary of such measures; 87 percent of all legalized aliens within the United States were born in Mexico.11 Aside from the legalization of migrants, the law favored family reunification, a mechanism that promoted the legal migration of women and children to the United States.12 At the same time, with the passage of IRCA and subsequent legislation—most notably the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA)—the U.S. federal government has implemented restrictive measures to make border crossing more difficult for undocumented migrants.13 As a result of


such measures, the costs and risks of migrating to the United States have increased. This has had a direct effect on the length of time migrants stay in the United States, and it is obvious that these migrants prefer now to remain within the host country for longer periods of time. To a certain extent, this has led to a reduction of the circularity that characterized the Mexico-U.S. migration movements of the past. As migrants tend to stay within the United States for longer periods of time, they are naturally inclined to settle in the host country more often than before and, thus, to bring their families along with them. Once again, here we have yet another example of how the immigration policies of the U.S. government may have favored female migration from Mexico. Finally, the labor market within the United States has undergone a series of changes that have actually created job opportunities for female migrants. As a matter of fact, in the case of other countries of origin, the participation of women in the flow is greater than the participation of men (this is the case for certain Asian, Caribbean, South and Central American countries).14 The current context of the rapid growth of high-tech sectors and highly skilled occupations has occurred parallel to the growing demand of unskilled, unstable, low-paid jobs mainly in social and personal services as well as in manufacturing.15 These jobs are unattractive to native workers, who have access to better paid jobs with labor conditions that seem much more favorable. These unattractive job opportunities have been mainly taken by individuals belonging to minority groups as well as by immigrants, particularly women and young people.16 Furthermore, migrant female labor may be preferred by employers, given its supposedly abundant, docile, and cheap nature. The combination of the loss of circularity—that resulted in a sharp increase of the Mexican population living within the United States, women included— as well as the ever-increasing role women play in the labor market, explain the “visibility” of migrant women as active participants in the migration process. Women are gradually being studied not only as passive subjects who await or follow their migrant husbands, but as individuals who participate in the flow themselves, building and sustaining families on both sides of the border and actively participating in economic and political activities in both the sending and receiving communities. The following sections seek to explore two main aspects of female migration: (1) to what extent the economic participation of Mexican women has changed in the United States and the importance of this change within the different households; and (2) the pattern of female economic participation regarding income differentials, labor conditions, and occupational categories. These aspects have become essential in order to understand the integration pattern of the Mexican population living in the United States. First of all, we know that women tend to prefer settlement over temporary migration more often than men, while the process of incorporation into the receiving society is assumed to be gendered.17 From this perspective, understanding the role of working Mexican women in the U.S. economy and within their households will give us


some insight into the integration process of this population in the context of change and the rapid growth of female Mexican migration. Mexican Women in the United States Today Mexicans constitute the largest sector of the foreign-born population living in the United States today. In 2005, eleven million Mexicans were living in the United States (Table 3.1), and approximately half (6.5 millions) were actively working. In relative terms, Mexican immigrants represent a third of the total amount of immigrants living in the United States.18 Although the presence of women in the migration flow from Mexico to the United States has increased, it is still a predominantly male migration. According to recent estimates, approximately 83 percent of Mexicans crossing the border into the United States every year are men.19 However, women who migrate to the United States tend to stay for longer periods of time within that country or tend to settle down definitely, thus decreasing the male/female ratio when examining the stock of the Mexican immigrant population residing within the United States (see the masculinity index in Table 3.1).20

Table 3.1 Selected sociodemographic characteristics of Mexican immigrant women in the United States, 1995 and 2005 Selected characteristics

1995

2005

Total population (men and women) Women (absolute numbers) Women (percentage of total population)

6,960,895 3,089,367 44.4

11,026,774 4,914,161 44.6

Masculinity index

125

124

Marital status (women aged 15 and over) Never Married Married Separated, Divorced or Widowed Total

2,767,216 20.6 62.8 16.6 100.0

4,448,620 21.2 63.5 15.2 100.0

Educational attainment (women aged 25 and over) Less than 10 years of schooling 10 to 12 years More than High School Total

2,202,513 62.4 24.8 12.8 100.0

3,682,159 53.4 31.7 15.0 100.0

Poverty status Household income below the poverty line Household income at or above the poverty line Total

3,089,367 39.9 60.1 100.0

4,914,161 31.4 68.6 100.0

Source: Authors’ calculations based on data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), 1995 and 2005 March Supplements.49


Despite the more restrictive measures for controlling undocumented entries into the United States, both the male and the female migration flows from Mexico have been rapidly increasing over the past decade. In fact, between 1995 and 2005 the total number of Mexican women living in the United States increased by 60 percent (from 3.1 to 4.9 million). These women are mainly concentrated in the early productive and reproductive years. In other words, their ages range between fifteen and thirty-four (Figure 3.1), and most are already married (Table 3.1). Given their ages, their marital status and the pattern of early childbirth among Mexican women, one can safely assume that the stock largely consists of women with young children. This will be important in understanding the labor participation rates of Mexican women in the United States, as we already know that the presence of young children within the household inhibits the entry of women into nondomestic jobs. This effect may be stronger among the Mexican population living in the United States, given the attachment to a more traditional gender division of roles and responsibilities among Mexican families. Mexicans are known to be negatively selected by education, meaning that they have lower educational attainment than other immigrant groups in the United States. In the year 2005, only 53.4 percent of the women had completed their elementary school studies (Table 3.1). However, Mexican women have more years of schooling than men, and the gap widens if one only examines those who are working.21 It is interesting to note that the educational profile of Mexican women in the United States has improved; and today, compared to ten years ago, there is a larger proportion of women who have at least studied their

Figure 3.1 Age distribution of Mexican women living in the United States, 1995 and 2005 Source: Authors’ calculations based on data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), 2005 March Supplement.


first year of high school. However, as we shall see later, this increase in education has not translated into better job opportunities for Mexican women in the U.S. labor market. The low level of education of the Mexican population and its concentration in low-paid unskilled jobs results in a high prevalence of households that have an income that is below the poverty line. In 1995, the percentage of Mexican women who were living in poor households was 39.9 percent; and in 2005 this percentage decreased to 31.4. Although still high, this reduction in the relative number of poor Mexican women suggests that their economic situation is better today than ten years ago, despite the stagnation of women in low-paid, unstable jobs within the U.S. labor market. Mexican Women in the U.S. Labor Market As noted earlier, the invisibility of women in the research agenda concerning the Mexican-U.S. migration process was partially explained by the idea that the migration of women was absolutely linked to the movements of their husbands (or other male relatives) and that it was also largely caused by family migration. This invisibility was linked to the low economic participation rates of Mexican women on both sides of the border. However, the insertion of Mexican women into nondomestic jobs has been noted as one of the main changes that has come about in recent decades.22 Much the same as in Mexico, Mexican women living in the United States have also increased their economic contribution to their household resources. As we shall see later on in this same section, a high proportion of immigrant Mexican women work as employees; and their income constitutes a significant resource for their households. Regardless of the original motivation that drove them to migrate—whether this migration was linked to a family movement or whether the women were in search of better job opportunities in the United States—the fact is that Mexican women living in the United States are increasingly participating in other spheres outside the household. By means of this information, we have attempted to reinforce the evidence against the arguments that identify female migrants from Mexico to the United States as passive actors. Economic Participation As has been seen, Mexican women who were living in the United States three decades ago showed very low participation rates. Beginning to rise in the 1970s and being consolidated by 1980, the participation of Mexican women increased from 29.3 percent in 1960 to 36.4 percent in 1970; and this process became stagnated at approximately 50 percent in 1980 (47.5 percent).23 More recent data suggest that since 1980 there has been little change in the labor participation rates (LPRs) of Mexican women living in the United States (see Table 3.2).

46 • Saucedo, Pérez, and Olvera Table 3.2 Selected labor participation variables for Mexican women sixteen to sixty-four years old in the United States, 1995 and 2005 Selected variables

1995

2005

Numbers working Labor force participation rates (percent) Unemployment rates (percent) Percentage of working women with health insurance provided by the employer Percentage of women with a pension or retirement plan provided by the employer Type of job full time (35 hours a week or more) part-time (less than 35 hours a week) Average yearly income (in 2005 dollars) Mexican women Mexican men Earnings differential between men and women (in 2005 dollars) Relative difference between men and women’s earnings (percentage)

2.169.955 49,6 13,9

3.629.675 49,4 7,6

not available

30,1

29,8 100,0 88,7 11,3

29,2 100,0 76,1 23,9

15.004 20.396

18.112 23.767

5.392

5.655

35,9

31,0

Source: Authors’ calculations based on data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), 1995 and 2005 March Supplements.50

These LPRs are low if compared to American standards; Mexican female migrants show the lowest LPRs in the United States. In respect to the total population, women’s participation has remained constant at about 70 percent (69.4 percent in 1995 and 68.7 percent in 2005). For Central American and Dominican women living in the United States, the LPR was 65.4 percent in 2005.24 These figures contrast sharply with the less than 50 percent in the case of Mexican women living in the United States, thus confirming the pattern of low participation rates of this migrant group. However, if one compares the participation rates of Mexican women in the United States to the same rates in Mexico (34.5 percent in 2000), what emerges is a more frequent incorporation into nondomestic jobs among the former when compared with those living on the other side of the border.25 Whether Mexican women migrated to work in the United States or whether they decided to participate in economic activities after their arrival to the United States, this greater participation, compared to the similar rate in Mexico, points to a certain (albeit slow) incorporation into the female labor patterns that prevail in the U.S. labor market.26 A look at specific participation rates will show us the importance of the childbearing years as deterrents of the participation of Mexican women in nondomestic jobs (see Figure 3.2). This explains the decrease in LPR among women ages twenty-five to twenty-nine when compared to groups of younger or older women. Furthermore, as has already been reported, the age of Mexican women


living in the United States is mainly concentrated between fifteen and thirtyfour. The low incorporation of women who belong to these age groups into the labor force partially explains the low total LPR. However, even in the age groups where the relative number of women who were working reached its peak (when women’s ages were mainly concentrated between forty and fifty), these are still far from the similar figure for American women. Between 57 and 62 percent of Mexican female migrants whose ages ranged from forty to fifty were employed in nondomestic jobs in 2005; the same percentage was close to 80 for all women living in the United States, regardless of their nationality.27 From a certain point of view, the incorporation of women into economic activities has empowered them, and this is due to the fact that this incorporation gives them a direct control over certain economic resources that they would not have otherwise. Ideally, this empowerment has led to less unequal relations between the genders and to a better social and economic position for such women.28 In the specific case of working women who were born in Mexico and who are now living in the United States, the scenario is less clear. To a certain extent, these higher participation rates, compared to those of women who did not migrate from Mexico into the United States, may suggest a better situation for them regarding gender relations and their position within the household. However, a look at the particular manner in which Mexican women join the American labor market confirms their position at the lower end of the occupational pyramid in low-paid jobs and in precarious conditions (which is reflected

Figure 3.2 Specific female Mexican labor participation rates in the United States, 1995 and 2005 Note: Refer to the methodological appendix for the definition of the population analyzed. Source: Authors’ calculations based on data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), 1995 and 2005 March Supplements.


in their low access to the social security that should be provided by the employer and in the high percentage of women who are working in part-time jobs [see Table 3.2]). This is not exclusive of female Mexican migrants. Mexican men living in the United States also experience a marked segregation within the American labor market, while other migrant groups (such as Central Americans and Dominicans) also occupy low-paid, precarious jobs. Nevertheless, Mexican women are at a disadvantage even when compared with Mexican men and other female immigrants.29 This becomes particularly obvious if we analyze average yearly incomes: the yearly income of Mexican men living in the United States is almost 30 percent higher than the wages working women from the same country earn in a year (see Table 3.2). In earlier works, Saskia Sassen had reported the role of female immigrants in the developed world in the context of global economies and global cities: “Global cities are key sites for the specialized servicing, financing, and management of global economic processes. These cities are also a site of incorporation of large numbers of women and immigrants in activities that service the strategic sectors . . . we are seeing the return in all global cities around the world of the so-called serving classes, made up largely of immigrant and migrant women.”30 The pattern of incorporation of Mexican immigrants living in the United States into the American labor market complies with Sassen’s argument. Mexican women work mainly in the service sector (social and personal), and most of the jobs created over the past ten years are concentrated within this very same sector. Furthermore, there is a high concentration of female Mexican laborers who work in occupations such as house cleaning, maintenance, as well as preparing food (see Table 3.3). Needless to say, these occupations are linked to unstable, lowpaid jobs in most cases. Saskia Sassen has also argued that this mode of labor incorporation “renders these workers invisible.”31 This section began by arguing that the participation of Mexican women in the American labor market should not be overlooked. Rather, it should be taken into account more seriously. Furthermore, this participation can be considered an example of the active role women play in the migratory process. The data show that this participation has remained constant over the past twenty-five years and that Mexican women have followed a pattern of segregated incorporation into an already segmented labor market. This can be considered a starting point for reflecting on the gendered nature of the modes of incorporation of Mexican migrants into the United States. Some of the literature that has been written concerning the relationship that exists between gender and migration has pointed to the impact that the work done by female migrants has on various dimensions, such as the relations between spouses and the position women hold within the household. The scenario is contradictory because, while women may gain access to economic resources (and probably more leverage in the decision making over the use of resources in the household), they occupy segregated positions within the American economy; and there is nothing to suggest that this mode of labor incorporation will change in the near future. On this topic, ethnographic studies

The Other Side of the Migration Story • 49 Table 3.3 Ten main occupations of economically active Mexican women in the United States, 2005 (volume and relative distribution) Occupations

Total

Percentage of total occupied Mexican women

Total Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations Production occupations Food preparation and serving related occupations Office and administrative support occupations Sales and related occupations Transportation and material moving occupations Personal care and service occupations Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations Healthcare support occupations Education, training, and library occupations Other occupations

1,888,241

100.0

362,767 298,788

19.2 15.8

265,009

14.0

229,599 183,882

12.2 9.7

100,444 93,093 66,000 60,208 46,125 182,326

5.3 4.9 3.5 3.2 2.4 9.8

Source: Authors’ calculations based on data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), 2005 March Supplement. See also Giorguli-Saucedo, Gaspar, and Leite, Migración Mexicana, 122.

have suggested that, in the final analysis, women place a higher value on their attainments within the household (in terms of personal autonomy and independence) than on the position they hold within the U.S. occupational structure.32 As reported by migrant women, these gains may be linked to a shift in the position they hold within their household compared to life in their communities of origin, where rigid patriarchal structures constrain the participation of women in any activity outside the domestic sphere and where they are excluded from most of the decision making. Through their participation in the labor market in the United States, women gain greater leverage in decision-making processes concerning the household, their access to economic resources outside the home and beyond the social networks, and a more equal distribution of household responsibilities that could lead to men participating more in household chores. Prior studies have reported that when migrant women work outside the home, there is a natural reorganization of household responsibilities between spouses. As migrant women cannot count on having large family networks like the ones they have back home, when they do work outside the domestic sphere their husbands tend to be more involved in household chores and in childcare than what is usual back in their own country. This, of course, already implies that the relation that exists between spouses has already undergone a transformation. Finally, life in the United States gives Mexican women greater access to institutional support, for example, through child support transferences, welfare programs, or in the enforcement of alimony payments from fathers who do not


coreside with their children. These kinds of resources are almost absent in the communities of origin, rendering women more dependent on their spouses and on their own family resources. These arguments imply a very optimistic view of the change in Mexican women’s position within the household and in the relation with their spouses as a result of their migration. However, we must clarify that we are describing changes that may modify gender relations and that, even if they happen, they may not be permanent in time. As Martha Tienda and Katherine Booth put it, migration may improve women’s status, lead to a deterioration, or it may pave the way for a reconstruction of gender inequalities. In fact, it seems that upon return to Mexico, migrant men and women tend to reproduce the traditional patterns of gender relations that they have left behind while in the United States.33 Female Headship Among the transformations that have taken place in the roles women play in Latin America and specifically in Mexico, we can include the increase in the percentage of female-headed households. Whereas in 1976 only 13.5 percent of Mexican households were headed by women, the percentage rose to 17.9 in 1995 and to 23 in 2005.34 This growth can largely be explained by the increase in life expectancy in Mexico, which has mainly benefited women, and by the sharp rise in the dissolution of marital unions. 35 Moreover, the transformations in the headship patterns in Mexico can also be linked to the changing economic role of women and their participation in nondomestic jobs. The fact that females who head households and are in their reproductive years (fifteen to forty-nine years of age) have a higher educational level and also have higher participation rates than the rest of the women in Mexico points to the argument that there may be two extreme paths to female headship: one related to women who have a greater access to economic resources and who have a greater autonomy and who, by this means, may take the initiative either to separate from their spouses or get a divorce, and another group of women with a lower educational level as well as fewer economic and social resources that is more vulnerable and might have had little say in the decision to separate from their spouses.36 The United States has experienced a similar increase in female headship over the past four decades. According to census data, the percentage of households headed by women increased from 21 percent in 1970 to 32.3 percent in 1990 and 36.1 percent in 2000.37 Unlike the Mexican experience, this increase is mainly due to the growth in voluntary dissolution of marital unions and to the increase of households headed by single-parents. Moreover, female-headed families are common in households with young coresident children.38 The next question is whether this same trend in headship is replicated in the case of Mexican women in the United States. For them, household arrangements are characterized by a “growing complexity,” since they face situations of a particular nature, such as the presence of nonrelatives or relatives that live temporarily


in the same household shortly after their arrival in the United States, resulting in a high percentage of nonfamily arrangements and compound households (5.5 percent and 8.2 percent respectively in 2005 [see Table 3.4]).39 Furthermore, the relative number of nuclear households in the United States that are headed by Mexicans is significantly lower than in Mexico (57.7 percent versus 69 percent in 2005 [see Table 3.4]).40 Migrant women play an important role in family organization and administration. In 1980, 18.9 percent of Mexican households in the United States were already headed by women.41 This figure is higher than the equivalent rate for households in Mexico that same year (14 percent).42 According to 2005 data, in 43 percent of the households headed by someone born in Mexico the head of the household was a woman (see Table 3.4).43 These households tend to be based on nuclear arrangements at early stages of the family life cycle, as is pointed out by

Table 3.4 Selected characteristics of Mexican households in the United States by sex of household head, 2005 Selected characteristics

Total

Number of Mexican householders 4,070,910 Percentage of Mexican householders by sex 100 Percentage distribution by household structure 100.0 Unipersonal 8.6 Nuclear 57.7 Extended 19.9 Compound 8.2 Non-family arrangement 5.5 Percentage of household with children under 14 57.8 Percentage distribution by household size 100.0 1 to 3 members 42 4 to 6 members 51.6 7 members and over 6.4 Percentage distribution by labor status of householder 100.0 Employeed 69 Unemployed 4.9 Not in the labor force 26.1 Percentage of beneficiaries of social welfare programs 100.0 Beneficiary 6.3 Not beneficiary 93.7 Total household income 39,530 Percent distribution by household’s poverty status 100.0 Poor families in the household 24 Mixed (poor and non-poor families in the household) 7.3 No poor families in the household 68.7

Sex of householder Men

Women

2,319,857 57.0 100.0 8.9 55.2 19.6 8.0 8.2 52.0 100.0 42.3 51.2 6.4 100.0 85.7 5.1 9.2 100.0 4.5 95.5 45,529 100.0 18.4 7.7 73.9

1,751,053 43.0 100.0 8.3 60.9 20.4 8.4 1.9 65.5 100.0 41.7 52.0 6.3 100.0 46.8 4.7 48.5 100.0 8.7 91.3 35,471 100.0 31.4 6.8 61.8

Source: Authors’ calculations based on data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), 2005 March Supplement.51


the fact that in 65.5 percent of households there are children younger than fourteen coresiding in the same home. Thus female heads may, to a certain extent, be mothers raising their children without the support of a coresident husband and who are under heavy economic pressure. However, this type of arrangements follow a strategy of multiple earners, as is demonstrated by the fact that only in 22.5 percent of all cases is the female head the sole breadwinner (see Figure 3.3). The high prevalence of poor families in households headed by Mexican women and their lower average earnings compared to those households headed by men (see Table 3.4) suggest that these women are in a more vulnerable situation, following the Mexican national pattern of fewer economic or human resources among female-headed families. Despite the high prevalence of poverty that exists when Mexican women are reported as heads of the household, only 8.7 percent receive some kind of support via social welfare (see Table 3.4). In conclusion, the presence of female heads among Mexican households also illustrates the increasingly active role that Mexican women play within the United States. However, in keeping with their unfavorable incorporation into paid jobs, female-headed households have also been found to have a high risk of being poor. This fact surely has an impact on the mode of incorporation of migrant women and their dependent children, as it may influence other outcomes such as health conditions and educational opportunities. Especially for the children of immigrant women, the greater risk of living in a poor household during their early years will most likely influence their economic incorporation into the United States in the future.

Figure 3.3 Household heads’ income relative to total household income, Mexican household heads in the United States, 2005 Source: Authors’ calculations based on dat from the Current Population Survey (CPS), 2005 March Supplement.


The Household The rising participation of women in nondomestic jobs is necessarily linked to a greater contribution to the total household income by other family members. We argue that the process from invisibility to visibility of Mexican women vis-á-vis the migration process is related, among other changes, to their increasing economic role within the household. As has already been pointed out, when women have a greater access to economic resources—in this case, through their earnings from their participation in nondomestic jobs—they attain certain gains in terms of their position within the family context. For example, they tend to participate more often in decisions concerning the use and distribution of resources.44 Table 3.5 shows that one of every three Mexican households in the United States have both male and female income earners. Moreover, in 11.3 percent of homes there are no men contributing to household resources. In short, this implies that in 43.2 percent of Mexican households we do not find the traditional model of only male income earners that prevailed when female participation rates were lower. Furthermore, the female economic role is greater when the heads of the household are women born in Mexico. In half of these arrangements, women contribute to the total income and, of the total proportion, one out of every five depend solely on female earnings. If we consider that Mexican women in the United States tend to earn less than men, we can expect that when the household head is a woman and there are only female contributors living within the household, there may be a greater risk of living in poverty, as we already saw in the previous section (see Table 3.5). One additional point of interest seen in Table 3.5 is the high proportion of households with no income earners. For Mexican households, this totaled 12 percent, and in the cases in which female headship prevailed, it increased to 17.2 percent. We know that a small percentage of the latter may be receiving monetary transfers from their participation in welfare programs (see Table 3.4), but that would still leave another 8.9 percent of households in which no one is engaged in paid employment. A more detailed interpretation of this finding is

Table 3.5 Composition of the Mexican households in the United States by sex of income earners and sex of household head, 200552 Employed (only paid jobs)

Total

Number of households headed by Mexicans 4,070,910 Total 100.0 Only male income earners 43.2 Only female income earners 11.4 At least one male and one female income earner 33.4 No income earner (from a paid job) 12.0

Sex of householder Men Women 2,319,857 100.0 53.4 3.4 35.1 8.1

1,751,053 100.0 29.7 21.9 31.2 17.2

Source: Authors’ calculations based on data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), 2005 March Supplement.


beyond the scope of this chapter, but an analysis of this sort would open up an interesting research line in terms of understanding what economic resources families live on as well as other alternative sources, such as transferences from other relatives also living within the United States, that may be of great importance in female-headed arrangements. Despite the increasing role of women as contributors to the household income, women’s relative participation is still low. When both the men and the women of a household work for a salary, the wages earned by women account for less than half the total household income in nearly 80 percent of cases. Thus we have a high proportion of arrangements that follow a pattern of female incomes “complementing” the husband’s earnings, rather than a role of “sharing” the responsibility of providing the economic resources for the survival of the household (see Table 3.6). Moreover, in only-female income-earner households, the scenario is contradictory. Our data show that in this type of arrangement, women’s earnings still account for less than half the total income in nearly a third of the cases (29.1 percent), suggesting that there is a diversification of income sources that requires further study. Moreover, when the results are analyzed by looking at the head of household, female contributions are the only source of income in 45.3 percent of households headed by a woman. In conclusion, we found that the traditional model of one or more male income earners is still the most common arrangement in Mexican households in the United States. Nonetheless, the participation of women is not so infrequent and should not be overlooked—especially when it occurs in combination with

Table 3.6 Relative contribution of female income earners to total income in Mexican households in the United States by sex of household head and income earners’ composition, 2005 Relative contribution of female income earners to the total household income (percentage)

Total

Sex of the householder Men Women

Households with only female income earners Total 100% of household income (sole-income earners) Between 75 and 99 percent of household income Between 50 and 74 percent of household income Less than 50 percent of household income

419,495 100.0 38.8 16.2 15.9 29.1

79,242 100.0 11.1 12.0 22.0 55.0

340,253 100.0 45.3 17.1 14.5 23.1

Households with at least one male and one female income earner Total 100% of household income (sole-income earners) Between 75 and 99 percent of household income Between 50 and 74 percent of household income Less than 50 percent of household income

1,333,089 100.0 0.3 3.1 17.7 79.0

795,432 100.0 0.0 2.5 15.4 82.1

537,657 100.0 0.7 3.9 21.1 74.3

Source: Authors’ calculations based on data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), 2005 March Supplement.


male income earners. This may have increased as a result of the changes that have come about in female labor participation rates among Mexican immigrant women over the past decades. Furthermore, as expected, the role of women as income earners increases in the case of female headship. The data in this section provide two additional interesting findings: that there is a large proportion of households that reported having no income earners at all, and that the strategy of multiple earners can be commonly found among Mexican households, especially when they are headed by a woman.45 The Other Side of the Integration Story Throughout this essay, it has been argued that Mexican women’s participation in the migratory process from Mexico to the United States has become increasingly visible in recent decades. This is due to several reasons. For instance, there has been an increase in their participation in the annual flow of people moving from Mexico into the United States—although it is still mainly a male-dominated flow. Furthermore, the number of Mexican women living in the United States has increased rapidly, and their greater tendency to settle down or stay for longer periods of time in comparison to men makes this type of migration relevant in terms of the integration process into American society. The recent debate on migration and gender has also provided greater recognition for women’s active roles in the migratory process on both sides of the border. Finally, in this chapter it is argued that women’s changing and increasing participation in the labor force and their economic contributions to the household are also linked to their greater visibility if compared to the past. One of the most important changes in the socioeconomic structure of the Mexican population on either side of the border has been the incorporation of women into the labor market. Following the pattern that occurred south of the Mexico-U.S. border, Mexican women living in the United States have also modified their participation model and are working in nondomestic jobs more often today than a few decades ago. Moreover, their participation rates are even higher than the equivalent ones for women living in Mexico. This greater economic involvement of women in American society has surely had diverse effects at different levels, giving the integration process for those Mexicans living in the United States a gendered nature. On the one side, prior work on different migrant groups has documented that the intentions to remain in the United States vary between men and women.46 In spite of their disadvantaged position within the labor market, migrant women in the United States tend to prefer to settle down in the host country rather than return to their native land. As Patricia Pessar has stated, this contradiction can easily be explained by the value women confer to their attainments and gains within the household sphere.47 This reflection also leads to a conclusion regarding different patterns of incorporation into the American society for women who depend on their labor status. As we have already seen, the participation rates are still low, and more than


half of the Mexican female immigrants living in the United States do not work. What we may be seeing is a divided universe between those who do work and those who do not. Their interaction with American society, their access to economic resources, and even their knowledge of institutional resources in the United States that are available to them and their families may differ according to the labor status of each of these women. Although we have some evidence derived from certain ethnographic studies that suggests that the working status of Mexican immigrant women living in the United States makes quite a difference in terms of gender relations, in future research it would be interesting to explore how this working status influences other dimensions of their incorporation into the receiving society (such as language acquisition and their social integration as well as the modification of their cultural and consumption patterns). The data presented throughout this chapter confirm the segmented pattern that incorporates Mexican women into the lower end of the occupational structure, with low-paid jobs, no benefits at all, and probably few chances of social mobility. The high proportion of households living in poverty among Mexican immigrants in the United States—particularly when a woman is the head of the household—can be linked to this unfavorable labor situation of a female population that plays a role in the daily survival of the household and that, in a nonnegligible number of homes, is the sole source of economic resources. In contexts where there are young children living in the household, even if they were actually born in the United States, the impact of the vulnerability of Mexican women in the United States can probably be seen in the integration process of the second generation, as it may be linked to their educational and economic opportunities. There is no reason to believe that the migration flow from Mexico to the United States will decrease sharply over the next few years. If one examines the data from the past decade, the majority of Mexican immigrant women now living in the United States has arrived in recent years, despite the more restrictive measures that the U.S. federal government has taken regarding border control (see Table 3.7). The current dynamics of the U.S. labor market point to a continuous creation of low-paid and unskilled jobs in the social and personal service fields. In recent years, these particular jobs have been filled mainly by the migrant female labor force.48 It is even probable that the spaces for female migrant labor may increase in the near future, given the growing demand for caregivers (nurses and nannies) in the United States. Given this scenario, we can expect that the presence of Mexican women in the flow, their participation in the American labor market, and their economic contribution to their households will continue to be the same or may even increase in the following years. Recognizing this active role will surely lead to thinking in broader terms about the integration process and to discussing the need to design specific public policies for particular groups (or household arrangements) that are especially vulnerable and subject to marginalized paths of incorporation for both the women as well as their children.

The Other Side of the Migration Story • 57 Table 3.7 Citizenship and period of arrival in the United States of Mexican immigrant women, 1995 and 200553 Selected characteristics Citizenship status American Citizen Non-American Citizen Arrival in the US Before 1986 1986 - 1993 (1994) 1995 - 2005

1995

2005

Total

Percentage

Total

Percentage

3,089,367 482,883 2,606,484 3,089,367 1,834,340 1,255,027 -

100.0 15.6 84.4 100.0 59.4 40.6 -

4,914,161 1,105,348 3,808,813 4,914,161 1,418,406 1,167,668 2,328,087

100.0 22.5 77.5 100.0 28.9 23.8 47.4

Source: Authors’ calculations based on data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), 1995 and 2005 March Supplements.

Notes 1. Jorge Durand, and Douglas Massey, Clandestinos: Migración México-Estados Unidos en los Albores del Siglo XXI (Mexico: Universidad de Guadalajara and Miguel ángel Porrúa Grupo Editorial, 2003), 207. 2. This “invisibility” of women was not restricted to Mexico-U.S. migration studies. The explanations offered by various scholars in the field vary from arguments related to the traditional division of labor that makes women’s participation invisible to the elaboration of male-centered theories that are not necessarily useful or appropriate for explaining why women migrate or the impact of migration on gender. For more detailed information on the perspective of gender and migration studies, see Monica Boyd, “Women and Migration: Incorporating Gender into International Migration Theory,” Migration Information Source, March 1, 2003, http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?ID=106; Katherine Donato, Donna Gabaccia, Jennifer Holdaway, Martin Manalansan, and Patricia Pessar, “A Glass Half Full? Gender in Migration Studies,” International Migration Review, XL.1 (2006): 3–26; Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, “Gender and Immigration. A Retrospective and Introduction,” Gender and U.S. Immigration. Contemporary Trends, ed. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 3–19; Shawn Kanaiaupuni, “Reframing the Migration Question: An Analysis of Men, Women, and Gender in Mexico,” Social Forces LXXVIII.4 (2000): 1311–47; Patricia Pessar, “Engendering Migration Studies. The Case of New Immigrants in the United States,” American Behavioral Scientist XXXIV.4 (1999): 577–600; and Sara Poggio, and Ofelia Woo, Migración Femenina hacia EUA (Mexico: Edamex, 2000), 140. 3. Katherine Donato and Shawn Kanaiaupuni, “Poverty, Demographic Change, and the Migration of Mexican Women to the United States,” paper presented at the Seminar on Women, Poverty and Demographic Change, International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, El Colegio de Mexico, SOMEDE, Oaxaca, October 24–28, 1994, 52; Marcela Cerruti, and Douglas Massey, “On the Auspices of Female Migration from Mexico to the United States,” Demography XXXVIII.2 (2001): 187–200. 4. Donato et al., “Glass Half Full?”


5. Hondagneu-Sotelo, “Gender and Immigration”; Donato et al., “Glass Half Full?”; Boyd, “Women and Migration.” 6. For estimates from the period before 2000, see Orlandina de Oliveira, Marina Ariza, and Marcela Eternod, “La Fuerza de Trabajo en México: un Siglo de Cambios,” in La población de México. Tendencias y Perspectivas Sociodemográficas hacia el Siglo XXI, comp. José Gómez de León and Cecilia Rabell, (México: Consejo Nacional de Población y Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2001), 873–923. For the year 2000, see María Adela Angoa, “Patterns of Economic Participation of Mexican-Origin Women in United States of America,” paper presented at the Population Association of America Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, March 31 to April 2, 2005, 28, http:// paa2005.princeton.edu/download.aspx?submissionId=51626. 7. Brígida García, and Orlandina de Oliveira, Trabajo Femenino y Vida Familiar en México (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 1994), 301. 8. Shawn Kanaiaupuni, “Reframing the Migration Question: An Analysis of Men, Women, and Gender in Mexico,” Social Forces LXXVIII.4 (2000): 1316. 9. Francisco Alba, “Change and Continuity in Government Responses to Mexican Migration,” in Population, City and Environment in Contemporary Mexico, comp. José Luis Lezama and José Morelos (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 2006), 262–63; Jorge Santibañez, “Algunos Impactos Empíricos de las Políticas Migratorias de Estados Unidos en los Flujos Migratorios Mexicanos,” Estudios Demográficos y Urbanos XIV.1 (1999): 39–74. 10. In 1986, U.S. Congress approved the Immigration Reform and Control Act, aimed at restricting illegal immigration by increasing border enforcement, implementing sanctions for employers of illegal aliens, establishing several programs to respond to specific demands in agriculture, and offering an amnesty to undocumented migrants already in the United States. See Francisco Alba, “La Política Migratoria después de IRCA,” Estudios Demográficos y Urbanos XIV.1 (1999): 20. Eventually, 2.7 million previously illegal immigrants were legalized under IRCA, a third of which were women. See George Vernez, Immigrant Women in the U.S. Workforce. Who Struggles? Who Succeeds? (Maryland: Lexington Books, 1999), 15. 11. Vernez, Immigrant Women, 15. 12. Katherine Donato, “Current Trends and Patterns of Female Migration: Evidence from Mexico,” International Migration Review XXVII.4 (1992): 748–71; Donato and Kanaiaupuni, “Poverty, Demographic Change, and Migration.” 13. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), approved in 1996, was mainly intended “to create more difficult conditions for immigration in general and for unauthorized immigration in particular.” See Alba, “Change and Continuity,” 267. 14. See Pessar, “Engendering Migration Studies”; Silvia Giorguli-Saucedo, Selene Gaspar, and Paula Leite, La Migración Mexicana y el Mercado de Trabajo Estadounidense. Tendencias, Perspectivas y ¿Oportunidades? (Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Población, 2006), 159. 15. Mary Powers, and William Seltzer, “Occupational Status and Mobility Among Undocumented Immigrants by Gender,” International Migration Review XXXII.1 (1998): 21–49; and Manuel Castells, La Era de la Información. Economía, Sociedad y Cultura. La sociedad Red (México: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2004), 590. 16. Saskia Sassen, “Global Cities and Survival Circuits,” in Global Women. Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy, eds. Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell


Hochschild, (New York: Henry Holt, 2003), 254–74; and Saskia Sassen, “Strategic Instantiantions of Gendering in the Global Economy,” in Gender and U.S. Immigration. Contemporary Trends, ed. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo (California: University of California Press, 2003), 43–60. 17. José Itzigsohn, and Silvia Giorguli, “Incorporation, Transnationalism, and Gender: Immigrant Incorporation and Transnational Participation as Gendered Processes,” International Migration Review XXXIX.4 (2005): 895–920; and Boyd, “Women and Migration.” 18. Giorguli-Saucedo, Gaspar, and Leite, Migración Mexicana. 19. This figure is the average percentage of people residing in Mexico interviewed at the border who had intended to cross over into the United States with no planned returned date between 2000 and 2004. It includes labor- and nonlabor-motivated movements. Secretaría de Gobernación, Consejo Nacional de Población, Instituto Nacional de Migración, Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social, and El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Encuesta sobre Migración en la Frontera Norte de México, 2004. Serie anualizada 1995 y 1999–2004 (Mexico: Secretaría de Gobernación, Consejo Nacional de Población, Instituto Nacional de Migración, Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social, and El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2006), 138. Other nationwide surveys suggest that between 1987 and 2002 one in every five Mexicans moving to live or work in the United States was a woman. Elena Zuñiga, Paula Leite, and Luis Acevedo, Mexico-United States Migration. Regional and State Overview (Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Población, 2005), 235. 20. See also Alejandro Canales, “Los Inmigrantes Latinoamericanos en Estados Unidos: Inserción Laboral con Exclusión Social,” Panorama Actual de las Migraciones en América Latina (Mexico: Universidad de Guadalajara and Asociación Latinoamericana de Población, 2006), 97. 21. Giorguli-Saucedo, Gaspar, and Leite, Migración Mexicana, 114–15. 22. García and Oliveira, Trabajo Femenino. 23. Frank Bean, and Marta Tienda, The Hispanic Population of the United States (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1987), 290. 24. Giorguli-Saucedo, Gaspar, and Leite, Migración Mexicana, 28, 112. 25. Angoa, “Patterns of Economic Participation.” 26. Ibid., and María Adela Angoa, and Antonio Fuentes-Flores, “Labor Force Patterns of Mexican Women and Mexico and United States. What Changes and What Remains?” paper presented at the Population Association of America Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, March 30 to April 1, 2006, 32, http://paa2006.princeton.edu/ abstractViewer.aspx?submissionId=61352. 27. See Figure 3.2 for the Mexican population and Giorguli-Saucedo, Gaspar, and Leite, Migración Mexicana, 28, for total population specific rates. Figure 3.2 also shows the little change in the participation patterns of Mexican women between 1995 and 2005. 28. Pessar, “Engendering Migration Studies.” 29. Giorguli-Saucedo, Gaspar, and Leite, Migración Mexicana. 30. Sassen, “Strategic Instantiations,” 44. 31. Ibid. 32. Pessar, “Engendering Migration Studies”; Sylvia Guendelman, and Auristela PérezItriago, “Double Lives: the Changing Role of Women in Seasonal Migration,”


Women Studies XIII.3 (1987): 249–71; and Itzigsohn and Giorguli, “Incorporation, Transnationalism, and Gender.” 33. Marta Tienda, and Karen Booth, “Migration, Gender and Social Change: A Review and Reformulation,” discussion paper, Series of the Economic Research Center, (Chicago: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 1988), 35; Auristela Pérez-Itriago, and Sylvia Guendelman, “Role Models and Parallel Lives: Mexican Migrant Women Return Home,” in The Impact of International Migration on Developing Countries, ed. Reginald Appleyard (Paris: OCDE, 1989), 269–86. 34. Rodolfo Tuirán, “Estructura Familiar y Trayectorias de Vida en México,” in Procesos Sociales, Población y Familia, ed. Cristina Gomes (México: FLACSO-Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 2001), 25–65; Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática (INEGI), II Conteo de Población y Vivienda (México: Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática, 2005), database. 35. Sylvia Chant, Women-Headed Households. Diversity and Dynamics in the Developing World (London: Macmillan, 1997), 338. 36. Ibid. 37. Frank Hobbs and Nicole Stoops, Demographic Trends in the 20th Century. U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 Special Reports (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2002), 222. 38. Mark Mather, Kerri Rivers, and Linda Jacobsen, “The American Community Survey,” Population Bulletin. A Publication of the Population Reference Bureau LX.3 (2005): 15–16. 39. Daniel Delaunay, and Francois Lestage, “Hogares y Fratrías Mexicanas en Estados Unidos: Varias Historias de Vida, una Historia de Familia,” Estudios Demográficos y Urbanos XIII.3 (1998): 611. 40. Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática (INEGI), II Conteo de Población. 41. Bean and Tienda, The Hispanic Population, 192. 42. Tuirán, “Estructura Familiar.” 43. We should add a methodological note regarding the measurement of headship with the Current Population Survey (CPS) data used for this essay. The CPS records the sex of the household head, defined as the person who owns, rents, or maintains the household. In the cases where the dwelling is jointly rented or owned by both spouses, either one can be reported as household head. Thus, data from the CPS may be overestimating the rate of female headship. Nonetheless, we decided to use it as a proxy of headship, and our data suggest that there are sharp sociodemographic and economic differences between dwellings depending on the sex of the household head (see Table 3.4). Other studies report female headship rates for Hispanic population as high as 34.6 percent in 2000 (see Hobbs and Stoops, Demographic Trends). 44. Pessar, “Engendering Migration Studies.” 45. We looked at the number and sex composition of all the income earners in the household. In Table 3.6 we only present a summary of the results. Additional data is available from the authors on request. 46. Itzigsohn and Giorguli, “Incorporation, Transnationalism, and Gender.” 47. Pessar, “Engendering Migration Studies.” 48. Giorguli-Saucedo, Gaspar, and Leite, Migración Mexicana. 49. The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a nationwide survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau on a regular basis. It gathers information on sociodemographic and


labor variables for a large sample of persons living in United States. See U.S. Census Bureau and Labor Statistics Bureau, Current Population Survey. March Supplement (Washington, DC: Census Bureau and Labor Statistics Bureau, 1995 and 2005), databases, http://www.census.gov/cps. For our analysis, we used information on men and women who reported having been born in Mexico and who were living in United States at the time of the survey (1995 or 2005). The data on poverty status describe whether a person lives in a household with an income below or above the poverty line, as estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau. Income relative to the poverty line has been adjusted to the size of the household. 50. The descriptive statistics of the working-age population refer to the women between fifteen and sixty-five years of age. It excludes all persons who reported being members of the armed forces. The average yearly income (in 2005 dollars) refers to one person’s income earned in a year. For comparison purposes, the 1995 yearly income was inflated to 2005 dollars. We adjusted the annual average earnings of men and women to 2005 dollars using the Consumer Price Index for 1995 and for 2005: Inflation adjusted dollars (2005) = annual average earnings 1995 * (rate of inflation 2005 / rate of inflation 1995). 51. For the purpose of this research, in the cases where we use households instead of individuals as the unit of analysis, we define as Mexican any arrangement whose household head comes from Mexico. The variable on household structure was constructed on the basis of the kinship link of all the household members that are related or not to the head of the household. The term single-person includes households with only one person. The term nuclear defines those comprising the father and/or the mother and coresident single children, if any at all. Extended households refer to those formed by a nuclear family and some other relative(s). The term compound refers to nuclear or extended households with a nonfamily coresident. Finally, coresident households are those where the dwellers do not have any kinship relationship to the household head. The total household income includes total individual wages/earnings, social security income, public assistance or welfare income, bank interests, or dividends received by any of the household members. The term household beneficiaries from social welfare programs refers to those households receiving public assistance payments such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children and other welfare programs. 52. It only includes the income received for the participation in paid jobs. 53. Based on the year of arrival, we grouped the period of arrival in the United States into three categories: before 1986 (before IRCA), between 1986 and 1994 (between IRCA and IRIIRA), and from 1995 to 2005. This grouping is useful for separating the periods by migration policies and for determining the relative importance of recent arrivals among the stock of Mexican women living in the United States.


CHAPTER 4

From Precarious, Low-paying Jobs in Mexico to Precarious, Low-paying Jobs in the United States1 Elaine Levine

igration from Mexico to the United States is not a new phenomenon. It began over 150 years ago, when many Mexican Latinos say, “the border crossed them.” Having lost the war with the United States, Mexico was forced to cede about half of its territory, and movement back and forth between the two countries has been going on ever since. However, over the past two or three decades this ongoing migration has been marked by some very significant quantitative and qualitative changes. While there are no formal agreements defining the process, it can be fairly said that the flow of migrants, which began increasing rapidly in the early 1980s, constitutes a certain degree of de facto labor-market integration and has been highly beneficial for some vested economic and political interests in both countries. Economic restructuring and modernization as implemented in Mexico has created a large supply of redundant labor. Many of Mexico’s unemployed or underemployed and underpaid workers have sought to better their lot by migrating to the United States. While industrial and economic restructuring in the United States has eliminated many fairly well-paid manufacturing jobs, employment opportunities for less skilled and lower paid service workers are on the rise. The significant wage differential makes jobs deemed undesirable by many native-born U.S. workers desirable enough to attract hundreds of thousands of Mexicans who literally risk their lives to enter the United States to work each year.

M

64 • Elaine Levine

The Current Population Survey estimate for 2004 of 10.6 million Mexicanborn people residing in the United States represents more than a thirteen-fold increase over the 1970 census figure. Decennial averages have increased from 122,000 migrants per year in the 1970s to around 450,000 per year since 2000. Undocumented migration continues in the post-IRCA (Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986) period at unprecedented levels. According to Pew Hispanic Center calculations, approximately half of all Mexicans in the United States and from 80 to 85 percent of the more recently arrived Mexicans are unauthorized.2 It also seems that most of them had some sort of employment in Mexico before migrating.3 Furthermore, it may be that the often quoted figure of somewhere around twelve million unauthorized immigrants currently residing in the United States, half or more who are presumed to be Mexican, grossly understates the facts. In a meeting with state government officials, members of the state legislature, and some activists and academics held in the city of Puebla in Mexico in February of 2007, Alfonso Aguilar, head of the citizenship office of the Department of Homeland Security, stated that there could be anywhere from twelve to twenty million undocumented immigrants in the United States. In the latter case, the total number of Mexican-born persons living in the United States at present would be considerably higher than the approximately twelve million usually cited. From the Mexican perspective, there is also evidence that the real figure is higher. Jesus Cervantes, an official from the Banco de México (the Mexican central bank), declared in early February that the exodus of migrants to the United States was much greater than stated estimates; he based his claim on the decline in population in several states. He also suggested that wage differentials would persist and provide a strong incentive to migrate for at least two or three more decades.4 Paradoxically, U.S. legislation and increased border surveillance designed to keep unauthorized immigrants out have in effect worked toward an opposite end, keeping those who do manage to enter the United States there for longer periods of time and increasing efforts to bring in family members as well. Thus for many, the once circulatory patterns of coming and going between Mexico and the United States on a regular basis have given way to more permanent settlement. This has in turn exacerbated the xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiments prevalent among some segments of the U.S. population. Since IRCA, the United States has consistently opposed any further facilitation of freer transit and more permanence for workers from Mexico in spite of the evident demand for such labor. Nevertheless Mexican immigration has continued to grow over the past few decades contrary to the decline that was expected to result from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The purpose of this chapter is to explain why so many Mexicans are willing to leave their homes and families to seek employment in the United States in spite of all the risks and hardships involved. In addition to exploring the circumstances that propitiate migration, I also try to highlight the socioeconomic constraints that migrants confront once they are in the United States. First of all, the

From Precarious, Low-paying Jobs • 65

Mexican government has no interest in restricting this out-migration since it represents an important escape valve for the country’s excess labor supply, and the remittances generated significantly supplement family incomes in Mexico. From the U.S. perspective, the migratory flow provides cheap labor to perform many tasks that are deemed undesirable by most native-born workers, especially at the going wage rates, thus keeping wages and prices down in various sectors. Even as they enjoy the economic gains from lower prices for many goods and services, some segments of the population do not look on Mexican migrants favorably, precisely because of their low socioeconomic status and the fact that so many of them are undocumented. Mexican Emigration and NAFTA One of the “selling points” used to promote NAFTA in the early 1990s was that it was supposed to stem migration from Mexico to the United States. The idea was often espoused by both U.S. President Bill Clinton and Mexican President Carlos Salinas. On a visit to the United States prior to the signing of NAFTA, Salinas warned audiences that if the agreement was not signed, an avalanche of Mexicans would be forced to emigrate north. Only NAFTA, he assured his listeners, could create the jobs and raise the wages in Mexico that would thereby alleviate migratory pressures.5 Framing this idea in more positive terms, he often insisted both at home and abroad that NAFTA would allow Mexico “to export goods and not people.”6 As Manning and Butera have argued, the free trade doctrine invoked to gain acceptance for NAFTA implicitly assumed that as a result the Mexican economy would be modernized, which would in turn “increase jobs, raise wages, reduce consumer prices, elevate the Mexican standard of living and reduce future flows of illegal immigration to the United States.”7 Generalized modernization of production units, higher employment levels, higher wages, lower prices for consumers, and increased living standards that would, in turn, reduce the flows of undocumented migrants from Mexico to the United States, is a tall order indeed for a free trade agreement. Certainly too many expectations were pinned on a partnership of this nature. Although there were never any official declarations to that effect, many Mexicans had originally hoped (and some continue to do so) that the country might somehow benefit from a trade agreement with its more prosperous partners in the same way that Spain, Greece, and Portugal have benefited from partnership arrangements in the European Union. The United States, however, has consistently reiterated that NAFTA is a trade agreement and nothing more. For the past eighteen years (from 1989 on), Mexico has figured among the top three trading partners, in terms of both imports to and exports, of the United States. Since 1997 Mexico has held second place in imports purchased from the United States. For a brief two years (2001 and 2002), Mexico also occupied second place as exporter to the United States, surpassing Japan, but was in turn quickly supplanted by China. However, Mexico’s positive trade balance with the


United States from 1995 to the present is derived more from weakness—reflecting most consumers’ and small-scale investors’ limited purchasing power—than from the strength of the nation’s exports, except of course for oil. It was hoped that NAFTA would help Mexico find new trading partners and interested investors from other regions because of its thus-enhanced relationship with the U.S. market. Instead it seems to have merely intensified connections with and growing subordination to the U.S. economy. Although Mexico now imports more merchandise from Asia than before (approximately 18 percent of total imports), the United States currently purchases almost 90 percent of Mexico’s exports. Foreign trade (imports plus exports) increased from approximately 30 percent of GDP in the pre-NAFTA period to over 50 percent in the postNAFTA years, leaving the Mexican economy all the more vulnerable to economic fluctuations in the United States.8 Mexican migration to the United States began surpassing that originating in Europe during the 1980s. The flow grew as a result of the neoliberal economic policies adopted at the time and intensified further after the implementation of NAFTA contrary to the rhetoric that was used to “sell” the agreement. Enhanced border surveillance after the September 11 attacks seems to have further intensified the process. Thus for many years now, Mexico has had the dubious distinction of being the primary exporter of persons to the United States. However Mexico’s current economic ills cannot be attributed solely to NAFTA nor to globalization in and of itself without taking into consideration the pervasive corruption at all levels and the short-sighted, self-serving economic policies implemented by the dominant elites throughout most of the country’s history. Since Mexico’s economic difficulties began to intensify in the early 1970s, successive governments have been trying to find easy solutions to problems that require more radical changes, which would affect vested interests and alter the status quo in many respects. Declining Real Wages and Pervasive Instability in the Mexican Labor Market Mexico’s highly protective import substitution model, designed to replace imported consumer durables with those domestically produced in order to promote national industries—which had permitted thirty years of generally favorable macroeconomic performance—began to falter in the 1970s. The oil boom in the second half of that decade postponed the impending crisis for a few years, but rapidly led the country into unstable overindebtedness. When oil prices fell to more normal levels at the beginning of the 1980s, reducing the flows of foreign exchange, Mexico was on the verge of defaulting on its international loans. Payment schedules were renegotiated, and the economic adjustment programs initiated marked an abrupt change of course in terms of economic policy. The country abandoned its import substitution-interventionist state model in favor of market liberalization and privatization policies aimed at achieving export-oriented industrialization, which has by and large proven thus far to be an unattainable mirage.


For Mexico, like many other Latin American countries, the 1980s was a lost decade in terms of economic growth and well-being for most of the country’s inhabitants. The subsequent improvement registered during the Salinas administration (1989–2004), rested on very weak foundations including volatile foreign capital flows attracted by high interest rates and manipulation of the exchange rate, as was abruptly evidenced by the 1994 peso crisis. After a severe drop in GDP growth in 1995 by 6.2 percent, the Mexican economy grew at an average rate of just under 5.5 percent for the next five years. In 2001 real GDP growth was totally stagnant (0 percent) and was quite sluggish through 2003, picking up somewhat as of 2004. The improvement registered in the second half of the 1990s, and the subsequent slump in 2001 seemed to indicate that Mexico’s macroeconomic performance now depended more heavily on the U.S. business cycle than before. The U.S. recession of 2001 immediately showed up as a decline in Mexico’s merchandise exports and imports, foreign investment levels, GDP growth rates, and employment growth.9 From 1999 on, job growth slowed considerably compared to the previous decade and even declined absolutely in 2004 (see Tables 4.1 and 4.2). Through the early 1960s, over half of Mexico’s economically active population still worked in the agricultural sector. Agricultural employment, which to a large degree is subsistence agriculture, has declined significantly but erratically since then. According to official figures, after some increases in employment levels in the late 1980s and early 1990s, perhaps related to growth in the production of agricultural export crops, almost three million workers were displaced from agricultural activities between 1997 and 2006. Some of those displaced eventually found work in precarious and low-paying service and construction jobs, while others migrated to the United States. Construction and service-sector employment have grown more or less steadily over the past several years in contrast to manufacturing job losses. Manufacturing expelled almost seven hundred thousand workers between 2000 and 2006. Furthermore only a relatively small proportion (around 18 percent) work in large-scale manufacturing, which produces 80 percent of the sector’s output in terms of value. A slightly smaller number work in maquiladora manufacturing (which temporarily imports components to be assembled in Mexico and then exported as finished goods), where employment grew considerably over the 1990s, then declined between 2000 and 2003, and has not yet returned to its previous high of 1,291,000. Throughout the economy almost half of all those employed (48.4 percent as of mid-2006) work in microenterprises or establishments with up to fifteen employees in manufacturing and up to five in wholesale and retail trade and services. Another approximately 17 percent (17.5 percent in mid 2006) work in small enterprises (sixteen to fifty employees in manufacturing, six to fifty in services, and six to fifteen in sales). Less than one fourth of all persons employed work in medium (up to 250) and large firms (over 250), 12.1 and 10.4 percent respectively in mid-2006.10 Currently almost half of all wage earners, approximately 48 percent, have no written contracts. While almost 20 percent of wage earners worked less than

Table 4.1 Occupational structure in Mexico (in thousands) 1991 1993 1995 Total employed 30,534 32,833 33,881 Average annual change 1,150 524 Agricultural activities 8,190 8,843 8,378 Mining 131 144 122 Petroleum (extraction and refining) 141 77 127 Electricity 151 99 80 (Subtotal) 423 320 329 Goods production 4,752 5,028 5,067 Large-scale manufacturing 953 1,439 1,273 Maquiladoras 467 542 648 Construction 1,872 1,879 1,819 Wholesale and retail trade 4,843 5,617 6,252 Hotels, restaurants, and similar activities 1,306 1,276 1,547 Transportation and communications 1,141 1,362 1,462 Finance, real estate, and professional services 945 1,080 1,104 Other services 5,581 5,922 6,483 Total services 13,816 15,257 16,848 Government and defense 1,295 1,283 1,282 Not specified 185 223 159 Unemployed 433 591 1,168

1996 1997 1998 35,226 37,360 38,618 1,345 2,134 1,258 7,921 9,020 7,817 97 76 108

1999 39,069 451 8,209 73

2000 39,388 319 7,134

2001 2002 39,516 40,038 128 522 7,179 7,234

2003 2004 2005 2006 40,666 41,593 41,115 41,909 628 927 -478 794 6,992 6,802 6,278 6,071

93 202 392 5,722

121 186 383 6,176

107 183 398 6,922

123 191 387 7,283

343 7,631

348 7,338

329 7,056

345 7,035

378 7,180

361 6,882

341 6,946

1,314 754 1,797

1,388 904 1,758

1,444 1,014 2,126

1,457 1,143 2,158

1,478 1,291 2,425

1,413 1,199 2,415

1,343 1,071 2,529

1,290 1,062 2,607

1,253 1,115 2,680

1,244 1,166 3,276

1,250 1,191 3,427

6,116

6,445

6,804

6,582

6,982

7,157

7,376

7,784

8,018

8,049

8,163

1,604

1,583

1,825

1,808

1,906

1,985

2,089

2,213

2,298

2,398

2,466

1,449

1,520

1,693

1,738

1,768

1,783

1,798

1,850

1,902

2,064

2,167

1,361 1,513 1,472 7,106 7,234 7,785 17,686 18,295 19,579

1,459 7,550 19,137

1,468 7,808 19,932

1,728 166 481

1,758 163 676

1,577 180 844

1,587 140 588

1,607 169 616

1,488 1,516 7,948 8,206 20,362 20,988 1,729 144 733

1,746 155 822

1,538 1,670 2,187 2,334 8,363 8,666 7,430 7,663 21,748 22,556 22,151 22,794 1,796 142 992

Source: Anexo Sexto Informe de Gobierno, September 1, 2000, p. 40; Anexo Sexto Informe de Gobierno, September 1, 2006, pp. 226, 236, 257, 258.

1,834 162 927

1,899 274 1,520

1,999 331 1,450

Table 4.2 Occupational structure in Mexico (percentages) Total employed

1991

1993

1995

1996

26.8% 0.4%

26.9% 0.4%

24.7% 0.4%

22.5% 0.3%

0.5% 0.5% 1.4%

0.2% 0.3% 1.0%

0.4% 0.2% 1.0%

0.3% 0.6% 1.1%

Goods production 15.6% Large-scale manufacturing 3.1% Maquiladoras 1.5%

15.3% 4.4% 1.7%

15.0% 3.8% 1.9%

Construction 6.1% Wholesale and retail trade 15.9% Hotels, restaurants, and similar activities 4.3% Transportation and communications 3.7% Finance, real estate, and professional services 3.1% Other services 18.3%

5.7% 17.1%

Total services 45.2% Government and defense 4.2% Not specified 0.6%

Agricultural activities Mining Petroleum (extraction and refining) Electricity (Subtotal)

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

24.1% 20.2% 0.2% 0.3%

21.0% 0.2%

18.1%

18.2%

0.3% 0.5% 1.0%

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

18.1% 17.2% 16.4% 15.3% 14.5%

0.3% 0.5% 1.0%

0.3% 0.5% 1.0%

0.9%

0.9%

16.2% 3.7% 2.1%

16.5% 17.9% 3.7% 3.7% 2.4% 2.6%

18.6% 3.7% 2.9%

19.4% 3.8% 3.3%

18.6% 3.6% 3.0%

17.6% 17.3% 17.3% 16.7% 16.6% 3.4% 3.2% 3.0% 3.0% 3.0% 2.7% 2.6% 2.7% 2.8% 2.8%

5.4% 18.5%

5.1% 17.4%

4.7% 17.3%

5.5% 17.6%

5.5% 16.8%

6.2% 17.7%

6.1% 18.1%

6.3% 18.4%

3.9%

4.6%

4.6%

4.2%

4.7%

4.6%

4.8%

5.0%

5.2%

5.4%

5.5%

5.8%

5.9%

4.1%

4.3%

4.1%

4.1%

4.4%

4.4%

4.5%

4.5%

4.5%

4.5%

4.6%

5.0%

5.2%

3.3% 18.0%

3.3% 19.1%

3.9% 20.2%

4.0% 19.4%

3.8% 20.2%

3.7% 19.3%

3.7% 19.8%

3.8% 20.1%

3.8% 20.5%

46.5% 3.9% 0.7%

49.7% 3.8% 0.5%

50.2% 4.5% 0.5%

49.0% 50.7% 4.2% 4.2% 0.4% 0.4%

49.0% 4.4% 0.4%

50.6% 4.5% 0.4%

51.5% 4.4% 0.4%

52.4% 53.5% 54.2% 53.9% 54.4% 4.4% 4.4% 4.4% 4.6% 4.8% 0.4% 0.3% 0.4% 0.7% 0.8%

0.8%

0.8%

0.9%

0.9%

0.8%

6.4% 6.4% 8.0% 8.2% 19.1% 19.3% 19.6% 19.5%

3.8% 4.0% 5.3% 5.6% 20.6% 20.8% 18.1% 18.3%

Source: Author’s calculations using data from Anexo Sexto Informe de Gobierno, September 1, 2000, p. 40; and Anexo Sexto Informe de Gobierno, September 1, 2006, pp. 226, 236, 257–58.


thirty-five hours per week, 27 percent reported working more than forty-eight hours. Approximately 40 percent receive no fringe benefits whatsoever. Only 32 percent of all those employed are covered by the Mexican social security system, which provides health care for workers and their immediate families; and an additional 5.7 percent are covered by the social security system for government employees.11 Mexican statistics, in general, and employment data, in particular, are not easily comparable over time. Consistent long-term series are extremely hard to find or construct. Furthermore the definition of what constitutes employment is very lax. The economically active population consists of all working age persons (twelve years and over through 2004, fourteen years and over from 2005 onward) who carried out some form of economic activity or who actively sought to do so during the two months prior to the reference week. The employed population is defined as all persons of working age who, during the reference week, participated in economic activities for at least an hour or a day per week in exchange for a monetary wage, nonmonetary wage, or no payment; those who did not work but do have a job; and those who would be starting a job within the space of a month. It also includes workers in the United States whose branch of economic activity is unknown.12 Those in the economically active population who do not meet any of the aforementioned criteria are counted as “openly” unemployed. Needless to say, the official “open unemployment rate” of 4.4 percent for the first half of 2006 grossly understates Mexico’s job deficit in a blatant attempt to cover up the fact that half or more of those who are counted as employed only work sporadically and mainly in the informal economy. According to Sandra Polaski, informal employment rose throughout most of the 1990s approaching 50 percent of the total in 1995 and 1996 “following the peso crisis and the subsequent economic contraction. After economic growth resumed in the late 1990s the informal sector shrank somewhat, but still accounts for about 46 percent of Mexican jobs.”13 An International Labor Organization (ILO) report released in 2004 maintains that informal sector employment in Mexico has increased from 55 to 62 percent of total employment over the past few years.14 These considerations should be kept in mind when analyzing Mexico’s employment statistics. A figure frequently cited in both academic and political circles is that Mexico currently needs to create at least one million jobs a year to more or less maintain the status quo in terms of employment ratios, or only slightly less than the yearly average of 1,144,000 jobs created between 1991 and 1999, according to official data. According to the same source, a yearly average of only 406,000 new jobs were created from 2000 to mid-2006.15 The deficit of approximately 600,000 jobs coincides more or less with Jeffrey Passel’s estimate of 575,000 Mexicans per year migrating to the United States since 2000.16 It is often argued that the real driving force behind migration to the United States is not the lack of jobs in Mexico, precarious as they may be, but rather the lack of adequately paying jobs—in other words, the wage differential.17 In


addition to all the problems of underemployment, disguised unemployment, and the growing informal economy, the Mexican labor force bears the additional burden of declining real wages, which has been eroding individual and family incomes for over twenty years. Price control policies were implemented after the 1982 crisis, and their main objective has been to keep wages down. Using official data, it has been calculated that between 1982 and 2002 the nominal wage increased 150.5 percent while at the same time prices rose 618 percent. As a result, purchasing power declined by 75 percent.18 The United States federally mandated minimum wage of $5.15 an hour is approximately ten times greater than the Mexican minimum wage of 47.05 pesos in 2006, which fluctuates around $4.20 a day depending on the exchange rate. Out of the working population in Mexico, 22 percent earn the minimum wage or less; almost two thirds earn only up to three times the minimum; and a total of 83 percent earn only up to five times the minimum wage or less, which averages out to slightly more than one half of the weekly minimum in the United States.19 The precarious employment conditions and declining real wage levels in Mexico make migration to the United States seem like an ever more viable alternative. Every state in Mexico now has international migrants; and although the greatest numbers still originate in the traditional sending states located in the central-western region, newer sending regions in the center, south, and southeast show the highest growth rates for migrants. Significant growth in the number of female migrants is another recent trend along with the extraordinary growth (over 600 percent) in remittances sent by migrants to their families in Mexico between 1995 and 2006. It is estimated that slightly less than 5 percent of all Mexican households receive remittances that represent about 36 percent of their total income.20 The Central Bank (Banco de México) recognized that as of 2003, remittances from workers in the United States became Mexico’s second source of foreign exchange, after oil exports, and that these flows were essential in bolstering consumer spending in an otherwise stagnant economy from 2001 to 2003.21 Up until fairly recently, the Mexican government was generally accused of ignoring the vicissitudes of the country’s international migrants. Clearly the government has no interest in limiting the growing out-migration. The main concern is how to assure that those who have gone will continue to send money back to their family members remaining in Mexico. Recent administrations have made active attempts to maintain and strengthen migrants’ ties to Mexico by approving dual citizenship, supporting and promoting hometown associations, issuing identification cards to those who solicit them at Mexican consulates in the United States, and establishing absentee voting in presidential elections to assure the continued flow of remittances. In spite of the adverse labor-market conditions in Mexico and the fact that many potential migrants have family members, relatives, or acquaintances who reside in the United States, emigration would not have increased nearly so much as it has if migrants were not able to find employment in the United States with relative ease.


Mexican Migrants in the U.S. Labor Market Just as remittances from emigrants have become vital for the Mexican economy, immigrant labor is becoming more and more important for the U.S. economy. The United States “experienced the greatest wave of new foreign immigration in its history, with nearly 14 million net new immigrants arriving on its shores between 1990 and 2000.”22 According to Andrew Sum and his coauthors, this record new wave of immigrants played a crucial role in filling the new and old jobs in what had been referred to before the 2001 recession as the “New American Economy.” While many—including George W. Bush and Alan Greenspan—have recognized that immigrant labor played an important role in the unprecedented economic expansion that occurred between 1991 and 2001, others argue that its presence is detrimental to native workers, particularly during what has been labeled by many as a “jobless recovery” after the last recession.23 Immigrants constitute 15 percent of the U.S. labor force, and 31 percent of these foreign-born labor force participants are from Mexico.24 In spite of the increasing difficulties Mexican migrants confront, because of enhanced border security since 2001 and frequent INS raids at worksites in 2006, it seems that they are still finding better employment perspectives north of the border than at home. Since their main motivation is work with better wages, it is not surprising that the Mexican immigrant population has a higher labor-force participation rate than any other group. Mexican-born workers had a participation rate of 70.2 percent altogether in 2006 (88 percent for men, 47 percent for women) compared to 67.9 percent for the foreign-born population (81 percent for men, 55 percent for women) and 65.3 percent (men 71 percent, women 60 percent) for the native-born population.25 Even though the intensity of labor-force participation tends to subside somewhat among subsequent generations, the Mexican origin population (which includes both first-generation migrants and their offspring), continues to have the highest overall labor force participation rate in the United States (see Figure 4.1). During the first quarter of 2006, the unemployment rate for the Mexicanborn population in the United States (4.9 percent) “was slightly higher than that of the total foreign-born population (4.4 percent), but lower than that of native workers (5.1 percent).”26 For the past three decades, unemployment rates for Mexican-origin Latinos, and in fact Latinos in general, have been consistently higher that the rates for whites and lower than those for African Americans. Unemployment rates for 2005 reflecting this pattern are shown in Figure 4.2. Native-born workers are mainly employed in professional and related occupations, followed by management and financial occupations, service occupations, and office and administrative support (see Table 4.3). The foreign born, in general, are more heavily employed in services, followed by professional and related occupations where their participation is a few percentage points below that of native-born workers. However the Mexican born hardly participate at all in this latter category. They are mainly employed in service occupations followed by construction work and then production occupations.

Figure 4.1 U.S. labor force participation rates, 2005 Source: Employment and Earnings 2006, 210–11.

Figure 4.2 U.S. unemployment rates, 2005 Source: Employment and Earnings 2006, 210–11.

Table 4.3 Workers employed in major occupational groups in the United States by national origin and gender, 2006 Mexican born

Total employed (thousands) Percentage of total employed Occupations (percentages) Management/financial Professional and related Service occupations Sales and related Office and administrative support Farming/fishing/forestry Construction Installation/maintenance/repair Production occupations Transportation

All Foreign born

Native born

Total

Men

Women

Total

Men

Women

Total

Men

Women

6,661 4.7% 100% 3.6 3.6 29.1 5.9 5.2 4.0 22.9 3.0 14.9 7.9

4,721 3.3% 100% 3.4 2.2 24.9 3.6 2.7 4.5 31.8 4.1 13.6 9.1

1,940 1.4% 100% 4.0 7.0 39.1 11.6 11.3 2.7 1.0 0.2 18.1 4.9

21,591 15.2% 100% 9.7 17.0 23.1 9.2 8.4 1.4 11.5 3.1 10.0 6.5

13,029 9.2% 100% 9.6 14.9 18.5 7.6 4.7 1.9 18.7 4.9 10.4 9.0

8,562 6.0% 100% 9.9 20.0 30.2 11.7 13.9 0.8 0.6 0.0 9.5 2.8

120,556 84.8% 100% 15.7 20.8 15.4 12.0 14.6 0.1 5.5 3.7 6.0 6.0

62,951 44.3% 100% 17.1 16.5 12.2 11.6 6.6 0.7 10.4 6.9 8.3 9.8

57,605 40.5% 100% 13.8 25.6 18.9 12.4 23.3 0.2 0.3 0.3 3.5 1.8

Source: Current Population Survey March 2006, cited in Migration Facts # 14.


Even though women now constitute almost half of the U.S. labor force, they still confront high degrees of de facto occupational segregation and wage discrimination, in spite of legislation prohibiting such practices. In general there are more women employed, both relatively (as a percentage of all women employed) and absolutely (as a percentage of all workers), in what are often referred to as white-collar and pink-collar occupations that include professional and related occupations, office and administrative support, and service occupations. Within each of these broad general categories, women and especially Latina women tend to be concentrated in the more subordinate and lower paying sub categories. Even for the same specific occupational categories, women tend to have lower median weekly earnings than men do.27 Furthermore, Latina and African American women experience labor-market discrimination derived from the combined effects of both gender and race or ethnicity.28 Historically racial and ethnic differences, along with the aforementioned gender differences, have had an important impact on the labor-market structure in the United States. Since both the native-born and the immigrant populations are made up of several racial and ethnic groups, it is pertinent for this analysis to compare labor-market outcomes for Mexican-origin workers (firstgeneration immigrants and their offspring) with those of the other predominant groups. U. S. Labor Department data shows that in 2005 Mexican-origin workers were more or less evenly distributed among four of the five major occupational categories: service occupations, 24.1 percent; natural resources, construction, and maintenance, 22 percent; sales and office occupations, 20 percent; and production, transportation, and material moving, 19.7 percent (see Tables 4.4 and 4.5). Mexican-origin workers’ participation in management and professional and related occupations (14.2 percent) was considerably lower than that of any other racial or ethnic group and contrasts sharply with whites and with Asians in the United States, among whom there is also a very high percentage of foreign born.29 Contrary to popular belief, only 3.1 percent of the Mexican-origin population—and just slightly more for all Mexican-born workers (4 percent)—were employed in farming, fishing, and forestry; but that far exceeds any other group’s participation in those activities. Some of the other major subcategories had much higher percentages of Mexican-origin workers. This is the case for construction and extraction (15.2 percent), production occupations (11.2 percent), and transportation and material moving occupations (8.6 percent), where there are some relatively high-paying jobs for highly skilled and experienced workers, along with many low-paying jobs for the less skilled. Approximately 11 percent were employed in office- and administrative-support jobs. These tend to be femaledominated occupations with moderately low earnings, which is also the case for many of the sales-related occupations that employed 8.7 percent of the Mexicanorigin labor force. An additional 9.1 and 8.8 percent, respectively, work in food preparation, serving, building, and grounds cleaning and maintenance, where wages tend to be extremely low.30

Table 4.4 Employed persons in the United States by occupation, race, and ethnicity, 2005 (in thousands) Occupation Management, professional, and related occupations Management, business, and financial Management occupations Business and financial operations Professional and related occupations Computer and mathematical occupations Architecture and engineering occupations Life, physical, and social science occupations Community and social services occupations Legal occupations Education, training, and library occupations Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media Healthcare practitioner and technical occupations Service occupations Healthcare support occupations Protective service occupations Food preparation and serving related occupations Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance Personal care and service occupations Sales and office occupations Sales and related occupations Office and administrative support occupations Natural resources, construction, and maintenance Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations Construction and extraction occupations Installation, maintenance, and repair occupations Production, transportation, and material moving Production occupations Transportation and material moving occupations Total Source: Employment and Earnings, January 2006, pp. 224–25.

Total 49,245 20,450 14,685 5,765 28,795 3,246 2,793 1,406 2,138 1,614 8,144 2,736 6,748 23,133 3,092 2,894 7,374 5,241 4,531 35,962 16,433 19,529 15,348 976 9,145 5,226 18,041 9,378 8,664 141,730

White 41,475 17,668 12,945 4,723 23,807 2,481 2,327 1,171 1,645 1,451 6,866 2,402 5,455 17,817 2,121 2,195 5,888 4,130 3,484 29,658 13,881 15,777 13,582 882 8,158 4,542 14,418 7,526 6,892 116,949

Black 3,985 1,451 888 564 2,533 224 143 71 365 96 804 160 670 3,656 766 560 857 828 645 4,033 1,507 2,526 1,086 50 643 394 2,552 1,160 1,393 15,313

Asian 2,898 983 611 372 1,915 479 277 142 60 41 302 117 496 983 127 46 397 142 271 1,455 721 733 277 15 106 155 632 457 175 6,244

Latino 3,174 1,330 924 406 1,844 172 170 63 209 111 557 195 367 4,434 426 300 1,518 1,605 584 4,000 1,742 2,258 3,552 394 2,450 790 3,473 1,875 1,597 18,632

Mex. 1,687 728 499 230 958 75 84 34 105 60 327 99 174 2,859 241 173 1,081 1,047 316 2,380 1,040 1,340 2,616 364 1,805 447 2,346 1,328 1,018 11,887

Puerto Rican 360 136 94 42 224 26 16 6 35 11 60 25 45 335 52 48 86 92 57 427 153 274 140 3 73 64 231 106 125 1,492

Cuban 215 94 65 30 120 15 11 6 11 8 24 16 29 95 12 11 22 38 11 199 92 107 102 1 61 40 119 45 74 730

Table 4.5 Employed persons in the United States by occupation, race, and ethnicity, 2005 (percentages) Occupation Management, professional, and related occupations Management, business, and financial Management occupations Business and financial operations Professional and related occupations Computer and mathematical occupations Architecture and engineering occupations Life, physical, and social science occupations Community and social services occupations Legal occupations Education, training, and library occupations Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media Healthcare practitioner and technical occupations Service occupations Healthcare support occupations Protective service occupations Food preparation and serving related occupations Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance Personal care and service occupations Sales and office occupations Sales and related occupations Office and administrative support occupations Natural resources, construction, and maintenance Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations Construction and extraction occupations Installation, maintenance, and repair occupations Production, transportation, and material moving Production occupations Transportation and material moving occupations Total

Total 34.7% 14.4% 10.4% 4.1% 20.3% 2.3% 2.0% 1.0% 1.5% 1.1% 5.7% 1.9% 4.8% 16.3% 2.2% 2.0% 5.2% 3.7% 3.2% 25.4% 11.6% 13.8% 10.8% 0.7% 6.5% 3.7% 12.7% 6.6% 6.1% 100%

Source: Author’s calculations based on Employment and Earnings, January 2006, pp. 224–25.

White 35.5% 15.1% 11.1% 4.0% 20.4% 2.1% 2.0% 1.0% 1.4% 1.2% 5.9% 2.1% 4.7% 15.2% 1.8% 1.9% 5.0% 3.5% 3.0% 25.4% 11.9% 13.5% 11.6% 0.8% 7.0% 3.9% 12.3% 6.4% 5.9% 100%

Black 26.0% 9.5% 5.8% 3.7% 16.5% 1.5% 0.9% 0.5% 2.4% 0.6% 5.3% 1.0% 4.4% 23.9% 5.0% 3.7% 5.6% 5.4% 4.2% 26.3% 9.8% 16.5% 7.1% 0.3% 4.2% 2.6% 16.7% 7.6% 9.1% 100%

Asian 46.4% 15.7% 9.8% 6.0% 30.7% 7.7% 4.4% 2.3% 1.0% 0.7% 4.8% 1.9% 7.9% 15.7% 2.0% 0.7% 6.4% 2.3% 4.3% 23.3% 11.5% 11.7% 4.4% 0.2% 1.7% 2.5% 10.1% 7.3% 2.8% 100%

Latino 17.0% 7.1% 5.0% 2.2% 9.9% 0.9% 0.9% 0.3% 1.1% 0.6% 3.0% 1.0% 2.0% 23.8% 2.3% 1.6% 8.1% 8.6% 3.1% 21.5% 9.3% 12.1% 19.1% 2.1% 13.1% 4.2% 18.6% 10.1% 8.6% 100%

Mex. 14.2% 6.1% 4.2% 1.9% 8.1% 0.6% 0.7% 0.3% 0.9% 0.5% 2.8% 0.8% 1.5% 24.1% 2.0% 1.5% 9.1% 8.8% 2.7% 20.0% 8.7% 11.3% 22.0% 3.1% 15.2% 3.8% 19.7% 11.2% 8.6% 100%

PRican 24.1% 9.1% 6.3% 2.8% 15.0% 1.7% 1.1% 0.4% 2.3% 0.7% 4.0% 1.7% 3.0% 22.5% 3.5% 3.2% 5.8% 6.2% 3.8% 28.6% 10.3% 18.4% 9.4% 0.2% 4.9% 4.3% 15.5% 7.1% 8.4% 100%

Cuban 29.5% 12.9% 8.9% 4.1% 16.4% 2.1% 1.5% 0.8% 1.5% 1.1% 3.3% 2.2% 4.0% 13.0% 1.6% 1.5% 3.0% 5.2% 1.5% 27.3% 12.6% 14.7% 14.0% 0.1% 8.4% 5.5% 16.3% 6.2% 10.1% 100%


Another way of analyzing labor-market outcomes for Mexican-origin workers is to see how concentrated they are in specific occupational categories and to look at earnings levels in categories that have particularly high percentages of Mexicans or Latinos. An analysis of the U.S. Labor Department’s detailed occupation tables reveals that in all of the cases where the concentration of Latinos was high or very high (at least 50 percent above the percentage they represent in the number of employed, which was 13.3 percent in 2005, in other words, 19.6 percent or more in 2005), median weekly earnings were significantly lower than the overall median of $651 per week (see Table 4.6).31 The same holds true for most of the cases where Latino participation is numerically high, 110,000 workers or more (see Table 4.7). In three of the four categories where median earnings were above the overall median, the percentage of Latinos employed was lower than their participation in the labor force as a whole. Thus even at this highly aggregated national level, it is quite clear that Latino workers are extremely concentrated in low-wage or otherwise undesirable or dangerous jobs. Increased Latino presence since the early 1990s is quite noticeable in some occupations, where it has almost or even more than doubled since then, such as cement masons, drywall installers, roofers, carpenters, food preparation workers, carpet and tile installers, and butchers and other meat and poultry processors. In other cases where the percent of Latinos is particularly high—grounds maintenance workers, maids and housekeepers, sewing-machine operators, textilepressing-machine operators, or graders and sorters of agricultural products, for example—the increment is considerable but less dramatic because their presence was already quite high over a decade ago. While Latino presence in agricultural occupations appears to have grown, increasing from under 20 to over 40 percent of those employed, the relative gain is hiding a real decline of one third in the number employed (from 621,000 to 393,000 ) because total employment in agriculture dropped by more than 70 percent over the last decade or so.32 There has also been significant growth in Latino concentration by industry as well, which generally coincides with the occupations data. Between 1990 and 2005, Latino participation in total employment grew from 7.5 to 13.1 percent, while in animal slaughtering and processing it grew from 17 to 39.9 percent (see Table 4.8). In construction Latino participation increased from 8.5 to 23 percent. Carpet and rug mills showed the most spectacular increase during this period, from 10.1 to 31.6 percent. Dalton, Georgia is the most important center for rug and carpet production in the United States. Now its mills rely heavily on Mexican labor, and around 40 percent of the town’s population is Latino, predominately Mexican. Many other industries such as landscaping services, cut and sew apparel, car washes, crop production, food manufacturing, dry-cleaning services, and traveler accommodation, for example, are becoming more and more dependent on Latino labor. At the same time, relative earnings (with respect to the overall median), in most occupations with high percentages of Latinos have declined over the past fifteen years (see Table 4.9).

Table 4.6 Occupations with the highest percentages of Latino employees Occupations 2005

% Latino

Total, 16 years and over Cement masons, concrete finishers, and terrazzo workers Drywall installers, ceiling tile installers, and tapers Roofers Butchers and other meat, poultry, and fish processing workers Packers and packagers, hand Construction laborers Graders and sorters, agricultural products Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations Carpet, floor, and tile installers and finishers Helpers, construction trades Helpers, production workers Packaging and filling machine operators and tenders Grounds maintenance workers Pressers, textile, garment, and related materials Dishwashers Maids and housekeeping cleaners Painters, construction, and maintenance Brickmasons, blockmasons, and stonemasons Sewing machine operators Cleaners of vehicles and equipment Dining room and cafeteria attendants and bartender helpers Laundry and dry-cleaning workers Cooks Cutting workers Pest control workers Janitors and building cleaners Upholsterers Miscellaneous media and communications workers Parking lot attendants Painting workers Bakers Food preparation workers Carpenters Tailors, dressmakers, and sewers Crushing, grinding, polishing, mixing, and blending workers Industrial truck and tractor operators Baggage porters, bellhops, and concierges Food batchmakers Electrical, electronics, and electromechanical assemblers Shipping, receiving, and traffic clerks Molders and molding machine setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic First-line supervisors/managers of housekeeping and janitorial workers Welding, soldering, and brazing workers Laborers and freight, stock, and material movers, hand Job printers Food servers, nonrestaurant Refuse and recyclable material collectors

13.1 54.4 46.8 42.0 42.0 41.6 40.8 40.5 40.3 40.0 38.6 37.8 37.6 37.4 35.7 35.4 35.2 35.0 33.7 33.6 33.5 30.4 29.4 29.3 28.6 27.8 27.3 26.8 26.5 25.8 25.7 24.6 24.4 24.4 24.3 24.1 23.8 21.9 21.5 21.1 20.7

Median # Latino weekly earnings $651 18,566,630 $519 64,736 $511 117,936 $500 115,080 $444 122,640 $372 188,032 $502 608,328 $402 27,945 $372 393,328 $482 118,800 $437 43,618 n.d 21,924 $410 113,928 $389 443,938 n.d 24,990 $296 93,456 $335 486,464 $466 241,150 $598 82,565 $360 90,384 $385 116,245 $347 113,392 $372 52,332 $336 538,534 $496 28,600 $508 19,182 $408 566,202 n.d 15,276 n.d 15,900 n.d 16,770 $562 50,886 $411 45,018 $321 162,016 $556 438,468 n.d 22,113 $498 22,413 $499 128,758 $457 15,111 $465 18,275 $473 44,099 $488 112,401

20.4

$529

12,240

20.0 20.0 19.6 19.5 19.4 19.1

$537 $599 $456 n.d $409 $491

58,200 115,200 353,976 11,310 28,518 13,943

Source: Author’s calculations based on Employment and Earnings, January 2006.

Table 4.7 Occupations with the highest numbers of Latino employees Occupations 2005

# Latino

Total, 16 years and over 18,566,630 Construction laborers 608,328 Janitors and building cleaners 566,202 Driver/sales workers and truck drivers 559,076 Cooks 538,534 Cashiers 498,150 Maids and housekeeping cleaners 486,464 Grounds maintenance workers 443,938 Carpenters 438,468 Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations 393,328 Retail salespersons 383,264 Laborers and freight, stock, and material movers, hand 353,976 First-line supervisors/managers of retail sales workers 317,070 Secretaries and administrative assistants 300,914 Waiters and waitresses 294,831 Nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides 285,000 Stock clerks and order fillers 248,370 Painters, construction, and maintenance 241,150 Child care workers 240,549 Customer service representatives 240,123 Packers and packagers, hand 188,032 Automotive service technicians and mechanics 168,858 Receptionists and information clerks 167,872 Food preparation workers 162,016 Elementary and middle school teachers 154,344 First-line supervisors/managers of office and administrative support 143,820 First-line supervisors/managers of non-retail sales workers 138,572 Teacher assistants 132,580 Industrial truck and tractor operators 128,758 Electricians 128,652 First-line supervisors/managers of construction trades and extraction 127,512 Office clerks, general 126,415 Butchers and other meat, poultry, and fish processing workers 122,640 Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks 122,304 Pipelayers, plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters 119,641 Carpet, floor, and tile installers and finishers 118,800 Drywall installers, ceiling tile installers, and tapers 117,936 Cleaners of vehicles and equipment 116,245 Welding, soldering, and brazing workers 115,200 Roofers 115,080 Packaging and filling machine operators and tenders 113,928 Dining room and cafeteria attendants and bartender helpers 113,392 Shipping, receiving, and traffic clerks 112,401 Food service managers 111,480 First-line supervisors/managers of production and operating workers 108,500 Accountants and auditors 107,712 Personal and home care aides 104,208 Registered nurses 103,888 Source: Author’s calculations based on Employment and Earnings, January 2006.

% Latino

Median weekly earnings

13.1 40.8 27.3 16.4 29.3 16.2 35.2 37.4 24.4 40.3 11.8 19.6 9.0 8.6 15.3 15.0 17.0 35.0 18.1 13.1 41.6 17.7 12.2 24.4 5.9

$651 $502 $408 $624 $336 $336 $335 $389 $556 $372 $494 $456 $631 $562 $352 $388 $427 $466 $332 $524 $372 $629 $466 $321 $826

9.0 9.8 14.0 23.8 15.1

$686 $881 $398 $499 $713

12.6 13.1 42.0 8.4 18.1 40.0 46.8 33.5 20.0 42.0 37.6 30.4 20.7 12.0

$830 $518 $444 $555 $703 $482 $511 $385 $599 $500 $410 $347 $488 $651

12.5 6.4 15.6 4.3

$761 $887 $390 $935

From Precarious, Low-paying Jobs • 81 Table 4.8 Industries with high percentages of Latinos, 2005 (in thousands) Industry

Total % Latino % Latino % increase Absolute employed 1990 2005 from 1990 increase in 2005 to 2005 1990–2005

Total employed Animal slaughtering and processing Landscaping services Cut and sew apparel Car washes Private households Fruit and vegetable preserving and specialty foods Services to buildings and dwellings Carpet and rug mills Crop production Support activities for agriculture and forestry Food manufacturing Bakeries, except retail Warehousing and storage Dry cleaning and laundry services Retail bakeries Textiles, apparel, and leather Specialty food stores Traveler accommodation Soap, cleaning compounds, and cosmetics Construction

141730 471 1133 301 155 812

7.5% 17.0% n.d. 22.6% n.d. 17.6%

13.1% 39.3% 37.5% 35.8% 35.4% 33.9%

74.7% 131.2%

5.6% 22.3%

58.4%

13.2%

92.6%

16.3%

161 1161 73 903

21.0% 18.0% 10.1% 19.5%

32.8% 32.3% 31.6% 29.1%

56.2% 79.4% 212.9% 49.2%

11.8% 14.3% 21.5% 9.6%

139 1506 163 306 323 168 871 278 1448

15.4% 14.1% n.d. 13.8% 14.6% 14.4% 20.2% n.d. 15.2%

27.9% 27.7% 27.3% 24.7% 24.5% 24.4% 24.4% 24.4% 23.7%

81.2% 96.5%

12.5% 13.6%

79.0% 67.8% 69.4% 20.8%

10.9% 9.9% 10.0% 4.2%

55.9%

8.5%

141 11197

14.5% 8.5%

23.6% 23.0%

62.8% 170.6%

9.1% 14.5%

Source: Author’s calculations based on Employment and Earnings, January 2006, pp. 234–38; and January 1991, pp.196–99.

Although Latinos are a significant and growing part of the U.S. labor force, “working Latinos have had persistently high rates of poverty and unemployment, as well as low incomes.”33 Since the early 1980s, in the case of female workers, and from the early 1990s on, for men, Latino workers have had lower median earnings than any other population group (see Figures 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, and 4.6); and as the graphs show the gaps are getting wider. Among Latinos, those of Mexican origin tend to have the lowest incomes.34 The differences in median family and household incomes for Latinos and African Americans with respect to non-Hispanic whites are also growing (see Figures 4.7 and 4.8). Latino families and households tend to have slightly higher incomes than African Americans, not because of higher individual earnings, but rather because there are usually more workers per family or household. Adolescents often drop out of high school before graduating in order to contribute to family income or, as is sometimes the case for adolescent girls, to take care of younger siblings so that the mother can work outside the home. These only slightly higher incomes

Table 4.9 Median earnings compared (1990 to 2005) in occupations with high percentages of Latinos, 2005 Occupations 2005 Total, 16 years and over Cement masons, concrete finishers, and terrazzo workers Drywall installers, ceiling tile installers, and tapers Roofers Butchers and other meat, poultry, and fish processing workers Packers and packagers, hand Construction laborers Graders and sorters, agricultural products Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations Carpet, floor, and tile installers and finishers Helpers, construction trades Helpers, production workers Packaging and filling machine operators and tenders Grounds maintenance workers Pressers, textile, garment, and related materials Dishwashers Maids and housekeeping cleaners Painters, construction, and maintenance Brickmasons, blockmasons, and stonemasons Sewing machine operators Cleaners of vehicles and equipment Dining room and cafeteria attendants and bartender helpers Laundry and dry-cleaning workers Cooks Cutting workers Pest control workers Janitors and building cleaners Upholsterers Miscellaneous media and communications workers Parking lot attendants Painting workers Bakers Food preparation workers Carpenters Tailors, dressmakers, and sewers Crushing, grinding, polishing, mixing, and blending workers

Median weekly earnings 1990 $415 $414 $440 $341 $314 $258 $347 n.d. $257 $376 $272 $314 $313 $267 $222 n.d. $220 $382 $506 $292 $249 n.d. $220 $226 $319 n.d. $280 n.d. n.d. n.d. $385 $304 $215 $412 n.d. $391

Source: Author’s calculations based on Employment and Earnings, January 2006 and January 1991.

Median weekly earnings 2005 100% 99.8% 106.0% 82.2% 75.7% 62.2% 83.6% 61.9% 90.6% 65.5% 75.7% 75.4% 64.3% 53.5% 53.0% 92.0% 121.9% 70.4% 60.0% 53.0% 54.5% 76.9% 67.5% 92.8% 73.3% 51.8% 99.3% 94.2%

$651 $519 $511 $500 $444 $372 $502 $402 $372 $482 $437 $410 $389 $296 $335 $466 $598 $360 $385 $347 $372 $336 $496 $508 $408 $562 $411 $321 $556 $498

100.0% 79.7% 78.5% 76.8% 68.2% 57.1% 77.1% 61.8% 57.1% 74.0% 67.1% 63.0% 59.8% 45.5% 51.5% 71.6% 91.9% 55.3% 59.1% 53.3% 57.1% 51.6% 76.2% 78.0% 62.7% 86.3% 63.1% 49.3% 85.4% 76.5%

% Latino 2005

# Latino 2005

13.1 54.4 46.8 42.0 42.0 41.6 40.8 40.5 40.3 40.0 38.6 37.8 37.6 37.4 35.7 35.4 35.2 35.0 33.7 33.6 33.5 30.4 29.4 29.3 28.6 27.8 27.3 26.8 26.5 25.8 25.7 24.6 24.4 24.4 24.3 24.1

18,566,630 64,736 117,936 115,080 122,640 188,032 608,328 27,945 393,328 118,800 43,618 21,924 113,928 443,938 24,990 93,456 486,464 241,150 82,565 90,384 116,245 113,392 52,332 538,534 28,600 19,182 566,202 15,276 15,900 16,770 50,886 45,018 162,016 438,468 22,113 22,413

Figure 4.3 Median income for all males ages sixteen and over, 1970–2005 (in 2005 dollars)

Figure 4.4 Median income for all males working full time, 1970–2005 (in 2005 dollars)

Figure 4.5 Median income for all women ages sixteen and over, 1970–2005 (in 2000 dollars)

Figure 4.6 Median income for all women working full time, 1970–2005 (in 2005 dollars)

Figure 4.7 Median family income, 1970–2004 (in 2004 dollars)

Figure 4.8 Median household income, 1970–2005 (in 2005 dollars)


(for families and households) are divided among a greater number of individuals due to larger families and more extended households among Latinos; so from 1988 on their per capita income has been somewhat lower than African Americans’ and much lower than non Hispanic whites’ (see Figure 4.9). Earnings differentials for Latino immigrants and subsequent generations can be largely explained by differences in educational attainment. There are more Mexican-origin Latinos with less than a high-school diploma and fewer with college degrees than for any other group in the United States (see Figures 4.10 and 4.11). However, Mexicans earn less not only because of lower educational attainment, but also because they tend to get lower returns to education than others from high-school graduation on.35 There are many mutually reinforcing connections between educational attainment and incomes that work to the disadvantage of Latino immigrants and their offspring, particularly those of Mexican origin since they have the lowest educational attainment and the lowest incomes.36 While years of schooling are not the only factor that determines low wages for Latinos, it can easily be used to justify and disguise other discriminatory practices. Furthermore, since large and growing numbers of Mexicans are undocumented, they are all the more vulnerable to wage discrimination and other forms of abuse. Conclusion Globalization and economic restructuring combined with specific internal characteristics have created an abundant supply of unskilled and underemployed labor in Mexico. Migration to the United States has become an important escape valve for this excess labor supply. Thus the rapidly deteriorating labor-market

Figure 4.9 Per capita income for various groups, 1970–2005 (in 2005 dollars)

Figure 4.10 Percentage of Mexican-origin Latinos without high school diploma, 2003

Figure 4.11 Percentage of Mexican-origin Latinos with college degree or higher, 2003


conditions in Mexico—declining real wages, insufficient job creation, and marked expansion of the informal labor market—go a long way toward explaining why low-wage jobs in the United States are so attractive for Mexican migrants. However, in spite of all the increased pressures on the Mexican side, emigration would not have increased nearly as much as it has if there were no readily available jobs in the United States. Immigrant labor is becoming more and more important for the U.S. economy, and the occupational profile of Mexican migrants is changing rapidly. Only a very small percentage of the Mexican origin population is currently employed in agriculture. Over the past few decades, more and more recent immigrants have found work in low-skilled manufacturing and service-sector jobs. The demand for workers to perform such tasks for low wages increased dramatically toward the end of the twentieth century, as did the new wave of immigrant workers from Mexico and other Latin American countries who were willing to fill those jobs. In addition to highly skilled health-related and information technology occupations where employment is expected to grow rapidly over the next several years, there are also some rapidly growing low-skilled jobs in the area of personal home health care and many low-skilled service occupations of various kinds where the number of employed will continue to grow significantly.37 Therefore Latino participation in the U.S. labor force is rising, and certain occupations are already viewed as “immigrant labor-market niches” or “jobs for Mexicans.” Recently arrived Mexican immigrants, like other groups before them, usually end up in the least desirable and lowest paying jobs in the United States, where they nevertheless earn considerably more than they could in Mexico. Furthermore, income inequality is clearly on the rise in the United States, and increasing labor-market segmentation has had a highly negative impact on Mexican migrants’ earnings. In spite of their growing importance as part of the labor supply, Mexican migrants experience high poverty rates, intermediate unemployment rates, and, by U.S. measures, very low incomes. The de facto labor-market integration taking place means that Mexican workers have left precarious low-paying jobs at home for what are, none the less by U.S. standards, also low-paying and precarious jobs. Mexican labor migrants have become proportionally, that is with respect to Mexican participation in the total population, the largest contingent of working poor in what is still the richest country in the world. The enhanced trading partnership between Mexico and the United States has perhaps accentuated rather than diminished the previously existing socioeconomic differences. The growing, but not officially recognized nor explicitly accepted, labor partnership temporarily alleviates economic hardships for Mexican families in spite of the other costs involved like family and community disintegration. However there is little migration can do to alter the underlying causes of the economic distress that fuels the process. It does facilitate labor-market segmentation and stratification in the United States, hence increasing income inequality, thereby perpetuating the contradictory circumstances that make Mexican migrants welcome as workers but not as residents.


Notes 1. The author would like to thank the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México’s Program to Support Research and Technological Innovation Projects (initials in Spanish, PAPIIT) for supporting the research for this chapter by funding project IN307907, “Integración Regional Transnacional: Políticas de Desarrollo y Migración,” and also thank Marcela Osnaya for technical assistance. 2. J. S. Passel, Unauthorized Migrants: Numbers and Characteristics (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2005), 36–37. 3. R. Kochhar, Survey of Mexican Migrants, Part Three: The Economic Transition to America (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2005), 1. 4. R. González Amador, “Migran más mexicanos a EU de lo que se ha calculado: B de M,” La Jornada, February 3, 2007, p. 18. 5. D. Bacon, The Children of NAFTA. Labor Wars in the U.S./Mexico Border (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 253–54, quoted in A. Alvarez, “A 10 años del TLCAN ¿Apetitosa neo colonial de jóvenes sin futuro?” Memoria 187 (September 2004): 12. 6. Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Marshall Loeb and Ani Hadjian, “Salinas speaks out on free trade,” CNNMoney.com, December 28, 1992, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/ fortune/fortune_archive/1992/12/28/77310/index.htm. 7. R. D. Manning, and A. C. Butera, “Global Restructuring and U.S.-Mexican Economic Integration: Rhetoric and Reality of Mexican Immigration Five Years after NAFTA,” American Studies 41.2/3 (Summer/Fall 2000): 185. 8. México, Presidencia de la Republica, Quinto Informe de Gobierno, Anexo Estadístico, September 1, 2005, p. 336. 9. Ibid., 193, 337, 344, 353–54. 10. México, Presidencia de la Republica, Sexto Informe de Gobierno, Anexo Estadístico, September 1, 2006, p. 240. 11. Ibid., 241, 242, 249, 257. 12. Ibid., 222. 13. S. Polaski, “Perspectivas on the Future of NAFTA: Mexican Labor in North American Integration,” paper presented at the Colloquium El Impacto del TLCAN en México a los 10 años, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, June 29–30, 2004, p. 17. 14. F. Martínez, “En la economía informal, 62% de los empleos de México: OIT,” La Jornada, June 12, 2004, p. 33. 15. México, Presidencia de la Republica, Sexto Informe de Gobierno, Anexo Estadístico, September 1, 2000, 40; and México, Presidencia de la Republica, Sexto Informe de Gobierno, Anexo Estadístico, September 1, 2006, p. 236. 16. Passel, Unauthorized Migrants, 36–37. 17. See, for example, J. Bortz, and M. T. Águila, “Emigración y bajos salaries: cosecha amarga de la globalización,” Memoria 213 (November 2006): 5–8. 18. Banco de México data quoted in A. Ortiz Rivera, “Hijos del salario mínimo,” El Independiente, August 15, 2003, pp. 4–5. 19. México, Presidencia de la Republica, Sexto Informe de Gobierno, Anexo Estadístico, September 1, 2006, p. 237. 20. F. Lozano, and F. Olivera, “El estado actual de la migración mexicana a los Estados Unidos,” in La Situación del trabajo en México, comp. E. de la Garza and C. Salas (México City: Plaza y Valdés, 2006), 413–35.


21. R. González Amador, “Las remesas de EU mantienen el consumo interno en México,” La Jornada, February 4, 2003, 20. 22. A. Sum, et al., “Immigrant Workers and the Great American Job Machine: The Contribution of new Foreign Immigration to the National and Regional Labor Force Growth in the 1990s,” paper prepared for National Business Roundtable, Washington, DC, August 2002, p. 2. 23. See S. A. Camarota, “A Jobless Recovery? Immigrant Gains and Native Losses,” Center for Immigration Studies, Washington, DC, October 2004. 24. J. Batalova, “Fact Sheet #14: Mexican-Born Persons in the U.S. Civilian Labor Force,” Migration Policy Institute, November 2006, http://www.migrationpolicy .org/pubs/fact_sheets.php. 25. Ibid. 3. 26. Ibid. 4. 27. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings, Household Data Annual Averages, January 2006, pp. 218–23, 258–62. 28. See I. Brown, ed., Latinas and Africa American Women at Work (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999). 29. Latino or Hispanic is an ethnic not a racial classification, therefore white includes many Latinos, who may be classified racially as either white or black. Figures for nonHispanic whites will differ slightly from those for all whites, which include most Latinos or Hispanics. 30. U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Earnings, Household Data Annual Averages, January 2006, pp. 224–25, 218–23, 258–62. 31. The Labor Department’s detailed occupational tables only provide information for the entire Latino population; it is not disaggregated by national origin. Since Mexican origin Latinos usually constitute about two thirds of the U.S. Latino population, and Mexicans were 64 percent of the Latino labor force in 2005, the degree of Latino participation in each occupational category is a more or less satisfactory indicator of the approximate degree of Mexican participation in most cases. 32. See U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings, Household Data Annual Averages, January 1991, 1995, and 2006. 33. S. Thomas-Breitfeld, “The Latino Workforce,” Statistical Brief No. 3 (Washington, DC: National Council of La Raza, 2003), 1. 34. See E. Levine, Los nuevos pobres de los Estados Unidos: los hispanos (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Miguel Angel Porrua, 2001), ch. 3. 35. See L. Lowell, “Human Capital and the Economic Effects of Mexican Migration to the United Status,” paper presented in the Seminar Migración México Estados Unidos: Implicaciones y retos para ambos países, El Colegio de México, Mexico City, December 1, 2004. 36. For a more detailed discussion of the obstacles Mexican children confront in U.S. schools, see E. Levine, “Hijos de migrantes mexicanos en escuelas de EU,” Sociológica 60 (2006): 173–205. 37. See U.S. DOL, BLS, “Employment Projections,” http://www.bls.gov/emp/emptab21 .htm, and http://www.bls.gov/emp/emptab3.htm, December 12, 2005.

CHAPTER 5

Sending Money Home: The Dynamics of Mexico-U.S. Remittances Mario Villarreal and Megan Davy

midst the news that Mexicans sent home an estimated twenty-five billion dollars in remittances in 2006, migration researchers and policy makers are still debating the developmental impacts that these monies have on home communities and countries. Many immigrants leave their countries looking for better opportunities for family and loved ones back home. The money transfers that they send home—here defined as remittances and including both electronic transfers and monies returned as savings—are an inherent part of immigration. In the case of Mexico, the amount of money sent by Mexican workers living in the United States is not trivial by any standard. Increased migration and decreased electronic transfer fees have helped make remittances Mexico’s second largest source of foreign exchange, behind petroleum sales and even surpassing foreign direct investment. The figure amounts to almost 3 percent of the country’s GDP.1 For some, these numbers are a reflection of a tragic situation not only in Mexico, but also in Latin America as a whole. Behind remittance income there are stories of struggling rural communities, divided families, illegal immigrants dying while crossing the border, and a country’s struggle to provide the means of prosperity for its own citizens. As Mexicans continue to build lives, families, and communities in the United States, they are increasingly less likely to migrate home. Although the majority of Mexicans are only temporary migrants to the United States, as networks grow abroad and the home economy remains stagnant, Mexico needs to address the problem of a growing number of its citizens who leave and never come home. A survey collected by Mexico’s Central Bank

A

92 • Mario Villarreal and Megan Davy

(Banxico) provides further information on this issue: nearly 60 percent of senders surveyed said they had had a job in Mexico when they fled for the United States, a reflection of low salaries in a nation where the minimum wage is less than five dollars a day.2 The long-term economic consequences of ignoring this fact can be catastrophic. The hard reality is that remittances exist because Mexico and many other countries cannot provide adequate employment and income for their citizens. Most migrants do not seek to leave Mexico permanently. However, local economic conditions are not sufficient to provide for the type of lifestyle that they desire. Even if basic survival needs are met, macroeconomic instability, lack of adequate access to financial markets, and legal barriers to entrepreneurship frustrate efforts to bolster economic activity at home. While remittances may not be a cause for celebration, it is also clear they are not the cause of underdevelopment. Moreover, while we acknowledge certain negative aspects, remittances are ultimately an expression of the power of individual freedom and the free market. The driving force behind this process is fundamentally a human relationship: workers move abroad to support family members and protect their futures at home. When given the right type of incentives, the productivity, talents, and entrepreneurial spirit of immigrants finds a way to flourish. Remittances are the ultimate manifestation of how powerful the combination of individual freedom and sound economic incentives can be in promoting prosperity. Remittances, as a source of private foreign aid, are an effective tool in alleviating economic limitations and problems in many communities. Unlike traditional foreign aid, remittances go directly to families and individuals, bypassing government bureaucracy and reaching places (such as remote rural areas) that other international assistance programs find difficult to serve. More importantly, remittances allocate the decision-making power about the best use of these resources to those with better information about their productive use. Given the importance of remittances to Mexico’s economy, the following questions arise: Where do these money flows come from? How are they sent? Where do they go? What is their regional economic impact? What can be done to improve their positive effects? This chapter will provide a statistical overview of the recent trends and developments in Mexico’s remittances, describe their effects on the economy, and present a general picture of the issue and its economic and social relevance on both sides of the border. In doing so, we analyze secondary data, mainly collected by the Inter-American Development Bank, Banxico, and the World Bank. Finally, we propose policies that might make remittances more efficient in fostering economic development both at a local and national level. Who Receives and How Much? Just as undocumented migration complicates the quantification of how many Mexicans journey to the United States, there are several roadblocks to defining a

Sending Money Home • 93

dollar amount for remittances that flow in the opposite direction. While Banxico can capture remittances sent through electronic transfers in their balance-of-payments calculations (and electronic transfers are increasingly the method of choice, making remittance estimates more accurate), monies sent through money orders, cash, and especially in-kind goods are more difficult to quantify. Banxico has taken the lead among other institutions in the region and initiated its own survey to better track both the quantity and the makeup of remittances to Mexico. (All numbers reported in this chapter are given in U.S. dollars unless stated otherwise.) Although Banxico reports remittance amounts coming from all countries, because 97 percent of all remittance senders are from the United States, we will take these numbers as a proxy of bilateral transactions. Figure 5.1 presents the historical data on remittances. According to the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), Mexico received over twenty-three billion dollars in remittances in 2006, more than any other country in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and almost half of the total amount remitted to the region (over forty-five billion dollars). While the total amount has more than quintupled over the last ten years and the number of transactions has more than quadrupled, the average amount per remittance has hovered between $300 and $350. Several factors help explain the increase in volume. As more Mexicans migrate to the United States, they build their social networks between the countries, thereby reducing travel and social costs, which facilitates further migration. Passel (2006) estimates that the Mexican population in the United States (documented and undocumented) increases by five hundred thousand people each

Figure 5.1 Total remittances and average amount of remittance, 1995–2006 Source: Banco de Mexico, “Remesas familiares,” Balanza de pagos, http://www.banxico.org.mx/polmoneinflacion/ estadisticas/balanzaPagos/balanzaPagos.html (accessed February 14, 2007).


year3. As more migrants remit, banks and other financial institutions enter the electronic transfer market and lower sending costs. The average cost of sending three hundred dollars from the United States to Mexico dropped 67 percent between 1999 and 2006.4 In spite of the fact that Mexico receives more money from abroad than any other LAC country, only between 5 and 10 percent of households receive remittances in Mexico.5 Given the size of Mexico’s population (around 107 million), it is unrealistic and unwise to hope that the country sends a large portion of its labor force abroad as do some Caribbean countries and to a certain extent smaller Central American countries. As a result, remittances as a part of GDP are modest in the region, less than 3 percent. For those households that do receive remittances, “local” income averages $4,699 a year with an additional $1,330 from remittances; remittances comprise 22 percent of total income.6 Data from Banxico suggests that senders and receivers increasingly take advantage of electronic transfers. In 1997, electronic transfers accounted for 54 percent of the total dollar amount remitted to Mexico (and money orders, 36 percent). Today electronic transfers are overwhelmingly the method of choice, with 93 percent of remittance dollars sent electronically (money orders have dropped to only 6 percent of the market). Table 5.1 demonstrates this trend. The distribution by state is by no means even. The five states that received the largest amounts in remittances in 2005 (Distrito Federal, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Estado de Mexico, and Michoacán) received 46 percent of all monies returned to Mexico. Twenty-five percent of recipients are concentrated in five Mexican states: Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán, San Luis Potosí, and Zacatecas. Ninety-seven

Table 5.1 Composition of remittance flows to Mexico, 1997–2006

Total Remittances (millions of $US) Money Orders Personal Checks Electronic Transfers Cash and In-kind

Total Remittances (millions of $US) Money Orders Personal Checks Electronic Transfers Cash and In-kind

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

4864.9 35.5% 1.6% 54.2% 8.6%

5626.8 33.2% 1.1% 57.8% 7.9%

5909.6 24.5% 0.9% 66.6% 8.0%

6572.8 21.8% 0.1% 70.6% 7.4%

8895.3 9.0% 0.1% 87.5% 3.4%

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

10749.0 7.4% 0.1% 89.3% 3.2%

13396.2 12.1% 0.0% 85.9% 1.9%

16612.9 11.3% 0.0% 87.3% 1.4%

20034.9 9.3% 0.0% 89.3% 1.4%

23053.8 5.9% 0.0% 92.6% 1.5%

Source: Banco de Mexico, “Remesas familiares,” Balanza de pagos, http://www.banxico.org.mx/polmoneinflacion/ estadisticas/balanzaPagos/balanzaPagos.html (accessed February 14, 2007)


percent of the senders live in the United States. Last year, Michoacán was Mexico’s top receiving state with nearly $2.5 billion in transfers, according to a report by Banxico, Mexico’s central bank. The five states with the smallest amounts received only 2 percent. Not surprisingly, these numbers largely correspond with the number of migrants to the United States from each state. Although the traditional sending states of Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán, and Zacatecas are still at the top of the list, states such as Nuevo León, México, San Luis Potosí, Veracruz, and especially the Distrito Federal are emerging as important remittance-receiving states. Although remittances total 2.7 percent of national GDP, certain states resemble smaller, poorer Central American countries in that remittances are a more significant proportion of total GDP. Figure 5.2 displays remittances as a percentage of GDP by state. Remittances comprise between 7.7 and 13.2 percent of GDP for the top five states. Incidentally, these states are also some of the poorest and most rural in Mexico. In addition to the dollar amount and geographic distribution, several important sociodemographic characteristics are pertinent to the discussion of the developmental capabilities of remittances. What do those households who receive remittances look like, and how do they compare to nonrecipient households? Mexico has become probably the most popular country for empirical studies on not only who receives remittances but on what effects those remittances have on economic development. To be sure, this is related to the greater availability of data and long history of migration to the United States, but economists and policy makers are increasingly looking to Mexico to be the case study for the power

Figure 5.2 Remittances as a percentage of state GDP, 2006 Source: Banco de Mexico, Las Remesas Familiares en Mexico, February 2007.


of remittances as a tool for economic development. Compared to its neighbors, Mexican immigrants to the United States are poorer, less educated, and from rural areas—in other words, these are the very people that most need and benefit from additional income. Unlike most countries in the LAC region, Mexican recipient households are predominantly poor: a World Bank report found that 61 percent of households receiving remittances are in the first income quintile of the nonremittances income distribution.7 According to the 2005 National Survey on Household Income and Spending by the National Institute of Statistics (INEGI, by its Spanish acronym), 73.5 percent of households receiving remittances were in the bottom three income quintiles for all households. These households received almost 60 percent of all remittances. See Table 5.2 for the survey results. Recipients are mostly female (around 60 percent), a phenomenon that not only has reduced gender inequalities (as females now control family finances in these households), but also suggests increased spending toward the human capital of children. Recipients are also more likely to have extended families in the household and have less health coverage.8 Mexico also differs from its other neighbors in the LAC region in terms of who migrates and who remits. Many see migration as an overly simplified story of parents (particularly young males) abandoning their families and disrupting the family structure to migrate to the United States. Recent studies on the composition

Table 5.2 Remittance amounts by income quintile, 2005 Total

Household Income Quintiles I

NUMBER OF HOUSEHOLDS TOTAL INCOME (thousands of pesos) HOUSEHOLDS Percent of total by quintile Percent of all houses REMITTANCE INCOME (thousands of pesos) Percent of total income by quintile Percent of all remittance income

25,709,405

5,141,882

II 5,141,882

III 5,141,882

IV 5,141,882

V 5,141,877

790,143,919 36,140,063 69,810,574 105,345,899 164,279,632 414,567,751 1,531,858

420,133

379,852

325,887

249,694

156,292

5.96%

8.17%

7.39%

6.34%

4.86%

3.04%

100.00%

27.43%

24.80%

21.27%

16.30%

10.20%

10,391,317

1,333,637

2,152,897

2,665,371

2,341,045

1,898,367

1.32%

3.69%

3.08%

2.53%

1.43%

0.46%

100.00%

12.83%

20.72%

25.65%

22.53%

18.27%

Source: Encuesta Nacional de Ingresos y Gastos de los Hogares, INEGI, 2005


of remittance senders from Mexico suggest a different story. A MIF study reports that 54 percent of remittance senders were either brothers or sisters (34 percent) or sons or daughters (20 percent) of the recipients. Only 27 percent of senders were spouses or parents. A similar study by Banxico supports this assertion: 68 percent of remittance recipients are parents.9 Although, to be sure, this may have other important effects on family structure, the traditional view of a parent leaving his or her household to the detriment of children, especially, is no longer a reality for Mexico. As attention to the economic impact of remittances increases and more economists and policy makers begin to weigh in, opinion is divided as to how remittances affect growth, income inequality, household expenditures, and human capital. Economists have long argued as to how to incorporate remittance income into a model of the economy, be it at a macro or micro level. That is to say, the decision to migrate and remit is affected by and impacts other variables in the model. For example, the fact that those states that received the most remittances as a percent of GDP are also the poorest states does not mean that remittances cause poor growth, but rather that poverty encourages out-migration and the decision to remit. Also, the decision to migrate and remit may affect other forms of household behavior and decision making. For example, migrants to the United States forgo labor at home, so additional income has to be weighed against potential income from domestic work when considering the total impact. Therefore, we cannot treat remittances as simply another source of income, a point that will have serious implications for the construction of empirical studies. Given the amount of money that flows into Mexico as remittances and its largesse both at a national and at a household level, it is easy to see why many have high hopes for the economic impacts of remittances. These hopes are further inflated by the fact that that the twenty billion dollars of remittances Mexico received last year is equal to almost 3 percent of national GDP and that a significant portion goes directly to poorer households and rural areas and avoids the bureaucracy inherent in foreign aid. In theory, remittance dollars not only boost national income but have multiplier effects because households spend this income, thereby further bolstering growth. Money to poorer households not only solves basic survival needs but may also contribute to better health and educational achievement. The empirical evidence, however, shows a more complex picture. Studies that treat remittances as exogenous (that is, they consider remittances as additional income and completely independent of other variables) tend to find very promising results with regard to poverty alleviation and income distribution. For example, a World Bank study claims that when household income is compared with and without remittances, the extreme poverty headcount is reduced by 39.9 percent and moderate poverty is reduced by 15.5 percent.10 However, when households consider remittances endogenously (that is, when studies compare the income of remittance-receiving households with similar nonreceiving households), the results are much more modest, and in the case of Mexico, even negative. The same study found that the Gini coefficient would, in


fact, increase by 0.7 percent and the poverty headcount would increase extreme poverty by 0.7 percent and moderate poverty by 2.8 percent.11 Empirical studies on GDP growth largely use cross-national panel data rather than study individual countries; so it is difficult to comment on the growth potential for Mexico. That said, the findings suggest a correlation between remittance receipts and economic growth, although the magnitude is rather small. Fajnzylber and López found that for Latin American countries, “the increase in remittances from 0.7 percent of GDP in 1991–95 to 2.3 percent of GDP in 2001–5 is estimated to have led to an increase of only 0.27 percent per year in per capita GDP growth. Moreover, when domestic investment is included as an additional explanatory variable, the effect of remittances on growth ceases to be significant. This may imply that one of the main channels through which remittances affect growth is by increasing domestic investment.”12 These studies offer valuable insights at the aggregate level. However, a more detailed picture is needed. In order to fully assess the potential economic and developmental consequences of remittances, information about how this massive flow of money is spent is fundamental. Remittance Use at a Household Level: More than Just “Keeping Up with the Joneses”? Until recently, information about remittances in general was very limited, particularly regarding its uses. Starting in 2000, Mexican authorities implemented initiatives to better record this growing phenomenon. It was clear that a better understanding of a growing market and the opportunities created by the massive flows of financial resources was needed in order to enact the type of policies that enable its better use. Thus, in October 2002, Banxico required money-wiring companies to register and to provide monthly reports including amounts, origin, and destination of the money being sent from overseas. At the same time, international organizations such as the World Bank and the IADB started developing new research and data-collection initiatives on the remittance topic. These sections drew heavily from two studies: A Banxico survey, and a survey collected by the MIF from the IADB.13 The survey by Banxico provided a detailed profile based on a poll of more than 8,700 individuals, interviewed in seven Mexican border cities in December 2006 after crossing by foot or car from the United States into Mexico for the holidays. The MIF survey included 2,415 interviews conducted during August and September of 2006 in thirty-one Mexican states. Empirical studies on household spending take two forms. Several surveys on remittance-receiving households attempt to disaggregate remittances by their use to get a better sense of whether recipients are spending on current consumption or on productive purposes. These studies have a few limitations. First, surveys on how households spend remittances cannot compare distributions with those of nonrecipient households, so researchers have no way of knowing if households


changed their spending habits as a result of receiving remittances. Furthermore, they do not take into account all household spending, a point that further skews comparisons with all households. These points are addressed in the second type of empirical study. However, this kind of spending survey can help us to understand remittance-spending priorities. Initially, many economists were pessimistic with regard to spending habits, saying that remittances were by and large spent on conspicuous consumption, a trend that led to a dependency on money from abroad to “keep up with the Joneses.”14 However, evidence suggests that households do allocate funds in economically rational ways. Especially in rural areas, remittances alleviate liquidity constraints in places where the formal financial sector is still absent. Households can not only increase consumption, but also invest in property, education, health care, or production. Mexican recipients use the funds almost exclusively on basics such as food, appliances, and schooling. The Banxico survey reports that 86 percent of the resources are used for living expenses, while the MIF reports that 57 percent of the money is used for consumption.15 The discrepancy may be due to sample differences, but nevertheless both figures seem to confirm the common wisdom and previous estimates: the largest share of remittance money is used for every-day expenses.16 By using the average of both consumption percentages as a proxy (70 percent), the figures suggest that in 2006, almost eighteen billion remittance dollars were used in Mexico for living expenses. While some economists regard these as nonproductive expenditures, this approach can be misleading. To be sure, spending on consumption necessarily means foregoing the possibility of obtaining higher returns on investments. However, the level of consumption financed by remittances should not be treated as purely noncapital formation expenditures. Especially among the poor and very poor, consumption likely goes to basic goods for survival, which is very different than conspicuous consumption. Furthermore, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between consumption and investment, especially with regard to human capital spending. Consuming durable goods, such as housing, home improvements, appliances, and so on, may in fact increase the standard of living and health for a household. The multiplier effects resulting from spending on consumption are not trivial, as consumption both stimulates demand and boosts the overall economy. Moreover, these transfers are the main source of revenue for almost all of the businesses located in rural remittance-receiving communities. Woodruff and Zenteno (2001) conclude that remittances in Mexico amount to about 27 percent of the capital invested in small businesses throughout urban Mexico, and this estimate rises to 40 percent in states that have typically high migration rates to the United States.17 Another example of consumption expenses that have an important economic impact on these communities is the money used to buy and maintain property. This is not an unusual use for remittances resources, since 67 percent of senders say they own property back in Mexico. Around 3 percent of the transfers are used


for “property acquisition” or “property renovations.” That means that in 2006, almost one billion dollars were used for these types of expenses. Are remittances also used for more direct investment purposes? At least at a modest scale, the answer is yes. Of the respondents interviewed by the MIF, 14 percent said they use part of the money for savings, and 5 percent reported using remittances for business operations. Although the survey did not reveal specific amounts, it suggests that some recipients consider alternatives other than consumption for their remittance money. Banxico’s survey does not report a figure for savings. If the actual savings rate for remittance flow is more modest than the selfreported figure (say 2 percent), the figure is still considerable: around five hundred million dollars. Considering that most of the recipients are not fully incorporated into the formal financial system, this figure offers an important opportunity to bring them into the mainstream financial sector and devote some of these resources to capital formation. While remittances comprise less than 3 percent of Mexico’s GDP, they represent approximately 10 percent of bankingsector deposits and credit. Thirty-three percent of remittance recipients have bank accounts, compared to only 22 percent of the general population.18 Financial education on the part of remittance senders and lower transaction costs may contribute to greater use of banking services on the other side of the Rio Grande. A study by Fajnzylber and López (2007) found that communities with larger percentages of their population receiving remittances tend to have a higher degree of participation in the formal financial system, observing higher ratios of savings accounts per capita, larger deposit amounts to GDP, and more bank branches per capita.19 They could not find statistically significant results for credit, a finding that may relate to unavailable or unattractive credit products (which will be further explained in the policy section). There is a figure that deserves particular consideration. According to the MIF survey, 13 percent of recipients reported using some of the resources on education expenses. Banxico’s results suggest the actual share of remittances devoted to education is 6.3 percent. In 2006, this figure was around $1.5 billion, more than Michoacán’s total education budget for 2005 (which was around $1 billion).20 Human capital investments facilitated by remittances are often overlooked and regarded as consumption expenditures. If remittances allow families to send their children to school, a luxury that not every family in Mexico’s rural communities can afford, the positive impact goes beyond the children’s future. Human capital literature suggests a positive link between education and economic growth (although not a panacea) that represents one of the main factors that fosters prosperity. 21 To some extent, remittances may be helping to deal with some of the factors they promoted in the first place, such as the massive immigration of low-skilled workers. The second type of empirical study on remittance-receiving household spending looks at total consumption (and not just that of remittances) and compares it with that of nonreceiving households. Researchers argue that it is not enough


to look just at how households spend remittances, but how those remittances are incorporated in the total household-spending behavior. Taylor and Mora (2006) find that rural households with international migrants have a larger marginal budget share for investments (21 percent versus 10 percent), consumer durables (22 percent versus 12 percent), and services (23 percent versus 16 percent). Marginal budget shares for food, supermarkets, education, and housing are lower.22 Fajnzylber and López find that remittance-receiving households at the lower income quintiles in Mexico are more likely to spend their income on durable goods, housing, and human capital than their nonreceiving counterparts. In the wealthier income quintiles, however, remittance-receiving households tend to spend more on nondurable goods. Poor households tend to spend their remittances in more productive ways.23 What explains this gap between overall positive findings at the household level (especially with regard to spending, entrepreneurship, and participation in financial markets) and more modest improvements to GDP growth, poverty alleviation, and income distribution? Part of the answer lies in the phenomenon of Mexican households substituting remittances for wage labor in their home country. Banxico reports that three out of every four emigrants had employment in Mexico prior to leaving. This is not necessarily negative if households maintain similar labor patterns after one or more family members leave for the United States. Economically rational behavior would argue that this should increase total household income, but, in fact, this does not appear to be the case. Zárate-Hoyos found that remittance-receiving households do substitute income for labor, as these households have a higher ration of nonproductive to productive members versus nonrecipient households (67 percent versus 50 percent).24 The World Bank reports that Mexico has the highest labor-substitution ratio of those LAC countries for which data is available. While nearly 90 percent of nonrecipient males are working or looking for a job, only 60 percent of males from recipient households are doing so. For females, those numbers are 45 and 34 percent, respectively.25 Although reducing the labor force in a country that struggles to provide sufficient employment may increase wages and productivity for those who do have employment, the overall results are difficult to measure. General development constraints (such as a lack of macroeconomic stability, poor infrastructure, or lack of access to financial services) not only affect a migrant’s decision to leave, but also whether to remit and how to spend those dollars. Durand et al. found that community factors such as economic vitality and infrastructure affect both the quantity of remittances received and the likelihood that those dollars will be put to productive versus consumptive purposes.26 That is, market failures such as poor capital markets or economic stagnation in particular communities are not symptoms of failed remittance development efforts, but instead are often the impetus behind out-migration and spending on current consumption. Households do allocate their spending in economically rational ways, and in the case of migrant households in stagnant communities, they know that they


are unlikely to earn a favorable return on their investments in future production. Therefore, part of the challenge is how to design public policies that create incentives that make investment alternatives an available and attractive choice among remittances recipients. Improving the Impact of Remittances Remittances are already playing an important role in promoting economic growth and prosperity. The current debate among international organizations, scholars, and policy makers is about how to increase the economic impact of remittances. This discussion has generated policy recommendations and has identified several areas and opportunities. These ideas can be grouped into four main themes: transparency and access, information access, competition and public policy issues, and financial sector development. They are applicable not only to the Mexican case, but also to the remittances phenomenon in general. Before detailing those policies that relate directly to remittances, let us step back and look at the big picture. Many of the economic constraints that hamper income and entrepreneurship will also slow the developmental impact of remittances. Efforts to redirect remittance spending through tax schemes have largely failed, and most countries have since rejected this strategy. Instead, if the Mexican government wishes to focus more remittances on job creation and economic growth, it needs to examine its own policies that discourage entrepreneurship and starting up small businesses. Although the country has improved its standing according to the “Doing Business” report by the World Bank, there are still several roadblocks that stand in the way of small-business start-up. Although easier than in many LAC countries, starting a new business is an onerous proposition in Mexico, in terms of both time and wealth required. While it takes only five days and 0.7 percent of per capita income to start a business in the United States, Mexicans require an average of twenty-seven days and 14.2 percent of their per capita income. Registering property in Mexico requires an average of seventy-four days and 5.2 percent of the property value, versus twelve days and 0.5 percent in the United States. Acquiring credit is also difficult, both in terms of geographic and service availability. Even in the case of geographic access to a financial institution, many banks avoid small borrowers, and credit rates are often prohibitively high: the average mortgage interest rate for 2006 was 15 percent.27 Transparency and Access Although competition among wiring companies has driven prices down, there are still several transparency issues that need to be addressed. Details about transfer conditions, foreign exchange rates, and fund availability are not always disclosed in a clear manner; and senders as well as recipients are not always given a clear idea about the final cost structure.


Similarly, financial institutions interested in gaining access to a Hispanic market with increasing purchase power in the United States are offering services that include wiring money to Mexico for free. An example is Bank of America’s program Safe Send, where customers who open a checking account and keep a minimum balance can send money to Mexico for free. Unfortunately, those immigrants who are not part of the financial mainstream opt themselves out of these types of programs, with the belief that they are not eligible to open bank accounts. As financial institutions increase their coverage in both countries, a better diffusion of these services will allow them not to only send more money to Mexico, but also give them access to the formal financial market with all the benefits that entail. Information Access Mexico has greatly improved its data collection regarding remittance flows during the last several years. There is, however, a lack of data that enables international comparisons as well as country-level market distinctions about the uses of the money. A better accounting of these details could provide valuable information for the design and implementation of public policy and programs. This information could be used to target specific segments of the population that are unaware of the potential benefits of savings and productive investments. Because many immigrants in the United States, especially undocumented ones, do not believe that they can open bank accounts, some Mexican remittance recipients take their cues from family members abroad and also remain outside of the formal financial system and therefore do not take advantage of services for which they are eligible (such as mortgages or business start-up loans). Competition and Public Policy Although authorities should supervise remittance institutions in order to prevent abuses regarding commissions and exchange rates, this task should be approached with care. In the January 2007 session of the Mexican Congress, some Mexican legislators argued for the need for price controls in the remittances market.28 Legislators proposed placing a cap on the commission that financial institutions could charge for wiring money from the United States to Mexico. Following this path would be a terrible mistake. Competition has already significantly brought down commissions and fees in the remittances market. Price controls would only drive out financial institutions from this market and would eventually raise prices instead of reducing them. In order to make remittances more effective, innovative public policy approaches that pay attention to market forces and economic incentives are needed. And there are good examples of these types of programs. In the Dos por Uno (Two for One) program, originally established by the state government of Zacatecas, the federal and state governments each match dollar for dollar immigrants’ contributions for infrastructure development projects such as


paving roads. In 1999, this program evolved into Tres por Uno (Three for One) when the local governments began to participate.29 Another public policy program is Invierte en México (Invest in Mexico). A joint effort between Nacional Financiera (Mexico’s development bank) and the IADB and organized by groups of Mexican immigrants in the United States, this program provides seed money and technical assistance to entrepreneurs. This type of program leads us to the last point in the strategy to make remittance flow more effective. Financial Sector Development Financial institutions in Mexico and the United States should explore joint ventures that offer integrated services to remittance customers. More than just a money wiring service, these customers are a large and attractive enough market for other type of financial products, such as savings accounts, loans, credit cards, and mortgages. By tapping into the profitability of joint efforts in these four services and thereby expanding access and lowering costs to the consumers, public officials and financial institutions could create the type of incentives that would increase the effectiveness and positive impact of remittances. Conclusion Economic theory, empirical analyses, and international experience suggest that a strong rule of law, sound economic policies, political stability, an independent judiciary system, and a free-market structure, among other factors, are indispensable elements in creating economic prosperity. Remittances are not and cannot be a substitute for these important elements. Creating economic growth and social development includes much more than large sums of money being sent back home by immigrants. However, the remittance experience sends some messages that should not be overlooked. First, given the adequate institutional factors and economic incentives, immigrants from poor and developing countries can be highly productive and prosperous. There are no cultural, social, or historical factors that can fully abolish the entrepreneurship spirit of free individuals with adequate incentives. Hispanics are no exception. Since 1997, the number of Hispanic-owned companies grew 82 percent—the fastest growth in the United States. In 2006, Hispanic-owned businesses generated almost $300 billion in annual gross revenue. Estimates suggest that by 2010 this figure will be more than $450 billion.30 Second, even in the face of adversity and being away from home, immigrants strive and succeed. It is not the objective of this chapter to discuss the economic and political factors surrounding the immigration debate between Mexico and the United States. But it is a reality that runs parallel to the remittances aspects we have discussed. The labor-market dynamics underlying the vast amounts of financial resources related to the immigration issue are too powerful to be


ignored. The debate should not be about compromising the enforcement of immigration laws and giving up the economic benefits derived from the influx of a labor force that is filling a supply and demand gap. Rather, it is about how to design public policies that recognize these economic gains and allow these workers to be a positive force for economic prosperity. Moreover, it is about how to create the conditions that would keep immigrants from leaving their countries in the first place. Until recently, immigrants leaving their countries were saying goodbye to a lot of things: family and friends, culture and heritage, and home and identity. Today, reduced transaction costs and technological improvements allow them not only to pay lower fees to send money home, but also to create a permanent link that was not possible thirty years ago. Remittances are just the tip of the iceberg of a trend that can be a positive factor in maintaining and promoting prosperity on both sides of the border. Notes 1. Banco de Mexico, “Household remittances in Mexico,” survey and working paper, February 2007. 2. Ibid. 3. J. S. Passel, The Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the U.S.: Estimates Based on the March 2005 Current Population Survey (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2006). 4. Banco de Mexico, “Household remittances in Mexico,” 2007. 5. P. Fajnzylber and J. H. López, Close to Home: The Development Impact of Remittances in Latin America (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007). 6. S. Bendixen and E. St. Onge, “Remittances from the United States and Japan to Latin America: An In-Depth Look Using Public Opinion Research,” in Beyond Small Change: Making Migrant Remittances Count, eds. Donald F. Terry and Steven R. Wilson (Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, 2005). 7. P. Fajnzylber and J. H. López, Close to Home: The Development Impact of Remittances in Latin America (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007). 8. G. A. Zárate-Hoyos, “The Development Impact of Migrant Remittances in Mexico,” Beyond Small Change: Making Migrant Remittances Count, eds. Donald F. Terry and Steven R. Wilson (Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, 2005). 9. Banco de Mexico, “Household remittances in Mexico,” 2007. 10. World Bank, The Development Impact of Workers’ Remittances in Latin America, Volume II: Detailed Findings, report no. 37026 (Washington, DC: World Bank). 11. Ibid. A Gini coefficient is a measure of inequality of a distribution (in this case, income distribution), defined as a ratio with a value between zero and one. A value of one corresponds with perfect income inequality, and zero with perfect equality. Therefore, higher values denote higher inequality. 12. Fajnzylber and López, Close to Home. 13. Banco de Mexico, “Household remittances in Mexico,” 2007; and Multilateral Investment Fund, “Public opinion survey among remittances recipients in Mexico,” Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC, 2007.


14. See J. E. Taylor, J. Arango, G. Hugo, A. Kouaouci, D. S. Massey, and A. Pellegrino, “International Migration and Community Development,” Population Index 62(3): 397–418, for a summary of consumption studies for Mexico and other countries. 15. The consumption figure for the MIF 2003 survey is 78 percent. 16. Consejo Nacional de Población, “Migración México-Estados Unidos: Presente y Futuro, Importancia de las remesas en el ingreso de los hogares,” 2000. 17. C. M. Woodruff and R. Zenteno, “Remittances and Microenterprises in Mexico,” working paper, December 21, 2001 (San Diego: University of California San Diego, 2001). 18. Inter-American Development Bank and Multilateral Investment Fund, “Las Remesas Como Instrumentos de Desarrollo,” 2006, http://www.iadb.org/mif/remittances/ markets/receivers.cfm?language=EN&parid=22&item1id=33. 19. Fajnzylber and López, Close to Home. 20. R. Tépach Marcial, El gasto público y privado en educación: su distribución entre los hogares del país, 1998–2005 (Mexico City: Cámara de Diputados, 2005). 21. J. Benhabib and M. M. Spiegel, “The role of human capital in economic development evidence from aggregate cross-country data,” Journal of Monetary Economics 34 (1994): 143–73. 22. J. E. Taylor and J. Mora, “Does Migration Reshape Expenditures in Rural Households? Evidence from Mexico,” working paper 3842, World Bank Policy Research, 2006. 23. Fajnzylber and López, Close to Home. 24. G. A. Zárate-Hoyos, “The Development Impact of Migrant Remittances in Mexico,” in Beyond Small Change: Making Migrant Remittances Count, eds. Donald F. Terry and Steven R. Wilson (Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, 2005). 25. Fajnzylber and López, Close to Home. 26. J. Durand, W. Kandel, E. A. Parrado, and D. S. Massey, “International Migration and Development in Mexican Communities,” Demography 33, no. 2 (1996). 27. Banco de Mexico, Sistema de Informacion Estadistica en Linea, Tasas y Precios de Referencia, 2007, http://www.banxico.org.mx/polmoneinflacion/estadisticas/tasas Interes/tasasInteres.html. 28. El Porvenir (Staff ), “Propone PRD ley para regular envío de remesas a México,” February 8, 2007, http://www.elporvenir.com.mx/notas.asp?nota_id=112284. 29. M. Moctezuma L., “Inversión Social y Productividad de los Migrantes Mexicanos en los Estados Unidos,” working paper, 2005 (Red Internacional de Migración y Desarrollo). 30. United Status Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Statistics Online Services, Sources: Small Business Administration, HispanicTelligence(r), 2007, http://www.ushcc.com/ res-statistics.html.

CHAPTER 6

The Impact of NAFTA on the Mexican-U.S. Border Region Elena Labastida-Tovar

oth sides of the Mexican-American border have benefited from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The processes of American and Mexican economic integration as well as the liberalization of capital, services, and goods under NAFTA legal instruments are however ongoing. Full NAFTA provisions do not become effective until 2009.1 Furthermore, economic interdependence between Mexico and the United States and between Mexico and the world economy are recent developments when compared to the European Union (EU).2 Mexican openness to the world economy started with its entry into the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) in 1986 and the liberalization of its currency in 1994. The liberalization of tariffs on goods, services, and capital exchange, and cooperation in the areas of environment and labor in Mexico and the United States (along with Canada), began with the signing of NAFTA in 1994. The process of economic integration has had both positive and negative outcomes during the early stages of NAFTA implementation. It is necessary, therefore, to assess NAFTA policies by looking at the long-term consequences for all of the actors in the economy. Looking at the short term and only at the groups affected by the removal of tariff protection will lead to misleading conclusions. NAFTA was politicized even before its inception. Unemployment, crime, drug trafficking, environment, illegal immigration, and infrastructure combined more recently with income inequality were some of the concerns raised constantly by political campaigns and the media who were opposed to the agreement. While the NAFTA negotiations were taking place, interest groups and

B

108 • Elena Labastida-Tovar

specifically 1992 presidential candidate Ross Perot, well-known for his phrase “giant sucking sound,” disseminated misconceptions through the media that obscured the legal and economic reasoning underpinning NAFTA.3 The first part of this chapter considers common economic indicators and summarizes the findings of econometric studies on NAFTA. It offers empirical evidence of the correlation as well as the causal relationship between NAFTA and economic growth in the Mexican-American border region. NAFTA legal rules and the ongoing process of economic integration can provide greater benefits for Mexico and the United States. However, there are impediments to obtaining the full benefits of economic cooperation. In particular, there are political hurdles. These include some of the demands that emerged during the U.S. and Mexican elections in 2006—the plans for the construction of a sevenhundred-mile fence along the border and the pressure by entrenched interest groups, most notably the labor unions, for protectionism (for example, textiles in Mexico or sugar in the United States). The second part of this chapter explores the ways in which economic integration can be more fully developed. Three policy proposals are considered. The first is to replace NAFTA antidumping and countervailing duty laws with an antitrust or competition authority. The second is to revise NAFTA labor and environmental side agreements (the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) and North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAEC). The third is the expansion of chapter 16 of NAFTA (Temporary Entry for Business Persons). This addressed the issue of temporary work permits for skilled labor so as to include work permits for unskilled labor. The European economic integration experience demonstrates the net welfare benefits obtained from the free movement of labor. If NAFTA allows the free circulation of unskilled workers, it will be the logical extension of its current economic integration program in goods, capital, and services. The Impact of NAFTA on the Border The assertion that NAFTA has had a beneficial impact on the border region could prove to be a difficult statement for critics of the agreement to accept. However, counterfactual analysis should be applied. What would the state of the border region be without NAFTA? Would the same number of industries, firms, environmental regulations, and infrastructure and quantities of trade be in place without the agreement? Would the Mexican-American border be a better place now without NAFTA? A review of economic indicators and econometric findings will provide evidence. A Map of the Border Region Like many other border areas, the approximately two-thousand-mile border between the United States and Mexico is a dynamic region. Population growth,

The Impact of NAFTA on the Mexican-U.S. Border Region • 109

greater consumption, creation of new business, transport, and infrastructure are notable features on this region. In 2005 the population of the Mexican border states was around 18,000,000 and the population of the American border states was about 66,000,000. The joint population in the U.S.-Mexican border region in 2005 was 85,059,295. The last figure represents approximately 83 percent of Mexico’s population, which in 2005 was 103,263,388. Some Mexican border cities have become, since the advent of the maquiladora (assembly plants) program, a magnet for capital and labor; and in turn, they benefit from specialization and economies of scale. 4 Table 6.1 shows the average percent changes in the population of the Mexican border states during three five-year periods. Table 6.2 records the average percent changes in the population of the U.S. border states by triennia. Since 2000, Mexican border states have shown a decline in the average percentage change of population levels. In northern Mexico at the end of 2002, 339

Table 6.1 Mexican border states population Average percent change from 1990 to 1995 Baja California Coahuila Chihuahua Nuevo Leon Sonora Tamaulipas

Average percent change from 1995 to 2000


3.8 1.3 2.1 1.8 1.4 2.0

2.4 1.5 1.1 1.6 1.4 1.7

4.3 1.7 2.4 2.4 2.4 2.1

Source: Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics (INEGI) http://www.inegi.gob.mx/ est/contenidos/espanol/rutinas/ept.asp?t=mpob09&c=3186 (accessed July 27, 2007).

Table 6.2 U.S. border states population

Arizona California New Mexico Texas





2.0 1.1 1.6 1.3

4.2 0.7 2.5 2.2

3.2 1.3 1.4 2.0

2.7 1.5 0.7 1.9

Average percent change from 2002 to 2005 2.9 1.1 1.2 1.7

Source: United States Department of Commerce, Regional Economic Information System, Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) http://www.bea.gov/regional/spi/default.cfm?satable=summary (accessed July 28, 2007). Notes: The BEA uses the Census Bureau’s midyear population estimates. Except for college students and other seasonal populations, which are measured on April 1, the population for all years is estimated on July 1.


maquiladoras closed as a result of the competition with Asian and Central American plants.5 Nonetheless, there are, despite this figure, around 3,251 maquiladoras in the border region employing one million people and importing about fifty-one billion dollars in supplies to Mexico.6 Some maquiladoras have reallocated to central Mexican states. U.S. population figures show fluctuations between 1990 and 1999; and then from 1999 onward there was a period of more steady population growth. Newcomers continue to arrive to the United States to meet the demand for labor created by the growth of trade in goods and services. Firms choose to locate on the Mexican-American border so as to be close to developed markets. Through spatial concentration, firms benefit from lower transportation costs, the sharing of information, and economies of scale. The average percentage rate of change of real GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in the Mexican border states from 1993 to 2004 represents 22 percent of the change in Mexico’s overall real GDP during the same years. The average percent change in real GDP of the U.S. border states between 1990 and 2005 represents 22 percent of the United States’ real GDP average in the same period. Figures 6.1 and 6.2 show average percent changes in GDP by triennia in the border states. In the last triennium, average growth in the Mexican and U.S. border states was higher than the national average for Mexico and the U.S. Greater openness and trade liberalization leads to higher income and faster growth.7 In international trade, this is most likely if liberalization leads to the expansion of sectors generating technological change and encouraging activities that create learningby-doing activities.8 But greater trade may lead to slower growth if it leads to the

Figure 6.1 1993–2004

Average percent changes in real GDP in Mexico and the Mexican border states,

Source: Author’s calculations of percent changes based on data from Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics (INEGI).


expansion of sectors with only limited potential for generating new technologies or securing learning-by-doing gains.9 For instance, American assembly plants for automotive parts located on the Mexican border have shown accelerated growth during NAFTA’s first six years when new technologies and rapid expansion took place. The three big American automotive producers, Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler, attracted Japanese and European investment to the border in this sector: “Toyota invested $140 million to open its first Mexican assembly plant in Tijuana in 2004.”10 Automotive tariffs were phased out in the 1965 Auto Pact. Canada and the United States concluded a free trade agreement in 1989, and finally NAFTA was signed. The phasing out of tariffs and the full exploitation of new technologies and learning-by-doing activities have resulted in a slower pace of growth. But this equilibrium is dynamic. When more competition arises, a new cycle of technologies and accelerated growth will follow. Exports from Border Cities The success of a preferential agreement can be measured partly in terms of its actual increase in trade and capital flows. These flows increased in the United States at a faster rate than that predicted in the nine years after the implementation of NAFTA. The 1993–2003 NAFTA State Export Report from the U.S.

Figure 6.2 Average percent change in real GDP in the United States and the U.S. border states, 1990–2005 Source: Real gross domestic product (GDP) data (millions of chained 2000 dollars) by state from the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis http://www.bea.gov/regional/gsp/default.cfm?series=SIC. National real GDP data (billions of chained 2000 dollars) from http://www.bea.gov/national/index.htm (accessed July 28, 2007). Notes: Real GDP figures from 1990 to 1997 are based on the 1977 Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) and from 1998 to 2005 real GDP figures are based on the 1997 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).


Department of Commerce and International Trade Administration confirms that U.S. “exports of goods to Mexico in 2003 were $56 billion higher than in 1993, an increase of 134 percent, or more than double the 1993 value of $41.6 billion.”11 Tables 6.3 and 6.4 show the export of goods from Mexican and American border cities by triennia. The export of goods from the Mexican and American border cities increased significantly during the period between 1994 and 2000. When compared to San Diego, it can be noted that poorer cities like Port Arthur in California have benefited to an even greater extent from trade within NAFTA. The same conclusion can be drawn when looking at Mexico. Reynosa, Torreon, and Guadalupe have higher rates of growth than Monterrey and Ciudad Juarez. In the U.S. border cities there has been, with the exception of Dallas/Fort Worth, an increase in the flow of exports to Mexico. David Gould argues that there is a causal relationship between NAFTA and the increase in American trade flows during the first three years of the agreement. Gould estimated that U.S. exports grew by an extra 16.3 percentage points per year, which accumulated, translates into $21.3 billion more in exports than without NAFTA.12 However, after a six-year period of increase in exports on both sides of the border, the flows from the Mexican regions started to fall back after 2000. In the

Table 6.3 The export of goods to the United States from Mexican border cities Average percent change from 1991 to 1993 Mexicali, Baja California Tecate, Baja California Tijuana, Baja California Agua Prieta, Sonora Nogales, Sonora Chihuahua, Chihuahua Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila Piedras Negras, Coahuila Torreon, Coahuila Guadalupe, Nuevo Leon Monterrey, Nuevo Leon Matamoros, Tamaulipas Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas Reynosa, Tamaulipas

5.5 21.1 20.2 21.5 11.7 14.6 8.5 17.4 19.9 53.6 13.8 –6.0 8.5 9.2 21.8

Average percent change from 1994 to 1996 46.9 32.3 41.1 21.3 44.5 26.9 34.9 31.4 28.9 52.4 34.1 44.1 18.1 33.7 34.3

Average percent change from 1997 to 1999 47.1 32.8 40.3 18.2 30.1 39.7 34.7 38.2 37.7 57.6 50.7 48.2 34.2 28.4 43.1

Average percent change from 2000 to 2002 5.9 0.30 1.8 –12.3 5.7 11.4 9.8 11.1 7.2 19.6 14.6 1.5 7.4 1.5 15.3

Average percent change from 2003 to 2005 3.7 3.0 –1.3 11.6 0.7 –3.3 –2.7 –8.9 –10.3 –6.2 5.3 –19.9 –4.1 4.0 5.1

Sources: Mexican municipalities’ exports to the world data from Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics (INEGI), Economic Information Bank http://dgcnesyp.inegi.gob.mx/cgi-win/ bdieintsi.exe/NIVJ1500020006#ARBOL (accessed July 28, 2007). Mexican Total Exports to the U.S. and Mexican Total Exports to the World http://dgcnesyp.inegi.gob.mx/cgi-win/bdieintsi.exe/NIVJ10001400010007 #ARBOL (accessed July 28, 2007). For adjustment to inflation, data from the General Prices Index for Exports http://dgcnesyp.inegi.gob.mx/cgi-win/bdieintsi.exe/NIVL1000120010#ARBOL (accessed July 28, 2007).


United States, the same pattern of decline in exports was evident between 2001 and 2003. Yet for 2004 and 2005, the U.S. figures show an increase again. There are a number of reasons for this. In Mexico, competition from Asian assembly plants has risen since 2000. The lower wages paid to the Chinese have been appealing to investors. Having said that, China itself faced competition from other Asian countries after 2005. While a Chinese factory worker in 2005 in Shanghai earned a monthly wage of $350 and $250 in Shenzhen, the monthly wage was $200 in Manila, about $150 in Bangkok, and $100 in Batam, Indonesia.13 Besides competitive foreign wages, other factors such as exchange rates may account for the decline in trade flows. Owners of factories make investment and production decisions on the basis of exchange rates. Currency fluctuations and price-level variations are important factors in deciding where to locate, how much to produce, and how many people to hire. A further explanation for the trade decline is the response of Mexican border economies to the U.S. economic downturn. One indicator of economic integration is the correlation between business cycles in different countries. If one economy experiences a downturn or recession as a response to a downturn or recession in a neighboring economy, it can be inferred that there is a high level of economic integration. An econometric study that measures the business cycles in four Texas border cities, the state of Texas, the United States, and Mexico, found that business cycles among these economies are indeed correlated.14 The tariff phase-out periods and the diversification of assembly plants to nonborder Mexican states also play a part in explaining the slowdown in export growth from the Mexican border states to the United States in 2000. Since

Table 6.4 The export of goods to Mexico from U.S. border cities Average percent change from 1992 to 1994 San Diego, California San Francisco, California Los Angeles, California Nogales, Arizona Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas El Paso, Texas Houston-Galveston, Texas Laredo, Texas Port Arthur, Texas

4.9 –1.7 –2.4 9.0 12.3 6.0 2.2 8.6 –3.2

Average percent change from 1995 to 1997 16.4 10.5 22.5 8.4 –8.6 9.9 16.3 12.3 82.7

Average percent change from 1998 to 2000 13.2 4.3 33.8 16.0 37.4 22.2 25.8 14.7 48.9

Average percent change from 2001 to 2003 1.2 –21.0 –7.8 –13.3 2.5 –0.9 –1.8 –5.0 2.1

Average percent change from 2004 to 2005 4.6 37.4 5.2 15.8 7.3 3.2 17.0 7.7 41.4

Sources: Exports of goods data from the United States Import and Export Merchandise Trade Statistics http://www.usatradeonline.gov (accessed February 15, 2007). Data for inflation adjustment from the Import and Export Price Indexes by end use (exports of goods) from the United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ximpim.toc.htm (accessed July 28, 2007).


NAFTA, new assembly plants have started to locate in cities such as Puebla, Toluca, and Leon. The automotive sector has also benefited from cluster locations in Saltillo, Queretaro, and Guanajuato. Although tariffs under NAFTA were phased out during the 1990s and this produced an acceleration of trade, tariffs still remain for some agricultural products. The elimination of U.S.-Mexico sugar tariffs will take effect in October 2007. In January 2008, the elimination of tariffs will take place in Mexico for corn and dry beans and in the United States for frozen concentrated orange juice, winter vegetables, and peanuts.15 The exports from the American border cities also declined between 2001 and 2003. The business cycle and the downturn in the United States in 2001 may provide part of the explanation. It was caused by cyclical factors—the rise in interest rates, the increase in energy prices, and the burst of the high-tech bubble. However, in 2004 and 2005, figures for exports in the American cities show an increase. The likelihood that this will continue depends on further liberalization by Mexico and the United States and the character of their relationship with other world economies. For instance, Mexican tariffs against countries such as China are still in place. The export figures for the Mexican and U.S. border cities cited here are, to draw on the approach adopted by the French economist Frédéric Bastiat, only part of what is seen.16 If Mexico would lower its tariffs on Chinese imports, it would substitute these for current U.S. textile imports. But we cannot see this yet. In June 2006 Mexican antidumping (tariffs) cases filed against Chinese products amounted to twenty-five instances.17 Preferential trade agreements create and divert trade flows. Trade is created when a country’s economy shifts its source of supply from an inefficient domestic supplier to a more efficient partner. In the case of trade diversion, a relatively inefficient partner replaces the cheapest foreign supplier in the world.18 As Anne Krueger’s study of NAFTA during the 1990s concludes, NAFTA seems to have led to both trade diversion and trade creation.19 NAFTA created trade because “commodity categories in which Mexican exports to the United States grew most rapidly were also those categories in which it grew most rapidly with the rest of the world.”20 But Krueger also noted that NAFTA members import less than predicted from non-NAFTA trading partners, which leads to suspicion that there is trade diversion. She also makes reference to a claim made in 1999 by the manager of a Taiwanese-owned textile company in Mexico who reported that his company’s decision to locate in Mexico was based on NAFTA and the advantages that it provided. Gary Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott found that there is trade diversion under NAFTA in textiles and apparel where rules of origin in the agreement were designed to make U.S. firms prefer Mexican manufacturers and vice versa. The “yarn forward” rules limited Mexican purchases of Asian fabrics and diverted them to U.S. suppliers.21 This diverts trade. Multilateral liberalization is the optimal solution. But domestic political hurdles, such as pressure by interest groups for tariff and subsidy protection, remain, making regional free trade arrangements a preferred option among politicians.


Investment Flows since the Signing of NAFTA There are variations in the U.S. investment flows in the Mexican border states. In Table 6.5 we can observe that the average percent change in investment levels between 1994 and 1996 is positive in four of the six Mexican border states. There was increased investment in the Mexican border states between 1995 and 1998, about the same period in which real GDP registered a sharp rise. Between 1997 and 1999, the average percentage change in investment shows a sharp drop only in Chihuahua, whereas there was a 207 percent in Nuevo Leon. The fluctuations continue from 2000 to 2005. Table 6.6 shows Mexican investment in the United States. From 1999 to 2001 and from 2002 to 2005, the average percentage change in Mexican investment in the United States dropped from 88 percent to 8 percent. As noted above, the economic downturn in the United States may have affected investment flows.

Table 6.5 U.S. investment in the Mexican border states Average percent change from 1994 to 1996 Baja California Chihuahua Coahuila Nuevo Leon Sonora Tamaulipas

37.9 23.6 12.8 –24.9 4.3 –2.6


Average Average percent percent change change from 2000 from 2003 to 2002 to 2005

44.3 6.5 22.5 206.6 28.5 15.1

–5.2 11.7 0.6 17.4 17.1 –9.4

4.8 32.4 –3.3 105.5 19.4 13.0

Sources: Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics (INEGI), Economic Information Bank http://dgcnesyp.inegi.gob.mx/cgi-win/bdieintsi.exe/NIVK1000020006#ARBOL (accessed July 28, 2007). Inflation adjustment data from Import and Export Price Indexes by end use (exports of capital goods) from the United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ximpim.toc.htm (accessed July 28, 2007).

Table 6.6 Mexican investment in the United States Average percent change from 1990 to 1992 37.1

Average percent change from 1993 to 1995 14.8




Sources: Foreign direct investment in the US from the United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, International Economic Accounts http://www.bea.gov/international/ii_web/timeseries2 .cfm?econtypeid=2&dirlevel1id=1&Entitytypeid=1&stepnum=1 (accessed July 28, 2007). For inflation adjustment: Import and Export Price Indexes by end use (exports of capital goods) from the United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ximpim.toc.htm (accessed July 28, 2007).


In an econometric study looking at the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Mexico since the approval of NAFTA, Alfredo Cuevas et al. found that the effect of FDI flows is larger than the effect of flows into the United States. After considering competing explanatory variables such as real growth and consumer price inflation, mining, education, an investment diversion effect, and FDI flows in the world, their results confirm that there is a causal relationship between NAFTA and increases in FDI. FDI flows are nearly 60 percent higher than they would have been without NAFTA.22 U.S. investment in the border region has had a positive impact on growth by increasing physical investment in plants and through the transfer of technology. For example, in the automobile sector, foreign producers in Mexico transferred industrial practices such as zerodefect procedures and production audits to domestic suppliers. This improved productivity and the quality of products.23 As a result of technological spillovers to local firms, through the transfer of best production practices, competition and efficiency increased, and Mexican automobile exports boomed.24 The significant factors that shape investment decision include security, red tape, the enforcement of intellectual property rights, and the character of the infrastructure. Investors are ready to commit capital in an environment of efficiency and predictability. NAFTA has provided a legal instrument in chapter 11 that guarantees the proper enforcement of matters related to investment. Chapter 17 also offers a legal mechanism for the enforcement of intellectual property rights. Even with lower wages, the infrastructure of Indian cities would still need to compete with the infrastructure of the Mexican border cities. International trade on the U.S.-Mexican border has created direct revenue for the border cities through bridge tolls allowing some cities to develop and improve their infrastructure. In 1999 the three bridges in Laredo collected about twenty-seven million dollars in tolls.25 Yet it is generally acknowledged that the border needs greater infrastructure investment to handle the growing demand of trucking and warehousing created by the expansion of international trade. The hard infrastructure is however only part of what is seen. There is also a less visible soft infrastructure: the institutional. At the international level, some cities and states are competing to lessen bureaucratic burdens so as to attract investment and make business creation requirements more straightforward. Some of the Mexican border states, like Nuevo Leon, have attracted more investment because of the efficiency of their regulations for the setting up of businesses. Soft infrastructure as well as physical infrastructure is crucial for economic growth. The report, Doing Business in Mexico 2007, is a study of quantitative indicators used to evaluate whether government regulations encourage or restrain business activity.26 Table 6.7 shows two of these indicators. The prosperous border state of Nuevo Leon and the central state of Aguascalientes occupy the first rank for “ease of starting a business.” The poor southern state of Oaxaca is left behind in thirtieth place. The institutional governmental framework is a priority for achieving economic growth. The investment in hard infrastructures like roads or bridges will come after wealth is created.

Table 6.7 Soft infrastructure and economic growth: Starting a business and registering property in Mexican states Registering property

Starting a business Number of procedures

Time (days)

Cost (% of GDP per capita)

Ease of starting a business (rank)

Number of procedures

Time (days)

Cost (% of GDP per capita)

Ease of registering property (rank)

Northern states Nuevo Leon Sonora Chihuahua Baja California Tamaulipas Coahuila

8 9 9 9 9 9

24 34 29 38 29 28

10 10 21 13 17 13

1 9 13 12 14 6

5 5 6 8 5 8

28 21 35 25 61 51

3 3 3 3 4 4

3 2 13 15 16 29

Southern states: Oaxaca Chiapas Tabasco

9 9 9

46 34 35

31 38 31

30 27 23

8 5 5

52 36 43

5 3 5

30 7 19

Central states: Aguascalientes Guanajuato Mexico City Estado de Mexico Queretaro

8 8 8 9 8

12 12 27 45 19

7 15 14 44 9

1 7 5 28 3

7 7 5 7 6

18 26 74 48 45

3 2 5 5 4

4 6 26 27 20

Source: Data from “Doing Business in Mexico 2007”, The World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (2006), Washington DC, p. 30, http://www-wds.worldbank.org/ external/default/main?pagePK=64193027&piPK=64187937&theSitePK=523679&menuPK=64187510&searchMenuPK=64187283&theSitePK=523679&entityID=000090341_200 70405112129&searchMenuPK=64187283&theSitePK=523679 (accessed July 28, 2007).


To create wealth, it is first necessary to have institutions that do not impose bureaucratic hurdles on those who seek to establish businesses. Where more costs, procedures, and time are required to open a business or register property, there is more likelihood that there will be corruption and the waste of resources. In comparing Mexican integration in NAFTA with Turkey’s integration with the EU, Jovanovic stresses, “Turkey failed to attract large-scale of FDI principally because of corruption, red tape and lack of protection of intellectual property rights.”27 The decision to invest in a developing country not only depends on the signature of an agreement covering the free flow of investment, but also requires the enforcement of law and business regulations. The Impact of NAFTA on the Border Region There was indeed a positive economic effect on the border region during the 1990s. NAFTA has contributed to the process of U.S.-Mexican economic integration by building on other trade liberalization policies, all of which accelerated trade, investment, and economic growth along the border. These included Bracero, the labor immigration program that provided guest-worker permits from 1917 to 1921 and from 1942 to 1964; the maquiladora program put in place from 1960 onward and that promoted manufacturing and Mexican dutyfree imports to the United States; the 1965 Automotive Pact, which phased out tariffs in this sector; Mexico’s entry into GATT in 1986, which phased out Mexican tariffs; and the steps taken to permit Mexico’s currency to fluctuate freely in 1994. These developments built on the geographical proximity of Mexican border cities to the more developed markets and higher technology of the United States. More refined econometric studies that isolate NAFTA’s impact on the U.S.Mexican border in the 1990s confirm that there has been a causal relationship between NAFTA and economic growth. A study of NAFTA by Alessandro Nicita, looking at the effects of trade liberalization in Mexico between 1989 and 2000, reveals that the Mexican northern states have won from trade liberalization.28 His results consider other tariff liberalization policies that might have explained economic growth. His study uses a “tariff pass-through model” that quantifies the extent to which movements in prices between 1989 and 2000 can be directly attributed to trade liberalization.29 Nicita’s results show that under NAFTA, Mexican states closest to the United States gained three times more than the least developed states in the south. In terms of real income, the Mexican states that are closer to American trade markets benefited most in terms of increases in real income and wages.30 Gordon Hanson’s findings confirm this.31 They reveal that between 1990 and 2000, wages in the Mexican border rose 8.5 log points more than the wages in the more southerly regions. Nicita’s econometric study draws the conclusion that “from a poverty perspective, the trade liberalization that occurred between 1989 and 2000 has had the direct effect of reducing poverty by about 3 percent, therefore lifting approximately


three million [Mexicans] individuals out of poverty.”32 In another study, Hanson’s assessment of benefits in the border region during the 1990s suggest that a 10 percent increase in export manufacturing in a Mexican border city is tied to a 1.5 to 2 percent increase in employment in the neighboring U.S. border city.33 Nicita’s study shows that although agricultural household income decreased in Mexico, purchasing power increased for the rest of the population as a consequence of lower agricultural prices. This is the result of the economic growth process. Once resources are free from tariffs, they will be spontaneously allocated to sectors where economic activity offers greater profits.34 The liberalization of trade leads to the displacement of inefficient industries. An important concern for NAFTA’s critics is the displacement of agricultural workers. It is however important to note that in Mexico, the reallocation of resources into efficient industries benefited the large majority of nonagricultural workers, producers, and consumers. NAFTA has allowed three million excluded Mexicans to gain in terms of purchasing power. Table 6.8 shows the distribution of the Mexican population in terms of economic sectors. As can be seen in 2005 and 2006, the nonagricultural population outnumbers the agricultural population by approximately 85 percent. Agricultural producers, who are few in number, no longer benefit from protectionism. The removal of trade barriers allows the great majority of the nonagricultural population to gain. Final consumers in the nonagricultural sectors, where some are as poor as agricultural households, secure an increase in real income. Intermediate consumers like producers can benefit from buying agricultural products at lower prices and enjoy an increase in profits. The privatization of agricultural land has also reduced the proportion of rural workers in Mexico. Hanson suggests that with the breaking up of the ejidos, “only relative high-wage workers may have remained in the sector.”35 Furthermore, the sector’s share of male employment fell from 29 to 20 percent between 1990 and 2000.36 Figure 6.3 shows the transition from rural (primary sector) to manufacturing and services (secondary and tertiary sectors) in Mexico by considering the different economic sectors.

Table 6.8 The Mexican active economic population by occupation (percentages) Year

2005 2006

Total Agriculture Construction Manufacturing Commerce Services Other(a) Not industry specified 100 100

15.18 14.41

7.9 8.08

16.81 16.72

19.54 19.62

39.03 39.57

0.88 0.83

0.66 0.78

Source: Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics (INEGI), Employment and Occupation National Survey http://www.inegi.gob.mx/est/contenidos/espanol/rutinas/ept.asp?t=enoe08&c =6523 (accessed July 27, 2007). Note: The values for 2005 are preliminary figures and include mining, electricity, water and gas supply.


Percentage

Economic development does however take time and does not come without effort. When economic development takes place, an economy moves from rural to industrial and then from manufacturing to services. Members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), like the United States, Canada, the EU countries, Japan, and Australia, were once largely rural economies but are now mainly service economies. The fifty least developed economies classified as such by the United Nations are trapped in the rural stage of development waiting for investment opportunities so as to take off and transform their rural economies into industrialized clusters areas.37 Another criticism of NAFTA that is sometimes found in academic literature is that “the overarching goal of the treaty was to advance the economic interests of a new binational class of investors, not the fortunes of citizens in general.”38 As noted earlier, NAFTA did indeed provide legal guarantees to investors. Mexico’s past history of nationalization was something that investors needed to be certain would not happen again. Without giving investors legal security, there would have been substantially less investment in, for example, new manufacturing plants. The fortunes of noninvestor citizens have increased thanks to the investment of capital in the creation of new businesses and jobs, as well as augmented competition that has lowered prices and led to an increase in purchasing power.

Figure 6.3 Mexican active economic population occupied by activity sector, 1895–2000 (percentages) Source: Data from Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics (INEGI). Housing and Population Census, 1895 to 2000 and Housing and Population Counting 1995. http://www.inegi.gob.mx/est/contenidos/espanol/sistemas/cgpv2000/100historia/epobla10.asp?c= 995 (accessed July 27, 2007). Notes: The primary sector refers to agriculture, cattle raising, forestry, hunting and fishing activities. The secondary sector refers to mining, oil extraction, gas, manufacturing industry and electricity. The tertiary sector refers to commerce, transportation and other services.


The positive impact of NAFTA on the northern Mexican states has also raised concerns about growing inequality. There are however reasons for this. As noted above, one of the many explanations for the slowdown in the northern region has been the diversification of assembly plants to central Mexican cities since NAFTA was implemented. The result of this diversification has allowed more individuals from different regions to join the market. In Table 6.7 we can observe that institutions in the southern Mexican states are imposing bureaucratic barriers that obstruct the creation of businesses. Yet to achieve development in the south will take time because of the entrenched power of the labor unions, government, and private entities. Education in southern Mexican states such as Oaxaca and Chiapas is in crisis, a reflection of a generalized lack of governance. The struggle for the domination of resources and the imposition of political power in these regions prevents the population from accessing the more developed market economy in the central and northern states of the country. The political constraints in these southern Mexican states have created the inequality, not the market. In response to the concerns of critics of NAFTA and the inequality of outcomes, four arguments are advanced: (1) In any exchange the outcome is not necessarily equal. The satisfaction and the willingness to pay or the sacrifice that any individual is willing to make in exchange for something is different for every person. We need to measure outcomes in relative and not absolute terms. (2) If we strive for equality there is no incentive to compete. If we live in a society without competition, then growth and improvement will not take place. That was Mexico’s position during the 1970s when a policy of import-substitution was adopted. This stifled foreign competition and left Mexico out of world competition. It condemned millions to poverty. (3) In any exchange, in international trade for example, economic factors need to be sufficiently unequal to give the parties a trade incentive. The greater the disparity, the greater the growth will be. (4) If inequality results from granting privileges to selected groups and from using violence or fraud, then this kind of artificial inequality should be condemned. Equality before the law, such as the enforcement of the international trade principle of nondiscrimination, is the form of equality that should concern us.39 How long the positive effect of NAFTA will last and how far from the border mutual gains will extend to other Mexican and American states remains to be seen. Although market benefits are gradually expanding by reducing inefficiencies and reallocating resources, some other factors can slow down the positive impact of liberalization. These include trade diversion as a result of the proliferation of other preferential trade agreements, the impasse in multilateral negotiations, the impediment to labor mobility, and the struggle between government elections and interest groups that causes tariffs and subsidies to become permanent through the imposition of antidumping and countervailing duties.


The Political Impact of NAFTA on Mexican Institutions In preferential trade agreements between rich and poor countries, it is commonly believed that the rich country benefits the most from trade and investment liberalization. In terms of absolute values, the economic gains for the rich country are perhaps enormous; but in relative terms, the poorer country gains as much as the rich one. There is also another gain for the less developed country: the transformation of its political and financial institutions. In Mexico, stifling statism, embodied in the rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) over seventy years, spent enormous amounts of money in alleged social programs for poverty reduction and protecting national industries based on talk of Mexican socioeconomic inequality. Applying public choice theory to the history of Mexican development, these social programs have for decades given special privileges to select industrial groups.40 In exchange, these groups provided financial support to the PRI so as to obtain benefits such as tariffs that gave them protection from foreign competition. This symbiotic relationship allowed the PRI to win consecutive elections over a long period of time. With NAFTA, a change in the political regime was indispensable to gain the confidence of investors. It was no coincidence that the PRI finally lost an election in 2000. NAFTA was a legal instrument that enforced property rights and reassured investors about Mexican commitment to economic liberalization and macroeconomic reforms. For Mexico, NAFTA symbolized an effort to keep its economy open to competition through currency liberalization, the continued dismantling of trade barriers, the deregulation of business, and the privatization of state monopolies. Oligopolies, labor unions, and the interests of some politicians who are opposed to further fiscal, health, or education reform remain. But NAFTA liberalization has provided the basis for the development of a democratic, competitive, and open Mexican society. The Next Steps for NAFTA Despite the process of integration under NAFTA, there are impediments that prevent the maximization of gains from the agreement. These are the obstacles to labor mobility and the tariffs and subsidies embodied in antidumping and countervailing policies. In the following sections, we review three policy options. Free Movement of Labor and the European Experience Bracero, the U.S. guest-worker program, operated between 1917 and 1921 in response to labor shortages caused by World War I. It was implemented again in 1942 in response to labor shortages caused by World War II. The Bracero program allowed U.S. firms and farms to hire Mexican labor on a temporary basis.


In 1964 Bracero was abolished. The U.S.-Mexican Maquiladora program began in 1965 and attempted to assimilate this workforce. But the Maquiladora program did not stop immigration as expected. Against this background, in 1986 the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) granted permanent legal status to unauthorized immigrants and prohibited U.S. firms from hiring illegal immigrants. This also failed to prevent illegal immigration. The unintended consequences of governmental policy (the end of the Bracero program, the IRCA policy, the proposed construction of a fence on the border, and restrictive labor supply policies) have ended the circular legal migration process. The risk and cost of leaving and coming into the United States again is too high. This pushed migrants to settle illegally and indefinitely in the United States. U.S. immigration policies have backfired by blocking the Mexican legal labor supply and have transformed it into an illegal labor market. The two most recurrent concerns of those who criticize open immigration are the threat of foreign competition for jobs and the downward pressure on average wages. Illegal immigration, as critics assert, does indeed depress wages and thus increases competition among low-wage workers. The IRCA imposed sanctions on employers who hired illegal workers, but has “encouraged hiring through subcontractors and off-the-books cash payments.”41 Another factor that depresses wages is the lack of bargaining power of undocumented workers. Their illegal status prevents them from “bargaining individually with employers for a full market wage.”42 Some illegal immigrants use false documents while others accept payment in cash: “The result is submarket wages and submarket working conditions for undocumented workers and for documented workers who compete with them in the labor market.”43 IRCA sanctions on employers have resulted in a form of tax on low-skilled workers, whether immigrant or native born.44 The lack of bargaining power, document fraud, submarket wages and conditions, and the penalties on employers that act as a tax on unskilled workers have indeed depressed wages and have led to submarket competition between citizens and immigrants. Immigration is not the problem; illegality is. Immigration becomes a social, economic, and political problem when it is illegal. Smuggling of workers, counterfeit documentation, social alienation, depressed wages, and substandard conditions for undocumented workers are some of the inefficiencies created by placing migrants outside the law. The economic and legal reasons for allowing freedom of movement for goods, services, and capital also apply to the free movement of labor. Growth is otherwise blocked. If the U.S. and Mexican economies and individuals want to gain the most from economic integration, free labor mobility needs to be part of the process. There is, however, a problem. The labor unions remain committed to protectionism. Their fears have been reproduced in the media and echoed in political campaigns in which candidates use the immigration issue as an argument to gain votes either by promising a guest-worker program to Latinos or by promising job protection to other ethnic and racial groups.


NAFTA chapter 16 (“Temporary Entry for Business Persons”) and Appendix 1603.D.1 (“Professionals”) include a list of skilled workers allowed to temporarily enter the labor market. It is puzzling why the United States, one of most competitive economies in the world, is afraid of the farmer, the cleaner, the construction worker, or the car washer, but does not fear the engineer, the dentist, the accountant, or architect. This part of the agreement may reflect pressure from labor unions, or it may be a mechanism to win votes. So as to gain the most from NAFTA liberalization, it is crucial that chapter 16 extends temporary work permits to unskilled labor. By providing legal channels for unskilled workers to obtain temporary work permits as easily as professionals, many of the economic inefficiencies created by an underground labor market will be overcome. Mexican immigration will reacquire its formerly circular character, and millions of individuals will be allowed to become a legal part of the economy. This will raise tax revenue, reduce policing costs, contribute to the social security deficit, and generally improve welfare. The experience of the EU is a case in point. The process of EU enlargement has often raised fears about a flood of immigrants from the poorer accession countries to the richer members. This was the case when Greece joined in 1981, Spain and Portugal in 1986, and the central and eastern European countries’ enlargement in 2004 and again in 2007 with the accession of Romania and Bulgaria. With each enlargement, an immigration flow from the new member countries followed. But after a period of time, immigration from these countries declined.45 The economic explanation for the decline in immigration level and the shift toward immigration circularity relies on the differences in production functions and barriers to trade among countries.46 The improvement of the economies in the new member countries, the growing convergence of economic structures, and the “catch up” effect as the new member countries moved toward a level of economic development comparable with that in the richer countries have all contributed to the decline in immigration levels.47 The United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland have benefited from Polish immigration. After the 2004 EU enlargement about, five hundred thousand people from east and central European countries went to the UK. The majority were Polish citizens. They provided a labor supply where it was needed, and the UK economy registered significant growth.48 Since many young Poles moved to the UK and Ireland to work, there were wage increases for unskilled employment in Poland. Higher wages, increased specialization, and new opportunities were created in Poland. These soon attracted Poles to return home. It is precisely because integration is taking place and with it economic growth that Mexican immigration will continue if employers demand it. However immigration levels fluctuate. Propaganda that evokes images based on vast and ceaseless flows of Mexican immigrants is false. Labor immigration only occurs when it is needed: “As advanced economies create more high-skilled jobs, they inevitably create more low-skilled jobs too.”49 Philippe Legrain points out that hospitals, for instance, not only require doctors and nurses, but also need cleaners, cooks, laundry workers, and security staff.50


Contrary to the assertions of those who criticize open immigration, the number of jobs is not fixed. Immigrants also create jobs:51 “Immigrants increase the demand for goods and services produced by native workers and firms. Immigrants, after all, buy cars, order pizza, call the plumber and go to the supermarket. Native-owned firms and native-born workers are more than willing to provide these services to new consumers.”52 Yet, “the problem for immigrants is that while the jobs they take are visible, the jobs they create for everyone are largely invisible.”53 Well-organized labor unions and interest groups publicize the jobs taken by immigrants, whereas the jobs created by immigrants are often invisible. To obtain mutual advantage of the Mexican labor supply and the demand for labor in the United States, a legal channel is required. Eventually, as new opportunities are created through the free flow of goods, capital, services, and labor, Mexican immigration will be circular and will fluctuate on the basis of market forces. There is still no empirical evidence to suggest that wage levels in Mexico and the United States have begun to converge. Wage differentials remain high. For Mexico’s economy to catch up, its productivity levels need to increase: “Low wages reflect productivity rates, leaving firms indifferent between a high wage, high productivity area and a low-wage, low productivity area.”54 For instance, Mexican agriculture is labor intensive, whereas U.S. agriculture is capital intensive. U.S. agricultural technology, and thus productivity, is far more advanced than in Mexico.55 In this case, “the real return to the factor used intensively in that sector will be higher in the advanced country.”56 As a result unskilled rural Mexican real wages are lower than in the United States, and there is an incentive to migrate. Since specialization is a precondition for factor price equalization, James Markussen and Steven Zahniser suggest that wages will only begin to equalize through Mexican immigration to the United States when migrants work with U.S. technology.57 After a period of time, because of immigration, specialization, and the resulting equalization of wages incentives to migrate in that sector will start to diminish. It is unsurprising that so far only wages for skilled workers in Mexico have increased while those for the unskilled have decreased. After a period of immigration, wages in Mexico for unskilled workers will tend to rise. As Hanson has found, “there is a strong positive correlation between wage changes and historical state migration rates to the United States. States with better opportunities for migration abroad had higher wage growth during the 1990’s. This suggests that migration abroad puts upward pressure on wages in the region from which workers were drawn.”58 The upward pressure on wages for unskilled labor was, as noted above, the case with Polish immigration to the UK. Economic integration results in stronger cooperation among governments in many areas including security. There is an established link between economic wealth and peace. The closer cooperation between EU countries and economic prosperity has resulted in peaceful relations among member states. After September 11, U.S. initiatives such as “Smart Borders” included cross-border measures such as the harmonization of port-of-entry logistics, the financing of border infrastructure projects, and the creation of a “law enforcement liaison


framework to enhance cooperation between U.S. and Mexican federal agencies along the U.S.-Mexico border.”59 Collaboration in fighting drug trafficking has also intensified since NAFTA was signed. Work permits for unskilled labor would provide a proper record of the identity and location of each worker, allowing the efficient use of policing resources at the border. Criminals and drug traffickers, rather than workers, would be chased. Open markets bind nations together and generate prosperity through cooperation. Voluntary exchange entails mutual benefits that create wealth and contribute to the making of a more secure world. Replacing NAFTA AD and CVD with an Antitrust Authority Dumping is traditionally defined as price discrimination among national markets or as selling below cost of production. In NAFTA, an antidumping (AD) measure permits the imposition of a tariff so as to protect the national market from imported goods that are allegedly being dumped. A NAFTA member country can also impose a countervailing duty (CVD) when it finds that subsidized imports are causing, or threaten to cause, injury to a domestic industry. The rationale for AD and CVD is “legalized protectionism.”60 These regulations allow great discretion when calculating alleged dumping and injury margins.61 The domestic industries that are supposedly affected by dumping are industries in decline or ailing sectors where it is easy to demonstrate “injury.” The protection of declining industries is unproductive and entails diffuse costs for consumers who pay for the subsidies and tariffs through higher prices and reduced imports, while concentrated benefits (rents) are granted to inefficient industries. NAFTA AD and CVD rules established in chapter 19 could be replaced with an antitrust or competition authority perhaps modeled on the European Community’s Competition Directorate. The Treaty of Nice, chapter 1, establishes “Rules for Competition” among member countries. It includes Articles 81 and 82, which set the rules for avoiding abuses within the common market such as predatory pricing, for instance, (a) directly or indirectly imposing unfair purchase or selling prices or other unfair trading conditions; (b) limiting production, markets, or technical development to the prejudice of consumers; (c) applying dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions with other trading parties, thereby placing them at a competitive disadvantage; (d) making the conclusion of contracts subject to acceptance by the other parties of supplementary obligations which, by their nature or according to commercial usage, have no connection with the subject of such contracts.62 Article 85 makes reference to the prohibition of anticompetitive behavior such as the establishment of cartels. The European Community’s rules of competition are an illustration of how to deal with noncompetitive behavior. If a competition policy such as the one already in operation in the EU or in the United States could be applied in the NAFTA countries, the agreement would be less open to conflict.


The Revision of NAFTA Labor and Environmental Side Agreements In the United States, NAFTA passed with Republican support. Sixty percent of congressional Democrats voted against the agreement. Former President Bill Clinton pushed for the implementation of the Labor and Environmental Side Agreements so as to win support from Democrats in Congress and alleviate the concerns of NAFTA’s critics about the loss of jobs and poor environmental standards in Mexico. However, as Huffbauer and Schott have asserted, “the NAFTA labor and environmental side agreements were never designed to make substantial progress in addressing labor and environmental problems.”63 Instead, the North American Development Bank (NADB) was created to overcome labor and environmental concerns. Nonetheless, the NADB has not proved to be an effective solution when tackling environmental issues. There is a need for further economic resources and additional cooperation from local governments. For the proper functioning of the NADB, greater collaboration between Mexican and American authorities is indispensable. Proposals for the creation of a transborder authority would prove to be a better way of dealing with border issues.64 The transborder authority would operate most effectively if it was designed at the lower levels of government and in conjunction with the NADB. For instance, Timothy Brown has pointed out that binational metropolitan area arrangements, like those adopted in BaselMulhouse between Switzerland and France, can face challenges jointly and find optimal solutions that allow local governments to resolve common problems.65 Conclusion This chapter has considered the impact of NAFTA liberalization. A series of studies looking at the wage differentials of NAFTA member countries, the impact of foreign direct investment, and household welfare has systematically established a link between trade and investment liberalization and economic growth. It is nonetheless premature to draw a final conclusion about the impact of liberalization under NAFTA. Robust evidence points toward positive economic effects, particularly on the U.S.-Mexican border region during the 1990s. Both sides of the border have gained. Yet the cost-effective character of NAFTA and the gains from economic integration are often neglected realities. NAFTA has been politicized before its inception, and this distorted its legal and economic rationale. Although often neglected in studies, border integration was taking place before NAFTA. Mexican participation in GATT, Bracero, Maquiladora, the Automobile Pact, Mexican currency liberalization, and geographical factors has contributed to the economic growth in the border region. Both sides enjoy benefits from freer markets and the resulting creation of wealth. The losers of the liberalization equation have been displaced workers from inefficient and protected industries. These industries have enjoyed a sanctuary market under tariff and subsidy protection at the expense of the rest of the population’s economic welfare. The winners from open markets are the workers in


new industries, workers who enjoy higher wages, producers and consumers who gain from reduced prices, and in overall terms, the new economic opportunities created because of investment and the creation of new businesses. They outnumber the losers. NAFTA was a powerful incentive for Mexico. It encouraged the locking in of earlier economic liberalization reforms and the continuing of newer ones. NAFTA also created incentives that led to greater political competition within Mexico. The economic integration process between Mexico and the United States is not over. The process of cooperation that led to the EU of today began in 1951 and the ongoing process of reforms at different levels of government continues to this day. NAFTA institutions must be flexible and adapt themselves to new challenges. The revision of the Labor and Environmental Side Agreements and the creation of a transborder authority are for example important. NAFTA has been an important step in the right direction, but political hurdles in both countries remain. In industries such as textiles or sugar, entrenched interest groups and opportunistic politicians seek rents from the political system at the expense of the overall population. Replacing NAFTA AD and CVD rules with an antitrust or competition authority would contribute to the overcoming of these political obstacles. If Mexico is to gain not only on the border region but also throughout the country, it needs to keep liberalizing its industrial sectors and open them to competition from the rest of the world. The Mexican government needs to continue the break up of monopolies, the enforcement of the law, and a policy of fiscal, education, and labor reform. Within NAFTA a crucial move toward increasing benefits for both Mexico and the United States would be the inclusion in chapter 16 of a provision for work permits for unskilled labor. Legal immigration would reduce the economic inefficiencies and social alienation created by an underground labor market. It would encourage circular migration and most importantly, generate wealth by accelerating economic growth along and beyond both sides of the border. Notes 1. NAFTA aims to phase out tariffs on trade over a maximum of fifteen years since its creation in 1994. See G. C. Hufbauer and J. J. Schott, NAFTA Revisited (Washington DC: Institute for International Economics, 2005). 2. European economic integration began with the signing of the agreement establishing the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951. 3. Perot’s phrase makes allusion to his idea that NAFTA “would devastate the U.S. economy by encouraging American firms to move to Mexico to take advantage of cheap labor.” The consequent loss of jobs in the United States would, according to Perot, create a “giant sucking sound.” According to Berens, “Perot’s folksy expressions have drawn extensive media attention and helped the Texas businessman publicize his political positions. . . . The media picked up the phrase—along with many of Perot’s other statements about NAFTA—and directed the public’s attention to the treaty’s potential impact during the ratification debate.” See C. Berens, “Amplifying the


Giant Sucking Sound: Ross Perot and the Media in the NAFTA Negotiations,” Newspaper Research Journal 20, no. 2 (1999): 90–91. 4. The Mexican Maquiladora Program has been in place since 1960. It allowed tarifffree entry from inputs and machinery and the reexporting of outputs to the United States. Duties were paid only on the value that had been added in Mexico. 5. A maquiladora is a labor-intensive assembly operation, plant, or factory. In Mexico, the maquiladora plant imports U.S. inputs, assembles them, and exports them back to the United States, sometimes even for more processing. 6. O. Ahumada, A. Lazzarotto, M. Restori, B. Smith, and J. R. Villalobos, “Inbound for Mexico: Overcoming Supply Chain Challenges for a U.S.-Mexican Maquiladora,” Industrial Engineer 36, no. 4 (2004): 38. 7. See Index of Economic Freedom (Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation, 2007) for the link between openness and economic growth. 8. According to M. A. Oliva and L. A. Rivera Batiz, learning by doing “implies that the productivity of existing and new technologies depends on the accumulated experience in using them.” See Oliva and Batiz, International Trade: Theory, Strategies and Evidence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 188. 9. Ibid., 191. 10. G. C. Hufbauer and J. J. Schott, NAFTA Revisited, 365–66. 11. U. S. Department of Commerce and International Trade Administration, NAFTA: A State Export Perspective, 1993–2003 (Washington, DC: 2004), 4. 12. Gould uses the gravity methodology or gravity models. They are econometric analyses that for forty years have been applied to international trade so as to quantify the effects of liberalization. The model name represents an analogy to Newtonian physics. The theoretical foundation is that larger economies have a pulling effect on labor and goods: “Bilateral trade is proportional to the GDP of each trading partner and inversely related to the distance between them.” See S. Rivera, “Key Methods for Quantifying the Effects of Trade Liberalization,” International Economic Review, U.S. International Trade Commission Office of Economics, publication no. 5383, 2003, p. 2. D. M. Gould, “Has NAFTA Changed North American Trade?” Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, (First Quarter, 1998), 16. 13. “The Problem with Made in China,” Economist 382, no. 8511 (2007): 69. See B. Powell and D. Skarbek, “Sweatshops and Third World Living Standards: Are the Jobs Worth the Sweat?” Journal of Labor Research 26, no. 2 (2006): 263–74. Their study found that most sweatshop jobs (like those in assembly factories) provide their workers with a standard of living above the national economic average. 14. J. Cañas and K. R. Phillips, “Business Cycle Coordination along the Texas-Mexico Border,” Economic Review, working paper no. 0502, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas (2004), 1. 15. Hufbauer and Schott, NAFTA Revisited, 285. 16. F. Bastiat, That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen: The Unintended Consequences of Government Spending (West Valley City, UT: Waking Lion, 2006). 17. Antidumping statistics from the World Trade Organization. 18. V. Curzon Price, Théorie de l’intégration économique (Genève: Université de Genève, 2001), 134. 19. A. O. Krueger, “Trade Creation and Trade Diversion under NAFTA,” working paper no. 7429, National Bureau of Economic Research (1999), 1–32. 20. Ibid., 21.


21. Hufbauer and Schott, NAFTA Revisited, 23. The “yarn forward” rule establishes that the component determining the good’s classification must be woven or knit in one NAFTA country with yarn spun or extruded in NAFTA countries. Furthermore, the garment must be cut (or knit to shape) and assembled in NAFTA countries. See also O. Cadot, C. Carrère, J. De Melo, and A. Portugal-Pérez, “Market Access and Welfare under Free Trade Agreements: Textiles under NAFTA,” World Bank Economic Review 19, no. 3 (2005): 415–30. Their study found that NAFTA rules of origin on textiles lead to a diversion of trade by creating a captive market for upstream producers. According to the authors, trade diversion on regional trade agreements distracts from necessary reforms to improve the functioning of the world trading system. 22. A. Cuevas, M. Messmacher, and A. Werner, “Foreign Direct Investment in Mexico since the Approval of NAFTA,” World Bank Economic Review 19, no. 3 (2005): 473. 23. K. Saggi, “Trade, Foreign Direct Investment and International Technology Transfer: A Survey,” World Bank Research Observer, 17, no. 2 (2002): 213. 24. Technological spillovers refer to pure externalities like the facilitation of technology adoption that may accompany foreign direct investment. Saggi, “Trade, Foreign Direct Investment,” 208, 213. 25. C. Manzanares, and K. Phillips, “Transportation: Infrastructure and the Border Economy,” Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas (Second Quarter, 2001), 13. 26. Doing Business in Mexico 2007 (Washington, DC: World Bank and International Finance Corporation, 2006). 27. M. N., Jovanovic, The Economics of International Integration (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2006), 38. 28. A. Nicita, “Who Benefited from Trade Liberalization in Mexico? Measuring the Effects on Household Welfare,” working paper no. 3265, World Bank Policy Research (2004), 1–34. 29. According to the tariff pass-through model, the change in the domestic price of an imported good is determined by the change in the tariff rate multiplied by the price of the imported good and adjusted by changes in the exporter markup. Nicita’s passthrough model is constructed to capture trade costs by taking into account the extent to which local markets are receptive to movements in the prices at the border. See Nicita, “Who Benefited,” 11–12. 30. Ibid., 28. 31. G. H. Hanson, “What Happened to Wages in Mexico since NAFTA?” working paper no. 9563, National Bureau of Economic Research (2003), 17. 32. Nicita, “Who Benefited,” 31. 33. G. H. Hanson, “North American Economic Integration and Industry Location,” working paper no. 6587, National Bureau of Economic Research (1998), 21. 34. F. A. Hayek, The Sensory Order (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1944); and F. A. Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1948). Spontaneous allocation refers to the decentralized system of the market, which is the sum of millions of individuals’ preferences and voluntarily exchanges and where an optimal use of knowledge is achieved. 35. In the Mexican ejido system, the land was owned by the state, supported by a national bank, and used by the people of the community. 36. Hanson, “North American Economic Integration,” 15–17. 37. The economies of some of the fifty least developed countries include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Benin, Myanmar, Nepal, Laos, Sudan, Yemen, and Zambia. It is out of


the scope of this study to account for other types of economic policies or state reforms that have transformed rural economies into service economies or how displaced agricultural workers reallocate in different sectors of the economy or migrate, as a result of this structural economic change. But see, for example, J. Powelson, “The State and the Peasant: Agricultural Policy on Trial,” in The Revolution in Development Economics, eds. J. A. Dorn, S. H. Hanke, and A. A. Walters (Washington, DC: CATO Institute, 1998). For an analysis of the challenges that non-metropolitan areas face due to new economic structures, see D. Barkley, “The Economics of Change in Rural America,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 77, no. 5 (1995): 1252–58. 38. P. Fernández-Kelly and D. S. Massey, “Borders for Whom? The Role of NAFTA in Mexico-U.S. Migration,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 610, no. 1 (2007): 115. 39. V. Curzon Price, “L’erreur française: la passion pour l’égalité,” in L’homme libre, eds. M. Laine and G. Hülsmann (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2006), 17. 40. J. M. Buchanan and G. Tullock, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of a Constitutional Democracy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press: 1962). 41. D. T. Griswold, “Willing Workers: Fixing the Problem of Illegal Mexican Migration to the United States,” policy paper no. 19, CATO Institute’s Center for Trade Policy Studies (2002), 7. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. M. N. Jovanovic, The Economics of European Integration: Limits and Prospects (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2005), 762. 46. Ibid. 47. V. Curzon Price, “Reintegrating Europe: Economic Aspects,” in The Enlargement of the European Union: Issues and Strategies, eds. V. Curzon Price, A. Landaum, and R. G. Whitman, (London: Routledge Studies in the European Economy, 1999), 42. 48. A. Taylor, “Poles dominated in migration of workers,” Financial Times, November 21, 2006. 49. P. Legrain, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them (London: Little, Brown, 2006), 74. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid., 66. 52. G. Borjas, Heaven’s Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 87. 53. P. Stalker, The No-Nonsense Guide to International Migration (Oxford: New Internationalist, 2001), 65. 54. V. Curzon Price, “Costs and Benefits of Membership. Making the Most of the Principle of Subsidiarity within the EU,” in The Enlargement of the European Union Experience: Advantages and the Costs for the New Members, ed. J. Kundery (Wroctaw: University of Wroctaw, 2005), 36. 55. J. R. Markusen and S. Zahniser, “Liberalisation and Incentives for Labour Migration: Theory with Applications to NAFTA,” in Migration: The Controversies and the Evidence, eds. R. Faini, J. De Melo, and K. F. Zimmermann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 288. 56. Ibid., 289. 57. Ibid., 290.


58. G. H. Hanson, “What Happened to Wages in Mexico since NAFTA?” working paper no. 9563, National Bureau of Economic Research (2003), 25. 59.Office of the Press Secretary, Smart Border: 22 Point Agreement—U.S.-Mexico Border Partnership Action Plan, White House, Washington, DC, March 21, 2002. 60. B. Hindley and P. A. Messerlin, Antidumping Industrial Policy: Legalized Protectionism in the WTO and What to Do about It (Washington, DC: AEI American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1996). 61. See for, example, R. Clarida, “Dumping: In theory, in policy and in practice,” in Fair Trade and Harmonization, eds. J. Bhagwati and R. Hudec (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996); and B. Blonigen and T. Prusa, “Antidumping,” in Handbook of International Trade, eds. E. K. Choi and J. Harrigan (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003). 62. Treaty establishing the European Community (consolidated version), Part 3: Community policies, Title VI: Common rules on competition, taxation and approximation of laws, Chapter 1: Rules on competition, Section 1: Rules applying to undertakings. 63. Hufbauer and Schott, NAFTA Revisited, 486. 64. See for example, T. Brown, “The Fourth Member of NAFTA: The U.S.-Mexico Border,” The Annals of the American Academy 550 (1997): 105–19; and A. Collinge and P. Emerson, “The Environmental Side of the North American Free Trade,” in NAFTA and the Environment (San Francisco: Fraser Institute, 1993). 65. Brown, “The Fourth Member of NAFTA,” 121.

CHAPTER 7

Transnational Social Networks and International Trade Magdalena Barros Nock

t the beginning of the 1990s, I carried out research in central Mexico looking at the opportunities that ejidatarios and small private property owners had to produce and export fruits and vegetables for the international market.1 I looked, in particular, at the importance that migration was beginning to have in the development of commercial chains in the fruit and vegetable business. For example, in the community that I was studying in Jalisco, the leader of the producer association was no longer the municipal president, whose power depended on his contacts and networks among government officials and employees. The new leader was an ejidatario who had migrated to the United States in the 1970s and was using the contacts and networks that he had established in Texas and California with brokers and import/export firm owners to export the organization’s output.2 Brokers from California hired him to negotiate with producers from his own town and nearby towns. I found similar cases and tracked the networks built by these intermediaries and firms to the Los Angeles wholesale markets.3 There I met a growing group of entrepreneurs of Mexican origin running small- and medium-sized businesses who were making a living from the fruit and vegetable business. Their activities were structured around transnational social networks formed by kin members, compadres (godparents), paisanos (people from the same region), and friends who lived in Mexico and the United States. The objective of this chapter is to discuss the creation and development of these transnational social networks involving small-scale family firms in Los Angeles and Tijuana and producers in Mexico. I analyze the strategies

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implemented by entrepreneurs of Mexican origin so as to create, build, and maintain their networks and businesses in Los Angeles. I describe the way transnational networks are used, their principal characteristics, and the ways in which they have developed around the fruit and vegetable business. In a study of transnational entrepreneurs, Portes, Guarnizo, and Haller describe how transnational immigration “points to an alternative form of economic adaptation of foreign minorities in advanced societies that are based on the mobilization of their cross-country social networks.”4 Two factors are important for an entrepreneur to be considered “transnational.” First, a firm owner should travel abroad at least twice a year for business. Second, the success of his business depends on his contacts and associates in another country, primarily his country of origin.5 Small-scale fresh fruit and vegetable wholesale marketing in Los Angeles and Tijuana largely involves men and women who migrated to the United States in search of work and found their way into the business. The types of firms analyzed in this chapter can be categorized as micro firms and small firms.6 They have permits to import and export fresh fruit and vegetables. They are flexible but unstable. The majority does not have a stable income, and business is vulnerable to market fluctuations and changes in weather conditions. As most business deals are not written, there are constant problems between buyers and sellers. Methodology During 1998 and 1999 I carried out fieldwork in Los Angeles and Tijuana. I interviewed firm owners and their families, workers, consumers, buyers, as well as sellers and brokers. The data was complemented with information gathered during previous research undertaken in producing areas in Mexico in the states of Colima, Jalisco, and Morelos. I made a case study of the Seventh Street Wholesale Market in Los Angeles and the Hidalgo Market in Tijuana. Working with wholesale traders in the markets was among the most difficult fieldwork that I have ever undertaken as an anthropologist. During my stay in Los Angeles, it took me three months before I could conduct a complete interview at the market. The firm owners and their workers are extremely busy. The market opens at three o’clock and closes around eleven o’clock in the morning. And every time I began an interview, the informants were constantly interrupted by telephone calls, consumers, and other business-related issues. Added to this, traders are very suspicious people. Information is a vital resource; they hardly ever give out information about where they buy their produce or where they obtain their capital because competition is very strong. Information and contacts are kept in secret. It took me a long time to convince them I was not interested in opening a business, and therefore, I represented no competition at all. Furthermore, I had to convince some of them I was not la migra (Homeland Security) or the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) collecting taxes. It was because of the kindness of a female entrepreneur who saw me wandering for months around the market and

Transnational Social Networks and International Trade • 135

who decided to let me into her world and introduce me to her family and friends that I was finally accepted and trusted by others in the market. My work is based on qualitative data obtained through observation and openended interviews through which I am able to build life histories and social networks. There is no quantitative data or precise census data because many of these firms appear and disappear within a season. In the Seventh Street Market, I interviewed thirty-six firm owners, some of their workers, and consumers. In the Hidalgo Market in Tijuana, I interviewed fifteen firm owners. The analysis is based on data related to the activities that the different members of the network carry out, the resources they control, their access to information, their knowledge about other members of the network, and the role they play in the flow of commodities, information, and capital. There is also data about relationships among members of the network and the social ties that sustain them. This chapter is divided in two parts. In the first one, I briefly describe the development of wholesale markets in Los Angeles and Tijuana; and in the second part, I analyze the main characteristics of transnational social networks in the fresh fruit and vegetable business, presenting as an example two cases: one of a small firm and its transnational social network that has been successful in the business and the other of a micro firm and the problems it has encountered in the business. These two cases show us some of the factors that influence the success or failure of a Mexican transnational family firm in the business. Fruit and Vegetable Wholesale Markets in Los Angeles and Tijuana Since the beginning of the century, Los Angeles has been one of the biggest and most important fresh fruit and vegetable wholesale distribution centers in the United States.7 One of the main suppliers of winter fruit and vegetables has been Mexico.8 There were three main wholesale markets in central Los Angeles: the Ninth Street Market, the Central Market, and the Seventh Street Market. Mexican immigrants started to work in these markets since the beginning of the last century. These people started working as truck loaders and unloaders, in selection bands and slowly started moving up the labor ladder. Tijuana began as a small border town isolated from the rest of the country by a mountain chain called La Rumorosa. The first wholesale market was constructed in the 1950s in Mexicali and was named Braulio Maldonado Market. Street vendors from the small town of Tijuana sold produce that came from Mexicali and San Diego. In 1955 the Traders Union Miguel Hidalgo S. C. was created. During the first years they had to change their location several times because of problems with neighbors and the local government. It was not until 1958 that they constructed the small Sixth Street Market where they stayed until 1983. Produce such as oranges and avocados came from California, and chilies and onions came from Mexicali. Some cautious traders preferred to buy their produce from California rather than venturing across the dangerous road to La Rumorosa.


Tijuana started to grow and so did the number of migrants hoping to cross the border. Retail markets that sold fruits, vegetables, and groceries started to emerge in order to meet the growing demand. When tomatoes began to be grown in the Valley of San Quintín during the 1970s, they were exported to Los Angeles through Tijuana. When the communications infrastructure was improved between Mexicali and Tijuana, the marketing of produce produced in other states grew. The networks formed between Tijuana’s traders and brokers from Southern California were asymmetric, fragile, and unequal. Indeed, California’s brokers had more economic power.9 By the 1970s the Mexican immigrant population in Los Angeles was growing, and the markets in Los Angeles and Tijuana offered attractive job opportunities. Migrants would usually start in the lowest paying jobs, those paid per hour, but with time, they were hired full-time; some even became buyers and sellers for the firm. This allowed them to learn about the business and make contacts with brokers, distributors, packers, and consumers. Within time, some of them made use of these contacts to open their own business. If a firm goes bankrupt, it is common for the high-level employees to take advantage of their bosses’ networks so as to open their own business. Later in the 1980s, important changes occurred that permitted Mexican immigrants to become entrepreneurs and open their own firms in the market. The 1986 amnesty allowed 2.3 million Mexicans to legalize their status and eventually become American citizens. This brought changes not only to the opportunities that Mexicans had in the United States, but also to their expectations about their future. As one firm owner once told me, “When I obtained my citizenship I realized I was going to stay here. I did not want to work for a boss anymore; I wanted to be my own boss. I then thought I could open a business, like my father once had in Rancho Grande in Mexico.”10 The United States was no longer a place to work for some months or years and go back to Mexico; it was instead a place to stay. For those in trading, this gave them the opportunity not only to try their entrepreneurial skills, but also to create employment opportunities for others in their firms. There was another important local change. In 1986 a new Wholesale Terminal Market was constructed in central Los Angeles at one side of the Seventh Street Market. Firm owners that had storage rooms in markets located in central Los Angeles, such as the Ninth Street Market, the Central Market, and the Seventh Street Market, moved to the new terminal. This opportunity left vacant spaces in the old markets for the arrival of new entrepreneurs to try out their skills. In the next years, 80 percent of the Seventh Street Market was filled with entrepreneurs of Mexican origin. The social and economic appropriation of the spaces in the Seventh Street Market was a process that took several years. Several factors have contributed to the success of these small entrepreneurs. One of them has been the increasing demand for Mexican products due to the concentration of Mexican and Latino populations in Los Angeles. In 1990 there were more than four million


Hispanics in Los Angeles County, constituting almost half of the county’s population.11 In addition to this, Mexican food products have been a commercial success allowing the growth of wholesale markets, supermarkets, and encouraging grocery stores to introduce fruits, vegetables, and spices typical of the Mexican cuisine such as chilies, epazote, chayotes, nopales, tuna, and cactus leaves. Another important factor is proximity to the border, which has allowed small family enterprises to have a competitive advantage. It has permitted firm owners to make direct deals with warehouse owners in Tijuana, and some of them even open their own warehouses to receive their produce in Tijuana, unload it, select the best produce for export, load it again in transportation authorized to enter the United States, and bring it to Los Angeles. Transnational networks began to emerge. Traders in Tijuana also saw the benefits of doing business in Los Angeles; and attracted by the new possibilities, some tried their luck in the Seventh Street Market. The creation of new firms has been constant and can be seen in the increase of the number of warehouses, markets, supermarkets, and grocery stores that have emerged in east central Los Angeles. In his 1988 article Roberto Álvarez noted that there were thirty-six businesses inside the market.12 In the summer of 1997, there were sixty-six firm owners of Mexican origin. This meant that the number of warehouses almost doubled in nine years. The warehouses also became smaller, subletting part of their space to smaller firms. These firms were able to compete in the market, offering cheaper produce brought from Mexico, especially during winter and spring. One of the main strategies has been to build transnational social networks, bringing in family members, compadres, paisanos, and friends. These social relationships are reinforced with ritual ties. These networks have been extended to producing areas in Mexico. They negotiate production and marketing contracts with small producers in an attempt to obtain better prices than their competitors secure in Los Angeles. The increasing demand for Mexican produce has given Tijuana’s commerce a huge boost, transforming the city into an important point of entry to the United States. San Isidro and Mesa Otey are, taken together, the biggest ports of entry by land in the world.13 According to firm owners who were interviewed, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has simplified some of the export business procedures. One business owner replied, “The rules of the game became clearer and the number of bribes were reduced.”14 The number of wholesale markets in Tijuana increased, and by the end of the 1990s there were seven in the city. This brief account of wholesale marketing in Los Angeles and Tijuana gives us a general idea about the ways in which the border has changed and about the process of integration between individuals, families, organizations, economies, and cultures from both countries. The commercial activities and transactions across the border are not only more numerous, but they have proliferated. They constrict, increase, and impact each other.15 Transnational social networks play an important role in the integration of these border spaces and link producers, intermediaries, brokers, and firm owners to the global economy.


Transnational Social Networks Transnational social networks are formed by the firm owners that rent or own a storage space inside the Seventh Street Market or around it in Los Angeles or/and in the wholesale and retail markets of Tijuana and other major cities of Mexico, along with sellers and buyers in the markets, packers and producers, brokers in the United States, and local intermediaries in the producing areas from Mexico. A transnational social network implies that all the actors who participate in the network on both sides of the border are necessary for the proper functioning of the business and influence its development. However, the intensity of the social ties among the members and their levels of participation vary. Some actors have a more direct and controlling form of participation in the network’s decision-making process than others. For instance, the firm owner in the United States who controls the money flows in the network has more power inside the network and the firm than those who work in Tijuana or the intermediaries in the producing areas. In the networks we find formal and informal relations. Formal relations are those established around a concrete activity, such as the relations between warehouse owners or the relations with consumers. Informal relations are based on kinship ties and ritual ties such as compadrazgo (godparentship or “sponsorship” of a child), friendship, place of origin, and cultural proximity. These guarantee a certain level of trust, loyalty, and honesty within the network. The social networks are a mixture of cooperation and competition. Competition forces the actors involved to defend constantly or improve their position. They do this by implementing a series of strategies that have as their main objectives the reduction of costs and the gaining of higher profits than those that would be obtained outside the network. A basic characteristic of these networks is their flexibility and capacity to change, grow, or get smaller. The development of social networks rests on a variety of actions performed by the actors involved; They have diverse levels of organization that are structured around the level of interdependence and trust between the actors involved in the network. The relationships inside the network and their characteristics influence the density of the network. There are solid networks in which members interact constantly, and their relations are reinforced by ties of kinship or friendship or have a ritual character. The social ties are characterized by being strong, where the relations among its members involve obligations, emotions, and expectations that give way to services and favors that sustain and support them. There are also less dense networks with weaker ties, where the relations between members are unstable. They interact less frequently, and therefore trust among them is frail. These social networks and the firms inside them appear and disappear constantly. But as Mark Granovetter suggests, weak ties can also be important resources for the actors involved.16 There are also networks that have members with strong ties among them and members with weak ties, depending on their position and role in the network. The position of the actors in the networks influences their access to commodities, resources, and information that flows inside the network. Those that


have corresponding positions have more direct access to the network’s resources. For example, if the network is mainly sustained by kinship ties, and one member is in charge of the warehouse in Los Angeles and another of the warehouse in Tijuana, both will have a similar degree of access to information within the network and its resources. In the case of smaller enterprises where the ties are weak inside the network, information is generally fragmented, and relations among members are fragile and easily broken. This situation can lead to the disintegration of the network and the firm itself. The members of a network use their experience and knowledge about the network, as well as their relations with its members, to carry out their objectives and expectations.17 Any exchange inside the network involves two actions: one of receiving and one of giving. Inside the network we find a functional interdependence and a power structure. Relations inside the network are asymmetrical, and the actors exercise different levels of power and influence its organization and development in different ways. The power that certain actors have over the networks is reflected in the degree of control that the person has over the flow of commodities, financial and human capital, the use of information, the degree of autonomy that they exercise, as well as the dependence of the actors on the network and the contacts they have outside the network. The fruit and vegetable business is a group activity in which social networks are crucial for its proper functioning, and members spend part of their time creating, maintaining, sustaining, and making them durable. There are arenas that are used to increase and develop these social ties among members. Informal occasions such as small gatherings in the market when the day’s work is over, or watching a football game during working hours, as well ritual events such as baptisms, first communions, and fifteen-year masses are used to reinforce social and symbolic ties and acquire information. Frequently, one can find chains of godparentship, which serve to support social ties, either among people with similar socioeconomic resources, as well as among people with different economic resources inside asymmetric relationships. For example, it is common for a worker to ask his boss to be the godparent of his child. Similarly, the owner of a warehouse may ask the owner of a supermarket to be the godparent of his child. Generally, the ones that have fewer economic resources ask those with more resources to become godparents of their children in all kinds of religious and nonreligious events. The purpose is to strengthen social ties and obtain access to better social, economic, or political resources. One of the main objectives of the network in the fruit and vegetable business is to maintain a constant flow of produce from the fields in Mexico and California to the consumers in Los Angeles and beyond. Each member of the team has a specific function or activity to carry out. The small-scale fruit and vegetable business depends on relations based on trust and spoken agreements because only a few deals are written, honesty and trust among brokers, sellers, and buyers in the different levels of the networks in Mexico and the United States are important. For the proper functioning of the network, it is necessary to have a relationship based on reciprocity and shared obligations. Solidarity has


to be a social norm among members. According to Thomas Faith, solidarity is an expressive form of social action, and the most important base of solidarity is collective representation: shared ideas, evaluations, and symbols. Collective representation can be expressed through collective identity, a notion and sensation of “us.”18 The moral codes that regulate kinship relations where loyalty and honesty is expected among members make it more difficult, though not impossible, for members to betray the trust bestowed on them by their social group, and that if it does happen, make it easier to correct. Furthermore, a family social network makes it easier to keep labor and transaction costs low. Noneconomic factors such as trust, loyalty, and cultural and geographic proximity are crucial for understanding the creation, development, and success of the networks. The analysis of the networks allows us to present these characteristics and factors in a systematic way. A network can be defined, in general terms, as a group of autonomous actors, each one partially participating but with a common purpose in the group activities.19 The next two cases exemplify how transnational social networks work in the border region. Case 1: The Modelo Firm The Modelo family comes from the coast of Colima. The father of the family, José, an old man, is an ejidatario and a small property landowner. He has seventeen children. The first two (Raul and Pablo) help their father work the land. However, this was not enough to sustain the whole family. In 1980, the next brother in the family line, Manuel, decided to leave for Guadalajara. Two years later, he opened a warehouse in a market where he sold the family’s production as well as that of other producers in the region. Jorge, one of the youngest sons, married when he was seventeen years old. He migrated to Guadalajara and worked with his brother. With his financial help, his wife studied accounting. However, the work in the market was not enough to sustain the two families, and in 1988 he decided to migrate to the United States in search of a job. He arrived to Los Angeles where his mother’s relatives from Jalisco lived. He got to know the Seventh Street Market, where he realized that there was a huge demand for Mexican produce; and he became interested in exporting his family’s production. He did not like living in the United States. He worked in the market for several years until he had saved enough money to rent a small warehouse in Tijuana and started a small export business. Jorge’s experience is representative. The majority of the firm owners who were interviewed started their businesses with their own savings. This is an example of how savings obtained by working in the United States are used to open a small business. By 1990, Jorge was exporting small quantities of produce from the coast of Colima, particularly watermelons to the United States. His wife, María, was in charge of the firm’s accounting procedures: inventories, invoices, and salaries; she also took care of the clients who came to the market to buy produce. Jorge started to have problems with the firms in Los Angeles: they did not pay him what they had initially agreed, or the payment process took longer than the


time previously stipulated. He thought that it would be better to send one of his brothers to Los Angeles to sell their produce directly to the consumers. One of his younger brothers, Rafael, migrated to Los Angeles and was able to obtain a job in the market. Soon, he was able to buy a van and started selling the produce that his brother was sending to supermarkets, small shops, restaurants, and even on street corners. With the money that he earned from this job and from selling his family’s produce on street corners, he was able to survive; but the project that the brothers had in mind was more ambitious. Slowly, Jorge and Rafael saved money and finally, in 1995, they were able to rent a small warehouse around the Seventh Street Market where they kept the watermelons and lemons they imported. This allowed them to control the buying and selling of the products more effectively. A year later they were able to rent a warehouse inside the market with a refrigerator in it. This meant better access to information, clients, distributors, and brokers. The brothers decided to diversify and offer produce typical of Mexican cuisine such as chilies. They introduced two cousins, Sebastian and Hugo, to their firm and network. Their job was to travel to chili-producing regions such as Zacatecas and negotiate production and marketing contracts with small producers. During the summer, produce was even cheaper in the United States, and so they hired a new employee named Juan as a buyer to deal with packers, coolers (cooler-plant owners), and brokers in the United States. They met in the market and became friends. He was born in Jalisco, therefore there was also a bond of paisanos between them; and within some years Jorge and Juan became compadres. Jorge was the godfather of Juan’s second daughter. There were important changes to power relations inside the family and the decision-making process in the business at this time. From being a patriarchal family where the father, José, was the one who made the decisions, when the younger sons emigrated to Tijuana and Los Angeles and built a successful family enterprise, these two sons began to make the decisions that affected the whole family. When money started to arrive from the north, it gave the younger brothers more power in the decision-making process of the family enterprise and the network. In this case, the network became more extended in both geographic and social terms. The social and symbolic ties among its members were strong. They were characterized by a sense of reciprocity, obligation, and shared solidarity; although there were also some weak ties inside the network, for example between Juan and brokers in the United States and between the cousins and producers in Mexico. Next I describe the roles and resources each member had inside the network. Rafael married a Mexican immigrant named Adela who worked in the market. It was not until they got married that they ventured into renting a warehouse inside the market. This is common: the owners of more than 60 percent of the small and micro firms in the Seventh Street Market waited until they were married before they opened their own business. Several factors explain this. The most important of these is the need to be able to count on a loyal and honest partner in the warehouse,


who can take care of the accounting, look after the workers, attend to the clients. In times of crisis it helps to have someone who will not demand a salary. Adela did all of these things. She also spoke English and knew the ways of Los Angeles, guiding her husband through its mysteries. Rafael and Adela hired two permanent workers: Juan the buyer, whose job was to look for packers, distributors, and brokers in the United States, and a seller who helped Rafael find clients in Los Angeles. As needed, they hired four workers per hour to load and unload the trucks, work in the selection bands, wash, pack and weight the produce, and repair the boxes. Rafael’s main clients were two restaurants and a small supermarket in east Los Angeles. However he was constantly searching for new customers within and outside of Los Angeles. Around 70 percent of the capital used in the network comes from Los Angeles. Jorge had his warehouse in Tijuana, in which he had two selection bands. The best quality fruit and vegetables were sent to Los Angeles and the rest was sold in Tijuana. He hired workers per hour to unpack, select, wash, and repack the produce. The number of workers depends on the produce that arrives in Tijuana. He had a truck with refrigeration and a driver who worked for him. He usually needed to rent more trucks. His wife was in charge of the accounting. The role of women is very important in the development of these small enterprises because they generally take care of the accounting and look after the warehouse and workers while the husbands are looking for new clients, collecting debts, taking care of the paper work and export permits at the customs, and so on. Even though some profits come from selling produce in Tijuana, the big sales come from Los Angeles, so Jorge received most of his earnings after his brother sold the produce in Los Angeles. Hugo and Sebastian played a very important role since the supply of produce during winter depended on them. They negotiated production and marketing contracts with producers with the money from Los Angeles, but they also made businesses for other clients. Even though their role was important, they did not control the network because they depended on the money received from their cousins. In 1998 they decided to leave the Seventh Street Market and rented a warehouse outside the market. The rents in the market were too high, and they no longer needed the market to acquire clients or information. The Modelo family was able to create and develop a transnational social network as it had access to diverse markets and to producers in Mexico and the United States. However, this is not the case of all small firms. I now want to present the case of another firm, the Sierra family, that was not able to succeed in the wholesale business. Consider the reasons that led them to failure. Case 2: The Sierra Firm Ricardo was born in Michoacán. He migrated to the United States in 1974 when he was eighteen years old. His first job was in the fields as an agricultural worker.


After two years he went to live in Los Angeles and started work at the Seventh Street Market where he loaded and unloaded trucks. He only worked a few hours a day. As time passed by, the warehouse owners got to know him, and after two years he was hired on a full-time basis. During these years he eventually came to know the details of the business. When he was twenty-eight years old he married Beatriz, who was born in Jalisco. Her father came to the United States during the Bracero period and stayed. With the amnesty of 1986, Ricardo and Beatriz were able to become citizens. Beatriz’s father has a small grocery shop in east Los Angeles where most Mexicans live. When they got married, Ricardo left the market and went to work with his father-in-law; and when he died, Beatriz inherited the shop. However, their earnings were low. Ricardo had seen Mexicans who had succeeded in opening their own warehouses in the Seventh Street Market and had higher profits than him. He did not want to leave his store because it allowed him to have a minimum income, so they decided to invite Beatriz’s sister, Alejandra, who lived in Jalisco, to come to Los Angeles and open a wholesale business with them. They started their small wholesale business buying produce from the big firms and reselling them half wholesale or retail, and through this obtained a minimal profit. Within a short period they started buying directly from brokers and packers in California, but still their profits remained marginal. In 1990, they subrented a space from a warehouse in the Seventh Street Market and started a micro firm. They did not have a refrigerator, and the area was just a space surrounded by a wire fence. They only hired workers when needed. They had a van as means of transportation. In order to reduce their costs and obtain cheaper produce, they decided to expand their network to Mexico and to buy their produce from the markets in Tijuana. They invited German, Beatriz, and Alejandra’s brother to their small enterprise to work as buyers, take care of the business in Tijuana, and if possible to buy the produce directly from producers. They tried several products, but because they did not have a refrigerator, their options were limited. They tried to sell watermelon, mangoes, and tomatoes, but they all matured before they could sell them. The produce they could best work with was onions. Even inside the market, where there are more opportunities to find customers for their produce, it was difficult to find steady and reliable clients. They needed a trustworthy person who would spend his or her time finding consumers. However they did not earn enough to hire a buyer and so Alejandra was in charge of the warehouse, the selling of the produce, and the firm’s accounting work. German made contacts in Tijuana’s markets. He needed a place to leave the onions in case he could not pass them immediately to the other side, and sometimes it was necessary to pass them through selection bands and pack them again before entering the United States. He met Pepe in the market, and they became friends. Soon they established a business together. Pepe had a warehouse in Tijuana. German started to make business with onion packers in the United


States. In this way he bought onions from Mexico during the winter and from the United States during the summer. So as to gain higher prices, he extended his networks to onion-producing areas of Morelos in central Mexico. In Morelos he negotiated with five intermediaries who had marketing contracts with small producers. When possible, he advanced capital to his intermediaries so they would do the same with the producers in an attempt to secure the best onions during the harvest. However the social ties that he had with the intermediaries were weak. He had constant conflicts with them, and they were not reliable. He had no family or other reliable friends or compadres to introduce to the network and take care of the business in Morelos. The intermediaries that he worked with used the money that he gave to them for personal businesses and sold the best onions to other brokers. This meant that German did not have a constant supply, and the quality of his onions was low. Therefore the firm could not supply their customers in Los Angeles regularly. Not having family members, friends, or compadres that would take care of the business in regions far away from the border led to constant losses and conflicts. German stopped buying from Morelos and started buying from the border and from packers in the United States. These transactions did not give the firm the profits needed to continue in the wholesale business. In 1999 they had to close the business in the market and retreat to the grocery shop. They are still interested in the wholesale business. They simply suffered, as they say, “a small setback.” Conclusion Transnational social networks are indicative of the new kinds of relations that migrants are developing where relations are maintained in their home country and in the receiving country in order to build a business. Firm owners living in the border region have benefited from the close proximity of Los Angeles to Tijuana so as to develop their family enterprises thereby creating alternative forms of economic activity that allow them to be competitive in the global economy. One of the main strategies that small firms have used to be competitive in the small-scale fresh fruit and vegetable business has been the creation and development of transnational social networks where the extensive family plays an important role. The social ties in the networks are reinforced by ritual ties such as godparentship, geographical proximity, and friendship and are ruled by moral codes where loyalty, trust, honesty, and solidarity are valued as essential requirements for belonging to the network and the firm. Women play a very important role in the development of these firms, and most firm owners wait to be married before starting their business. This shows us the important role that cultural and social factors play in economic relations. We have seen how social capital is crucial for the development of a firm. The social capital a person has created and can use in a business can make the difference between being self-employed and becoming an entrepreneur.


Commodities are exchanged through the social networks, as well as the financial, human, and social capital with which the members of the network and its firms count on. Information is shared and distributed. The fresh fruit and vegetable business is very competitive. Small firms have used the geographical closeness of Los Angeles and Tijuana to create close links with wholesalers and brokers in the border region. These links have been useful to reduce transaction costs, obtain a constant supply, and reduce prices for their produce. However, the need to extend their networks to the production regions, as well as the fact that they can only draw on small amounts of financial capital, makes many of these networks unstable and weak. There is, therefore, a high failure rate.

Notes 1. Ejido is a form of land tenure that grants communally-owned land to agrarian reform communities in which there are individual or collective plots. An ejidatario is an ejido member. 2. Magdalena Barros Nock, From Maize to Melons. Struggles and Strategies of Small Mexican Farmers (Amsterdam: CEDLA, 2000). 3. This research was part of a postdoctoral project that I carried out at the Department of Rural Sociology at the Wageningen Agricultural University, Netherlands, financed by WOTRO. I would like to acknowledge the support of El Colegio de la Frontera Norte during the research. 4. Alejandro Portes, Luis Eduardo Guarnizo, and William Haller, “Transnational entrepreneurs: An alternative form of immigrant economic adaptation,” American Sociological Review 67, no. 2 (2002): 279. 5. Ibid., 284, 287. In the study I carried out, it was not always considered necessary for the owners to travel to their country of origin if they could depend on a solid transnational network. 6. A small firm rents a warehouse at the market with a refrigerator and has one permanent worker, but also hires other workers on an hourly basis. They have one or two trucks with refrigeration. They usually have a warehouse in Tijuana where they receive the produce, select it, and load up in transportation authorized by the U.S. government. A microfirm rents a space from a larger firm that does not have a refrigerator, has a small truck or van, and only hires workers when needed. In Tijuana sometimes they rent a space in the markets to keep their produce. 7. Roberto. R. Álvarez, “Mexican entrepreneurs and markets in the city of Los Angeles: A case of an immigrant enclave,” Urban Anthropology 19, no. 1–2 (1990): 99–124. 8. Humberto González y Calleja Margarita, La Exportación de Frutas y Hortalizas a Estados Unidos de Norteamérica, Guia para Productores (Guadalajara: SAGAR, CIESAS, CONACYT, 1998), 53. 9. See Magdalena Barros Nock, “Transborder relations and markets,” in La Economía de la Frontera México-Estados Unidos en el siglo XXI / The U.S.-Mexico Border Economy in the 21st Century, comp. Noé Arón Fuentes, Lucinda Vargas, and Paul Ganster, ed. Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Federal Reserve Bank, El Paso, Texas, and San Diego State University, NOBE/REF (http://www.nobe-ref.org), 2001, pp. 150–167. 10. Interview conducted by the author in Los Angeles, January 29, 1999.


11. U.S. Census Bureau, American Fact Finder, 1990, http://www.census.gov/main/ cen1990.html; U.S. Census Bureau, Demographic Profiles, 2000, http://www.census .gov/main/cen2000.html. 12. Roberto. R. Álvarez, “Mexican entrepreneurs and markets in the city of Los Angeles: A case of an immigrant enclave,” Urban Anthropology 19, no. 1–2 (1990): 113. 13. Roberto. R. Álvarez, “La maroma, or chile, credit and chance: An ethnographic case of global finance and middlemen entrepreneurs,” Human Organization 57, no. 1 (1998): 63–82. 14. Interview conducted by the author with a warehouse owner in Tijuana, Mexico August 22, 1998. 15. See James N. Rosenau, “Coherent Connection or Commonplace Contiguity? Theorizing about the California-Mexico overlap,” in The California-Mexico Connection, eds. Abraham F. Lowenthal and Katrina Burgess (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 10. 16. Mark Granovetter, “The strength of weak ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 6 (1973): 1360–80. 17. See Paul R. Beije and John. Groenewegen, “A Network Analysis of Markets,” Journal of Economic Issues 26, no. 1 (March 1992): 96. 18. Thomas Faith, The Volume and Dynamics of International Migration and Transnational Social Spaces (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 109. 19. Paul R. Beije and John. Groenewegen, “A Network Analysis of Markets,” Journal of Economic Issues 26, no. 1 (March 1992): 90.

PART III

The Border Region


CHAPTER 8

Beyond Border Crossing and Soulless Places: The Role of Mexico’s Northern Border Cities in the Construction of Transnational Social Spaces Cristóbal Mendoza ransnational approaches have challenged traditional views on international migration, which was previously characterized as a permanent change of residence between two nation-states, leading to assimilation in the migrant’s destination.1 Indeed the transnational approach implies a radical overturning of geographical concepts of migration (e.g., place of birth or place of destination) that are left behind by more ambiguous, yet more analytically challenging, transnational social spaces. Transmigrants take actions, make decisions, and develop identities within social spaces that connect them to two or more societies simultaneously.2 Furthermore, migrants create fluid, transnational spaces that are defined as both a social terrain that reflects migrants’ biculturality and a fragmented, diffused geographical reality.3 Embedded in the theoretical literature on transnational migration are two assumptions about “space.” First, transnational communities do not have precise geographical limits, but instead are created in “deterritorialized nation-states,” “delocalized transnations,” “hyperspaces,” and “third spaces.”4 Migration takes place in global spaces with multiple dimensions composed of interlinking subspaces that are both limitless and occasionally discontinuous.5 Second, MexicoU.S. transnational communities are social and cultural constructs.6 These socially constructed communities have also been described as “imagined,” as composed of transnational families, or in terms of circular movements.7

T

150 • Cristóbal Mendoza

Indeed recognition of the role of “place” in empirical studies on Mexico-U.S. transnational migration has been limited to its examination within specific localities in the United States and Mexico. As a result, even when it is recognized that the concept of “community” is delimited by social relations and not by specific geographical entities, the bulk of empirical studies continues to focus on particular municipalities or cities within specific nation-states.8 These two places in Mexico and in the United States are interconnected by intense social, economic, and even political ties that translate into the circulation of people, remittances, goods, and ideas. Yet these interactions take place in “neutral” spaces and flow in both directions. These places may be conceived as sites of resistance, in which cultural hybridism, transnational practices, and overlapping identities may constitute counterhegemonic practices and discourses.9 This chapter argues that the role of “place” needs to be reasserted in transnational migration studies—particularly those places that lie in between Mexico and the United States, such as the northern cities in Mexico. Moreover, since the literature on Mexico-U.S. “transnational social spaces” has focused on their social and cultural aspects, the geographical aspects of these spaces (e.g., distance, barriers, or even border) have been systematically ignored. The exception to this rule is the concept “migration circuits.”10 Yet, even in this case, the concept is mainly used for description, rather than for analytical purposes. Indeed, transnational spaces are constructed in many cases without even considering any reference to their territorial base.11 Yet even in this global world, borders play a relevant role for migration, and a significant part of the migration between Mexico and the United States still takes place over land. Certainly border towns are both cities of passage in Mexico-U.S. migration and destination for Mexico’s migration internal outflows. Due to the increasing militarization of the border in the 1990s, potential U.S. immigrants from inland Mexico have been “locked” in border towns.12 Yet the image of these towns as places of passage is well rooted in the collective imaginary, even if these cities themselves attract a large number of migrants from inland Mexico and even from the United States, mainly (but not exclusively) of Mexican origin. In the reassertion of “place,” this chapter argues that the Mexico’s border region constitutes a “place” that is defined by its contiguity with the United States and characterized by strong migration flows. Giving a twist to the argument, the characteristics of U.S.-Mexico migration may be directly related to the construction of the border as an intrinsic “place.” This construction in turn depends on political, economic, social, and cultural dynamics that may go well beyond the border area. However, more than a discussion based on theory, the debate on the “border region” has been focused on a controversy regarding the definition and extent of the border region.13 Some authors assert the existence of a common U.S.-Mexico region contiguous to the international border, while others criticize such conceptualizations as lacking a solid theoretical base or empirical frame of reference.14 It has been argued that resolving the debate may require delineating and comparing the essential demographic features of a huge area,

Beyond Border Crossing and Soulless Places • 151

one that is situated north and south of an international border that extends nearly three thousand kilometers.15 This debate has a clear demographic bias. Early sociodemographic studies of northern Mexico focused on its particularities with respect to the close proximity to the United States.16 The essence of the argument was that strong interactive effects of movements of people, capital, and goods across the international line influenced population patterns in the region. Even if implicitly stated, this literature considers diffusion effects from the United States to Mexico to be the basis for change. For example, an early demographic transition in northern Mexico compared to the rest of the country was attributed to the spatial congruity of the two nations.17 In the 1990s, sociodemographic studies of northern Mexican states also began comparing trends in the region with those elsewhere in the country. In the United States, on the other hand, studies of the sociodemography of the Southwest concentrate on migration and ethnicity, with the flow of undocumented workers and the use of the Spanish language being the most popular topics, in addition to poverty.18 While not always stated clearly in the debate on poverty, the interconnections of immigration and Mexican proximity to the United States are generally assumed. Certainly this coincides with popular views about migration in U.S. border towns.19 Yet the debate on the relationship between poverty and migration goes beyond the border area. For instance, in Losing Control, Saskia Sassen argued that structural conditions of U.S. urban labor markets, rather than characteristics of the labor force, are the fundamental reasons for the precariousness and downgrading of jobs in the United States.20 What is clear from this sociodemographic literature is that, even if Mexico’s northern border cities may share common characteristics with others in the country, migration makes them unique. This is a key aspect of this chapter, since its main objective lies in the analysis of the role of the border in the construction of U.S.-Mexican transnational migration. This chapter uses data from the Survey on Migration in Mexico’s Northern Border (Encuesta sobre Migración en la Frontera Norte, EMIF) whose objectives are to quantify and characterize migration flows in border cities.21 Survey of Migration on Mexico’s Northern Border (EMIF) EMIF is a flow survey. It consists of four connected questionnaires that correspond to a unique theoretical framework. This survey has been conducted in the main border cities of northern Mexico (from west to east, Tijuana, Mexicali, Nogales, Ciudad Juárez, Piedras Negras, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, and Matamoros) since 1993 and is the result of coordinated efforts of three institutions: Consejo Nacional de Población, Secretaría de Trabajo y Previsión Social, and El Colegio de la Frontera Norte. The main objectives of the EMIF are to quantify and characterize four migration flows that originate from central, western and southern Mexico, border cities, the United States, and migrants deported by the U.S. Border Patrol. Since 1993 seven specific surveys have been conducted.

152 • Cristóbal Mendoza

Specifically, this chapter focuses on data from the questionnaire “Migrants from the South” (i.e., migrants from inland Mexico who arrive to the border towns either to stay or to migrate to the United States). The scope of the questionnaire is persons from twelve years old or older who were neither born in the United States nor reside in Mexico’s border cities, and arrive at one of these cities with no plans to return to their place of origin. The “Migrants from the South” data allow us to separate the migrants who want to stay at least for a period of time in Mexico’s northern cities (“border migrants”) from those in transit to the United States (“migrants in transit”).22 In this we use data from the period 1993–2001. The specific data of each survey have been aggregated in calendar years, since the methodology of the surveys is comparable. Migrant networks and transnational social spaces A first approach to the concept of transnational social space may come from the more easily delimited social networks. The sociodemographic literature has made a relevant contribution to this, since it has amply demonstrated that the strengthening and reinforcement of social networks between immigrants, old immigrants, and nonmigrants nonimmigrants in sending and receiving areas has an impact on the continuity and expansion of outflow migration.23 Moreover, since networks reduce risks that are associated with displacement, the expansion of social networks in the places of origin increases the probabilities of emigration among those groups that are less likely to migrate.24 This is to say that social networks expand and increase the magnitude of social capital that circulates within them.25 Recent literature on transnationalism has also recognized the relevance of migrant networks for understanding the construction of social spaces.26 EMIF contains several “classic” demographic questions that throw light on the way that networks on the border help articulate transnational social spaces. First of all, EMIF questions relatives or friends in Mexico’s northern city where the survey has taken place. Thus Figure 8.1 shows the percentage of migrants who have family or acquaintances in the city, broken down by destination (i.e., “border migrants” and “migrants in transit”). Figure 8.1 shows that half of the border migrants in the period from 1996–2001 have relatives or friends in Mexico’s northern cities. Furthermore this trend clearly increases through time. This is quite revealing because migrants in transit to the United States do not display these kinds of social connections. For this group, the border is simply a place of passage. These data also suggest that the higher the number of social networks in the region, the less the probability of migrating further north into the United States. Taking the argument further, this may suggest that both flows may be different in nature and, consequently, not interchangeable. This would mean that the fact of having relatives and friends does not decrease in principle for further migration up north, but border immigrants chose this destination because of the existence of networks within family and friends in the area. In line with this, Table 8.1 shows the kind of help that was received by migrants in their last trip to the border city, broken down by type of migrant


Figure 8.1 Migrants from inland Mexico with family and friends in border cities, 1996–2001 (percentages) Source: Encuesta sobre Migración en la Frontera Norte, EMIF.27

(i.e., “border migrant” and “migrant in transit”). Data are restricted to those with relatives or friends in the border region; it comes as no surprise that migrants in transit not only have less social relationships, but the quality of their networks is considerably poorer than that of the border migrants. Interestingly enough, with the exception of 2001, around one fourth of the border migrants received monetary support from family or friends on their last trip to the border city. This percentage drops dramatically for those in transit (Table 8.1). Furthermore, both groups display substantial differences regarding the continuity of patterns through time. While data on border migrants are consistent through the 1990s, the migrants in transit show an uneven, irregular trend during the decade (Table 8.1). As for job search strategies, more than 40 percent of border migrants in the period from 1996–98 (but 30 percent in 1999–2001) find a job in their last visit to the city surveyed through relatives and friends. This trend is not seen for those in transit, for whom this way of obtaining a job through informal channels fluctuates remarkably through time (Table 8.1). In other words, the quantity and quality of social networks are vital for understanding why migrants in northern Mexico stay. Yet this picture would be incomplete if we did not take into account the group of border migrants who wants to stay only temporarily in Mexico, but may migrate into the United States in the future. To be specific, for the period

154 • Cristóbal Mendoza Table 8.1 Assistance provided by family and friends in their last migration to the border city, 1996–2001 (percentages) 1996 Border migrants Money Yes 29.0 No 71.0

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

25.6 74.4

25.8 74.2

21.6 78.3

22 77.1

16.9 83.1

Accommodation and food Yes 79.2 No 20.8

83.3 16.7

83.2 16.8

79.7 20.2

76.7 23.2

88.3 11.7

Assistance to obtain a job Yes 43.7 No 56.3

40.4 59.6

41.8 58.2

32.9 67.1

28.9 71

33.4 66.6

Work contract Yes 3.1 No 96.9

1.8 98.2

9.2 90.8

4.9 95

3.8 95.4

0.8 99.2

In transit Money Yes No

8.4 91.6

27.1 72.9

12 84.5

9.3 90.6

8.9 91

Accommodation and food Yes 38.7 No 61.3

83 17

77 23

59.8 39.8

75.3 24.6

58.9 41

Assistance to obtain a job Yes 0.0 No 100.0

18.3 81.7

34.6 65.4

17.5 79.3

6.2 93.7

2.8 97.1

0.0 100.0

0.1 99.9

0.8 95.9

0.2 99.7

0.6 99.3

0.9 99.1

Work contract Yes 0.0 No 100.0

Note: Proportions calculated from the total number of migrants who declare that they had family and/or friends in the city of survey. “No answer” is not included. Source: Encuesta sobre Migración en la Frontera Norte, EMIF.

of 1993–97, a remarkable 35 percent of this group said that they had a clear intention of migrating into United States (albeit this has decreased to less than 20 percent for 1998–2001). This change in trend suggests that the border towns increasingly retain a large part of the Mexican outflows to the “north” (i.e., border towns and the United States) in the 1990s. Probability of Emigration to the United States In the previous section, the quantity and quality of social networks explain why migrants choose to remain in Mexico (or alternatively migrate to the United


States). In this section, the analysis goes a step further and examines reasons for migrants continuing their trip to the north once they find themselves in border cities, using two regression models that calculate probabilities of migrating to the United States according to demographic, economic, and social characteristics. In both models, the dependent variable is the intention of emigration to the United States (person does not want to migrate = 0, person does want to migrate = 1), and independent variables include sex, age groups, year of survey, the labor experience in previous migrations, social networks in border cities, and region of origin in Mexico (western states, border states, the center, and southern and Caribbean states). Model 1 refers exclusively to border migrants (i.e., those who want to stay temporarily or permanently in Mexico’s border cities), and Model 2 includes both border migrants and migrants in transit. Table 8.2 shows the probability of emigration by selected demographic, economicand social variables. First of all, the gender of the migrants is highly significant (.pdf; and Alejandro Portes and Rubén Rumbaut, Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 29. Geert Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-related Values (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1980). 30. Dania Akkad, “Art of the Hoe,” Monterey Herald, April 8, 2006, http:// l i b r a r y 2 . c s u m b. e d u : 2 2 2 7 / i w - s e a r c h / w e / In f o We b ? p _ a c t i o n = d o c & p _ docid=110DF9BD5D9B6C08&p_docnum=197&p_queryname=4&p_product= NewsBank&p_theme=aggregated4&p_nbid=X5EY4EVLMTE3MTM2NDY5Ny4 0MzI5MDU6MToxNToxOTguMTg5LjIzNy4xODk (accessed February 28, 2007).

228 • Rafael Goméz

31. Huntington, Who Are We?, 22. 32. Debra A. Castillo, “Travails with Time: An Interview with Carlos Fuentes,” Center for Book Culture.org, http://www.centerforbookculture.org/interviews/interview_fuentes .html (accessed February 22, 2007). 33. Meléndez, “Farmworkers Look North for Better Life,” Monterey Herald, January 15, 2007, http://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/InfoWeb?p_action=doc&p_ docid=10F2A1B628BA3178&p_docnum=268&p_queryname=2&p_product=News Bank&p_theme=aggregated4&p_nbid=P5CJ50TNMTE3MTQ2OTYyMC4yMTI zNzA6MToxNDoxOTguMTg5LjI0OS4zNw (accessed February 14, 2006). 34. David R. Diaz, “Public Space and Culture: A Critical Response to Conventional and Postmodern Visions of City Life,” in Culture and Difference: Perspectives on the Bicultural Experience in the United States, ed. Antonia Darder (West Port, CT: Greenwood, 1995). 35. Huntington, Who Are We?, 223. 36. Roland Martin, “Immigration Actions,” Monterey Herald, May 25, 2006, http://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/InfoWeb?p_action=doc&p_docid= 111D76DEC8FB1280&p_docnum=138&p_queryname=3&p_product=NewsBank &p_theme=aggregated4&p_nbid=V64G5AIXMTE3MDc3OTc2NC44MzgzMjk6 MToxNDoxOTguMTg5LjI0OS4zNw (accessed February 23, 2007). 37. Meléndez, “Farmworkers Look North.” 38. “The Herald’s View,” Monterey Herald, May 14, 2006, http://library2.csumb.edu: 2227/iwsearch/we/InfoWeb?p_action=doc&p_docid=1119F4F36BF82638&p_ docnum=6&p_queryname=16&p_product=NewsBank&p_theme=aggregated4&p_ nbid=S68N4EBLMTE3MjcyMDY2MC40MDgyMjY6MToxNToxOTguMTg5LjI zNy4xODk (accessed Februay 24, 2007). 39. Huntington, Who Are We?, 225. 40. George Lakoff and Sam Fergurson, “The Framing Immigration,” Rockridge Institute, http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/rockridge/immigration (accessed February 1, 2006). 41. Victor Calderón, “Marchers Face Punishment,” Californian, March 29, 2006, http://library2.csumb.edu:2227/iw-search/we/InfoWeb?p_action=doc&p_docid= 110B5888603116C0&p_docnum=219&p_queryname=3&p_product=NewsBank &p_theme=aggregated4&p_nbid=O5AE4AFHMTE3MTgwOTcyMS45ODIwOT Y6MToxNToxOTguMTg5LjIzNy4xODk (accessed February 18, 2007). 42. Lakoff and Fergurson, “The Framing Immigration.” 43. Huntington, Who Are We?, 25. 44. Meléndez, “Oaxacan Cultural Event Attracts 500,” Monterey Herald, February 14, 2006, http://library2.csumb.edu:2227/iw-search/we/InfoWeb?p_action=doc&p_ docid=10FC85388F772AE0&p_docnum=256&p_queryname=4&p_product=News Bank&p_theme=aggregated4&p_nbid=C5AP4BWIMTE3MTcyMzgwNy42NTY1 NjU6MToxNToxOTguMTg5LjIzNy4xODk (accessed February 17, 2007). A Mixtec is from among the indigenous Mesoamerican people of Oaxaca. 45. Meléndez, “Farmworkers Look North.” 46. Meléndez, “Students Walk Out of Class, March to City Hall,” Monterey Herald, March 28, 2006, http://library2.csumb.edu:2227/iw-search/we/InfoWeb?p_action= doc&p_docid=110A5EE56AA06638&p_docnum=227&p_queryname=7&p_ product=NewsBank&p_theme=aggregated4&p_nbid=M65T56QTMTE3MTc2M DU5NS44OTg1NzY6MToxNToxOTguMTg5LjIzNy4xODk (accessed February 17, 2007).

Mexican Immigration and the Question of Identity • 229

47. Christopher Ortiz, “Salinas Joins Nation in Protest,” Californian, March 27, 2006, http://library2.csumb.edu:2227/iw-search/we/InfoWeb?p_action=doc&p_docid= 110B58863328C570&p_docnum=228&p_queryname=8&p_product=NewsBank &p_theme=aggregated4&p_nbid=M65T56QTMTE3MTc2MDU5NS44OTg1Nz Y6MToxNToxOTguMTg5LjIzNy4xODk (accessed February 17, 2007). 48. Hayes-Bautista, La Nueva California, 4. 49. Ibid., 5. 50. Meléndez, “Immigration Legislation Protest Planned,” Monterey Herald, March 15, 2007, http://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/InfoWeb?p_action=doc&p_ docid=110613F57955B818&p_docnum=1&p_queryname=6&p_product=News Bank&p_theme=aggregated4&p_nbid=K4DI4FWLMTE3Mjc2MTI2Ny4yNzUw Nzk6MToxNDoxOTguMTg5LjI0OS4zOA (accessed February 26, 2007). 51. Ortiz, “Salinas Joins Nation in Protest.” 52. Meléndez, “Students Walk Out of Class.” 53. Zachary Stahl, Californian, April 1, 2006, http://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/ we/InfoWeb?p_action=doc&p_docid=110CA656C4ECC9B8&p_docnum=2&p_ queryname=22&p_product=NewsBank&p_theme=aggregated4&p_nbid=K4DI4F WLMTE3Mjc2MTI2Ny4yNzUwNzk6MToxNDoxOTguMTg5LjI0OS4zOA (accessed February 21, 2007). 54. Ortiz, “March Honors Cesar,” Californian, April 3, 2006, http://infoweb.newsbank .com/iwsearch/we/InfoWeb?p_action=doc&p_docid=110CA658237963F0&p_doc num=1&p_queryname=23&p_product=NewsBank&p_theme=aggregated4&p_nbid =K4DI4FWLMTE3Mjc2MTI2Ny4yNzUwNzk6MToxNDoxOTguMTg5LjI0OS4 zOA (accessed February 10, 2007). 55. Victor Calderon, “Thousands Protest,” Californian, May 2, 2006, http://infoweb .newsbank.com/iwsearch/we/InfoWeb?p_action=doc&p_docid=11163923A71C7B 50&p_docnum=1&p_queryname=24&p_product=NewsBank&p_theme= aggregated4&p_nbid=K4DI4FWLMTE3Mjc2MTI2Ny4yNzUwNzk6MToxNDox OTguMTg5LjI0OS4zOA (accessed February 9, 2007).


PART IV

Politics and Public Policy


CHAPTER 14

Immigration and the 2006 U.S. Midterm Elections Edward Ashbee

he fears and anxieties associated with illegal immigration would, it was said, rally the Republican base. Just two months ahead of the 2006 midterm elections, there were widely shared expectations that illegal immigration and the prospect of a fence along much of the U.S.-Mexican border would play a pivotal role in determining the outcome. The strategy that had seemingly secured George W. Bush’s second presidential term in November 2004 would, it was felt, again bring the Republicans electoral victory. Instead of reaching out toward independents and middle-ground opinion, there was to be an emphasis on the process of increasing turnout among committed conservatives and core supporters. As Jonathan Weisman noted in the Washington Post, “The way to win in a swing district is not with a campaign aimed at swing voters. Instead, the goal is to motivate conservatives with anti-immigration appeals, hoping they overcome their disenchantment with GOP policies in Washington. . . . In a way, this strategy borrows from President Bush’s rally-thebase approach to winning reelection in 2004.”1 This chapter surveys Republican campaigning around the immigration issue and assesses its overall impact on the 2006 congressional elections.

T

The House of Representatives and Illegal Immigration Republican hopes that the party could boost electoral turnout within its most committed constituencies through calls for border enforcement and by setting its

234 • Edward Ashbee

face against illegal immigration rested upon the belief that legislation passed by the House of Representatives in December 2005, the Border Protection, AntiTerrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act (HR 4437), offered a basis for campaigning. The bill provided for the construction of double-layered fencing (together with the building of other physical barriers and the provision of roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors) along 698 miles of the 2,000-mile border between Mexico and the United States that had not already been fortified. At the same time, the legislation laid out steps to reduce the number of illegal immigrants living in the United States through a process that was sometimes dubbed “attrition through enforcement.” It made illegal presence in the country a felony and increased the penalties for first-time illegal entry. It also became a felony to encourage or assist others to enter or remain in the United States, a provision that caused concern among some churches, charities, and voluntary groups. The bill required furthermore that an illegal immigrant should be deported following a first offense for drunken driving. The House bill not only addressed supply-side issues but also sought to regulate and rein in the demand for labor. After a period of six years, all employers would have to use a database so as to verify the Social Security numbers of all employees. The maximum fine for those who hired illegal workers was to be increased from the current ten thousand dollars to forty thousand dollars per violation. There were to be prison sentences of up to thirty years for repeat offenders. Context When voted on in the House, support for and opposition to the legislation was on partisan lines. Just thirty-six Democrats backed the bill, while only seventeen Republicans crossed the aisle.2 Nonetheless, partisan considerations and goals can only be effective within particular structures of political opportunity. Athough statements and comments by well-known Republicans such as Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo and John Hostettler of Indiana as well as other members of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus garnered much of the press attention, the House legislation was shaped by and brought forward within a broader social and political context. The numbers of both illegal and legal immigrants grew dramatically during the 1990s and in the early years of the new century. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, there were 10.3 million undocumented immigrants in March 2004, an increase of 23 percent from an estimated 8.4 million in 2000. By 2004, as Table 14.1 suggests, illegal immigrants represented 29 percent of the foreign-born population in the United States.3 In peak migration season, according to the National Border Patrol Council, more than 8,000 immigrants were crossing from Mexico into Arizona daily.4 The number of illegal immigrants entering the United States was not however the only consideration. There were also fears that these migrants and the relative openness of the U.S.-Mexican border posed a threat to homeland security. There were televised reports of desperate border crossings. In polls, many respondents

Immigration and the 2006 U.S. Midterm Elections • 235

said that they spoke about illegal immigration from personal experience: 61 percent reported they had had dealings or encounters with people they believed to be illegal immigrants; 5 percent told interviewers they had employed someone that they thought might be an illegal immigrant to work in their house; 14 percent said they had hired the services of a contractor or company that may have used illegal immigrants.5 Concerns about illegal immigration were not confined to the border states. The 2004 documentary, Farmingville, tracked about 1,500 Mexican workers who had moved to the township of Farmingville, Suffolk County, Long Island (population 15,000). They stood on particular street corners hoping for casual employment in the landscaping, construction, and restaurant industries. The film records the sense of shock within a settled and overwhelmingly white community “at the sudden influx of employment-hungry Spanish-speaking men crowding their street corners and over-crowding rented houses in their neighborhoods.” Farmingville, after all, is about as far from a border town, or traditional employer of immigrant labor, as you can get.”6 Farmingville was not unrepresentative of suburban and exurban communities far from the Rio Grande. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, there was a 70 percent rise in the numbers of illegal immigrants living in the Maryland, Virginia, and District of Columbia area from an estimated three hundred thousand in 2000 to about five hundred thousand in 2004.7 The Latino protests during the first half of 2006 brought immigration issues to the forefront of the news agenda and added further to concerns. Large numbers took to the streets in cities such as Los Angeles, Miami, and Chicago. The marches in 102 cities held on April 10 are said to have attracted between one hundred thousand and five hundred thousand protestors. On May 1 there was a “day without immigrants” involving not only demonstrations but consumer boycotts, church services, candlelit vigils, and picnics. According to conservative commentators, the protests were underpinned by anti-Americanism and hostility to the assimilation principle. The cultural integrity and national identity of the United States were in jeopardy: “The demo organizers, who understand politics, have told the marchers to wave only American flags and to refrain from separatist

Table 14.1 Status of foreign-born population, 2004 (percentages) Percent Permanent legal residents Undocumented Refugees Temporary legal residents All foreign born

61 29 7 3 100

Source: Adapted from Sylvia Moreno, “Mexicans Make Up Largest Group; D.C. Area Numbers Up 70 Percent Since 2000,” Washington Post, March 22, 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55202-2005 Mar21.html.


slogans and placards. So it is very significant that many marchers—in some cases most—have ignored this advice, waving Mexican flags and anti-Yanqui placards.”8 Hostility toward the protests was not the prerogative of conservative commentators alone. While 14 percent of those asked in polls said that the protests made them more supportive of illegal immigrant rights, almost three times as many (40 percent) said that the marches had made them less supportive.9 For their part, government agencies were often portrayed as impotent. There were frequent reports of “catch and release.” Illegal immigrants, it was said, were apprehended by the authorities but then freed. Despite increased security concerns after the September 11 attacks, Department of Justice statistics for 2004 included the cases of seventy-three illegal immigrants who had been arrested 429 times (a collective total) and then subsequently released. The counts had included traffic violations and weapons and drug charges.10 Furthermore, little action seemed to be taken against employers or subcontractors who hired illegal immigrants. Provisions in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act had imposed penalties on those who “knowingly” employed illegal immigrants but did not include a requirement that employers verify the authenticity of documentation submitted by job applicants. Prosecutions seemed to be few and far between. When they took place, fines were imposed but these, commentators asserted, had become increasingly institutionalized and were seen as simply another business cost. Furthermore, the overall number of prosecutions was minimal. There were 127 criminal convictions in fiscal year (FY) 2005.11 If immigrant workers are included in the figures alongside company officials, the number of criminal arrests in worksite enforcement cases was 716 during FY 2006. This was however an increase from a mere 25 in FY 2002.12 As Third Way, a moderate lobby group within the Democratic Party, noted, during the Bush years, “a person is more likely to be eaten by an alligator than to be prosecuted for hiring illegal labor.”13 Against a background of increasing public concern and vocal calls for action by many conservatives, the Bush administration promised stricter measures. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the unit within the Department of Homeland Security that acquired responsibility for operations against employers, turned to the criminal prosecution of managers and executives who were alleged to have “knowingly and recklessly engaged in the unlawful employment of illegal workers.” ICE talked about the seizure of personal assets, forfeitures, money laundering charges (a felony carrying a potential twenty-year prison sentence), and the bringing of charges against employers who harbored illegal immigrants. All of this would, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in April 2006, be “matched by a reenergized enforcement effort.”14 In December 2006, there were raids on meatpacking plants, and hundreds were rounded up. According to the New York Times, “The raids have been replicated in other states and industries, on day-labor street corners and in homes from Connecticut to California.”15 There was a further reason why illegal immigration came to the forefront. Some local governments, campaigning organizations, and lobbying and interest


groups had begun to play an increasingly proactive role. State, county, and local measures were proposed that would, for example, prohibit workers from assembling at county roadsides. There were efforts to deny the provision of government benefits to those who were undocumented. Alongside all of this, the border patrols, organized by the Minutemen, a movement founded in October 2004, attracted particular attention. Widely described as border vigilantes, the Minutemen described themselves as a “citizens’ Vigilance Operation,” asserting that they were “doing the job Congress won’t do.”16 Public Opinion Those making the calls for stronger enforcement measures and backing the House bill could legitimately claim to have a substantial degree of public backing. The Minutemen’s actions along the border secured support from about a third of those asked in surveys. In some border states the figure was higher. About a half of those questioned in Phoenix, Arizona backed the movement.17 However, concern about border security and illegal immigration extended far beyond the ranks of Minutemen supporters. According to a January 2006 Time magazine poll, 83 percent of respondents felt that the provision of social services for illegal immigrants was too costly, and 71 percent believed that illegal immigrants increased crime levels. Just 21 percent said that the federal government was doing enough to prevent illegal immigrants from entering the United States, and 50 percent said all illegal immigrants should be deported.18 Furthermore, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted at about the same time, a very substantial minority (42 percent) backed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution so that parents would have to be legal residents for a newborn child to become a U.S. citizen by virtue of being born in the country.19 Polling data also suggested that there was widespread backing for the immigration bill passed by the House of Representatives at the end of 2005. While many surveys only offered respondents a choice between the “deportation” of illegal immigrants and some form of legalized status, a poll conducted on behalf of the Center for Immigration Studies presented three choices: the awarding of legal status to those living in the United States illegally, “a large scale effort to round up and deport illegal immigrants,” and thirdly “a policy that strictly enforces immigration laws and causes illegal immigrants to go home over time” (a summary of the measures passed by the House of Representatives). Posed in this way, a plurality (44 percent) backed House proposals compared with 20 percent who supported deportations and 31 percent who backed an amnesty. Alongside these concerns about illegal immigration, there was also ambivalence and uncertainty about the levels of legal immigration. There was backing for immigration if the issue was posed in relatively broad and abstract terms. When asked by the Gallup Organization whether “on the whole . . . immigration is a good thing or a bad thing for this country today,” 67 percent replied that it was a “good thing.”20 However, there was a pronounced shift in tone if narrower


and more specific questions were asked. There were, in particular, fears about the economic and cultural consequences of mass migration. According to a December 2005 Gallup poll, 52 percent of those asked felt that immigrants drove down the wages of other workers and thereby damaged the economy. In recent years, fears about the consequences of immigration seem to have grown. In early 2006, according to a Pew poll, 52 percent believed that “immigrants today are a burden on our country because they take our jobs, housing and health care,” an increase of 14 percent from the 2000 figure.21 Only 41 percent said that “immigrants today strengthen our country because of their hard work and talents,” a fall from 50 percent in 2000.22 There was therefore relatively little enthusiasm for proposals to increase the numbers of legal immigrants allowed into the United States. Indeed, according to the Pew Center’s findings, a large plurality (40 percent) felt that levels of legal immigration should be reduced (see Table 14.2). Against this background, House strategists and those in organizations committed to immigration restriction had good reason to believe that a strong and assertive position on illegal immigration might bring forth electoral dividends. The calling of a special election in California’s Fiftieth Congressional District seemed to provide further confirmation of this. The election, which required a run-off contest in June 2006, followed the resignation of Randy “Duke” Cunningham, a Republican Congressman who had pleaded guilty to corruption charges. Despite these circumstances, the continuing fall in President Bush’s approval ratings and the overall slide in support for the Republican candidate Brian Bilbray won the election by a margin of about 4.5 percent. Strategists and commentators attributed this, in part, to the emphasis that the Republican campaign had placed on illegal immigration. As Chuck Todd of National Journal noted, the House Republicans had drawn the conclusion that it “was immigration—being tough on immigrants and having being for the toughest possible immigration law and anti-amnesty is the ticket to getting conservatives back into the Republican fold and getting them excited about why they need to keep the House.”23

Table 14.2 Attitudes toward legal immigration, February–March 2006 (percentages) Percent Decreased Kept the same Increased Don’t Know

40 37 17 6

Text of Question: “Legal immigration—levels should be decreased, kept the same, increased.” Source: Adapted from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, No Consensus on Immigration Problem or Proposed Fixes: America’s Immigration Quandary (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2006), 4, http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/274.pdf.


Election Campaigns Against this background, a significant number of House and some Senate Republican candidates placed illegal immigration at the forefront of the campaigns. It initially seemed that their efforts caught the imagination of both core supporters and broader swathes of voters. According to Dan Allen, a Republican strategist, “immigration is an issue that is really popping. . . . It is an issue that independents are paying attention to as well. It gets us talking about security and law and order.”24 As Carl Hulse noted in the New York Times, “Many Republicans, on the defensive here and around the country over the war in Iraq, say they are finding that a hard-line immigration stance resonates not just with conservatives, who have been disheartened on other fronts this year, but also with a wide swath of voters in districts where control of the House could be decided.”25 Election campaigning went beyond the customary forms. Congressional subcommittee hearings looking at, for example, the magnitude of problems at the border or the costs of illegal immigration were held in swing states and districts where immigration provoked anxiety or at flashpoints such as a border patrol station near San Diego.26 As Hulse recorded, these had an openly partisan purpose: “The taxpayer-financed, ostensibly nonpartisan meeting took on the air of political theatre. . . . The angry confrontation thrust the session into the headlines, reminding residents that the issue remained a leading one in the House race between Rick O’Donnell, the Republican nominee, and Ed Perlmutter, the Democrat, who are running to fill a seat being vacated by Representative Bob Beauprez, a Republican seeking the governorship.”27 Some Republican candidates however went further and shaped much of their political persona on the basis of illegal immigration. Congressman Tom Tancredo (representing the Sixth Congressional District of Colorado), attracted widespread national attention because of his opposition to both illegal and largescale legal immigration and because of suggestions that he might, on the basis of this stance, seek the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. Congressman J. D. Hayworth of Arizona’s Fifth Congressional District, first elected in the Republican landslide of 1994, also largely defined himself on the basis of the immigration issue.28 He published Whatever It Takes: Illegal Immigration, Border Security, and the War on Terror and emphasized the importance of adopting “broken windows” policing methods so that there was a clampdown on the most minor forms of criminality by immigrants. Such an approach would, Hayworth asserted, “convince illegal aliens to return home.”29 Randy Graf, the Republican U.S. House nominee in Arizona’s Eighth Congressional District, was also in the forefront of Republican efforts to mobilize around the issue. CBS News reported on his campaign, “Randy Graf, a Republican who hopes to win the open seat in a House district that sits on the border, is one who takes a tough stance. As he led a biker rally against illegal immigration Oct. 22, someone handed him a frayed denim vest that ‘used to belong to an illegal alien.’ When Graf put it on, the crowd cheered. But the theatrics went too far, and his face blanked when the giver joked: ‘It has a bullet hole in the back.’”30


However, Vernon Robinson’s campaign to unseat the incumbent Democrat in North Carolina’s Thirteenth Congressional District attracted the most widespread national attention. His television advertisements opened with music from The Twilight Zone and then, using a dramatic 1950s style of narration, said, “If you’re a conservative Republican, watching the news these days can make you feel as though you’re in the Twilight Zone. . . . The aliens are here, but they didn’t come in a spaceship. They came across our unguarded Mexican border by the millions.”31 Some Senate Republican candidates also adopted the “pro-enforcement” politics that had been embraced by almost all in the House Republican Caucus. Senator Jon Kyl, first elected to the U.S. Senate from Arizona in 1994 and then reelected in 2000 (after having served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives) and chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security, defined their campaigns in terms of illegal immigration. Illegal immigration, he asserted in his campaign publicity, absorbed local government resources, limited health provision for U.S. citizens, threatened the environment, and had profound security implications in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Furthermore, illegal immigration had a dynamic of its own that progressively undermined respect for law: “Turning a blind eye to illegal immigration, or sanctioning such behavior, undermines the rule of law in our country. It mocks those who wait patiently, sometimes for years, to enter the U.S. through legal channels. It encourages more people to immigrate illegally with the expectation that they, too, might benefit from some future amnesty.”32 Kyl not only called for border security measures (including extended fencing, vehicle barriers, detention facilities, and patrols), but also set his face against proposals that incorporated a “pathway to citizenship” allowing illegal immigrants to secure legal status. They were depicted as an “amnesty.” Indeed, it seemed at times that the word “amnesty” had been demonized in a way that recalled the use of the term “quotas” by those who were opposed to affirmative action in some earlier electoral contests. Tensions and Cleavages Nonetheless, despite the expectations that California’s special election aroused among “enforcement” campaigners and the structuring of some House election campaigns around the illegal immigration issue, hopes of making illegal immigration the defining issue in the November 2006 contests were dampened down well before the votes were cast. Although there was near unanimity among House Republicans, both the Bush administration and many Senate Republicans saw illegal immigration in markedly different terms. Following the passage of HR 4437 in December 2005, the White House issued a statement stating that the administration “strongly supports” the bill and “appreciates the efforts of the House Judiciary Committee and the Homeland Security Committee in bringing this important legislation to the floor.” The statement added however that the administration “looks forward to working with Congress to improve certain provisions in the bill.”33


The White House’s plan to “improve” sections of the House bill reflected President Bush’s longstanding commitment to much more comprehensive forms of immigration reform than those offered by the House bill. In contrast with some other Republican state governors during the latter half of the 1990s, most notably Pete Wilson in California, George W. Bush had as Texas governor courted the Latino vote. He criticized California’s Proposition 187 that called for the denial of government benefits to illegal migrants. He also opposed the “English-only” programs that Republicans had promoted in many other states.34 As the Dallas Morning News recorded, Texas Republicans adopted a markedly different approach toward immigration and immigrants during Bush’s gubernatorial tenure: “No angry demonstrations filled the streets of Texas cities, the way they did in California. Politicians offered no tough-on-immigration campaign rhetoric nor harsh proposals to deny state benefits to the children of illegal immigrants.”35 It was a strategy that yielded electoral dividends. In the November 1998 elections, Bush secured reelection with 47 percent of the Latino vote, which was according to some estimates nearly twice the Republican Party’s customary showing.36 Bush continued to pursue a conciliatory approach once he entered the White House. In July 2001, CNN reported that the administration was considering “a proposal to give the more than 3 million illegal Mexican nationals in the United States legal status to remain.” Although Bush had pulled back from talk of an “amnesty” for illegal immigrants by the time he met with Mexican President Vicente Fox just before the September 11 attacks, he still stressed the need for solutions based on U.S.-Mexican cooperation.37 There were some shifts over the months that followed. By the time the House of Representatives passed its immigration bill, the president was talking in much sharper terms about border security and in a rather more circumspect way about legalizing the status of illegal immigrants. He ordered the deployment of six thousand National Guard troops to border states.38 Nonetheless, Bush continued to distance himself from policies associated with “deportation”: “But I know you cannot deport ten million people who have been here working. It’s unrealistic. It may sound good in certain circles and political circles. It’s not going to work.”39 As congressional debate continued, twenty-three Senate Republicans adopted an approach that was broadly comparable with Bush’s plans and joined forces with most of the Democratic senators to back a “comprehensive” immigration reform package. The Senate bill (the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act) that was sponsored by Edward Kennedy and John McCain and passed by sixty-two votes to thirty-six in May 2006 conceded some ground by accepting the case for strengthened border security. It authorized 370 miles of new triple-layer fencing, plus 500 miles of vehicle barriers (in contrast with the 700 miles proposed in the House version). There were, furthermore, to be additional border patrol agents and detention facilities for those who were apprehended. Illegal immigrants who had been convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors would be deported regardless of the length of time that they had been in the United States. Like the House


bill, the Senate proposals required employers and subcontractors to use an electronic system to verify that new employees had legal status. They increased the maximum fine to be imposed on employers for hiring illegal workers to twenty thousand dollars for each worker and imposed jail sentences for repeat offenders. In a bid to allay the fears of those who argued that mass immigration undermined the cultural integrity and national identity of the United States, the measures declared English to be the country’s national language. At the same time, the Senate bill held out a promise of a “path to citizenship” to the majority of illegal immigrants. However, it established three categories. The bill allowed illegal immigrants who had been in the United States five years or more to remain, continue working, and eventually become legal permanent residents and citizens once they had paid at least $3,250 in fines and fees as well as back taxes and learned English. It required those illegal immigrants who had been in the United States between two and five years to go to a point of entry at the border and file an application to return. Those who had been in the United States for less than two years would have to leave. Alongside these provisions, there was also to be a guest-worker program for the projected 1.5 million immigrant farm workers who would eventually be allowed to earn legal permanent residency. Two hundred thousand new temporary guest-worker visas would be issued annually.40 Why did many Senate Republicans and the White House embrace “comprehensive” immigration reforms while their House counterparts adopted a much more “restrictionist” approach? In some states, House districts are drawn up in ways that protect incumbents. Many House elections are relatively uncompetitive, and there is little incentive to court middle ground and moderate opinion. Instead, victorious candidates must simply reassure the majority that is already in their electoral camp. In contrast, many Senate candidates face a significantly less homogeneous electorate, and they must build broader coalitions of support. The electoral cycle also plays a part. Whereas members of the House face the electorate every two years, the Senate has a six-year election cycle. This, some suggest, allows senators to become more detached from public opinion and permits a greater sensitivity to business interests. As Tamar Jacoby of the Manhattan Institute noted in a series of influential articles, the ageing of the native-born population is creating serious labor shortages and bottlenecks: “Employers in trades such as masonry and dry-walling report that they cannot find enough young Americans to do the work. The prospects for the restaurant business are even bleaker . . . the number of 16- to 24-year-old job seekers—the key demographic for the restaurant trade—will not expand at all. So unless the share of older Americans willing to bus tables and flip hamburgers increases—and in truth, it is decreasing—without immigrants, the restaurant sector will have trouble growing through the next decade.”41 Others pointed to similar shortages in the agricultural labor market. Speaking in September 2006, Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho stressed the part played by illegal immigrants in the agricultural sector. As Craig put it, “They’ve got to come to the reality that we have to do more than


just border security. We have job shortages showing up across the country at the moment. We are at a near crisis in American agriculture as our fruits and vegetables rot in the field. Surely the House members aren’t so frightened of the politics of this issue that they don’t understand the reality of the problem.”42 Some within the Republican and conservative camp looked beyond the immediate needs of the economy and talked in terms of broader principle. In July 1984, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal had issued a rallying call by publishing a constitutional amendment, “there shall be open borders.” In the two decades that followed, libertarian conservatives not only emphasized the dangers associated with “big government,” but stressed the economic benefits of immigration by arguing that the gains that accrued from the free movement of goods and services could also be secured through the free movement of labor. Others within the conservative movement had more pragmatic objections to the House Republican strategy. There were, in particular, memories of Californian experience during the 1990s. Under Governor Pete Wilson, California Republicans had associated themselves with Proposition 187 in 1994. The measure would have denied all nonemergency benefits (including education) to those in the United States illegally. Although Proposition 187 secured a majority (58.8 percent) and won a measure of support from within the Latino communities, Republican backing for it was widely seen as a threat to Latino interests.43 Proposition 187 contributed to an erosion of votes among Latinos and moderate whites and ensured that California, which had already been trending Democratic, was (despite Arnold Schwarzenegger’s election as governor) invariably in the Democratic column when the Electoral College Votes for U.S. president were counted. Securing the Border The gulf between the House and Senate immigration bills created an impasse. The differences went beyond those that could be reconciled in a conference committee; and despite a sense of urgency among many on Capitol Hill, movement was only possible on one front. Majorities in both the Senate and the House endorsed the call for strengthened security and, at the end of September 2006, the Senate accepted (by eighty to nineteen votes) the seven hundred miles of border fencing and advanced surveillance techniques that had been included in the House version. The passage of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 provided some, albeit limited, reassurance to congressional restrictionists. According to Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, “This is something the American people have been wanting us to do for a long time.”44 For his part, Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia said the vote would build credibility with those who had been skeptical: “They have been under the impression that Congress has been a lot about conversations about securing the border and not about action. . . . This is real action.”45 Administration officials talked in broadly similar terms although their comments were more often


framed in terms of national security rather than immigration. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that the measure would “enable the department to make substantial progress toward preventing terrorists and others from exploiting our borders and provides flexibility for smart deployment of physical infrastructure that needs to be built along the southwest border.”46 Election Results As has been seen, there were good reasons for thinking that despite the differences and tensions within the Republican Party, a strategy resting on base mobilization would reap electoral dividends. Furthermore, although the Democrats had a lead in successive preelection polls, immigration remained one of the issues in late October 2006 (together with moral concerns such as same-sex marriage and abortion) on which the Republicans were still ahead (see Table 14.3). On election day itself (Tuesday, November 7), there were some “victories” for the “enforcement” lobby. Writing in National Review, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies pointed to the passage of ballot measures in Arizona, where voters approved four immigration-related measures (including the denial of bail or the provision of state subsidies for education and childcare to illegal aliens), and in Colorado, where two anti-immigration measures including an instruction to the state attorney general to begin legal proceedings against the federal government on the grounds that immigration laws were not being enforced.47 Nonetheless, despite earlier expectations and hopes, illegal immigration contributed relatively little to the overall election outcome. The Democrats secured majorities in both congressional chambers. Despite the efforts of those who stressed the extent and scale of mass illegal immigration, the weakness of security along the U.S.-Mexican border, and the need for “enforcement,” polls suggested that only about a tenth of those asked in these polls regarded immigration (both illegal and legal) as the single most important issue. In terms of concerns, (as

Table 14.3 Issues and parties, October 2006 (percentages)

Moral values Guns Crime Same-sex marriage Abortion Immigration

Democrats

Republicans

Both

Neither

Unsure

40 37 36 33 33 32

39 39 38 41 42 40

4 3 5 2 3 4

8 7 9 9 8 11

9 14 12 15 14 13

Text of Question: “Please tell me which political party—the Republicans or the Democrats—you trust to do a better job handling each of the following. What about [see below]? Which party do you trust to do a better job handling this issue?” Party names rotated. N = 1,002 adults. Margin of error ± 3 percent. Source: Adapted from PollingReport.com, Problems and Priorities (October 26–27, 2006), http://www.pollingreport .com/prioriti.htm.


Table 14.4 suggests), immigration was dwarfed as an election issue by both the Iraq War and the state of the economy. Furthermore, the evidence that immigration played more of a role in areas where immigrants were more highly visible and that there may have been greater pressure on services and resources is limited. Pew Center research suggests that negative attitudes toward immigrants are more ingrained in areas that have the fewest immigrants. Those living in areas where there were relatively small numbers of foreign-born believed disproportionately that newcomers threatened traditional American “customs and values,” increased crime, and that legal immigration levels should be reduced. Of the five metropolitan regions surveyed by the Pew Center, Phoenix (Arizona) was the only one where immigration was regarded as the most important local problem.48 If anything, immigration may have lost votes for those who talked about the issue in the most strident terms. Some of the most prominent immigration hardliners such as J. D. Hayworth, Randy Graf, and John Hostettler all lost their seats. Despite predictions that his strident messages around illegal immigration would enable him to win, Vernon Robinson was overwhelmingly defeated in North Carolina. As David Weigel noted in Reason, “The Democrat, who had won 59 percent of the vote in 2004, thumped the well-funded Robinson by 28 points. After a year in which the immigration issue inspired reform bills, citizen border patrols, mass marches of undocumented workers, and untold hours of talk show screaming, a candidate who had seemed to strike a hidden chord with voters lost in a rout.”49 Reasons Why did immigration fail to play more of a role? In part, the scale and extent of American losses in Iraq, continuing fears about terrorism, and perceptions of the

Table 14.4 Most important issue, November 2006 (percentages) Issue Iraq Economy Health care Terrorism Immigration Ethics in government Something else Unsure

Percent 31 21 12 11 9 6 7 2

Text of Question: “Which of the following will be / was the SINGLE MOST important issue in your vote for Congress this year: the U.S. campaign against terrorism, the war in Iraq, the economy, immigration, ethics in government, health care, or something else?” Items rotated, registered voters. N = 1,205 adults nationwide. Source: Adapted from PollingReport.com, Problems and Priorities (ABC News / Washington Post Poll, November 1–4, 2006), http://www.pollingreport.com/prioriti.htm.


economy pushed immigration and many other concerns aside. However, immigration may also have been relegated as an issue because popular attitudes have an ambivalent and often contradictory character. Firstly, Latinos, who in March 1984 constituted about 81 percent of illegal immigrants, are along with Asians seen in increasingly positive terms. Between 1997 and 2006, the proportions asserting that Latinos work “very hard” and have “strong family values” grew markedly while fears of welfare dependency and criminality declined very significantly.50 Furthermore, as noted above, positive attitudes about immigrants are asserted with the greatest vigor in areas where most immigrants are to be found. Secondly, although some economists have argued that African Americans and other groupings that are disproportionately represented at the lower end of the labor market are at risk from the entry of low-cost labor into the country, a majority of the American public does not believe that immigrants are in direct economic competition with the native-born population. Fifty-six percent assert that illegal immigrants are taking jobs that citizens do not want.51 Thirdly, although there is strong backing for a clampdown on illegal immigration, a very large plurality (49 percent) said that the most effective way to reduce the numbers of illegal immigrants entering the United States from Mexico was to penalize employers rather than intensify security along the U.S.Mexican border. As Table 14.5 suggests, only 33 percent asserted that the answer lay in increased border patrols, and just 9 percent emphasized the building of more fences. Alongside the imposition of penalties on those who employed illegal immigrants, large majorities supported the introduction of mechanisms so that identities could be verified. While almost three quarters of those asked drew the line at withdrawing children who were in the United States illegally from schools (perhaps fearing the consequences for law and order as well as the interests of the children themselves), more than two thirds would, in an echo of Proposition 187 that was passed by California’s voters in 1994, deny social service provision to illegal immigrants (see Table 14.6). Fourthly, although more or less half of those asked in the Pew survey believed that policy toward illegal immigration should be based on taking steps against employers rather than strengthening border security, there are significant cleavages

Table 14.5 Attitudes toward ways of reducing illegal immigration from Mexico, February–March 2006 (percentages) Policy options Penalizing employers would be the best way to reduce illegal immigration More border controls would be the best way to reduce illegal immigration More border fences would be the best way to reduce illegal immigration

Percent 49 33 9

Source: Adapted from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, No Consensus on Immigration Problem or Proposed Fixes: America’s Immigration Quandary (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2006), 2, http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/274.pdf.


about policy toward the illegal immigrants already living in the country. These divisions are particularly evident in surveys, such as the Pew poll, that offer respondents three options. As Table 14.7 shows, opinion was fairly evenly divided between those who said that illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay, those who stated that illegal immigrants should be given temporary legal status, and those who argued that illegal immigrants should be required to go home. A more precisely worded question, based on the bill passed by the U.S. Senate and asking about a path to legalization (rather than the granting of citizenship) for illegal immigrants who were settled in the United States, that accepted the imposition of a fine, paid back taxes that might be owed, and learned English secured a large majority (see Table 14.8).

Table 14.6 Attitudes toward identity checks and provisions for illegal immigrants, February– March 2006 (percentages) Policy options

Percent

Favor government database Favor government ID card Opposed to eligibility for social services Favor education of children in public schools

66 76 67 71


Table 14.7 Policy toward illegal immigrants, February–March 2006 (percentages) Policy options

Percent

Illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay Illegal immigrants should be given temporary legal status Illegal immigrants should be required to go home

32 32 27


Table 14.8 Attitudes toward the “legalization” of illegal immigrants, May 2006 (percentages) Favor

Oppose

Unsure

77

19

4

Text of Question: “Would you favor or oppose allowing illegal immigrants who have done the following to stay and work in the United States: paid a fine, been in the U.S. for at least five years, paid any back taxes they owe, can speak English, and have no criminal record?” N = 636 adults nationwide. Margin of error ± 4 percent. Source: Adapted from PollingReport.com, Immigration (CBS News Poll, May 16–17, 2006), http://www.polling report.com/immigration.htm.


As Ruy Teixeira has noted, the American public supports “a tough, but not punitive, approach to the problem of containing illegal immigration and is willing to consider fairly generous approaches to the illegal immigrants already here, provided they feel expectations for these immigrants are high and that they will play by the rules.”52 The Latino Vote During the 1980s and 1990s, Republican Party strategists had often spoken of their hopes that a greater proportion of the Latino electorate could be won away from the Democrats. Traditionally, the Republicans secured the support of about a third of Latino voters. There were some solid grounds for the claim. Although Republican associations with Proposition 187 in California had taken their political toll, growing economic security among Latinos had created a sizeable middle class. Cultural issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage were, it was said, playing their part. Some local and statewide politicians such as Michael Bloomberg (New York City), George Pataki (New York state), Arnold Schwarzenegger (California), as well as state governors such as George W. Bush himself had been able to secure a foothold that, in turn, laid a basis for the Republicans’ five-point gain among Latinos in the 2004 presidential contest.53 In November 2006, however, the Republican share of the Latino vote fell back to 30 percent. This represented an 11 percent swing against the Republicans when the 2006 result was compared with the 2004 presidential contest. In contrast, there was only a 6 percent swing among whites and a 3 percent swing among African Americans. Newspaper reports had little hesitation in attributing the size of the swing to the Republicans’ handling of illegal immigration and the House immigration bill or in suggesting that the loss of Latino votes contributed to the Democrats’ overall congressional victories. They cited the warnings of religious leaders within the Latino communities such as those issued by Pastor Luciano Padilla Jr. of the Bay Ridge Christian Center in Brooklyn. Two weeks before the election, Padilla told journalists that he had backed the Republicans “because of their views on such issues as gay marriage and abortion.” However, the immigration debate led him to become more equivocal: “We will have to look at where we put our allegiance in the future.”54 Nonetheless, some important caveats should be entered before accepting all of this. Immigration may have played less of a role within the Latino electorate than it at first sight appears. Firstly, only about 14 percent of Latinos cited immigration as “the most important problem facing the country today,” This is more than among the general population (see Table 14.9), but it is not markedly more. Indeed, a 2002 study suggests that almost half of Latinos (48 percent) who were registered to vote believe that there were too many immigrants in the United States.55 For Latinos as well as the general population, the most important issue was the war in Iraq (22 percent). There were also, as Roberto Suro and Gabriel


Escobar of the Pew Hispanic Center emphasize, some striking differences within the Latino communities. Immigration was only a major issue among some subgroupings. Of the foreign-born, 20 percent ranked immigration as the most important problem compared with just 6 percent of native-born Latinos. Whereas 20 percent of first-generation Latino immigrants cited immigration as the most important problem facing the country today (and for them it was their top priority), only 9 percent of those in the second generation saw it as such. Among the third generation, the figure was only 5 percent.56 Secondly, the fall in the Republican share of Latino votes was to some extent a reflection of national trends. The Republicans also lost ground among other demographic and sectional groupings. Indeed, if the 2006 result is compared with the preceding midterm election (2002), which provides a much more accurate point of comparison than 2004 (when turnout is higher because a president is also being chosen), the Republicans’ share of the white vote fell by a marginally higher figure (see Table 14.9). Lastly, some Republican candidates, including immigration “hawks,” secured a sizeable share of the Latino vote. Jon Kyl, one of the Senate’s most outspoken advocates of an “enforcement” policy, won 41 percent of the Latino vote, a share that was as the Pew Hispanic Center noted comparable to that secured by George W. Bush in the November 2004 election.57 Lastly, the impact of Latino voting patterns on the overall result was limited. The Latino vote did not hand victory to the Democrats. The Pew Research Center suggests that Latinos constituted 10 percent or more of eligible voters in only twelve of the closest seventy-five House races. Latino voting led to a net gain of four seats for the Democrats.58 Democrats Nonetheless, although illegal immigration played less of a role in the 2006 elections than the Republican “hawks” had hoped or expected and did not lead to the shifts in Latino voting on the scale that some commentators have suggested,

Table 14.9 Voting patterns by race and ethnicity, 2002–6 (percentages) Dem. Rep. (2006) (2006)

Whites Hispanics Blacks

47 69 89

51 30 10

Dem. (2004)

41 58 86

Rep. Dem. Rep. (2004) (2002) (2002)

58 40 13

38 61 89

57 37 9

Change in Dem. vote (2004–6) 6 11 3

Change in Dem. vote (2002–6) 9 8 0

Note: The 2002 and 2006 figures are drawn from national exit polls. The 2004 results are taken from state exit polls. Source: Adapted from the Pew Hispanic Center, Latinos and the 2006 Mid-term Election (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2006), 2, http://pewhispanic.org/files/factsheets/26.pdf.


immigration and fears about the ways in which the Republicans might use the issue did contribute to a continuing process of ideological readjustment among Democrats. Candidates and officials talked in increasingly strident terms about order security and immigration law enforcement. Their statements built on earlier efforts. In 1994 the Clinton administration doubled the budget for border fencing and the deployment of agents along the border. Operation Gatekeeper was launched in an attempt to prevent crossings in the area around San Diego and Tijuana. In 2006, nearly all Democratic candidates and party organizations took the political offensive by seeking to establish that Republican lawmakers had long been lax in their approach. In mid-2006, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) issued a radio advertisement featuring Texas Democratic congressman and former U.S. border patrol agent Silvestre Reyes. He called upon listeners to “join Democrats in calling on Republicans to stop playing games with immigration; and start securing our borders.”59 Although later withdrawn, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee issued a web advertisement that seemingly tied illegal immigration to terrorism by showing images of people scaling a border fence together with pictures of Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong-il of North Korea.60 When in September 2006 Congress considered the bill authorizing the construction of a border fence but addressing no other aspect of the immigration issue, significant numbers of Democrats retreated from the argument that immigration reform had to have a broad and comprehensive character and that border security could not be considered in isolation. In the Senate, twenty-six Democrats joined the Republicans in backing the Secure Fence Act.61 In the House of Representatives, sixty-four Democrats crossed the aisle.62 The emphasis on border security opened the way for some candidates to go further and campaign against an “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. Gabrielle Giffords, the Democratic candidate in Arizona’s Eighth Congressional District who stood against Randy Graf, the Republican nominee who had already made his name as a campaigner against illegal immigration, sought to match her opponent’s arguments: “A big concern right now that health care is not being delivered properly, that education is not being delivered properly, and that illegal immigrants are the beneficiaries of the taxpayers’ dollars.”63 In Colorado’s Seventh Congressional District, the Democratic candidate Ed Perlmutter addressed the question of government provision for those in the United States illegally and drew on the record of the state legislature which was controlled by the Democrats: “We made it tougher for employers to continue to hire illegal aliens. . . . We limited benefits to the bare bones for people who are here illegally.”64 Others spoke in similar terms. According to Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, campaign Web pages on immigration issued by John Spratt, the successful Democratic candidate in South Carolina’s Fifth Congressional District, “might as well have been written by Tom Tancredo.”65 Heath Shuler, the Democrats’ House candidate in North Carolina’s Eleventh Congressional District who went on to defeat an eight-term


Republican incumbent, made illegal immigration a defining theme of his campaign. He stressed the threat to national security posed by border crossings, campaigned against “granting amnesty to people who have broken the law,” and at the same time asserted that illegal immigrants represented a drain on resources: “It is unfair to those who have come to our country legally to provide education, welfare, and health care benefits to people who have broken the law and come here illegally. Our priority must be to educate and employ our citizens.”66 Conclusion In the immediate aftermath of the 2006 congressional elections, there was speculation about the future of comprehensive immigration reform proposals. Some commentators suggested that the Democrats’ victory made the passage of a bill more rather than less likely. Both the victorious Democrats and the White House were, it was said, committed to comprehensive reform. It seemed that the Senate bill or at least a version of it might be revived, although the provision that required illegal immigrants who had been in the country for less than two years to leave before becoming eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship could, it was said, be abandoned. Homeland Security officials had raised questions about the feasibility of such a plan.67 The changed character of the House of Representatives and the electoral battering to which the Republicans had been subject would, it was said, allow a measure close to the bill that had passed the Senate in 2006 to secure a majority in the House and go forth for signature by the president. Nonetheless, comprehensive immigration reform proposals still face substantial difficulties. Firstly, as noted above, a significant proportion of congressional Democrats not only emphasized border security but distanced themselves from and openly criticized proposals for an “amnesty.” Many of those newly elected in November 2006 represent districts and states that voted for the Bush/Cheney ticket in 2000 and 2004. Electoral exigencies or at least the fear that the issue might be used against them will almost certainly curb their freedom of action. Many have, furthermore, embraced a form of populism that regards both the large corporations and the globalization process with profound suspicion. Writing in the New York Times, David Brooks has pointed to the ways in which Jim Webb, who won the Virginia senatorial contest for the Democrats, brought together hostility toward the Iraq War, the economic insecurity that he argued had been brought about by corporate interests and unregulated immigration. Brooks cited Webb’s words as election day approached: “I do believe we must gain control of our borders. . . . We also must gain control over corporate America’s use of illegals. This, along with the Iraq war, has been the major failure of this administration.”68 There are, furthermore, important organizations and currents within the Democratic camp that will back sentiments such as these. As the 2006 election approached, the labor unions reiterated their opposition to the temporary worker program that was incorporated in the Senate bill and that they regard as


a direct threat to American jobs.69 In reply, Latino and immigrant organizations such as the National Council of La Raza and the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition accused some Democrats of abandoning the party’s principles.70 Secondly, the 2008 presidential primaries and the long “invisible” contest that precedes them will place pressures on those making a presidential run and their allies. There will be a reluctance to antagonize core constituencies or offer succor to rivals. Within the Republican Party, Senator John McCain, who put his name to the Senate comprehensive reform package, faced particular difficulties with some of the party’s pivotal primary constituencies. Thirdly, despite the 2006 contests, many Congressional Republicans remained firmly opposed to comprehensive reform. Against this background, the course of Congressional deliberations on immigration during the first half of 2007 had a predictable character. Despite agreement between President Bush and senior senators, efforts to move to a vote on a new comprehensive reform bill in June 2007 attracted the support of only fortysix senators. Sixteen Democrats voted against the measure.71 In the House of Representatives the Republican conference voted by 114 votes to 23 to support a resolution expressing opposition to the Senate bill.72 Incremental reform at the edges of the immigration issue may be feasible but nonetheless, despite the outcome of the 2006 elections, there are still formidable obstacles facing those who call for comprehensive reform. Notes 1. Jonathan Weisman, “In Porous Border, GOP Sees an Opening: Candidates Take Hard Line to Rally Conservative Base,” Washington Post, August 21, 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/20/AR20060820 00658.html. 2. Jonathan Weisman, “House Votes to Toughen Laws on Immigration—One Setback for Bush: No Guest-Worker Plan,” Washington Post, December 17, 2005, http://www .washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/16/AR2005121601814 .html. 3. Sylvia Moreno, “Mexicans Make Up Largest Group; D.C. Area Numbers Up 70 Percent Since 2000,” Washington Post, March 22, 2005, http://www.washington post.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55202-2005Mar21.html. 4. Gail Russell Chaddock, “Voters on Immigration: Action, Please: In Arizona, Illegal Immigration Is Focus of Virtually Every Race This Fall,” CBS News, Christian Science Monitor October 29, 2006, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/27/politics/ main2132388.shtml. 5. Nathan Thornburgh, “Inside the Life of the Migrants Next Door,” Time, January 29, 2006, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1154222-12,00.html. 6. PBS, Farmingville—About the Film, 2004, http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2004/ farmingville/about.html. 7. Moreno, “Mexicans Make Up Largest Group” 8. John O’Sullivan, “‘No Illegal Alien Will Be Left Behind’: The Politics of Immigration,” National Review, April 14, 2006, http://www.nationalreview.com/jos/ osullivan200604140919.asp.


9. Mark Schulman and Tara Regan, “Large Majorities Support Guest Worker Program and Border Crackdown,” SRBI Public Affairs, Schulman, Ronca & Bucuvalas, Inc. (SRBI), March 31, 2006, http://www.srbi.com/time_poll_arc24.html. 10. Associated Press, “Repeated arrests of illegal immigrants cited,” Washington Post, January 9, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/ 08/AR2007010801473.html. 11. Morgan Lewis, “Immigration Enforcement to Focus on Criminal Prosecution of LargeScale Violators,” April 21, 2006, http://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/ImmAlert _LargeScaleViolators-21apr061.pdf. 12. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “Worksite Enforcement—Fact Sheet,” December 5, 2006, http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/factsheets/worksite120506.htm. 13. Jim Kessler, “Winning the Immigration Debate,” Third Way Culture Project, 3, http://www.third-way.com/data/product/file/51/Immigration_Message_and_ Strategy_Memo_for_Candidates.pdf. 14. Morgan Lewis, “Immigration Enforcement to Focus on Criminal Prosecution of Largescale Violators,” April 21 2006, http://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/ImmAlert_ LargeScaleViolators-21apr061.pdf. 15. New York Times, “Opinion—They Are America,” February 18, 2007, http://www .nytimes.com/2007/02/18/opinion/18sun1.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin. In August 2007, the White House announced twenty-six measures, which, it was said, would strengthen border enforcement and penalize employers who hired illegal immigrants. Although many of these steps simply maintained policies that had already been established, fines for knowingly hiring illegal workers were increased and improvements were made to the electronic system that employers can use to verify the status of potential employees. See N. C. Aizenman, “Bush Moves to Step Up Immigration Enforcement,” Washington Post, August 11, 2007, http://www .washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/08/10/AR2007081001113.html. 16. Minuteman Project, “Welcome to the Minuteman Project,” 2007, http://www .minutemanproject.com. 17. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, No Consensus on Immigration Problem or Proposed Fixes: America’s Immigration Quandary (Washington, DC, Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, March 30, 2006), 25, http://people press.org/reports/pdf/274.pdf. 18. Nathan Thornburgh, “Inside the Life of the Migrants Next Door.” 19. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, No Consensus on Immigration, 23. 20. PollingReport.com, “Immigration,” 2006, http://www.pollingreport.com/immigration .htm. Gallup Poll, June 8–25, N = 2,032 adults nationwide, including oversamples of Blacks and Hispanics weighted to reflect their proportions in the general population. Margin of error ± 6 percent. 21. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, No Consensus on Immigration, 9. 22. Ibid., 1. 23. Chuck Todd, “The 2006 Midterm Elections,” U.S. Department of State, June 21, 2006, http://fpc.state.gov/fpc/68174.htm. 24. Carl Hulse, “In Bellwether District, G.O.P. Runs on Immigration,” New York Times, September 6, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/washington/06colorado .html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin. 25. Hulse, “In Bellwether District.” 26. Anne C. Mulkern, “Tensions High at House Hearings,” Denver Post, July 6, 2006, http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_4017366.


27. Hulse, “In Bellwether District.” 28. Hayworth voted against the House immigration bill because it would, he argued, open the way for the Senate to attach a guest-worker program to its provisions. See J. D. Hayworth, “Time for an Immigration-Enforcement Bill,” Washington Times, December 14, 2005, http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20051213-0923183663r.htm. 29. Hayworth, “On the Issues: Illegal Immigration and Border Security,” U.S. Congress, 2006, http://www.jdhayworth.com/hayworth_contents/issues/. 30. Chaddock, “Voters on Immigration.” 31. Quoted in David Weigel, “Why Anti-Immigration Conservatives Fell Flat in 2006,” Reason Magazine, February 2007, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/17746 44/posts (posted January 27, 2007). 32. Jon Kyl, Border and Immigration Issues, U.S. Senate, 2006, http://kyl.senate.gov/ legis_center/border.cfm. 33. Executive Office of the President, “Statement of Administration Policy—H.R. 4437—Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005,” December 15, 2005, http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/legislative/sap/ 109-1/hr4437sap-h.pdf. 34. CNN.com, “Texas Gov. George W. Bush Wins in Landslide,” CNN.com, November 3, 1998, http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/11/03/election/governors/ texas/. 35. Associated Press, “As Texas Governor, Bush Defended Immigrants: In His Absence, Acrimonious Debate Has Surged,” DallasNews.com, January 28, 2007, http://www .dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/012907dnt swimmigbush.781af4.html. 36. Jim Barnes, “Moderates Inherit the Governor’s Mansions: Good Day for Bush Family,” CNN.com, November 3, 1998, http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/ 1998/11/03/election/governors/governor.analysis/. 37. CNN.com, “U.S. considers residency for illegal Mexicans,” CNN.com, July 17, 2001, http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/07/16/bush.mexico/index.html. 38. The White House, “President Bush Discusses Comprehensive Immigration Reform in Texas,” August 3, 2006, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/2006 0803-8.html. 39. Ibid. 40. Washington Post, “Immigration Bills Compared: Highlights of the House and Senate and Border Security Measures,” Washington Post, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost .com/wp-dyn/content/custom/2006/05/26/CU2006052600148.html. 41. Tamar Jacoby, “Immigration Nation,” Foreign Affairs 85 (November/December 2006): 6, 53. 42. Quoted in National Immigration Forum, “As Congress Fiddles, Fruits and Vegetables Rot: Labor Shortages Reported in Agriculture, Spreading Elsewhere,” September 27, 2006, http://www.immigrationforum.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=847. 43. Lina Y. Newton, Why Latinos Supported Proposition 187:Testing the Economic Threat and Cultural Identity Hypotheses, paper 98-12, (Irvine: University of California, Irvine, Center for the Study of Democracy, 1998), http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1110&context=csd. 44. C. Hulse, and R. L. Swarns, “Senate Passes Bill on Building Border Fence,” New York Times, September 30, 2006, http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res= FB0A1EFB3C540C738FDDA00894DE404482.


45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Mark Krikorian, “The Word on Immigration: Voters Didn’t Say Yes to Amnesty,” National Review LVIII: 22, December 4, 2006, pp. 33–35, http://nrd.nationalreview .com/article/?q=YzA4OTk5ZTQwNTc1YTMyZmY1MzY3MDEzNjY1MTIzMWY=. 48. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, No Consensus on Immigration, 8–9. 49. David Weigel, “Why Anti-Immigration Conservatives Fell Flat in 2006,” Reason Magazine, February 2007, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1774644/ posts. (posted January 27, 2007). 50. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, No Consensus on Immigration, 1. 51. Thornburgh. “Inside the Life of the Migrants Next Door.” 52. Ruy Teixeira, “What Does the Public Want on Immigration?” Donkey Rising (The Emerging Democratic Majority), April 5, 2006, http://www.emergingdemocratic majorityweblog.com/donkeyrising/archives/001420.php. 53. John Zogby, “The Battle for the Latino Vote,” Huffington Post, November 29, 2006, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-zogby/the-battle-for-the-latino_b_35164 .html. 54. P. Wallsten, “Latino and Black Voters Reassessing Ties to GOP: Clergy and Other Leaders Say Promises Haven’t Been Kept,” Los Angeles Times, October 24, 2006, http://www.cbhn.org/Latino_and_black_voters.pdf. 55. Pew Hispanic Center / Kaiser Family Foundation, National Survey of Latinos: The Latino Electorate, October 10, 2002, http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/12.pdf. 56. R. Suro, and G. Escobar, 2006 National Survey of Latinos: The Immigration Debate, (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, July 13, 2006), http://pewhispanic.org/ files/reports/68.pdf. 57. Pew Hispanic Center, Latinos and the 2006 Mid-term Election (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, November 27, 2006), 3, http://pewhispanic.org/files/factsheets/26 .pdf. 58. Ibid. 59. Democratic National Committee, “Secretary Gutierrez, Congressman Schwarz Bring GOP’S Immigration Roadshow to Michigan,” 2006, http://www.democrats.org/a/ 2006/07/secretary_gutie.php. 60. Rachel L. Swarns, “Some Democrats Send a More Conservative Immigration Message,” New York Times, October 17, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/ 17/us/politics/17immig.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. 61. Jonathan Weisman, “With Senate Vote, Congress Passes Border Fence Bill: Barrier Trumps Immigration Overhaul,” Washington Post, September 30, 2006, http://www .washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092901912 .html. 62. WashingtonPost.com, “Votes Database—H.R. 6061,” WashingtonPost.com, 2006, http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/109/house/2/votes/446/. 63. Quoted in William Schneider, “Immigration: Election Issue Fade-Out,” Atlantic Online, November 7, 2006, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200611u/nj_schneider_ 2006-11-04. 64. Quoted in ibid. 65. Mark Krikorian, “‘Interesting Opportunities’: Are Amnesty and Open Borders in Our Future?” National Review Online, November 9, 2006, http://article.national review.com/?q=ZjM1YmEwZmNiMDBiOGIwOTQ3NDc3N2Q4MWEwMDVi M2Q=.


66. Heath Shuler for Congress, Issues—Immigration, 2006, http://www.heathshuler.com/ issues_details.asp?id=41. 67. Rachel L. Swarns, “Bipartisan Effort to Draft Immigration Bill,” New York Times, December 26, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/washington/26immig .html?ei=5090&en=7694e146b520381f&ex=1324789200&. There were administrative and security concerns about the proposal to divide up illegal immigrants into different categories, compel them to leave, and then permit their re-admission. 68. Quoted in David Brooks, “Democrats Work the Factory Floor,” New York Times, October 1, 2006, http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/opinion/01brooks.html. 69. Swarns, “Bipartisan Effort to Draft Immigration Bill.” 70. Rachel L. Swarns, “Some Democrats Send a More Conservative Immigration Message,” New York Times, October 17, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/ 17/us/politics/17immig.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. 71. CNN.com, “Senate Immigration Bill Suffers Crushing Defeat,” CNN.com, June 28, 2007, http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/06/28/immigration.congress/index .html. 72. Yahoo News, “US House Republicans Reject Immigration Bill,” Yahoo News, June 26, 2007, http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070627/ts_alt_afp/usimmigrationhouse;_ ylt=AkaCgOZaEkSIfsoSYObySns8KbIF.

CHAPTER 15

Immigration, Social Policy, and Politics in the United States Alex Waddan

here has long been an animated discussion about the overall economic impact of immigration. More recently, an associated yet distinct argument has developed about the use of government benefits and services by the immigrant population. This issue, that had already sparked vociferous debate in various state capitals, rose to the fore of national politics in 2006 as the possible budgetary impact of different immigration reform proposals being considered by Congress became evident. This issue was disputed by pro- and anti-immigrants’ rights campaigners. The focus of this chapter is to examine the policy and the ongoing politics underlying the debate about the relationship of immigrants, both legal and illegal, with the American welfare state. At first sight it might appear that these issues form a more empirically objective part of the debate about immigration than more culturally driven arguments about assimilation and American identity. Any such expectation, however, is confounded by the welter of competing evidence placed in the public domain by pro- and anti-immigration voices. There are some areas of consensus, for example, that the “difference between immigrants and the native-born in [benefit] program participation and program expenditures varies greatly across types of government programs.”1 That is, immigrants are underrepresented as claimants of the two biggest U.S. social policy programs, Social Security and Medicare, which provide pensions and health care for the country’s seniors, but are more likely to claim a variety of means-tested benefits such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and food stamps. It is also manifest that the cost of providing benefits to poor immigrants is spread unevenly across the states according to the size

T

258 • Alex Waddan

and nature of their immigrant community and that such variation particularly applies with regard to undocumented immigrants and their use of emergency medical care and also schooling for their children. In this context, it is also clear that contemporary controversies about immigration and social policy focus on Latino and particularly Mexican immigrants, since they have tended to enter the United States with fewer qualifications and hence a lower skill base than other newcomers and also because so many cross the border illegally.2 There is little agreement, however, on how to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the impact of immigration. Equally, there is no consensus about what the effect of immigration and social policy reform might be on the process of advancing the socioeconomic integration of the less well-off immigrant communities. Hence, it is not surprising that quite different recommendations are advanced about how immigration and social policy should interact. For some the imperative is to drive down the costs or “burden” placed on U.S. taxpayers, and hence there is a call for both immigration control and an emphasis on denying benefits to immigrants, especially illegal immigrants. Alternatively, immigration rights advocates maintain that newcomers to the United States, even illegal ones, are a permanent reality and that a policy based on exclusion is therefore likely to be counterproductive. In this view policymakers should be aiming to better incorporate poorer immigrants into U.S. society through extending access to services such as education and health care. Immigration and Social Policy Immigrant access to government benefits and the generosity of those benefits has real fiscal consequence. It matters, of course, to the immigrants themselves as well as to those whose taxes pay for the benefits. More generally, the cost of government welfare programs is affected by population growth whether this results from higher birth rates, increased life longevity, or immigration. That is, the bigger the population, the higher the cost of maintaining existing levels of social provision. On the other hand, the reason behind population growth matters since an increase in the working aged population has quite different tax-andspend implications than an increase in the number of children or seniors.3 Furthermore, much will depend on the skill level of immigrants and whether they are in the United States legally or not. Working aged, legal, and skilled immigrants in well paying jobs are unlikely to require welfare benefits and indeed are likely to make a net contribution to the government budget through their tax payments. On the other hand, low skilled immigrants in poorly paid and perhaps irregular work are less likely to make a significant contribution to government coffers in tax payments, but are more likely to need public assistance. Illegal immigrants, while they are ineligible for most benefits, are more likely to work in the underground economy and are hence less likely to pay payroll and income tax. Furthermore, illegal immigrants in the United States do use, and in their circumstances may have little option but to use, emergency medical

Immigration, Social Policy, and Politics in the United States • 259

care that they cannot pay for; and, in addition, the children of illegal immigrant parents are entitled to attend public school at the public expense. Arguments about the cost of immigration and the rights of immigrants to public welfare programs did not begin with large-scale Hispanic immigration but have grown in intensity over the last twenty-five years. One concern of critics of mass immigration, such as George Borjas, is that the allure of the United States changed in nature with the expansion of the welfare state in the mid-1960s: “[G]enerous welfare programs can create a magnet that influences the migration decisions of persons in the source countries, changing the type of person who wishes to migrate to the United States.”4 Whatever the legitimacy of this concern, it is clear that the fiscal consequences of contemporary immigration are “a much more important policy issue . . . than for earlier immigrant waves, because the relative size of all levels of government is so much larger.”5 The Rise in Welfare Use Whether or not the expansion of public welfare programs in the 1960s did create a subsequent magnet effect and attracted immigrants to the United States, Borjas maintains that immigrant use of welfare rose during the 1980s and early 1990s: “In 1970 immigrants were slightly less likely to receive cash benefits than natives. . . . By 1998, over 10 percent of immigrant households received cash benefits, as compared to only 7 percent of native households.”6 Moreover, in addition to cash benefits, immigrant households were more likely to use means-tested, in-kind programs such as food stamps and Medicaid than nonimmigrant households.7 Furthermore, if this aggregate data that relates to all immigrants and refugees is teased out, it illustrates disproportionate welfare use by Latinos and in particular Mexican households.8 A study published by the National Academy of Sciences in 1997 reflected that “the net fiscal burden imposed on native residents” was “by far heaviest for households of immigrants originating in Latin America.”9 The study attributed this difference to the tendency of Latino households to have “lower incomes and to include more school-age children than . . . other immigrant households.”10 According to Steven Camarota, 33.1 percent of immigrant households with a Mexican family head accessed a welfare program in 1996. This compared with 16.7 percent of immigrant households with an East Asian head of household, 11.2 percent with a Canadian head of household, or 9.1 percent with a western European head of household. For all immigrants the figure was 21.9 percent, and for “native” households the figure was 15.2 percent.11 In this analysis Camarota classed what was then still Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), general assistance, Supplemental Security Income, Medicaid, and food stamps as the major welfare programs. Like Borjas, Camarota is an advocate of immigration control. It is certainly possible to quibble with the methodology employed in the study since it attributes welfare use by any family member as immigrant welfare use (that is, it would still count as

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immigrant welfare use if, for example, a citizen child of an immigrant parent was accessing Medicaid). Nevertheless, the perception that Mexican immigrants were relatively high users of means-tested cash benefits and in-kind services was established as the conventional wisdom in the mid-1990s. The popular backlash this produced was seen most explicitly in California in 1994 with the passage of Proposition 187 that denied various benefits to illegal immigrants. In the end most of the measures in Proposition 187 were never implemented due to legal challenges. At the federal level the drive to restrict immigrant access to benefits climaxed in the 1996 welfare reform legislation, formally known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). The Impact of the 1996 Welfare Reform The primary focus of PRWORA was not in fact immigrant welfare use but was an effort to reduce welfare use, and specifically the AFDC program, among America’s poor single-parent families.12 Nevertheless, PRWORA contained hugely significant clauses about legal immigrants’ access to welfare benefits and services. Congressional concern about the costs to the public purse of immigration had already been manifested in 1993 when legislation was enacted extending the waiting period from three to five years for immigrants to become eligible for Supplemental Security Income. The 1996 reform, however, was much more sweeping and indeed, according to Michael Fix and Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution, these provisions constituted “a revolution in welfare policy for non-citizens” as the law placed a variety of restrictions on immigrant eligibility for welfare benefits.13 For example, prior to the enactment of PRWORA, legal immigrants were eligible for AFDC, which was an entitlement established at the national level, albeit with significant state-level discretion in terms of its actual payments. PRWORA, however, abolished AFDC and replaced it with a new benefit called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). TANF came with new conditions for all families, but immigrant families arriving in the United States after August 22, 1996, were now to be ineligible for federal TANF money for five years. In addition, this five-year waiting period was applied to a raft of other programs, notably SSI, Medicaid, and food stamps.14 If the aim of the immigrant-related aspects of PRWORA was to reduce immigrant use of welfare provision, then it had quick success. Fix and Haskins identified a “sustained decline in legal non-citizens’ use of TANF, SSI, food stamps, and Medicaid . . . from 1994 through 1999 . . . the sharpest decreases occurred in TANF (60 percent) and food stamps (48 percent) and the lowest in Medicaid (15 percent).”15 Significantly these declines outpaced the declines taking place in citizen family use of these programs. However, in a study of the years between 1996 and 2001, Camarota, put a different interpretation on the evidence. His analysis acknowledged that immigrants’ use of TANF and food stamps declined at a relatively faster rate than for “native households,” but he added that if the aim of reform was to cut costs, then this goal remained unmet.


This was “primarily due to immigrant households’ continued heavy use of Medicaid, by far the most expensive welfare program.”16 Nevertheless, legal immigrant welfare use had declined, and ten years after PRWORA the focus of debate about the interaction between immigration policy and social policy had shifted to undocumented immigrants. Immigrants and Welfare State Politics in 2006 Through 2006 policymakers argued about whether simply to get tough on undocumented immigrants already in the United States or to acknowledge the reality of their presence in both society and the economy. In Washington, DC, bills were introduced in both chambers of Congress, but there was an overall legislative stalemate. There was, however, also considerable activity at the state level. An early example of this came in November 2004 when Proposition 200 was passed in Arizona. This ballot initiative echoed some of the themes seen ten years before in California when that state passed Proposition 187. Proposition 200 was followed by various other legislative and state ballot initiatives in Arizona and other states with an increasing number of illegal immigrants such as Virginia, North Carolina, and Colorado.17 One unintended consequence of Proposition 187’s supporters in California, notably its Republican governor, Peter Wilson, was to push Hispanic voters more firmly toward the Democratic Party.18 George Bush, however, first as governor of Texas and then as president, worked to reverse the negative image of the GOP in the Latino community, and in the 2004 presidential election this paid a political dividend as he won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote.19 In 2006, however, while generally playing political defense, many congressional Republicans saw immigration as an issue that might cause both political and ideological discomfort to the Democrats.20 Hence, as well as demanding stricter enforcement of immigration controls, they emphasized a punitive approach toward existing illegal immigrants. And this message was sometimes broadcast in the most strident terms. For example, in North Carolina, Republican candidate for the House of Representatives Vernon Robinson ran an advertisement that contained the following voice over: “These illegal aliens pay no taxes but take our jobs and our government handouts, then spit in our face and burn our flags.”21 Against this background, various proposals for immigration reform were debated in Congress toward the end of 2005 and through 2006. In December 2005 the House of Representatives passed the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act. This very much reflected the sentiments of those wishing to focus on tighter border controls and crack down on those already unlawfully in the United States. In contrast a bill passed in the Senate in May 2006, sponsored by Republican John McCain from Arizona and Massachusetts’s Democrat Edward Kennedy, called for a “guest-worker” program and would have offered some undocumented immigrants a pathway to legal status and citizenship depending on how long they had been in the United States.

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A further Senate offering from Republican Senators Chuck Hagel from Nebraska and Mel Martinez from Florida also proposed that illegal immigrants who had been in the United States for five or more years would have a pathway to eventual citizenship so long as they paid a $3,250 fine and any back taxes. Those who had been in the United States between two to five years could apply for work permits if they first left the country, while those in the United States for less than two years would simply be deported. Both the Senate bills also contained strong language on enforcement, but given the accusations from anti-immigration advocates in the House that they were tantamount to “amnesty” for illegal immigrants, there was little chance of a reconciliation of the proposals. Nevertheless, the Hagel-Martinez proposal did generate considerable discussion. It also produced wildly different estimates as to its likely cost to American taxpayers. According to Robert Rector, a commentator at the conservative Heritage Foundation, the bill would “provide amnesty to 9 to 10 million illegal immigrants and put them on the path to citizenship.”22 This would incur an extra cost to the federal government in providing benefits to these new citizens of “$16 billion per year.” Rector continued to hypothesize that these new citizens would then bring their parents to the United States who in turn would become U.S. citizens. He calculated that the overall impact would be an extra cost of $30 billion per year in benefits, meaning that the proposal would constitute the “largest expansion of the welfare state in 35 years.”23 Other analysts disputed these figures. Citing data from the Congressional Budget Office, a report from the liberal think tank, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, placed the likely extra costs at $6.9 billion per year.24 Such significant disparities not only reflect quite different methodological assumptions, but also normative positions on the value of immigration. Immigrants, Social Policy, and the States These debates in Washington echoed at a national level some of the intense arguments that had been going on at state level for some time. In fact state-level political leaders, while arguing amongst themselves, were relatively united in their frustration at what they perceived to be the manner in which the federal government had effectively imposed unfunded social policy mandates on state and local governments. In particular, state leaders complained that the restrictions on legal immigrants’ access to federal benefits imposed by PRWORA meant that states had to provide substitute services at their own expense. Also, state governors expressed increasing concern about the cost of providing emergency health care to undocumented immigrants and of educating the children of these immigrants as they are required to do regardless of whether the children are U.S. citizens or are themselves in the United States illegally.25 The manner in which these concerns produced a mix of inflamed rhetoric and arguments over the data was seen in a series of congressional field hearings in the summer of 2006. For example, in August 2006 the then chair of the


Committee on Government Reform, Tom Davis, a Republican from Virginia, declared, “The health care system, already under severe strain, risks being swamped by a continuing flood of uninsured illegal immigrants, many of whom use hospital emergency rooms for primary care.”26 This reliance on emergencyroom care however, is not surprising given that undocumented immigrants are highly unlikely to be in jobs with health insurance and are not eligible for Medicaid and hence are more likely to wait for treatment until the last moment. While providing uncompensated medical care does eat into state budgets, the bigger burden on state governments is the cost of educating the children of illegal immigrants. Even here, however, it is worth noting how the different methods by which the relevant data is collected and disseminated can drive the terms of the debate. For example, a report by the Texas State Comptroller published in December 2006 estimated that there were 135,000 undocumented children in Texas public schools in the 2004/5 school year. This constituted about 3 percent of the system’s total numbers. The average cost per student in public school was $7,085, meaning that the state spent just under $957 million on the education of undocumented immigrant children.27 This is certainly not an insignificant figure, but when examining the fiscal consequences of illegal immigration for New York, an immigration control group estimated costs of “$4.3 billion per year.”28 One explanation for the discrepancy is that the Texas report did not include citizen children of undocumented immigrants in its figures while the New York report did include these citizen children since they owed their presence in the United States to the illegal behavior of their parents. More generally, the fiscal impact of immigration at the state level depends not only on the number of immigrants in each state, but also on the legacies left by the long-term development of social policy in each state affecting immigrant eligibility for state-administered welfare services. Hence there can be significant variation even between states that do have high immigrant communities. For example, according to Gordon Hanson’s study, “taxpayers in California and New York are highly likely to be exposed to the fiscal costs associated with immigration; taxpayers in Texas, Florida, Nevada and New Jersey appear likely to face a smaller burden.”29 One factor is the different natures of the immigrant communities in these states, but that does not adequately explain the differences between California and Texas that both have high Latino and particularly Mexican immigrant populations. Hanson found that in Texas there were over twenty nonimmigrant households per immigrant household in receipt of welfare. In California there were only ten. Put simply, over time California had developed both a more generous system in terms of the benefits and services provided by the state to all its inhabitants and also a system that granted better access to immigrant households than was the case in Texas.30 When measuring the impact of immigration on state budgets, it is also important to consider the revenue-raising side of the fiscal equation. That is, a state’s taxation policy matters to any cost-benefit analysis. For example, Texas does not have a state income tax but relies more heavily on a sales tax. Since undocumented

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immigrants working in the underground economy are unlikely to register to pay an income tax but cannot avoid paying a sales tax when they make any purchases, this makes the Texas system a more efficient means of collecting tax revenues from illegal immigrants.31 This illustrates again how long-term policy legacies can be consequential in perhaps unexpected ways. Looking Ahead: Education and “Hispanization” Underpinning the arguments between pro- and anti-immigration advocates about the fiscal consequences of Latino immigration are different perceptions about the integration of Latinos into a wider U.S. society. In particular Samuel Huntington caused considerable controversy when he argued that Latinos were not adapting to the “American creed” in the manner that previous immigrant communities had done.32 As evidence Huntington pointed to the failure of Mexican Americans to rise up the socioeconomic ladder and to the fact that in 2005 Latino households, and particularly recent arrivals in the United States, remained likely to have lower incomes than non-Latino households making them more likely to require public assistance. In 2005, an overall 49.5 percent of Hispanic households had yearly earnings below twenty thousand dollars, with 53.3 percent of foreign-born Hispanic households below that mark. In comparison, 34 percent of non-Hispanic whites had yearly earnings below twenty thousand dollars, with 37.2 percent of all households in that income category.33 In the light of these relatively low earnings, Huntington suggested that Mexican immigration was bringing about a “Hispanization” of a subgroup of American society. He also warned that these trends were reinforced by a continuing educational underachievement. Huntington noted, “Any significant improvement in the economic status of Mexican-Americans depends on an improvement of their educational level, and the ongoing influx of poorly educated people from Mexico makes that difficult.”34 Bean and his co-authors acknowledged that the picture drawn by Huntington “invites the conclusion that immigrants in general, and Mexican immigrants in particular, are generating a permanent and largely illegal underclass.” These authors add that the “average years of schooling completed for Mexican male immigrants” living in the United States in 2000 was “8.8 years” and for Mexican women was “8.7 years.” In contrast, “African Americans, a group that has faced a historically educational disadvantage . . . averaged almost 50 percent higher in 2000.”35 Clearly, if such patterns of comparative educational underachievement persist, this restricts the opportunities for Mexican immigrants to develop the skills necessary to climb the socioeconomic ladder. In turn this limits their potential future earnings and increases the likelihood that they will need to claim benefits and services designed to help low-income households. Bean and his co-authors however, question this pessimistic portrayal of the future educational life chances of immigrant families. They point out that the data being used to underpin these arguments about Mexican immigrant educational


assimilation are “based on largely short-run, static depictions of the incorporation experiences of new immigrants.”36 The authors contend that a longer-term perspective suggests a less negative scenario. They reflect on Huntington’s comment that “Naturalization is the single most important political dimension of assimilation” and that Mexican immigrants have the “lowest or among the lowest” rates of naturalization of all immigrant groups.37 Bean et al., however, maintain that recent evidence shows that when given the opportunity, there has been an increased tendency for Mexican immigrants to naturalize; and that if given the chance, a greater proportion of Mexicans would seek legal status and then citizenship. And this desire for a change in legal status shows that “Mexican immigrants are not mired in static life situations.”38 Furthermore, the available evidence illustrates that “within the second generation, having a father who naturalized improves substantially the likelihood of human capital acquisition.”39 In other words, the children of naturalized citizens are more likely to have a better educational profile and hence a better opportunity to compete in the labor market. In turn this will have an impact on the amount that they pay to and receive from the government. Again it is clear that these competing projections of the likely educational development of the Mexican immigrant community in the United States have quite different implications for policymaking. Looking Ahead: Latinos and Social Security While it is impossible to predict onward patterns of immigration, it seems likely that Mexican migration to the United States will continue whatever efforts are made to restrict the movement across the border, although demographic trends in Mexico and economic conditions in the two countries may reduce numbers over time.40 It is also difficult to be certain about the long-term choices of those already in the United States and how their decisions will be affected by changes in U.S. social and immigration policy. One estimate is that of the 28 million Mexicans who illegally entered the United States between 1965 and 1985, about 23.4 million returned to Mexico.41 According to Durand et al., however, the United States’ stricter border enforcement from the late 1980s had a series of unintended consequences. Making it more difficult to move to and fro across the border encouraged undocumented immigrants to settle in the United States rather than move between the United States and Mexico on a seasonal basis. In turn this led to an expansion of the black market for Mexican labor and further to a spreading of the illegal population across more of the United States rather than keeping its more traditional regional concentration.42 Riosmena concurs that “the escalation of border enforcement operations . . . dramatically reduced the probability of return migration.”43 In the long term a possible consequence is that there will be an increase in the elderly and illegal Hispanic and specifically Mexican population that is resident in the United States but without access to Social Security benefits. Indeed, regardless of the legal status of each individual, income security in old age for the

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wider Hispanic community is already problematic and is likely to grow as a cause of concern. The debate about welfare provision in 2006 was structured by the fact that Latino immigrant families are younger than average American households. In 2005, 7.1 percent of Hispanic men and 7.5 percent of Hispanic women living in the United States were ages fifty and above. This compares with 16 percent of white non-Hispanic men and 14.5 percent of white non-Hispanic women. In contrast 19.4 percent of Hispanic males and 18.3 percent of Hispanic females were ages nineteen or less. The comparative figures for white non-Hispanics were 12.3 percent and 11.7 percent respectively.44 This suggests that for some time to come, day-to-day arguments about the costs of immigration will focus on the expenses associated with education rather than retirement. As a consequence, immigration has not played too significant a part in the debate about the future of Social Security and Medicare. There are already indications, however, of likely future angst about the socioeconomic status of elderly Latinos. In 2003 an estimated 710,000 Mexicans ages sixty or more were living in the United States. This represented an increase of 63 percent over the previous decade. Disturbingly, about 25 percent of these had an income below the poverty line in comparison with the overall national figure of about 10 percent.45 More generally, the eligible Latino community is the most dependent on Social Security benefits for its retirement income. A Pew Hispanic Center survey found that “Hispanic workers are the least likely of the principal racial and ethnic groups to participate in an employment-based retirement plan or own any longterm financial assets.”46 Hence over time it is likely that the already thorny politics of immigration and social policy will become even further complicated. Conclusion Overall the manner in which the debate about social policy and immigration is conducted often generates more heat than light. Evidently much depends on the methodology used by researchers as pro- and anti-immigration forces search to legitimize their assumptions through “hard data.” Of course, long-term projections are notoriously difficult, especially when it is not clear what the life cycle choices of immigrants will be. That is, if Mexican immigrants spend their working life legally employed in the United States while making minimal claims on the state and return to Mexico in retirement, then their efforts will likely have been a boost to U.S. government coffers. If, on the other hand, they choose to stay in the United States through their retirement or if, as suggested by Robert Rector, they become citizens and then bring their parents to the United States, the fiscal equation shifts significantly. Even if such “unknowns” could be calculated, however, the dispute about the entitlement of immigrants to the same benefits as citizens is not simply a number-crunching exercise waiting to be settled by a definitive analytical methodology. Fundamentally, questions about immigrant access to government benefits and services hinge on political and philosophical judgements. Those who insist that


immigrants, or at least legal immigrants, should not be discriminated against because of their immigrant status maintain that immigration has been a motor for U.S. economic growth. An example of how new restrictions on immigration might impact the economy came in Colorado in early 2007. In the aftermath of new regulations enacted in the summer of 2006 designed to drive illegal immigrants out of the state, which the state legislature championed as the most rigorous in the country, many Latinos, including legal immigrants, did leave. In early 2007, however, many businesses, particularly farms, complained of a serious shortage of workers.47 Moreover, immigrants’ rights groups insist that it is only just that legal immigrants be treated equally since they pay taxes and shoulder the same responsibilities as citizens. Hence they should be afforded the same protections against poverty and ill health that are available to citizens. In contrast, those who wish to restrict the right of access of immigrants to welfare point out that U.S. immigration officials have long had the authority to deny entry to the United States to noncitizens deemed likely to become a “public charge.” Furthermore, if immigrants are to continue to drive economic growth, then the incentive structure that they encounter on entry into the United States should encourage them to strive to improve their status through work rather than being able to rely on the public purse. The different perspectives are well illustrated by the dilemma facing state policymakers over access for illegal immigrants to colleges or universities. Should states enable undocumented immigrants to pursue their post–high school education by allowing them to attend state colleges or universities paying in-state tuition fees? On the one hand, if socioeconomic integration is to be encouraged, then there is a compelling reason to allow such immigrants to pay the same as others from the state in order to promote their educational achievement. On the other hand, such a policy may well be interpreted as implicitly encouraging undocumented immigrants to continue their illegal behaviour and settle in the state.48 Notes 1. National Research Council, The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration, executive summary (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1997), 11. 2. F. Bean, S. K. Brown, and R. G. Rumbaut, “Mexican Immigrant and Economic Incorporation,” Perspectives on Politics 4 (2006): 2, 309–13. The Pew Hispanic Center calculated the Hispanic population in the United States in 2005 at 41,926,302. Of this, 63.9 percent was Mexican and of these, 40.5 percent had been born in Mexico. The center also estimated that 56 percent of undocumented immigrants in the United States were originally from Mexico with a further 22 percent from elsewhere in Latin America. See Pew Hispanic Center, Hispanics at Mid Decade, 2006, http:// www.pewhispanic.org/files/other/middecade. 3. The fiscal impact of immigration extends beyond social policy. For example, immigrants’ taxes contribute to the military. This reduces the cost to citizens since military spending is unaffected by population size. On the other hand, citizens pay for the

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incarceration of immigrants. This chapter, however, is concerned only with social policy and immigration. 4. George Borjas, Heaven’s Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 105. 5. National Research Council, The New Americans, 8. 6. Borjas, Heaven’s Door, 106. 7. Ibid., 108. 8. Welfare use by refugees is often high: “Over half of the households originating in Cambodia or Laos and about a third of those originating in Vietnam, Cuba or the former Soviet Union, received some type of assistance” (Borjas, Heaven’s Door, 109). There has been an increase in the number of refugees from the 1970s onward, and refugees have better legal access to welfare provision than non-refugee immigrants. Since, however, refugees have a different legal status to other immigrants, this entails a different set of policy questions that is beyond the scope of this chapter. 9. National Research Council, The New Americans, 9. 10. Ibid., 10. 11. Steven Camarota, Back Where We Started: An Examination of Trends in Immigrant Welfare Use since Welfare Reform (Washington, DC: Center for Immigration Studies, 2003), 13. 12. Alex Waddan, “Redesigning the Welfare Contract in Theory and Practice: Just What is Going on in the USA?” Journal of Social Policy 32 (2003): 1, 19–35. 13. Michael Fix and Ron Haskins, Welfare Benefits for Non-citizens (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution Welfare Reform and Beyond Project, 2002), policy brief no. 15, http://www.brookings.edu/es/research/projects/wrb/publications/pb/pb15.htm. 14. The original PRWORA legislation in fact removed immigrants who were already on the SSI rolls from the program, but that was reversed by the 1997 Balanced Budget Act. Although PRWORA prohibited federal TANF money to be used to pay benefits to immigrants arriving after August 1996, states could provide benefits to such immigrant families at their own expense. Eighteen states had chosen to do this by 2002. See P. Loprest, and S. Zedlewski, The Changing Role of Welfare in the Lives of Lowincome Families with Children (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2006), 16. 15. Fix and Haskins, Welfare Benefits. 16. Camarota, Back Where We Started, 2. 17. M. Matthews, “Immigration Bedevils State Lawmakers,” Stateline.org, September 2, 2005, http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=136&languageId= 1&contentId=51980. 18. John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, The Emerging Democratic Majority (New York: Lisa Drew, 2004), 83. 19. This figure was disputed in the aftermath of the elections. For a discussion of the methodological problems surrounding the counting of the Hispanic vote in 2004, see D. Leal, M. Barreto, M. Lee, and R. de la Garza, “The Latino Vote in the 2004 Election,” PS: Political Science & Politics 38, no. 1 (2005): 41–49. Nevertheless, President Bush clearly made significant inroads into the Latino vote that were seen by Democrat strategists as crucial to their long-term electoral prospects. See Judis and Teixeira, The Emerging Democratic Majority. Whether or not as a direct consequence of their harsh rhetoric on illegal immigration, the GOP share of the Hispanic vote in 2006 fell to 30 percent (CNN, America Votes 2006—Exit Polls, 2006, http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/U.S./H/ 00/epolls.0.html).


20. Thomas B. Edsall, “Border Politics,” National Journal, February 10, 2007, pp. 29–30. 21. New Republic, “Ay Caramba,” November 6, 2006, p. 7. North Carolina had a Hispanic population of 544,470 in 2005, which represented a 48.2 percent increase from 2000 (Pew Hispanic Center, Hispanics at Mid Decade, 2006, http://www .pewhispanic.org/files/other/middecade 2006). Robinson does provide an extreme example of anti-immigrant sentiment, and he was heavily defeated in the November 2006 election. 22. Robert Rector, Amnesty and Continued Low-Skill Immigration Will Substantially Raise Welfare Costs and Poverty (Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation, 2006), 1. 23. Ibid., 2. 24. L. Ku and S. Dean, CBO Analysis Shows Heritage Foundation Claims on the Cost of Immigration Reform Are Greatly Exaggerated (Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2006), 2. 25. National Governors Association, Immigration and Refugee Policy, policy position HHS-01, issued February 27, 2004, http://www.nga.org. In 1982 the Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that a Texas law banning school districts from using public funds to educate undocumented immigrant children was unconstitutional. 26. Statement of Chairman Tom Davis, House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform, “Porous Borders and Downstream Costs: The Cost of Illegal Immigration on State, County and Local Governments,” August 14, 2006, serial no. 109-188, Washington, DC, U.S.GPO, 2. 27. C. Strayhorn, Undocumented Migrants in Texas: A Financial Analysis of the Impact to the State Budget and Economy (Austin, TX: Office of the Comptroller, 2006), 4. 28. Federation for American Immigration Reform, The Cost of Illegal Immigration to New Yorkers (Washington, DC: Federation for American Immigration Reform, 2006), 9. 29. Gordon Hanson, Why Does Immigration Divide America? Public Finance and Political Opposition to Open Borders (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 2005), 36. 30. Ibid., 33–34 31. Strayhorn, Undocumented Migrants in Texas, 2. 32. Samuel Huntington, Who Are We? America’s Great Debate (London: Free Press, 2004). 33. Pew Hispanic Center, Hispanics at Mid Decade, 2006, http://www.pewhispanic.org/ files/other/middecade. In black households, 43.4 percent had annual earnings of less than twenty thousand dollars. 34. Huntington, Who Are We?, 240. 35. F. Bean, S. K. Brown, and R. G. Rumbaut, “Mexican Immigrant and Economic Incorporation,” Perspectives on Politics 4, no. 2 (2006): 310. 36. Ibid. 37. Huntington, Who Are We?, 242. 38. Bean, Brown and Rumbaut, “Mexican Immigrant and Economic Incorporation,” 311. 39. Ibid., 311. 40. R. Alba, “Mexican Americans and the American Dream,” Perspectives on Politics 4 (2006): 2, 293. 41. John Judis, “The Fight Over Immigration Is a Fight over Identity,” New Republic, January 16, 2006, p. 19. 42. J. Durand, N. Malone, and D. Massey, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002).

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43. F. Riosmena, “Return versus Settlement among Undocumented Mexican Migrants, 1980 to 1996,” in J. Durand and D. Massey, eds., Crossing the Border: Research From the Mexican Migration Project (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004), 279. 44. Pew Hispanic Center, Hispanics at Mid Decade. 45. E. Porter and E. Malkin, “Mexicans at Home Abroad,” New York Times, August 4, 2005. 46. R. Fry, R. Kochhar, J. Passel, and R. Suro, Hispanics and the Social Security Debate (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2005), ii. 47. N. Riccardi, “Colorado to Use Inmates to Fill Migrant Shortage,” Los Angeles Times, March 1, 2007. 48. In 2005 nine states, including California and Texas, did allow undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition fees subject to proof of long-term residency in the state. See Matthews, “Immigration Bedevils State Lawmakers.”

CHAPTER 16

From the Margin to the Middle? The Origin, Transformation, and Direction of the Minutemen Pia Møller

n April 1, 2005, the national and international media flocked to the Arizona borderlands to cover the Minuteman Project. Running for the entire month, the campaign drew volunteers from across the United States to Cochise County for a citizen militia that would patrol a twenty-threemile stretch of the so-called Tucson Sector, a section of the U.S.-Mexican border that has become a high-traffic corridor for undocumented migrants since various state and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) operations sealed off the busiest crossing points in California and Texas. Their job, as outlined by the campaign organizers, former kindergarten teacher Chris Simcox and retired accountant Jim Gilchrist, was to do “the job Congress won’t do,” namely secure America’s borders.1 It is difficult to establish how many people participated in the campaign because it was so protracted and geographically dispersed. The organizers claimed over 1,000 volunteers; other estimates are more modest. A Los Angeles Times reporter, for example, counted around 135 participants on the opening day; other observers estimated that approximately 150 volunteers participated during the first week.2 Equipped with binoculars and cell phones, they came to watch the border and report suspected border intruders to the U.S. border patrol for apprehension and deportation. They descended on the town of Douglas—population 16,791—hauling RVs or bunking up in the spartan dormitories of nearby Miracle Valley Bible College, where organizers set up “base camp” and

O

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instructed volunteers before sending them off on eight-hour shifts in the field. Some Minutemen were clad in fatigues and carried hand weapons; others (including a few Minutewomen) wore jeans and jerseys as they took up positions in the desert.3 A majority of the volunteers were retirees and a good number of them had a background in the military or in law enforcement, according to both organizers and observers.4 Claiming that the vigilance of their volunteers had led to the apprehension of several hundred suspected border intruders, Minuteman organizers declared the April patrol an overwhelming success. “We did in our first ten days what Congress couldn’t do over the past ten years,” Gilchrist announced to the Washington Times; “this has been a successful and bloodless effort, proving without a doubt that the physical presence of additional bodies along the border deters illegal immigration.”5 The U.S. border patrol (USBP), adhering to its policy of not revealing the identity of its informants, has not wanted to comment on the number of reports from the Minuteman participants, but USBP figures indicate a significant drop in apprehensions of illegal aliens in Cochise County for the month of April.6 This decrease could suggest that the Minuteman Project was a deterrent as claimed by its organizers, but it could also suggest that migrants simply crossed elsewhere, as Professor Wayne Cornelius of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California San Diego has argued.7 The Minuteman campaign was extensively covered in Mexican media; and Mexican police, military, and humanitarian organizations active in the borderlands also informed migrants of the campaign.8 The campaign’s deterrence factor aside, Minuteman organizers were pleased with the national attention their campaign garnered. The Minuteman Project was not simply a border patrol; it was also a political rally and a public-relations stunt intended to send a message to Washington. Gilchrist said to the Los Angeles Times, “This was a dog-and-pony show designed to bring in the national media and get the message out, and it worked.”9 In his written communications to Minuteman volunteers, Simcox noted, “Our efforts are not meant to stop illegals, our efforts are designed to send our elected officials a stiff reminder.”10 The Minuteman Project certainly succeeded in getting national, even international attention, to the chagrin of the Nation editor and senior fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication, Marc Cooper, who berated his colleagues for aiding the Minuteman organizers in making the event seem much bigger and more significant than it was.11 The Minuteman Project in Context The Minuteman group is unquestionably the most publicized border militia, though other groups have operated along the southern border for years. The Minuteman militia in fact has been dubbed the “Johnny-come-lately” to the arena of civilian border patrol.12 A family-run armed posse known locally around

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Douglas as the “Barnett Boys” has patrolled private ranch properties along the border since 1999, possibly earlier, and Ranch Rescue claims to have members patrolling ranches in all four states along the southern border.13 In 2002 a Californian named Glenn Spencer settled in Cochise County and founded American Border Patrol, introducing high-tech devices such as thermal nightscopes and camera-equipped aerial vehicles to civilian border patrol. The aim of American Border Patrol is not merely to detect and report suspected border intruders, but to film the intrusions and broadcast the footage live.14 The U.S. Border Patrol’s website currently displays video recordings and photographs of presumed illegal immigrants surrendering in the desert.15 Other border militias include Texas Border Volunteers, Arizona Guard, Border Regulators, Border Solution Task Force, and the Yuma Patriots, some of which appear to have modeled themselves on the Minuteman group.16 By all independent accounts, civilian border patrols enjoy very modest memberships—their Web sites likely give an exaggerated impression of their numbers—and the patrols operating in Cochise County have never had much local support. Quite to the contrary, a Tucson-based grassroots organization that calls itself the Border Action Network has documented widespread opposition to the self-assigned border patrols.17 Besides the Border Action Network, organizations including the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Mexican Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) have monitored border militias and made their legal council and resources available to migrants who claim to have been abused by militia members. To date, two civil lawsuits have been settled in favor of migrants, and several others are pending in Cochise County.18 Civilian border patrol was already a conflict-ridden phenomenon in the county when the Minuteman organizers announced they would bring in hundreds of volunteers for a large-scale operation. Community leaders and local border patrol officials expressed grave concerns about the project. “They are going to draw every misfit, every renegade, everyone with an ax to grind about ethnic preference,” Douglas mayor Ray Borano told a Washington Post reporter.19 Local business owners complained that the Minuteman Project had a negative economic impact on the community, a majority of which is Hispanic and moreover depends on the business of Mexican customers, many of who steered clear of the town during the month of April.20 Border patrol agents complained that Minuteman volunteers were disrupting their work by setting off ground sensors on their patrols in the desert.21 Fears of violent encounters were widespread and many Cochise County deputy sheriffs attended the opening rally as did state troopers and local police officers.22 The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sent legal observers, and a number of counterprotestors also showed up. “I want this border issue solved, but I don’t want these guys out here, acting up and playing Wyatt Earp,” one protestor told reporters as he held a sign that read, “Minutemen: Angry White Men with Nothing Better to Do.”23 Arizona’s governor, Democrat Janet Napolitano, expressed concern about people “taking the laws into their own hands,” and in Washington President

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Bush similarly denounced the Minuteman participants as vigilantes.24 A New York Times editorial disparaged the Minutemen as a “few dozen gunslingers” in pursuit of Wild West action.25 In short, in 2005 the Minuteman formation appeared to be yet another fringe faction of angry white men. Over the past two years, however, the Minuteman organization has undergone considerable transformation: Minuteman leaders have been invited into more mainstream conservative circles and testified before government officials. They have raised considerable funds, built a political arm of some influence, and linked up with a network of conservative individuals and groups. In addition, the organization has spawned state chapters far from the border, taking the concept of civilian patrol of illegal aliens into new arenas. The Mainstreaming of Vigilantism It is worth looking at these developments more closely because they indicate that Minuteman activists may have succeeded to some degree in gaining a foothold in more moderate and reputable conservative circles. As social historian Mike Davis has suggested, it would be a mistake to regard the Minuteman militia merely as “the latest incarnation of anti-immigrant patrols”; they are, Davis suggests, “a canny attempt to move vigilantism into the mainstream of conservative politics.”26 This chapter scrutinizes this attempt to bring vigilantism into the mainstream of conservative politics. It begins by tracing the grassroots origin of Minuteman activism; it then examines the (partial) transformation of the group into a sanitized political organization increasingly concerned with its public image. The chapter evaluates the extent to which Minuteman activity has influenced political discourse on border control and illegal immigration, and it considers its impact on policymaking. Finally the chapter discusses the most recent developments within the Minuteman organization, which aspires to launch a national movement but is plagued by considerable internal problems, including financial mismanagement and interpersonal conflicts. It suggests that the Minutemen cannot be dismissed as the “big angry white men in jeeps” as Luis Alberto Urrea described them in his harrowing account of life and death on the Devil’s Highway.27 The Formation of the Minuteman Militia The Minuteman Project was the collaborative creation of Chris Simcox and Jim Gilchrist. Simcox, a former school teacher and tutor, has repeatedly pointed to the attacks of September 11, 2001, as a major turning point in his life, and his candor with the press allows us to gain insight into the impact of the terrorist strikes on his psyche. “For a while, I wouldn’t talk to anyone unless they could recite the Pledge of Allegiance,” Simcox told Dan Baum of the Los Angeles Times in a 2003 interview; “I got very aggressive about my views.”28 His views and outspokenness eventually cost him many of his tutees and contributed to his loss of


custody of his teenage son, and he left Los Angeles in a rage. For several months he camped out in a national park in southern Arizona, where he says he witnessed numerous migrants cross into the United States illegally. “At that moment, it clicked,” he explains, “the borders were wide open. Terrorists could come through.”29 Simcox decided he wanted to help secure America’s borders, and after being turned down by the U.S. border patrol, the military, and the National Guard because of his age (he is in his forties), he proceeded to form his own militia, the Civil Homeland Defense Corps (CHDC). He set up base in Tombstone, Arizona, a small former mining town that capitalizes on its Wild West image; and for a while, he worked as an actor in the staged gun fights that attract tourists to the town. Simcox cashed in his retirement savings and bought a small local newspaper, the Tombstone Tumbleweed, which quickly became a mouthpiece for his newly formed militia, whose mission he declared was “to report suspicious illegal activities to proper authorities and deter, by legal means, illegal aliens, drug traffickers and terrorists from entering the United States.”30 In his 2002–3 Tumbleweed articles, Simcox referred to illegal aliens as murderers, rapists, and drug pushers and stated that he would fight illegal immigration “by any means necessary.”31 Simcox had very limited support from local residents, recruiting only about a handful to a dozen volunteers from the community, and his first attempt at setting up a month-long patrol in 2003 failed miserably.32 A reporter who met with Simcox at the time found him high strung; during the interview, Simcox paced back and forth and kept fidgeting with the gun on his belt. The reporter concluded that Simcox was “a man itching for action.”33 Simcox at this time embraced the label vigilante and referred to his groups as a militia, designations he would later come to reject.34 In the fall of 2004, Simcox was contacted by Gilchrist, a retired accountant and Vietnam veteran, who had read Simcox’s Web site, sympathized with his views, and offered to help him recruit for a volunteer patrol.35 Visions Simcox and Gilchrist put out a call for volunteers via the Internet, a medium they have also used to solicit contributions and sell merchandise: T-shirts, caps, pins, bumper stickers, and dog tags imprinted with Minuteman slogans and a logo, a drawing of a revolutionary figure, referred to as “Watchman George,” equipped with a cell phone and binoculars. In this way they raise revenues for their organization and develop the Minuteman “brand.”36 The Internet enabled the Minuteman organizers to recruit nationally for a project they described in part as a military operation of great significance, in part as an outdoors camp for adults. Adopting the name “Minuteman,” the organizers designated their militiamen as the successors of legendary revolutionary heroes, and they identified the enemy as consisting of “mobs of ILLEGAL aliens who

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endlessly stream across U.S. borders.”37 Minuteman volunteers were instructed to obey Arizona state laws and to follow the militia’s “standard operating procedure” (SOP) which recognizes their Second Amendment right to carry arms, but dictates that firearms should not be removed from their holsters unless for selfdefense. The SOP prescribed a no-contact policy, warning that those who fail to comply will be dismissed from duty. Admonishing volunteers to behave and take the “mission” seriously, the SOP emphasized that each volunteer must see him/herself as part of a greater cause that cannot be jeopardized: “If one individual puts their selfish desires before the mandate of the mission, we all lose. We cannot allow such petty individual desires to ruin years and thousands of hours of effort to be wasted at the hands of one self-serving fool.”38 Many passages in the group’s communications are formulated in a ceremonial and archaic language, not least the “Minuteman pledge” in which volunteers “vow before God and [their] fellow Americans” to defend the Constitution and stand guard to protect America’s borders and sovereignty.39 At the same time, Minuteman recruiting materials are expressive of a fun ethic. Volunteers are reminded of the many outdoors opportunities in the area (climbing, horseback riding, fishing), and Simcox promised to let his thermal nightscopes rotate among volunteers so “everyone gets in on the fun.”40 On the whole, though, the tone is solemn, and the organizers appear to take their project very seriously. The Minuteman participants, as Simcox described them, are a group of “truly patriotic nationalists” and peaceful activists. Indeed, they are “one of the most important, socially responsible, and peaceful movements for justice since the civil rights movement of the 1960s.” He talked of drawing “thousands and thousands of volunteers from across the [country].41 Simcox writes, “Our efforts will change the course of history and ignite others to stand with courage to make a change. Many are waiting for the outcome, and will themselves be motivated with a new sense of activism; we will be leaders who will make a difference, role models who will influence future generations.”42 Comparing Simcox’s vision to the actual turnout at the border, one can only reach the conclusion that he vastly overstated the size of his organization; one researcher with the SPLC labeled the Minuteman leader a “relentless self-aggrandizer.”43 A Change in Rhetoric As is the case with other border patrols and restrictionist organizations, the Minuteman militia has been described as racist.44 Dissociating themselves from Ranch Rescue, whose leaders refer to Mexicans as “substandard humans,” “drug smuggler terrorists,” and “scum,” Minuteman organizers have consistently maintained that they are motivated not by a desire to keep out Latinos, but by a concern for the rampant violation of U.S. law.45 Indeed, the Minuteman founders insist that race and ethnicity are irrelevant to the issue of illegal immigration; as Gilchrist puts it, “It’s not a race thing. This is an enforcement of law issue.”46 In that vein, they describe their volunteers as defenders of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and American sovereignty.47


From the onset, the organizers were adamant that racism or bigotry would not be tolerated in their organization, which they describe as ethnically inclusive, proudly keeping a tally of their nonwhite participants.48 In addition, Simcox has often pointed to his biracial son as evidence that he is not racist; Gilchrist, similarly, has pointed to his Mexican son-in-law and Mexican American grandchild.49 But whatever the intentions of its organizers, the 2005 Minuteman Project appealed to white supremacists. Both Aryan Nations and National Alliance advertised the rally on their Web sites, encouraging their members to participate, which prompted the Minuteman organizers to more explicitly distance themselves from such groups. “We don’t want the guys in the white sheets and hoods, the militants or the supremacists,” Simcox told one reporter.50 Nonetheless several observers have documented that white supremacists attended the rally and used the event to proselytize, and Simcox has acknowledged that he had to “send home” five or six smaller groups who had white supremacist viewpoints or affiliations.51 Since the 2005 rally, the Minuteman organizers have added several clauses to their SOP directives to underscore that racism is not welcomed in their ranks. In addition, their Web site now prominently displays the following stipulation: “MMP has no affiliation with, nor will we accept any assistance by or interference from, separatists, racists, or supremacy groups.”52 This disclaimer aside, there is one paragraph remaining on the site, which indicates that the group’s opposition to illegal immigration is not motivated exclusively by a concern about legal infractions but is also in part driven by an anxiety about America as a multicultural society. The paragraph reads: [our] nation is devoured and plundered by the menace of tens of millions of invading illegal aliens. Future generations will inherit a tangle of rancorous, unassimilated, squabbling cultures with no common bond to hold them together, and a certain guarantee of the death of this nation as a harmonious “melting pot.” The result: political, economic and social mayhem. Historians will write about how a lax America let its unique and coveted form of government and society sink into a quagmire of mutual acrimony among the various sub-nations that will comprise the new self-destructing America.53

The claims made in this passage rest on the assumptions that contemporary illegal aliens are unfit for American-style democracy, an assumption that has underpinned previous nativist formations in U.S. history, as historian Matthew Frye Jacobson has documented.54 The paragraph also asserts that contemporary immigrants cannot, or will not, assimilate and expresses a fear of cultural fragmentation or balkanization—a fear that was often manifest in both conservative and liberal critiques of multiculturalism in the 1990s.55 Individual members of the Minuteman patrol continue to express misgivings about the presence of immigrants in their communities, complaining about multicultural or bilingual schools, the celebration of Mexican/Latin American holidays in public spaces, the wearing of Mexican attire, and the growing prevalence of the Spanish language, more vaguely, expressing their distress over “cultural change,” which they associate with immigrants, be they legal or illegal.56

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But Simcox, interestingly, has taken on a different tone over the past year or so. More and more he expresses sympathy with the plight of illegal immigrants, describing them as victims of unscrupulous human smugglers and the Mexican government, whose economic policies fail to provide for the Mexican people.57 Invoking the figure of the impoverished illegal immigrant, Simcox has stressed that their decision to cross into the United States illegally is fully understandable: “If I were in another country and right across the border was a land of milk and honey, I’d be doing it, too. . . . Don’t blame the victims.”58 In another interview, the Minuteman leader presented the Minuteman Project as a humanitarian effort, declaring that his men have saved the lives of many dehydrated migrants and arguing that the border must be sealed in order to put an end to such human suffering.59 These statements are evidence of a transformation in Simcox’s leadership. By abandoning the inflammatory rhetoric in favor of a more restrained style and speaking in a voice of compassion, he has sought to reframe his opposition to illegal immigration, making it more palatable to a wider audience. The following sections of this chapter examine the reception of the Minuteman efforts, beginning with the conservative media. The Conservative Media The Minuteman Project has been endorsed by a number of conservative media pundits and talk radio hosts. Most notably, Fox News has brought many sympathetic portrayals of the Minutemen, and Simcox has been interviewed in person or via telephone at least a dozen times on the Hannity & Colmes program.60 CNN’s Lou Dobbs has been an enthusiastic supporter, lauding the Minuteman volunteers for doing an “outstanding” job.61 Conservative print media have also welcomed the Minuteman efforts. The Washington Times by far has provided the most extensive coverage of the organization, and the greater part of this coverage has been highly favorable.62 The Minutemen are praised as part of an “American patriotic resistance movement” against encroaching alien cultures in the American Conservative, a journal cofounded by Patrick J. Buchanan, the former speechwriter and commentator who promoted a socially conservative and economically isolationist agenda and sought the Republican and the Reform party presidential nominations in successive elections.63 Another conservative periodical, the American Spectator, has described the militia as a group of “responsible and civic-minded middle-class” Americans on a neighborhood watch, and advised the president “to take a second look at the Minutemen and their works.”64 Similarly, National Review, an influential voice in more mainstream American conservative circles, has characterized the Minuteman campaign as a neighborhood watch, fully warranted by the government’s failure to secure the border.65 In addition, National Review editor John O’Sullivan has interpreted the emergence of Minuteman border patrol as a symptom that the Republican Party has


drifted too far from the people in its attempt to accommodate an “elite” of proimmigrant “new realists,” a crowd said to include President Bush and Senator McCain among others.66 National Review has barely mentioned the organization since the 2005 April event, save for a brief 2006 commentary expressing indignation that the U.S. government shares “intelligence” about Minuteman positions along the border with the Mexican government, which in turn shares it with potential migrants—a commentary that indicates that the journal remains sympathetic to the Minuteman border patrol efforts.67 The Minuteman militia has received a mixed treatment in the Weekly Standard, the main organ of American neoconservatism, the exponents of which tend to be less opposed to immigration than traditional and isolationist conservatives. Minuteman volunteers are described by one Weekly Standard writer as pleasant and peaceful senior citizens concerned with the rule of law and the economic impact of mass immigration.68 Another frequent contributor to the periodical and senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Tamar Jacoby, took issue with that position in an analysis of the 2006 midterm elections, which she argued had featured a very “ugly” debate on immigration because of the “immigrant bashing” conducted by Minutemen with political aspirations.69 In summary, though many conservative media welcomed the Minuteman efforts in 2005, only the most right-leaning and populist outlets have provided extensive and continuing coverage of Minuteman activities. Inroads into Congress President Bush’s disavowal of the Minuteman Project was not shared unanimously in Republican and conservative circles; indeed, prominent conservatives disagreed. “I’m not sure the president meant that. I think that they’re providing an excellent service,” said Tom Delay (R-TX), then House majority leader.70 Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO) expressed his support for the Minuteman Project in a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, encouraging Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to consider a nonfederal solution to the problem of border security.71 In an interview on a conservative Los Angeles radio talk show, California Governor Schwarzenegger applauded the militia for doing “a terrific job.”72 The Minuteman militia has found its staunchest supporter in Representative Tom Tancredo, a Colorado Republican known as a hard-liner on immigration politics who spoke at the opening rally of the 2005 campaign, hailing the volunteers as “heroes.”73 Tancredo heads the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, an assembly of over one hundred representatives working together to tighten U.S. immigration policy.74 When the Minuteman campaign took off, the caucus dispatched two congressional staff members to investigate the project and report back to the caucus. The staff members communicated their findings in Results and Implications of the Minuteman Project, a report that gives a very favorable review of the Minuteman volunteers, whom its authors describe

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not as vigilantes but as “average Americans fed up with government inaction.”75 Similarly, though the observers noted that the organization was “military in nature” and estimated that two thirds of the participants were armed with handguns, they described the group not as a militia but as “a border version of a Neighborhood Watch program.”76 The caucus investigators commended Minuteman leaders for exerting discipline, turning away “groups that were likely racist in nature,” and promptly dismissing two individuals who had violated Minuteman operating procedure.77 The first to be dismissed was a volunteer who brought a rifle to an instructional session; the second was a volunteer by the name of Bryan Barton, who approached a migrant and somehow persuaded—possibly paid—the migrant to put on a Tshirt that Mr. Barton had specially made for the occasion. It read, “Bryan Barton caught an illegal alien and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.” Barton had his photograph taken with the migrant.78 The campaign organizers did not conduct any background checks of its volunteers, but, argued the report, by following their “gut instinct,” Minuteman leaders were able to weed out troublemakers.79 The report concluded that the Minuteman Project had proven that illegal immigration could be put to an end if only the manpower was adequate, and it recommended volunteer border watch as a cost-efficient way to increase manpower. “In contrast to the Border Patrol position of two-year training time for new officers, the Minutemen demonstrated that auxiliary personnel can be trained and deployed in three days,” one concluding point read.80 The Immigration Reform Caucus report circulated among congressmen in a period in which illegal immigration and border control—or the lack thereof— was being intensely debated in the House, and by the summer of 2005 a formal proposal for a volunteer border militia was put on the congressional table. The Border Protection Corps Act (H.R. 3500) was introduced by Texan Republican John Culberson and cosponsored by forty-seven of his congressional colleagues. It would authorize the funding of a national citizen militia, drawing on unused monies from the Homeland Security Budget.81 Congressman Culberson announced that while the Border Protection Corps he had in mind would be formed at the behest of the U.S. government, Minuteman volunteers would be welcome to join, provided they met the selection criteria.82 Several other bills proposing the formation of citizen patrols were proposed in both the House and the Senate, and while none of them passed, their very emergence suggests that the efforts of the Minuteman organization have affected the ways politicians think about the problem of illegal immigration and the crisis at the border.83 Senior administrators within the Customs and Border Protection Agency also began to consider the use of citizen patrols to complement the U.S. Border Patrol, widely recognized as an underfunded and understaffed agency. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner raised the issue before the House Government Reform Committee in May of 2005, when he suggested that the government should think about how to “better and more effectively harness citizen volunteers.” Bonner went on to commend the Minuteman group for


demonstrating that citizens could be used more extensively without causing “incidents.” Also testifying before the House Government Reform Committee— the main investigative committee in Congress—was Chris Simcox, who was brought in, it would appear, as an expert on citizen patrolling. Chairman of the House Government Reform Committee Tom Davis (R-VA) was receptive to the idea of incorporating citizens in border patrol, drawing a parallel to the longstanding tradition for volunteer firefighters in the United States.84 About a year later, researchers at the Heritage Foundation also took up the idea of civilian border patrol. A 2006 Heritage study encouraged the administration to consider a “comprehensive strategy” for border security that included private subcontracting as well as volunteers patrolling the border. The study’s authors referred specifically to the Minuteman Project, noting, “The Minuteman Project demonstrated both the propensity for volunteers to serve and a range of useful activities they can perform, from conducting surveillance to undertaking search and rescue operations.”85 Akin to Congressman Culberson’s proposal, the Heritage study advised that volunteers be integrated into state defense forces under the command of the governors of the respective border states, but it contained no criticism per se of the Minuteman Project. Conservative Circles As noted above, a number of Republican representatives have been sympathetic to the Minuteman Project. So have other conservatives. In February 2006, Simcox was invited to speak at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). A three-day conference organized by the American Conservative Union, CPAC draws upward of five thousand attendees from across the conservative spectrum. Conference speakers always include high-ranking conservatives; in 2006 the speakers included Vice President Cheney; Senators Rick Santorum and Bill Frist, and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay as well as influential commentators, right-wing pundits, and columnists. Illegal immigration was a major issue at the conference, and the Minutemen cofounder told a cheering crowd that illegal aliens and illegal drugs crossing from Mexico into the United States amounted to a form of “terrorism.”86 Later that year, Simcox was invited to speak at Georgetown University by the academy’s student-run Lecture Fund; Gilchrist meanwhile visited Columbia University, invited by College Republicans. College Republicans, with a quarter million members spanning the spectrum from moderate to extreme, prides itself on being the grassroots branch of the Republican Party and the source of future Republican leaders. When they sought to speak, both Minuteman leaders were met with large protests—in fact Gilchrist’s speech was interrupted by rowdy students who stormed the stage, causing security officers to remove him from the stage—but the very fact that they were invited to speak at these established venues indicates that their organization has gained a footing in established conservative circles.

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More significant, perhaps, is the fact that the Heritage Foundation—arguably the most influential conservative think tank in the nation today—has proven receptive to Minuteman efforts. Besides recommending volunteer participation in border patrol operations as mentioned above, the think tank has been welcoming to the Minuteman organization’s foremost promoter, Congressman Tancredo, who was invited to give a lecture at the institution in the fall of 2006.87 What all these developments suggest is that Minuteman leaders and Minuteman promoters have made considerable inroads into established conservative political forums. It is possible that conservative politicians and restrictionist organizations have embraced the militia for strategic reasons, as a way to tap into and thus gain the support of a constituency. Whether they are regarded as angry white men or neglected nationalists, Minuteman organizers have found a sympathetic ear among prominent conservatives. Whether the Bush administration has been receptive to the Minuteman militia and its agenda is the focus of the following section. Policy As mentioned earlier in this paper, President Bush was quick to denounce the Minuteman participants as vigilante, but given that his administration made policy changes that coincided with Minuteman campaigns, it is reasonable to ask whether there is any correlation between the rise of the Minuteman organization and the seeming tightening of the border that has been initiated under the administration. Precisely what impact, if any, has the Minuteman organization—or perhaps rather the considerable media attention and public debate it instigated—had on the Bush Administration? There are coincidences. In April 2006, Simcox formulated an ultimatum, demanding from President Bush that the National Guard be dispatched to secure the border. The ultimatum that was widely reported in right-wing outlets, including Hannity & Colmes, the popular Fox show, as well as in mainstream media. In addition, Simcox warned that if the government did not take steps to seal the border, his militia would start building a border fence.88 Interestingly, two initiatives correspond to these demands: on May 15, 2006, President Bush deployed six thousand National Guard troops to the border, and in the Fall of 2006 he signed the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which authorized the construction of seven hundred miles of fencing along the border. The timing would suggest a possible correlation, but before jumping to the conclusion that the Bush administration takes its cues from the Minuteman leaders, we would do well to look more closely at the administration’s initiatives, which on closer inspection turn out to be much less substantial than they might at first seem. The National Guardsmen deployed by the government were not authorized to act as border patrol agents; rather, their job was to assist border patrol agents by improving the physical and technological infrastructure of the border security apparatus, which has long been deemed defective. Thus the measure did not amount to an escalation of manpower on the border.89


The Secure Fence Act, though by some decried as a new Berlin Wall, is in reality a nominal piece of legislation, as no funds were allocated for the fence, the construction of which would be an immensely costly affair. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that one mile of fencing would cost approximately three million dollars; over a ten-year period the costs, including maintenance expenditures, would amount to forty-eight billion dollars.90 The act has been described as a publicity stunt made by an administration that recognizes the need to appear “tough” on illegal immigration.91 Publicity stunt or not, the initiatives suggest that the Bush administration became increasingly attentive to voices demanding a tightening of the border. Beside the Minutemen—whose numbers, it should be remembered, are very few—these voices include many more established anti-immigration organizations that have long called for border control, such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee (ALIPAC), which along with the Immigration Reform Caucus constitute the anti-immigration right wing of the Republican constituency. But calls for increased border security have also come from Democrats, among them New Mexico’s Governor Bill Richardson and Arizona’s Governor Janet Napolitano, both of whom declared a state of emergency in August 2006 in response to what they saw as a negative social impact of large-scale illegal immigration. As the 2006 midterm elections approached, Arizona Democrats running for Congress sounded, as Rodolfo Espino, a political scientist at the University of Arizona noted, very much like “right-wing conservatives on immigration.” Indeed, it seemed that everyone was getting tough on illegal immigration.92 Major Democratic figures such as Senators Hillary Clinton and Edward Kennedy were also eager to talk about border enforcement. The Bush Administration has had to maneuver between those calling for increased enforcement at the border and the very important business base of the Republican Party—employers who appreciate cheap immigrant labor and are generous campaign contributors. And it has generally favored the latter (for example, the administration’s lax enforcement of sanctions against employers of illegal aliens—workplace raids were at a record low until 2006—and its now resumed pursuit of a guest worker program).93 As the national debate on illegal immigration has hardened, it has become imperative that the administration be seen as proactive; and some commentators have interpreted the administration’s steps, the deployment of National Guard troops, and the Secure Fence Act as evidence that it seeks to quiet down the anti-illegal immigration furor without making any major policy concessions.94 As others have noted, this strategy of “tossing a bone to the hardliners” has not satisfied the anti-immigration wing.95 Minuteman leaders and their foremost proponent, Representative Tancredo, continue to criticize the administration’s immigration and border policies, as do many others. Notwithstanding their impression on aforementioned Congress members, there is no evidence that that the Minuteman organization has had any influence

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on the policymaking of the current administration, which has been under pressure from many sides to “do something” about illegal immigration. In the future, however, Minuteman forces will gain more policy influence seeing that the organization has recently formed a political wing, to be explored in the following section, that recounts the group’s organizational transformation and the problems this transformation has generated. The Organizational Transformation of the Minuteman Militia The Minuteman organization has made inroads into national politics by forming a political arm. Through a political action committee (Minuteman Civil Defense Corps or MCDC PAC), they “seek to influence policy and legislation to secure [the] borders.”96 In the 2006 midterm elections, the MCDC PAC supported more than twenty Republican candidates for Congress and Senate, all of whom promote a hard-line immigration policy. MCDC PAC donations varied in size, but according to the Federal Elections Committee, the Minuteman PAC spent more than $250,000 on contributions.97 Among the beneficiaries were Republican Randy Graff, a self-described Minuteman, who ran in the state of Arizona despite being disowned by the national Republican Party, and Jim Gilchrist who ran for the American Independent Party in the state of California, the only state in which said party is still on the ballot.98 Graff and Gilchrist both lost their bids for Congress, but ten candidates supported by the Minuteman PAC were elected (or reelected), including Colorado Congressman Tancredo.99 It remains to be seen whether those elected will be influential in terms of promoting a hard-line on immigration and border issues, but the fact that so many candidates from many states accepted donations from the Minuteman PAC suggests that the group has succeeded to some extent in shedding its vigilante image—Minuteman leaders are no longer political pariahs. Besides the new orientation toward national politics, the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC) also underwent organizational changes. The group registered as a 501(c) 4 nonprofit social welfare organization, which gives it tax exempt status. Contributions to MCDC in 2005 amounted to $418,493, of which $112,500 was a direct contribution from the Declaration Alliance, another tax-exempt nonprofit organization, whose aim is to raise “public awareness” about immigration by “distributing educational material.”100 Today the MCDC vaguely refers to itself as “a project” under the Declaration Alliance. The Declaration Alliance is a more established organization with higher revenues: in fiscal year 2004 (the latest year for which information is available), the Declaration Alliance elicited over $1.7 million in public support.101 It is based in Reston, Virginia, where it shares an office suite and several officers with the Declaration Foundation, a nonprofit organization that endeavors to “promote the Declaration of Independence” and endorses the Minuteman militia as well as an array of other conservative and nationalist initiatives. Both the Declaration Alliance and the Declaration Foundation were founded by


conservative activist and radio show host Alan Keyes, who has ties to several other conservative groups.102 By incorporating under the Declaration Alliance, the Minuteman organizers inserted their organization into a web of connected conservative groups pursuing a restrictionist agenda—groups that are more experienced in terms of fundraising and networking. Simcox has stressed the practical advantages of being a part of the Declaration Alliance, which offers his organization access to mass mailing lists, advertising, and public-relations consultation.103 The publicrelations advice included sessions with Diener Consulting Inc., a company that specializes in advising conservative political campaigning and conducted Keyes’s political races. Some observers have credited the company with transforming Simcox into a clean-cut and presentable figure—far from the nervous figure Dan Baum described in 2003.104 During his first many interviews with the press, Simcox usually sported a stars-and-stripes baseball cap, scruffy stubble, and a visible gun resting in the front of his jeans; today he appears well groomed and unarmed in suit and tie. Simcox’s decision to place the Minuteman organization under the aegis of the Declaration Alliance has not been welcomed by some rank and file Minutemen, who suspect that money collected for Minuteman patrols has been funneled to Keyes’s organizations.105 Several long-serving volunteers report being inadequately equipped for their shifts on the border patrols and assert that their requests to Simcox for equipment went unheeded. When Gary Cole, the Minuteman Project’s national director of operations, called for financial accountability, Simcox removed him from his position; other high-ranking Minutemen left on their own accord after their queries to the leadership went unanswered.106 Needless to say, such seeming financial untidiness threatens to undermine the credibility and unity of the organization as does the disregard the leadership has demonstrated vis-à-vis the volunteers, some who found Simcox outrightly dictatorial (volunteers have referred to him as “Little Hitler” and “the Little Prince”).107 In addition, some volunteers report tensions between the founders who have taken the Minuteman Project in different directions: besides developing ties with more established restrictionist and conservative organizations, Simcox has continued recruiting for border-watch operations. More recently he has also recruited volunteers for the construction of a fence on private properties along the border using donations from individuals and corporations (as of this writing, seven and a half miles of fencing has been completed).108 Meanwhile Gilchrist has concentrated on establishing local Minuteman chapters across the United States, an initiative discussed in more detail more below. Minuteman Patrols Gilchrist left the 2005 rally early in order to set in motion what he saw as the next step in the fight against illegal immigration: patrolling illegal immigrant labor in cities, suburbs, and towns across the United States.109 To that end he

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began recruiting volunteers across the country to set up state chapters so they can do their “part in saving America.”110 His efforts have borne fruit: today there are Minuteman chapters in twenty-four states, and some appear to be quite active. In several states, Minuteman volunteers monitor sites, such as parking lots of home improvement and convenience stores, where day laborers, mainly Latinos seeking work in construction and landscaping, solicit employment.111 In the fall of 2005 a local chapter was formed in Herndon, Virginia, a wealthy and fast-growing Washington, DC, exurbia with a large demand for in situ services. To the consternation of some residents, a 7-Eleven parking lot had become a regular gathering place for individuals seeking work, the majority Latinos who are presumed to be illegal immigrants. According to its founder George Taplin, the Herndon Minuteman chapter has more than 125 members; independent observers have estimated the group has around 35 active members.112 Besides monitoring the gathering place and taking pictures of transactions and license plates, Taplin has stated that he and his people follow day laborers to their homes to investigate whether they violate zoning laws by overcrowding housing designated as single-family residences.113 Would-be employers in the area complain of being harassed by Minuteman volunteers, and day laborers have sometimes felt so intimidated by the Minutemen observers that they have left the site, losing the chance of a day’s earnings. As Honduran day laborer Alex Aleman put it, “When they [the Minuteman volunteers] come, we don’t eat.”114 Similar surveillance patrols of day laborers have been conducted by Minuteman chapters in Maryland, New York, and New Jersey; and Minuteman off-shoot groups have been very active in California.115 A journalist who accompanied a Texan chapter on a patrol reported that Minuteman participants were taking photographs of emergency room patients whom they suspected were illegal aliens; similar surveillance has taken place in North Carolina.116 In some cases Minuteman chapters are involved in local politics, seeking to make local government take a harder line against illegal immigrants than the federal government has been willing to do. In the state of Washington, for example, local Minutemen are petitioning Kennewick City Council to adopt an ordinance that will fine landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and employers who employ them. In Laguna Beach a day labor site was closed after Minuteman activists put pressure on the California Department of Transportation, which owned the site.117 The patrolling activities of these groups clearly have a direct effect on the people who find themselves under surveillance, but it is too early to assess the larger social and political impact of the formation of Minuteman state chapters. Communities are divided in their reception of the Minuteman group, and tensions are rising.118 The development of local Minuteman chapters warrants more examination, which can disclose their effect on communities that are ever more challenged to find new ways to deal with internal division over illegal immigrants and their participation in the labor market and in the community at large.119


Conclusion Calling the Minuteman organization a “movement” as some have done would be to exaggerate their number and role in American society. That said, the findings presented here indicate that Minuteman formations must be taken seriously as a political force. First of all, the Minuteman organization has helped to make sure that illegal immigration remained a key national issue, in part because of their ability to draw in the media. On the one hand, ALIPAC likely exaggerates the significance of the Minuteman organization, when it credits it for bringing “the issue of illegal immigration from the margins of America’s conscience onto the national stage.”120 But, on the other hand, immigration researcher Wayne Cornelius, who thinks the Minutemen have had a negligible impact on the national debate on immigration, underestimates the group and the media and the debate they spurred.121 The findings of this chapter suggest a middle ground between those two positions. Illegal immigration clearly was already a key issue in American politics by the time Minuteman volunteers took to the border, but the group has helped bring an urgency to the issue. The group has also had some impact on political discourse on the border. The fact that the country’s top border official as well as several congressional representatives and a powerful think tank have adopted the idea of citizen border patrols can be directly traced to the Minuteman Project of 2005. Citizen border patrols are not a likely scenario, at least not in the near future, but they have become imaginable in influential circles owing to the efforts of the Minuteman organization, whose leaders have been allowed into the fold of conservative associations. In addition, Minuteman organizers now participate in an active and well-connected network of restrictionist and anti-immigration associations—a network that could potentially grow into a major movement given the failure of current border policy combined with widespread discontent with the restructuring of the U.S. labor market that is part and parcel of globalization. With the Minuteman organization’s latest move into communities far from the border, contemporary nativism has moved into its latest frontier: small towns and suburbs across the United States, which since the passage of the Immigration Reform Control Act in 1986 have become home to increasing numbers of immigrants. It is possible that it will be in these communities rather than at the border that the Minuteman organization will have the biggest impact, as it will be able to draw on growing anxiety about changing neighborhoods and labor conditions. For these reasons it is critical that social scientists begin studying the maneuvering and local integration of the Minuteman organization, which have hitherto been largely ignored in academia. This chapter has sought to lay some of the groundwork for such further research by detailing the origin, transformation, and current direction of the Minuteman organization. Given these current directions—the attempts to move from the margins to the middle, both politically and geographically— we would do well to follow the growth and development the Minuteman

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organization if we care about which forces and ideas shape America’s immigration and border politics. Notes 1. “Doing the job Congress won’t do” is the slogan of the Minuteman Project and appears throughout the Web sites (http://www.minutemanhq.com and http://www .minutemanproject.com) and in communications with the press. 2. Marc Cooper, “Immigration: The 15-Second Men,” Los Angeles Times, May 1, 2005, p. M2. 3. I use the plural “Minutemen” to refer to members of the Minuteman organization. 4. Amy Argetsinger, “Immigration Opponents to Patrol U.S. Border,” Washington Post, March 31, 2005, p. A3; Jerry Seper, “Border Minutemen Firm despite Discomforts,” Washington Times, April 18, 2005, p. A3. No systematic study has been done of the demographics of the Minuteman volunteers, but all the press reports informing this chapter corroborate that a majority were retirees and ex-military personnel. 5. Jerry Seper, “Minutemen Pronounce Border Vigil a Success,” Washington Times, April 19, 2005, p. A1. 6. Jerry Seper, “Border Project Declared Success,” Washington Times, April 13, 2005, p. A9. 7. Ernesto Portillo Jr., “April Fool’s, Minutemen Will Arrive Tomorrow,” Arizona Daily Star, March 31, 2005, opinion. 8. Jerry Seper, “Mexican Cops Warn Migrants at Border,” Washington Times, April 7, 2005, p. A1. 9. Cooper, “Immigration.” 10. Chris Simcox, “SOP: Standard Operating Procedure for Minuteman Civil Defense Corps,” Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, http://www.minutemanhq.com/hq/ borderops_sop.php. 11. Cooper, “Immigration.” 12. See, for example, Portillo, “April Fool’s.” The expression has also been employed by other observers. 13. Zoe Hammer-Tomizuka and Jennifer Allen, Hate or Heroism: Vigilantes on the Arizona-Mexico Border, Border Action Network, December 2002, http://www .borderaction.org/PDFs/BAN-Vigilante%20Report.pdf. See also Ranch Rescue’s Web site: http://www.ranchrescue.com. 14. Austin Bunn, “Homegrown Homeland Defense,” New York Times, June 1, 2003, p. 20. 15. http://www.americanborderpatrol.com. 16. Jerry Seper, “Border Patrols Inspire Imitation,” Washington Times, April 16, 2005, p. A1. See also Mary Jo McConahay, “Terror War on the Border,” Anti-Defamation League Online, http://www.adl.org/learn/extremism_in_the_news/White_Supremacy/ arizona_border_update52105.htm; and the survey of border patrols in the pages of the Anti-Defamation League, http://www.adl.org/learn/extremism_in_the_news/White_ Supremacy/arizona_border_update52105.htm; as well as the following site: http:// www.texasbordervolunteers.org. 17. Hammer-Tomizuka and Allen, Hate or Heroism. 18. In the first suit filed jointly by the SPLC, the MALDEF, and local attorneys, a Salvadoran couple who had been attacked and detained by leading members of


Ranch Rescue, was awarded reparations, including a seventy-acre ranch owned by the assailants to the victims. The assault took place in Jim Hogg County, Texas, March 2003. See the SPLC’s Web site for more information: http://www.splcenter.org/legal/ docket/files.jsp?cdrID=44 and http://www.splcenter.org/legal/news/article.jsp?aid= 125&site_area=1&printable=1. In the second civil suit, filed jointly by MALDEF and the Border Action Network, Roger Barnett was ordered to pay damages to a migrant family whom he had falsely imprisoned on his Cochise Country ranch and on whom he had inflicted emotional distress. See Jerry Seper, “Civil jury fines rancher in illegal aliens dispute,” Washington Times, November 25, 2006, p. A2. 19. Argetsinger, “Immigration Opponents.” 20. Ananda Shorey, “Border Poject Creating Tension, Hurting Businesses,” Daily Herald, Utah, April 16, 2005, http://old.heraldextra.com/modules.php?op=modload&name= News&file=article&sid=52781. 21. Arthur Rotstein, “Border Watchers Tripping Sensors,” Ventura County Star, April, 5, 2005, p. 5. 22. Jerry Seper, “Border-Vigil Volunteers Big in Spirit, Not in Number,” Washington Times, April 3, 2005, p. A1. 23. Annie Schleicher, “Civilian Militia Patrols U.S. Mexican Border,” Jim Lehrer News Hour Extra, Public Broadcasting System, April 6, 2005, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ extra/features/jan-june05/minuteman_4-06.html. 24. Jacques Billaud, “‘Minuteman Project’ Gets Started,” Sacramento Union Online, April 1, 2005, http://www.sacunion.com/pages/nation/articles/3688; and Amy Argetsinger, “In Ariz., ‘Minutemen’ Start Border Patrol,” Washington Post, April 5, 2005, p. A3. 25. New York Times, “A West Too Wild,” Editorial, April 11, 2005. 26. Mike Davis, “Vigilante Man,” Interactionist Info Exchange, 2005, http://info. interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=05/05/28/0125223&mode=nested&tid=17. 27. Luis Alberto Urrea, The Devil’s Highway (New York: Little Brown, 2004), 79. 28. Dan Baum, “Patriots on the Borderline: Toting Guns, Cameras and Mighty Convictions, Small Bands of Americans Are Patrolling the Southwest in Search of Illegal Immigrants,” Los Angeles Times, March 16, 2003, p. I10. 29. Dennis Wagner, “Minuteman’s Goal: To Shame Feds into Action,” USA Today, May 25, 2006, p. A4; and Susy Buchanan and David Holthouse, “Minuteman Leader Has Troubled Past,” Southern Poverty Law Center, http://www.splcenter.org/intel/news/ item.jsp?aid=149&site_area=1&printable=1. 30. Quoted from http://www.civilhomelanddefense.us (accessed March 20, 2005), no longer in use. 31. Simcox, quoted in Hammer-Tomizuka and Allen, Hate or Heroism, 7, 26; and David Holthouse’s commentary in “Arizona Showdown,” Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Intelligence Report, Summer 2005, http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/ article.jsp?aid=557&printable=1. 32. Baum, “Patriots on the Borderline,” and Ted Robbins, “Citizens to Patrol ArizonaMexico Border,” National Public Radio, Morning Edition, March 23, 2005, http:// www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4556693. 33. Baum, “Patriots on the Borderline.” 34. Hammer-Tomizuka and Allen, Hate or Heroism, 6. See also David Holthouse, “Airona Showdown.” 35. Robbins, “Citizens to Patrol.”

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36. The fact that Simcox’s Homeland Civil Defense Corps changed its name to the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps is an indication that Simcox felt that the Minuteman name was gaining currency. 37. Jim Gilchrist, “Minuteman Project: Welcome,” The Minuteman Project, http:// minutemanproject.com/AboutMMP.html The site is no longer is use; author last accessed it March 20, 2005. The text on the Web site also referred to illegal immigration as “a human flood” and a “tidal wave,” http://www.minutemanproject.com/ default.asp?contentID=2. 38. Simcox, “Standard Operating Procedure.” 39. Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, “The Minuteman Pledge,” http://www .minutemanhq.com/hq/mmpledge.php. 40. Ibid. 41. Simcox, “Standard Operating Procedure”; and The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, “About Us,” http://www.minutemanhq.com/hq/aboutus.php and http://www .minutemanhq.com/hq/sop.php. 42. Simcox, “About Us: Mission Statement,” The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. http://www.minutemanhq.com/hq/aboutus.php. 43. Wagner, “Minuteman’s Goal.” 44. See, for example, Bill Berkowitz, “Minutemen to Spread Wings,” August 22, 2005, http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Berkowitz0822.htm; Davis, “Vigilante Man”; Bahadur, “Reach of ‘Minutemen.’” See also Buchanan and Holthouse, “Minuteman Leader,” which talks of Simcox’s “thinly veiled racism”; and Holthouse, “Arizona Showdown,” in which the author attributes to Simcox the following comment about Mexican and Central American immigrants: “They have no problem slitting your throat and taking your money or selling drugs to your kids or raping your daughter, and they are evil people.” SPLC online, http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/ article.jsp?pid=916. 45. These terms are frequently used on Ranch Rescue’s Web site: http://www.ranch rescue.com/. 46. Susan Carroll, “Supremacists a Border Worry,” Tucson Citizen, Local News, March 5, 2005. 47. See, for example, Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, “The Minuteman Pledge.” 48. Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, “The Minuteman Pledge.” Gilchrist kept the tally of non-white participants patrol on his Minuteman Project Web site; the site is no longer in use. On the site, Gilchrist claimed that minorities constituted 40 percent of the volunteers; this claim was disputed by observers who claimed that practically all participants were white; see David Holthouse, “Arizona Showdown.” 49. See also Simcox, “Standard Operating Procedure”; and Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, “The Minuteman Pledge.” For Gilchrist’s comment on son-in-law, see Carroll, “Supremacists.” 50. Jerry Seper, “Volunteers Set to Monitor Arizona Border Crossings,” Washington Times, January 24, 2005, p. A1. 51. Buchanan and Holthouse, “Minuteman leader”; Holthouse “Arizona Showdown”; Gaiutra Bahadur, “Reach of ‘Minutemen’ Extends Far from Southern U.S. Border,” Utah Daily Herald, March 27, 2006, p. D6. 52. The first rule stated in the 2006 Standard Operating Manual reads, “Minutemen are courteous to everyone with whom they come into contact and never discriminate against anyone for any reason,” and it addresses potential volunteers: “You are


considering joining the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps not because of bias toward people from another country.” For the full document, see http://www.minutemanhq .com/hq/sop.php. For the main page disclaimer see http://www.minutemanproject .com/. 53. http://www.minutemanproject.com/default.asp?contentID=2. This is the Web site of Jim Gilchrist; it should be noted that Simcox’s Web site does not contain this passage. 54. See Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 72–75. 55. Conservative critics include Dinesh D’Souza, Allan Bloom, Roger Kimball, among others; a liberal critique was articulated by the late Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. 56. See interviews in James Gordon, “Eyes across the border,” Niagara Falls Review, April 22, 2006, p. C2; and James Gordon, “Nothing is more patriotic than dying for your country,” Ottawa Citizen, April 25, 2006, p. A6; and Bahadur, “Reach of ‘Minutemen.’” 57. D. Pierce Nixon, “Border Activist Speaks, Sparking Rally: Simcox Stresses Border Patrols,” Hoya (Georgetown University newspaper), November 3, 2006, http://www .thehoya.com/news/110306/news1.cfm. 58. Wagner, “Minuteman’s Goal”; and D. Pierce Nixon, “Border Activist Speaks.” 59. Chris Simcox, interview by Hannity & Colmes, Fox News, October 17, 2005, http:// www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,172598,00.html. See also David Neiwert’s coverage of Simcox’s statements made at the Human Rights Committee Hearing in Bellingham, Washington, April 2006, http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/05/simcox-makeover .html; here Simcox describes his group’s activities as “pro-immigrant.” 60. See, for example, “Exclusive! Minuteman Founder Chris Simcox,” Fox News, April 3, 2006, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,190504,00.html. 61. Lou Dobbs Tonight, CNN, March 31, 2005, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ 0503/31/ldt.01.html. 62. See Jerry Seper’s articles referenced here. In the fall of 2006, Seper began reporting on financial mismanagement and interpersonal conflicts within the organization, and his articles increasingly give an unfavorable impression of the group. 63. “Battle for the Border,” American Conservative, December 4, 2006, p. 13ff. 64. Glynn Custred, “The Border Games along California’s Southern Border Have Taken on an Ugly Leftist Coloring,” American Spectator 38 (2005): 9, 28–32; and John Tabin, “Minutemen at the Polls,” American Spectator online, December 12, 2005, http://spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=9132. 65. “Neighborhood watches are groups of private citizens who patrol their neighboorhoods and report crime to the cops. The neighborhood being patrolled by the Minuteman Project is the San Pedro Valley of Arizona.” National Review 57 (2005): 7, 4. 66. John O’Sullivan, “The GOP’s Immigration Problem,” National Review 57 (2005): 16, 34ff. 67. “The Week in Brief,” National Review 58 (2006): 10, 8. 68. Matt Labash, “North of the Border,” Weekly Standard 10 (2005): 46, 18. 69. Tamar Jacoby, “Immigration Reform Needed,” Weekly Standard 12 (2006): 10, 27–29. 70. Stephen Dinan and Charles Hunt, “Texan Pushes Reform of Immigration System,” Washington Times, April 14, 2005. 71. Jerry Seper, “Minutemen Join New Organization,” Washington Times, April 21, 2005. 72. Carla Marinucci and Mark Martin, “Governor Endorses Minutemen,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 29, 2005.

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73. Jerry Seper, “‘Heroes’ Poised for Vigil on Border,” Washington Times, April 2, 2005. 74. As of this writing, Tancredo is about to end his term as chairman of the IRC; his successor is Representative Bilbray (R-CA). 75. Frederick A. Peterson and John E. Stone, Results and Implications of the Minuteman Project, April 2005. The report can be accessed via Tancredo’s Web site: http://tancredo .house.gov/irc/FinalCaucusVersion%206%2015%2005%20(2).pdf. The quotations are taken from p. 8 (photo caption) and p. 20. 76. Ibid., 4, 7. 77. Ibid., 5. 78. Arthur H. Rotstein, “Immigrant says he was held by volunteers watching American border,” Associated Press, April 7, 2005. Peterson and Stone’s report glosses over the incident—the print on the t-shirt is not mentioned. 79. Peterson and Stone, Results and Implications of the Minuteman Project, op. cit., 5. 80. Ibid., 20. 81. For details on this bill (H.R. 3500), see the online immigration bulletin by the major immigration law firm Siskind Susser Bland, “Border Protection Corps Act of 2005 Introduced in House,” http://www.visalaw.com/05aug2/16aug205.html. 82. Sara I_es Calderón, “Law Maker Proposes Creating Border Militia,” Brownsville Herald, August 7, 2005. 83. For an explication of H.R. 3704, H.R. 3622, H.R. 4099, S. 1823, and S. 2049, see Blas Nuños-Neto, “Immigration Related Border Security Legislation in the 109th Congress,” a CRS Report for Congress, http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/ 58262.pdf. 84. Chris Strohm, “Border Patrol Seeks More Personnel, Might Enlist Citizen Patrols,” GovEXEC.com, May 13, 2005, http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0505/051305c1 .htm. Commissioner Bonner retired a few months later, prompting speculations that he was asked to resign. See, for example, CNN, “U.S. Border Protection Chief Resigns,” September 30, 2005, http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/28/bonner .retirement/index.html. For the record, Bonner was seventy-five years old at the time and moved on to work for Wal-Mart lobbyists in Washington, DC. 85. James Jay Carafano et al., “Better, Faster, and Cheaper Border Security,” Heritage Foundation backgrounder no. 1967, September 6, 2006, http://www.heritage.org/ Research/Immigration/bg1967.cfm. 86. Robert Stacy McCain, “Senator Calls Immigration a National Security Concern,” Washington Times, February 10, 2006, p. A11. 87. Thomas G. Tancredo, “A New Strategy for Control of Illegal Immigration,” Heritage Lecture no. 871, http://www.heritage.org/Research/Immigration/hl971.cfm. 88. Chris Simcox, “Minutemen May Help Build Fence along U.S.-Mexican Border,” interview by Hannity & Colmes, Fox News, April 19, 2006. For a partial transcript of the interview, see http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,192521,00.html. 89. Kathleen T. Rehm, “Bush: 6,000 National Guardsmen to Assist Border Patrol in U.S. Southwest,” Department of Defense News, May 15, 2006, http://www.defenselink.mil/ news/May2006/20060515_5141.html. 90. Congressional Budget Office, “Cost Estimate S. 3611,” August 18, 2006, http:// www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/75xx/doc7501/s2611spass.pdf. 91. See, for example, Jonathan Weisman, “With Senate Vote, Congress Passes Border Fence Bill,” Washington Post, September 30, 2006, p. A1. 92. Carolyn Lochhead, “In Arizona, GOP Finds the Issue of Immigration No Help at Polls,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 2, 2006, p. A1.


93. For details on the administration’s enforcement policy, see Spencer Hsu, “Immigrant Arrests Down 8% for Year,” Washington Post, October 31, 2006, p. A5. 94. Amy S. Traub, “Bush’s Half Measures,” TomPaine Common Sense, May 16, 2006, http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/05/16/bushs_half_measures.php. 95. Laura Carlsen, “Doublespeak in Congress, Soldiers at the Border,” International Relations Center, Silver City, New Mexico, June 15, 2006, http://americas.irc -online.org/pdf/columns/0606doublespeak.pdf. 96. Quoted from MCDC PAC Web site: http://www.mcdcpac.com/. 97. Jerry Seper, “Minuteman Committee Aids GOP; Donations via Keyes’ Companies,” Washington Times, Oct 16, 2006, p. A1. To see the candidates supported by the MCDC PAC, visit http://www.minutemanpachq.com/candidates.php. 98. The American Independent Party, which under George Wallace’s reign was vehemently opposed to civil rights, today pursues a restrictionist agenda, also favoring a reduction of legal immigration. In addition it promotes other conservative causes, both social and fiscal (overturning Roe v. Wade, eliminating the federal income tax, to name a few). 99. Successful candidates include Buchanan (R-MN), Davis (R-KY), Drake (R-VA), King (R-IO), Kyle (R-AZ), Lamborn (R-CO), Musgrave (R-CO), Roskam (R-IL), Tancredo (R-CO), and Wahlberg (R-MI). 100. http://www.declarationalliance.us. 101. Tax forms accessed via GuideStar online: http://www.guidestar.org/index.jsp. 102. http://www.declaration.net. 103. Jerry Seper, “Minutemen Skeptical of Ties with Keyes Project,” Washington Times, July 20, 2006, p. A11. 104. See, for example, Seattle-based reporter David Niewert’s extensive coverage of the Minutemen on his blog, http://dneiwert.blogspot.com. 105. Seper, “Minutemen Skeptical.” 106. Jerry Seper, “No Accounting for Minuteman Funds; Border Group Can’t Explain Where Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars Went,” Washington Times, July 20, 2006, p. A1. Keyes’s two declaration groups are also beset by financial untidiness. The Declaration Foundation has been fined by state authorities for falsifying information regarding its revenues; for more information, see Jerry Seper, “Minuteman Consulting Charity Fined; Flaws in Group’s Finances,” Washington Times, December 5, 2006, p. A1. 107. See Buchanan and Holthouse, “Minuteman leader.” 108. The ranchers’ reasons for welcoming the Minuteman fence vary: some are fed up with migrants crossing their land and leaving trash behind; others are more concerned about keeping in their roaming cattle than they are about illegal immigrants. See KVOA TV, “Ranchers Want Border Fence to Protect Cattle Herds,” August 3, 2006, http://www.kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=5235918; and Jonathan Clark, “Minutemen Hire Contractor to Finish Fence,” Herald, Sierra Vista, December 1, 2006, http://www.svherald.com/articles/2006/06/15/local_news/ news1.txt. 109. Arthur H. Rotstein, “Minuteman Founder Leaving Border Early But Volunteers to Remain,” Associated Press, BC cycle, April 18, 2005. 110. http://www.minutemanproject.com. 111. For a recent report on contemporary day labor, see Abel Valenzuela et al., On the Corner: Day Labor in the United States, Center for the Study of Urban Poverty, January 23, 2006, http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/issr/csup/pubs/papers/item.php?id=31.

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112. Daniel Gilbert, “Day Laborer Center Opens in Herndon,” Potomac News, December 15, 2005, http://www.potomacnews.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename= Common/MGArticle/PrintVersion&c=MGArticle&cid=1128768729666&image =wpn80x60.gif&oasDN=potomacnews.com&oasPN=!news; and Immigrant Solidarity Network, January 8, 2006, http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/cgi-bin/ datacgi/database.cgi?file=Issues&report=SingleArticle&ArticleID=0395. 113. Dominic Bonaiuto, “Minutemen to Begin Surveillance of Laborers,” Fairfax County Times, October 26, 2005, http://www.timescommunity.com/site/tab5.cfm ?newsid=15455954&BRD=2553&PAG=461&dept_id=511691&rfi=6. 114. N. C. Aizenman, and Timothy Dwyer, “In Herndon, Only Feet away But Worlds apart,” Washington Post, December 9, 2005, p. B1. In August 2005, the Herndon City Council approved a day laborer center, which was established in December as the Herndon Official Workers Center. Herndon is located in Fairfax County, but the workers center straddles the border to neighboring Loudoun County and can only be accessed from Loudoun County whose zoning officials have disputed the use of residential land for a workers center. In May 2006, Herndon residents ousted Mayor O’Reilly and two councilmen, who had backed the center and supported it with public funds. The conflict is ongoing. In the spring of 2006, the Herndon Minutemen chapter dissolved into the larger Virginia state chapter, and Taplin stated, “We need to get active in Loudoun County” (Scott J. Krischke, “Herndon’s Minutemen look to the future,” Connection Newspapers, May 17, 2006, http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/article.asp?archive=true&article= 62201&paper=66&cat=188). 115. Keyonna Summers, “Minutemen to Recruit Monitors; Montgomery Groups to Keep Eye on Day Laborers,” Washington Times, January 19, 2006; Summers, “Counties Defend CASA Pickets; Group Targets Minutemen,” Washington Times, April 17, 2006, p. B1; Bahadur, “Reach of ‘Minutemen’”; Elena Gaona, “Minuteman offshoot pickets day-labor site; Encinitas group targets illegal-immigrant hiring,” San Diego Union-Tribune, May 21, 2006, p. N1. 116. Megan Feldman, “The Hunted: Minutemen Train Their Sights on a New Target: Hispanic Day Laborers,” Dallas Observer, December 14, 2006, http://www .dallasobserver.com/2006-12-14/news/the-hunted/full; and Jennifer Ludden, “Minutemen to Track Illegal Immigrant Labor,” National Public Radio, Morning Edition, August 24, 2006; to listen to the program visit http://www.npr.org/ templates/story/story.php?storyId=5701625. 117. Kevin Graman, “Minutemen Press Immigration Ordinance,” Spokesman Review (Spokane), December 6, 2006, http://www.spokesmanreview.com/local/story.asp ?ID=163060; and Jennifer Delson, “Day Labor Spot Closed after Tip,” Los Angeles Times, July 1, 2006, p. B4. 118. See Feldman, “The Hunted”; David A. Fahrentold, “On Patrol in Vermont, Minutemen are the Outsiders,” Washington Post, October 31, 2005, http://www .washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/30/AR2005103000822 .html; and Eve Fairbanks, “The Minutemen Are More Mainstream than You Think,” New Republic Online, October 25, 2006, https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub .mhtml?i=w051128&s=fairbanks112905. 119. My own research focuses precisely on such questions in the case of Herndon, Virginia. 120. Brock N. Meeks, “Minutemen Gear up for Mainstream Movement,” June 11, 2005, ALIPAC, http://ww.alipac.us/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=460. 121. Portillo, “April Fool’s.”

CHAPTER 17

Migrants, Votes, and the 2006 Mexican Presidential Election Helene Balslev Clausen and Mario Alberto Velázquez

bout one out of every ten Mexican nationals lives in the United States as either a legal or illegal immigrant. This chapter will consider and assess the part that they play in Mexican elections. Although the numbers who have cast a vote are still not significant or definitive in federal electoral processes, migrants have the potential to play an important role.

A

Mexicans Living Abroad In 2006 Mexico’s government extended the right to vote to include those living outside the country. The 1857 and 1917 constitutions required (male) citizens to vote in Mexico. However, the fact that the 1917 constitution, which was drafted following the revolution, did not authorize the right to vote for Mexican citizens abroad should not cause surprise given that, in the early twentieth century, no country had yet permitted its citizens to vote outside its borders.1 In the early 1920s there was a growing tide of Mexican immigrants to the United States who went to work in the agricultural fields of California and other southern U.S. states. Between 1920 and 1929 more than five hundred thousand Mexicans migrated.2 The process was not only driven by economic considerations; political factors were also significant. A considerable number of people feared attacks, fled the revolution (1910–29), and refused to return once the armed conflict had ended.3 Some of those who remained in the United States rejected the idea of participation in organizations associated with the newly created Mexican government,

296 • Helene Balslev Clausen and Mario Alberto Velázquez

Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party [PRI]). Instead, they began to establish their own forms of organization and develop autonomous forms of expression. These groups, for example Mexico de afuera (Mexico outside Mexico), were the first to demand the right to participate in Mexican national politics through voting despite their wish to remain outside their country. 4 In the late 1920s, a severe economic crisis in the United States prompted a large-scale return of Mexicans who had been living there. Many of the repatriates were agricultural workers who were seeking employment. By the 1940s, the U.S. economy had recovered and was experiencing accelerated growth. A new migratory wave began. Between 1942 and 1964, the Bracero program created by the U.S. and Mexican governments allowed the entry of almost five million temporary workers to meet the demands of the U.S. economy.5 The program envisaged the return of these workers to Mexico, but a significant number of them remained in the United States without official permission. Rachel Sherman has described the years between the 1920s and the mid1930s when the Mexican government seemed to turn its back on citizens living outside its borders—“a period of national introversion.”6 Mexican policy was confined to the Bracero program, the provision of limited consular protection to Mexican nationals, repatriation issues, and the promotion of cultural nationalism among Mexicans living in the United States. Why did the Mexican state deliberately ignore a growing population living outside its boundaries? The reason was that those who held the levers of power were seeking to maintain a particular political image of the country both within Mexico and abroad. Massive emigration could be represented as evidence that the policies adopted by postrevolutionary administrations had failed. In the 1940s the Mexican government attempted to integrate emigrants into the control and participation systems of the PRI.7 The government maintained its power through clientelist structures and relationships with particular societal groupings. However, emigrant groupings rejected attempts to incorporate them within the clientelist pacts that formed the basis of PRI’s system of government.8 In the 1960s, Mexican organizations in the United States joined together with other civil rights organizations. They not only sought to secure political gains within the United States but were also, despite the Mexican government suppression of open criticism within the country, overtly critical of the Mexican government.9 For the most part, their criticisms were structured around two issues: the clientelist character of Mexican structures of power and the presidential regime that centralized the governmental process. The emigrant groups argued that the hold of one party over the political process was a clear sign that there was no genuine democracy and that it was necessary to make far-reaching changes to the political system.10 For decades, the Mexican government suppressed opportunities for political organization and calls within the country for voting rights abroad. The Mexican government had two reasons for excluding Mexican emigrants from the electoral

Migrants, Votes, and the 2006 Mexican Presidential Election • 297

process: the criticism that the emigrant groups expressed regarding the Mexican political system and the incapacity of the government to incorporate this population within corporate power structures.11 Therefore, any form of oppositional organization and expression by Mexicans in the United States represented a political risk for the Mexican government. Far from dissipating, the negative opinions that many Mexican emigrant groups had of the Mexican government grew stronger during the latter half of the twentieth century. Research carried out by the Centro de Estudios Fronterizos del Norte de México (Northern Mexico Center for Border Studies) in 1982 confirms this. The researchers brought community groups together for a mock election. Less than 40 percent of the participants backed the PRI.12 In contrast, the PRI attracted 70 percent of the vote in the “real” national Mexican elections.13 Further mock elections were held in 1988 in cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago, and as before, the opposition parties won the contests. Alongside this, there were visits by governors of several Mexican states including those from Oaxaca, Zacatecas, Puebla, and Guanajuato from the mid-1980s onward. The Mexican presidential candidate, Cuahtémoc Cárdenas, from the opposition party Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Democratic Revolution Party [PRD]) organized a campaign tour of the United States in the run-up to the 1988 Mexican presidential election.14 In the late 1980s, the opposition party, Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party [PAN]) began to win significant victories in state and municipal elections in the northern region of Mexico. Although the authorities recognized PAN’s gains, the PRI still used public resources and fraudulent tactics to influence electoral results in other ways. Against this background, PAN began to consider the voting rights of Mexicans living abroad so as to win greater support. It was the first political party to discuss the possibility of extending the franchise to Mexicans living abroad.15 Aside from the calculations made by the Mexican political parties, some communities of Mexicans living in the United States developed independent political organizations. These included the National Council of La Raza, the Mexican American Legal Defence Fund, and the Coalition of Indigenous Communities of Oaxaca.16 Although their activities were generally directed toward the task of helping their communities and improving their position within the United States, they also sought the right to participate in Mexican national elections. Despite this and petitions from political parties and emigrant organizations, the Mexican government continued to deny the vote to those living abroad. It argued that technical limitations as well as the financial costs of implementing the measures that would be required were prohibitive. Furthermore, the Mexican government asserted that voting abroad was contrary to its international policy of “non-intervention” in the political affairs of other nation-states. “Extra-territorial” political participation could, it was said, have negative consequences for the country’s bilateral relationship with the United States.17 However, although Manuel García y Griego, director of the Southwest Hispanic Research Institute at the University of New Mexico, summed up the


position of the Mexican government on migrants in the mid-1980s as “a policy of having no policy,” a new series of policies and programs toward Mexicans living abroad was adopted just a few years later.18 The government began to develop a relationship with emigrant communities through the leadership of social and business associations of Mexicans in the United States. It sought to work with leaders willing to collaborate on projects that would benefit Mexican emigrants’ communities of origin, knowing that support for and assistance to their regions of origin was of particular concern to these emigrants. Nonetheless, the emigrants continued to insist on their participation in Mexican electoral processes. In the 1990s, the Mexican government began to pay attention to the emigrant organizations in the United States by establishing different programs to assist emigrants and hometown associations. The federal government sponsored visits by municipal presidents from several states.19 Groups such as the Frente Civico Zacatecan and the Zacatecas Federation formed a binational coalition to lobby for the right of Mexicans abroad to vote in presidential Mexican elections. It soon became apparent that the Mexican state had embarked on a project that had begun to redefine and reincorporate Mexicans living abroad as participants in the reconstruction of an imagined community. It rested on the extension of the Mexican nation-state into the United States.20 Particular initiatives illustrate this. The Paisano program was created to improve the treatment given to migrants by police and customs authorities in Mexico.21 In 1997, a constitutional change made Mexican nationality “unrenounceable,” allowing Mexicans to adopt a second citizenship without losing their own.22 All of this helped to create political space for emigrants and incorporate them as members of the Mexican nation. Against this background, there were further calls by, for example, some of the opposition parties for the extension of the vote to those living abroad. In early 1994, the Zapatist Movement (El Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional) took power in indigenous villages in the state of Chiapas, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was implemented, and only two months later the official presidential candidate from the PRI, Luis Colosio, was killed.23 There was also a severe economic crisis. This threatened the legitimacy of the Mexican government, and against this background it proposed a series of important changes in the structures for the Instituto Federal Electoral (Federal Electoral Institute [IFE]). It was attempting to move toward greater democratization.24 The PRI government also proposed the possibility of electing the head of Mexico City’s government (who until that point had always been appointed by the president) and put forward changes to the structure of both chambers of Congress. In addition to these reforms, a proposal was made to Congress to consider the budgetary implications and examine the technical issues that would arise if Mexicans living abroad were granted the right to vote. Vicente Fox Mexican President Vicente Fox (2000–2006) from PAN made radical changes to the political system that led to a redefinition of the relationship between the


Mexican government and Mexican emigrants.25 He was the first Mexican president to recognize officially the political and economic significance of the emigrants living abroad. In the weeks after he was first elected, he emphasized that he wanted to be president of “all 118 million Mexicans,” a number that included those living in the United States.26 This was an important symbolic gesture. From his inauguration he advocated legal reforms so as to extend voting rights to those living abroad.27 He also depicted the role and position of migrants through an emphasis on the centrality of emigrants’ economic power and extended the imagined Mexican nation to include transborder Mexicans.28 There were other steps. He revived the matrícula consular (consular registration card), an identification card issued to Mexicans in the United States by their consulates. The cards have proved to be invaluable tools for undocumented migrants who can now open bank accounts, identify themselves to the police, and obtain a driver’s license. The process required direct talks with banks, the local police, and state governments, but the results have far exceeded expectations. Despite some opposition from conservative “law-and-order” elements of the U.S. Republican Party, the matrícula is now established and recognized by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, after public consultations in which the support of migrants and their organizations was crucial. Reasons Why did Fox and other Mexican politicians finally accept that Mexicans living abroad should have the right to vote? There were partisan considerations. However, the growing economic weight of the emigrant communities also played a role. From the early 1980s onward, remittances between the United States and Mexico have changed in character. Increasingly, they are no longer confined to individuals or households. Instead, organized hometown associations (HTAs) play a pivotal role. They contribute to the improvement of both their communities of origin and residence. The HTAs are structured around the social networks that migrants from the same town or village in Mexico have established in the United States. Member associations raise money to fund public works and social projects. For example, HTAs linked to the Federation of Michoacano Clubs in Illinois have sent more than one million dollars to support public works in their localities of origin. The associations have channeled funds for the maintenance of public infrastructure (road construction, street and building repair, etc.), the donation of equipment (for example, ambulances, medical equipment, and vehicles for social and nonprofit purposes), and the promotion of education (through scholarship programs, construction of schools, and provision of school supplies). Alongside these activities, they have also addressed political issues. Several Mexican emigrant-led grassroots groups based in the Midwest have campaigned around human and immigrant rights as well as absentee voting. All of this has enhanced the leverage and visibility of emigrants in both the United States and Mexico. They have been able to secure important gains


including, for example, the implementation of programs that match the funds raised by the associations for approved public infrastructure projects in Mexico. The Mexican states of Guerrero, Jalisco, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosí, and Michoacán have signed agreements with associations.29 A New Political Force On February 22, 2005, the Mexican Congress made it legal through an amendment to Section III of Article 36 of the Ley Electoral Federal de Mexico (Mexico’s Federal Electoral Law) for Mexicans residing abroad to vote. They had the first opportunity in the 2006 Mexican presidential election.30 The Instituto Nacional de Estadística Geografía y Informática (INEGI) which conducts the Mexican census estimated that ten million Mexicans live in the United States.31 The Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) estimated that only about three million of them would in practice cast a vote.32 The IFE was responsible for promoting the vote among Mexican emigrants. It used three tools. Firstly, there was a campaign in the major Spanish-speaking media in the United States. Secondly, there was a promotional effort by the 139 Mexican embassies and consulates. Thirdly, the IFE collaborated with 138 Mexican immigrant organizations so as to distribute information and application forms.33 Many Mexicans including the most important national political parties (PRD, PRI, and PAN) as well as the majority of political analysts had high expectations of the part that emigrants would play in the federal elections. In August 2004 and February 2005, Parametria, one of the most important Mexican polling organizations, asked respondents if the votes of the Mexicans living abroad “would” or “would not” define the final result of the elections. Half of those questioned replied positively, while only three out of every ten disagreed.34 To encourage voting, the Mexican federal Congress approved, and the IFE assigned 901.6 million pesos in total for electoral logistics and promotion. The Migrant Vote in the July 2006 Election The IFE received 33,111 envelopes with completed ballots. This represented 81 percent of the 40,876 registered citizens. The total number of votes from emigrants was only 28,335. According to the IFE, 32,632 ballots met legal requirements. 28,335 of these were from Mexicans residing in the United States. Table 17.1 shows the distribution of the emigrant vote and how these are distributed between the two most important parties in the Mexican states where there were relatively high rates of participation. Table 17.2 records the overall emigrant vote and its distribution between the political parties. The percentage of votes for the winning political party (PAN) was considerably larger among Mexicans residing in the United States (57.4


percent) than within the domestic Mexican electorate (35.89 percent). As Table 17.2 suggests, the PRI was “punished” by the Mexican emigrant communities partly because of its longtime opposition to the emigrant franchise.35 Participation Why were participation levels so low? 1. The IFE had a nominal list of voters residing abroad. It included 40,876 persons, 84.49 percent who were Mexicans residing in the United States while the remaining 15.51 percent lived in other countries.36 This represented just 1.36 percent of the 3 million people the IFE had regarded as potential voters. 2. Although the IFE had assigned resources to inform Mexicans residing abroad about the absentee voting process, they were unable to reach many of them. There was also only a short period before the application deadline. Applicants living in the United States had only four weeks to register

Table 17.1 The 2006 election: Mexicans living outside of Mexico (votes by party and state) State/party

Partido accion nacional (PAN)

Jalisco Michoacán Estado de méxico Distrito federal Baja california norte Nuevo león Guanajuato

2,913 1,342 1,753 2,747 807 1,203 1,546

Partido de la revolución democrática (PRD) 939 1,132 1,369 2,305 410 212 372

Source: Adapted from Instituto Federal Electoral, Colección de Cuadernos Elección 2006 (Aguascalientes México: Instituto Federal Electoral 2007), 4:12–47.

Table 17.2 The 2006 election: Mexicans residing in the United States (votes by party) Votes by Mexicans: U.S. total Partido acción nacional (PAN) Partido de la revolución democratica (PRD) Partido revolucionarios institucional (PRI) Votes by Mexicans: National total Partido acción nacional (PAN) Partido de la revolución democratica (PRD) Partido revolucionarios institucional (PRI)

19,016 11,040 1,360

57.40% 33.47% 4.10%

14,916,927 14,683,096 9,237,000

35.89% 35.33% 22.23%

Source: Adapted from Instituto Federal Electoral, Colección de Cuadernos Elección 2006 (Aguascalientes México: Instituto Federal Electoral 2007), 4:12–47.


3.

4. 5. 6.

with the IFE as absentee voters. They had to provide proof of their address in Mexico. There were prerequisites for voting. Only citizens with a valid identification card could apply for a vote. The majority of the Mexicans residing in the United States did not possess the card, and it could only be issued in Mexico. Many possible voters were in the United States illegally and therefore would not risk crossing the border to obtain an identification card. Many did not have sufficient funds. According to the electoral procedures established by the IFE, the political parties were not allowed to conduct campaigns in the United States, and voters may have lacked essential information. Mexicans living in the United States had to pay postage charges to send their application for a vote by certified mail. The cost was eight or nine dollars, about an hour’s wage for many Mexican workers. Furthermore, many forms were not sent by certified mail but by regular mail and, as a consequence, they were annulled.37

Conclusion However, despite the disappointing levels of participation among Mexicans residing in the United States, emigrants will continue to be a significant political and electoral force. Their demands can no longer be ignored. Their concerns are now directly addressed in political campaigns and federal public policies. Furthermore, Mexican communities in the United States are becoming more politicized through rights-based campaigns, and this could generate the conditions or incentives necessary for greater participation in Mexican elections. The organizational capabilities that migrants have acquired in recent years represent a political opportunity and an organizational advantage. Mexican emigrants could come to represent social capital in the electoral process. Even though the low level of participation in the July 2006 elections was very disappointing, the vote played an important symbolic role and will continue to do so. It drew attention to the growing economic and social importance of emigrant communities. Emigrants are now being recognized as an important element within the Mexican nation-state. They have gained the opportunity to negotiate a space within domestic Mexican politics. Notes 1. María Raquel Carvajal Silvia, Migración internacional y derechos humanos (Guadalajara, México: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2004), 74. 2. Pablo Mijangos y González, “El voto de los mexicanos en el extranjero: historia de una ciudadanía negada,” ISTOR (2002): 11, 30–48.


3. John Reed, Villa y la Revolución Mexicana (Mexico: Nueva Imagen, 1983); and Cecilia Imaz, La Nación mexicana transfronteras. Impactos sociopolíticos en México de la emigración a Estados Unidos (México: ediciones Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2006), 56. 4. Tatcho Mindiola Jr. et al., “The Chicano in Mexico-North American Foreign Relations,” Chicano Mexican relations (Houston: University of Houston, 1986); and Victor Manuel Duran Ponte, Etnia y cultura política. Los mexicanos en Estados Unidos (Mexico City: Miguel Ángel Porrúa / Centro Regional de Investigación Multidisciplinarias de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2000), 83. 5. Mijangos y González, “El voto de los mexicanos,” 30–48. 6. Rachel Sherman, “From State Introversion to State Extension in Mexico: Modes of Emigrant Incorporation. 1990–1997,” Theory and Society 6 (1999): 28, 835. 7. Duran Ponte, Etnia y cultura política, 85. 8. Clint Smith, México y Estados Unidos: 180 años de relaciones ineludible (Guadalajara, México: UdeG / UCLA-Program on Mexico / Juan Pablos, 2001), 142. 9. Imaz, La Nación mexicana transfronteras, 69. 10. Clint Smith, México y Estados Unidos, 151. 11. Mijangos y González, “El voto de los mexicanos,” 30–48. 12. Duran Ponte, Etnia y cultura política, 98. 13. Mijangos y González, “El voto de los mexicanos,” 30–48. 14. Michael Smith and Luis Guarnizo, “Transnationalism from Below,” Political Science Quarterly 2 (Summer 1999): 355–56. 15. Clint Smith, México y Estados Unidos, 154. 16. Duran Ponte, Etnia y cultura política, 112. 17. Mijangos y González, “El voto de los mexicanos,” 30–48. 18. Manuel García y Griego and Gustavo Vega, comp., Mexico-Estados Unidos, 1984 (Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 1985). 19. Luin Goldring, “The Mexican State and Transmigrant Organizations: Negotiating the Boundaries of Membership and Participation,” Latin American Research Review (2002): 3, 55–99. 20. Michael Smith and Guarnizo, “Transnationalism from Below,” 355–56. 21. Goldring, “The Mexican State,” 55–99. 22. Duran Ponte, Etnia y cultura política, 115. 23. Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, “Homepage,” January 1, 1994, http:// www.ezln.org.mx (accessed March 21, 2007). 24. The IFE is a nongovernment agency that organizes, counts, reviews electoral results, and declares the winner. It was created in 1989. 25. Robert Smith, “Migrant Membership as an Instituted Process: Comparative Insights from the Mexican and Italian Cases,” paper given to the Conference on Transnational Migration: Comparative Perspectives, June 2001. 26. Robert Smith, “Migrant Membership,” 19–20. 27. Ibid., 31. 28. In 2002 the emigrants contributed twelve billion U.S. dollars to Mexico’s economy, and the figure is expected to be significantly higher in 2006. 29. Robert Smith, “Migrant Membership,” 28–29. 30. Francisco Robles Nava, “Aprueban el voto de los mexicanos en el extranjero,” La opinión Digital, February 23, 2005, http://www.laopinion.com/primerapagina/ ?rkey=00050222194204613842.


31. Instituto Nacional de Estadística Geografía e Informática (INEGI), II Conteo Nacional de Población y Vivienda, http://www.inegi.gob.mx/est/contenidos/espanol/ proyectos/conteos/conteo2005/default.asp?c=6224 (accessed March 19, 2007). 32. Instituto Federal Electoral, Colección de Cuadernos Elección 2006, vol. 4 (Aguascalientes, México: Instituto Federal Electoral, 2007), 12–47. 33. The Mexican emigrant organizations distributed 197,200 forms, while the Mexican government distributed 39,036 applications to 158 different countries through the Internet (Instituto Federal Electoral, Colección de Cuadernos Elección 2006). 34. El voto de los mexicanos en el extranjero, Parametria, Survery Company, http:// www.parametria.com.mx/escartaprint.php?id_carta=89 (accessed March 23, 2007). 35. Robert Smith, “Migrant Membership,” 19. 36. Instituto Federal Electoral, Colección de Cuadernos Elección 2006, 12–47. 37. The IFE failed to publicize the exact number.

CHAPTER 18

Sovereignty along el Río Bravo / the Rio Grande: Changes in U.S. Immigration Law and Mexican Foreign Relations Law1 Ernesto Hernández-López his chapter examines the ways in which the migration process has contributed to a reinterpretation of legal sovereignty in both Mexico and the United States.2 “Traditional” or “absolute” sovereignty paints sovereign authority as exclusive and autonomous, something not to be shared or to be made subject to foreign influence.3 Specifically, this chapter analyzes the doctrine of nonintervention (NIV) in Mexican foreign-relations law and the plenary power doctrine (PPD) in U.S. immigration law. Both doctrines are based on and apply the international law concept of sovereignty.4 NIV barred the Mexican government’s foreign policy from interfering in another country’s domestic affairs. It prohibited foreign policy addressing the concerns or seeking to benefit migrants in the United States because such a policy “intervened in U.S. jurisdiction.” Such intervention would have violated international sovereignty. Because of this, Mexico had a “policy of no policy” on migrants in the United States.5 With sovereignty applied similarly, PPD labels U.S. immigration law issues as immune from judicial review because the political branches (Congress and the executive branch) have complete “plenary” authority over immigration.6 This effectively denies migrants in the United States most individual rights protections in the U.S. Constitution. Without judicial review the courts cannot determine whether immigration law infringes on a migrant’s individual rights. In Mexico and the United States, domestic law has made rigid sovereignty determinations that have deeply influenced migrant rights. In Mexico, the determination was that sovereignty barred its foreign relations influencing migrant

T

306 • Ernesto Hernández-López

treatment in the United States. In the United States, the determination was that courts could not review how the executive implemented or how Congress created immigration policy. Sovereignty excluded migrants from governmental protection in foreign relations and immigration law. Migrants were left with little protections in home- or host-government legal regimes. This happened because sovereignty was conceived as to protect absolute and exclusive governmental authority. This chapter examines Mexico’s experiences as a migrant-sending country and the United States’ experiences as a migrant-receiving country. It also explores the ways in which Mexico and the U.S. have understood and applied notions of sovereignty. Examining events since 2001, the chapter’s principal argument is that recent applications of PPD in the United States and of NIV in Mexico point to a reinterpretation of absolute and traditional legal sovereignty conceptions. It pays particular attention to Zadvydas v. Davis (2001). The “el Río Bravo / the Rio Grande” part of this chapter’s title suggests that legal doctrines traverse traditional boundaries. El Río Bravo is the name used in Mexico to identify the river boundary between Mexico and the United States along the Texas and Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas borders. Rio Grande is the name used in the United States. Although both names use Spanish terminology, “bravo” literally means “angry,” and “grande” translates into “big.” The signification of an “angry” versus “big” river reflects the border’s dual nature. The Mexican and the U.S. choice of words describes a boundary between sovereign governments. For Mexico, the term paints the boundary as angry and maybe challenging. In U.S. terms, it is big and perhaps a fortress. For this chapter, two sovereignty-based doctrines (NIV and PPD) are migrating across traditional borders set by absolute notions of sovereignty. This chapter examines one international law concept (sovereignty) to argue that in both the United States and Mexico migration has led to a reinterpretation of the concept. The Ineffectiveness of Migration Policies Migration studies considers migration from a global perspective and not solely as a domestic concern. The discipline seeks to understand why so many persons cross international borders to relocate and what conditions in sending and receiving societies contribute to the migration process. Scholars consider cross-border movements in diverse areas of the world, different periods in history, distinct economic markets, and the impact of contrasting government policies. This chapter takes findings from this field to make sense of the context that U.S. immigration law and Mexican foreign-relations law address when applying PPD and NIV. Wayne A. Cornelius et al. in Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective and Douglas S. Massey et al. in Worlds in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millennium paint vivid pictures of migration as a complex force with multifaceted causes and consequences.7 They dispel common myths about wage differentials, limited economic development, or poverty as the primary causes of international migration. They challenge the effectiveness of border control policies as a way of ending or regulating migration. Cornelius

Sovereignty along el Río Bravo / the Rio Grande • 307

explains that there are “significant and persistent gaps” between official policies and actual outcomes of labor-importing countries.8 This gap is the result of migrant labor being “structurally embedded” in sending-society and receivingsociety economies. Furthermore, transnational economic and political forces in both sending and receiving societies play an important part in sustaining migration.9 At the same time, government policies aimed at deterring migration often have “unintended consequences.” For example, border control is intended to curb illegal entry but often makes it less likely that migrants will return home. Policies result in long-term consequences contrary to their intended goals and “rarely dry up ‘unwanted’ migration flows or even significantly reduce them.”10 Massey explains that “immigration control” (the government’s ability to determine the number of migrants, their “qualities,” the duration of their stay, and the locality in which they settle) is illusory given the flexibility people have to adjust their behavior in response to “changes in laws, policies, and circumstances.”11 Policy makers have only an impression of control.12 Government policies, regardless of their repressive or restrictive nature, cannot control immigration since it “originates in the social, economic, and political transformation that accompany the penetration of capitalist markets into non-market or pre-market societies.”13 Transnational networks sustain the international movement of labor. Migration from Mexico to the United States exemplifies these realities. Instead of regulating the demand for labor or creating guest worker programs, U.S. immigration policy has, since 1993, attempted to control “unwanted” immigration through border enforcement. Multiple efforts have militarized and created walls along the U.S.-Mexico border. Policy has been directed toward the discouragement of clandestine entry. Empirical studies of migrants at the points of origin show these policies have no deterrent effect. Border policies have little impact on labor-demand markets north of the international border. The “unintended consequences” of border policies include a redistribution of crossings along the Southwest border, “undocumented migrants” remaining longer in the United States, dramatic increases in border-crossing deaths, anti-immigrant border violence, and increased economic incentives for migrant smugglers.14 In all, despite over ten years of border control policies, there are estimated to be at least five hundred thousand unauthorized migrants entering the United States annually.15 All this suggests that government control of migration is at best limited. Social and transnational forces sustain and support migration on both sides of the border. However, there is a striking contrast between these socioeconomic realities and the legal doctrines of NIV and PPD. Both legal doctrines claim absolute sovereignty. They assert complete and exclusive government authority over migration. Mexican Foreign Relations Migrates from “No Policy” From its birth during the nineteenth century, NIV has characterized a sovereign government’s authority within its domestic jurisdiction as exclusive, and therefore not subject to foreign influence.16 NIV shields sovereign authority from


external pressures. It governs foreign relations between countries.17 Codified in Article 89:X of Mexico’s constitution, NIV prohibits Mexico from interfering in another country’s domestic affairs.18 It is also included in Article 46:I of the Ley del Servicio Exterior Mexicano. This states that the Foreign Service is prohibited from “intervening in the internal and political affairs of or the international affairs of the State where they are commissioned.”19 The principle has a long history. In 1931, Foreign Relations Minister Genaro Estrada developed Mexico’s most important contribution to NIV doctrine.20 Labeled the Estrada Doctrine, its objective was for Mexico to remain neutral in foreign controversies.21 The country proclaimed it would not judge or support a particular domestic political actor in a foreign country. The Estrada Doctrine’s central objective of not interfering in another country’s domestic matters was extended over time. Indeed, it became a central tenet of Mexican foreign policy. Jorge Chabat notes that the “mere expression of an opinion was regarded as an act of meddling” and thus violated the principle.22 On the basis of this, Mexico developed a “policy of no policy” regarding its emigrants in the United States.23 From this perspective, Mexican migrants in the United States fell within U.S. jurisdiction because they were inside U.S. territory. A policy toward these migrants would violate U.S. sovereignty and the principle of NIV. An example of this “no policy” was when U.S. Senator Alan Simpson, architect of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986, solicited support for the bill from Mexico’s President López Portillo.24 The President told the Senator, “You have a sovereign right to do what you want with your borders. But I am glad a man as sensitive as you appears to be in charge of immigration up there because I want you to look after our workers.”25 Here, we see that President López Portillo did have a concern for migrant workers, but he was not willing to use Mexican foreign policy to benefit the migrants. His concern was not proactive—especially since the U.S. senator approached him. However, Mexico began to shift away from NIV. This happened when the U.S. Congress enacted the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996. IIRIRA eliminated many migrant rights and emphasized border security.26 There were five important changes. First, Mexico lobbied while IIRIRA was being debated. This went beyond diplomatic channels and directly influenced U.S. lawmaking as part of its IIRIRA lobbying. Building on its experience when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was being considered in Washington, the Mexican diplomatic corps took on specialized congressional and executive branch liaison efforts to voice Mexico’s opinion on the bill’s contents. Early versions of IIRIRA included the Gallegly Amendment, denying school access to the children of undocumented migrants. Mexico lobbied for the defeat of the amendment.27 Here, Mexican foreign relations did not view the U.S. legislative process as something solely within the autonomous and absolute sovereign authority of the United States. Instead, Mexico participated because it had a stake in the U.S. legislative process.


A second example of Mexico’s reinterpretation of NIV began in 1990, when it created the Program for Mexican Communities Living in Foreign Countries. The Program currently exists as the Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior (IME). The IME’s goals were to build relationships between Mexican migrants abroad, Mexican Americans in the United States, and the Mexican government.28 The objective was to “raise awareness among Mexicans around the world that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory contained by its borders.”29 Before the program, Mexican consulates avoided active support of migrants because of concerns of violating NIV.30 This new position of increasing consular support for migrants abroad, in particular in the United States, is also evident in Mexico’s foreign service regulations, the Reglamento Interior de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores.31 These include specific duties for consular migrant services and foreign policy objectives on migration issues. A third step, that changed the way in which NIV was applied, took place in 1997 where there were reforms to Mexico’s nationality law regime. These permitted Mexican nationals to become dual nationals.32 This reform was enacted so that Mexicans abroad could retain their Mexican nationality if they acquired another nationality, for example, if they naturalized as U.S. citizens.33 A primary motivation for this was that Mexicans in the United States would become U.S. citizens and influence U.S. immigration policy makers as U.S. voters.34 The changes were initially announced in March 1997 with amendments to Articles XXX, XXXII, and XXXVII of the Mexican constitution. The fourth and most publicly visible step was President Vicente Fox’s efforts to conclude a migration agreement with the United States. In April 2001, Mexico proposed a five-part plan to the United States. It was colloquially referred to as the “whole enchilada,” and included proposals for the regularization of temporary workers so that “undocumented” aliens would secure the legal authority to remain in the United States), improved border security, regional development, and increased visa allotment measures.35 Ultimately, no agreement was reached. This was largely because of the changed security context in the United States after September 11, 2001. The most contentious point in the package was undoubtedly regularization.36 For Mexico, it represented the most important gain and it would have resulted in a far-reaching change to U.S. policy. A fifth example of Mexico’s reinterpretation of NIV is to be found in the way that Mexican policy agenda, in its dealings with the United States, continues to include a number of immigration issues. These include continuing efforts to secure a migration agreement, lobbying for comprehensive migration reform, and improved treatment of Mexican nationals residing in the United States.37 In February 2006, Mexico presented a more nuanced immigration position in a resolution titled “Mexico and the Migration Phenomenon,” which was approved by the executive and Mexico’s Congress.38 It stressed that migration is a shared governmental responsibility; has domestic and international consequences and causes; and should be regulated in coordination with border, security, and economic policies. It emphasized that current U.S. border policy prevents many


migrants from returning to Mexico. For its part, Mexico seeks a “circular migratory flow” of migrants (Mexico to United States and back to Mexico). Sovereignty Subtly Migrates in U.S. Immigration Law In the United States, PPD similarly applied notions of absolute sovereignty. Furthermore, it confers this sovereignty on the political branches of government. The courts are excluded. These principles were established in Chae Chan Ping v. United States (1889), (the Chinese Exclusion Case). The case rested on questions about where the federal government derived the authority to not admit a returning Chinese national.39 The Supreme Court ruled that the United States could deny his reentry and confirmed that this authority derived from international sovereignty. Sovereignty was described as “necessarily exclusive and absolute. It is susceptible to no limitation not imposed by itself.”40 The Chinese Exclusion Case was built upon in Nishimuria v. United States (1892) and Fong Yue Ting v. United States (1893). With development of PPD, sovereignty jumped from being an international law principle of foreign relations to become the basis for excluding judicial review when immigration issues were being considered. However, there have been important shifts. In Zadvydas v. Davis (2001), the Supreme Court held that the executive branch did not have the power to indefinitely detain removable aliens in situations when a home country would not accept alien repatriation, thereby making their detention effectively indefinite.41 In this dispute, the executive branch claimed that its plenary authority permitted the indefinite detention of aliens who were to be deported if their home country did not cooperate in the process. The legal code at stake did not explain what was the executive’s authority if home countries did not cooperate in receiving the removable alien; so the executive claimed that the PPD allowed this. Joined by four other Supreme Court justices, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the majority opinion. Four justices dissented, finding that the executive did have this power and that the statute did not require limits to detention. The majority’s treatment of PPD suggests some measure of sovereignty reinterpretation and a shift in the way governmental authority is allocated when adjudicating immigration issues. This reinterpretation occurs in deportation settings, when governmental authority to remove someone physically present in the United States is at stake, and not in exclusion settings, when a foreign national is attempting to enter the United States.42 Two points in Zadvydas’s reasoning illustrate a degree of distancing from absolute sovereignty. First, in determining if there has been a constitutional violation, the court initially identified an alien’s potential rights and then examined the political branches’ plenary authority. In Zadvydas the majority first found a potential rights infringement (indefinite detention without due process), and then it decided whether there was a plenary authority to implement this.43 Secondly, the court engaged in reviewing immigration issues rather than deferring to the political branches.44 By examining how the executive implements its


immigration authority, by factually distinguishing prior Supreme Court decisions on plenary power issues and by closely interpreting statutes or legal codes for constitutional doubt, the court’s approach to plenary power questions shows a distancing from absolute distinctions that were formerly made. The Zadvydas court breaks with precedent. It does not regard PPD as the dispositive legal interpretation but instead reads the statute or legal code to find ambiguities in its terms, to ultimately side with the assumption that Congress did not create the statute to violate the Constitution. As such, the Court finds the executive does not have the authority to indefinitely detain aliens. The decision overturned indefinite detention, but also asserted that there are important limits to the political branches’ plenary power over immigration. After describing the executive’s arguments that plenary-power case law requires the judicial branch to defer to the political branches, the majority opinion states, “But that power is subject to important constitutional limitations.”45 Explicit claims of this sort by the Supreme Court, limiting the doctrine in immigration law decisions with constitutional norms, had not been seen before. Three jurisprudential steps stand out in the opinion’s limits to plenary power. It (1) recognizes there is plenary authority and then examines if there has been a “constitutionally permissible means [of ] implementing” it; (2) limits plenarypower precedent to specific factual holdings that do not apply in the Zadvydas dispute; and (3) interprets a statute to avoid constitutional doubt.46 For the purposes of this chapter, these three steps indicate a slight reinterpretation of sovereignty in PPD. If, alternatively, sovereignty were regarded in absolute terms when applying PPD, the court would have regarded the political branches’ power as absolute, regardless of the possibility of indefinite detention. Such a “hands-off ” position with no judicial review would have followed a long line of Supreme Court precedent. Following the examples set in INS v. Chadha, the Zadvydas court reasoned there was no question of whether the political branches had the plenary authority, but instead it “challenged” that “Congress must choose a constitutionally permissible means of implementing that power.”47 The court first identifies the authority of the political branches, and then it applies constitutional rights limitations to the authority’s implementation. For Zadvydas, the majority recognized that executive has primary responsibility over immigration, and foreign policy matters and has “greater immigration-related expertise,” but it reasons that “ordinary principles of judicial review” allow it to consider the legality of alien detention.48 Likewise, the opinion clearly explains how it does not deny the executive or Congress any authority already prescribed. Significantly, the limits articulated to PPD were found by the court interpreting the statute to avoid a constitutional rights infringement. This measure is termed the “canon of avoidance.” Using the canon, a judge will read the statute to avoid any constitutional doubt.49 The Supreme Court and numerous lower courts have applied the canon increasingly to immigration law disputes. This chapter suggests that use of the canon in immigration law points to a rethinking


of prior sovereignty notions. Because PPD attempts to close the door on judicial review despite over a century of precedent, the court’s use of the canon steps away from this position. The canon inevitably results in statutory holdings for the immediate parties. But perhaps longer-term norms may develop with its persistent application that permit the taking of more concrete steps away from the plenary power’s powerful past. An example of this occurred in Clark v. Martinez, when the Supreme Court affirmed the Zadvydas holding by extending its ruling to excludable aliens. Clark addressed a situation very similar to Zadvydas. An alien was to be removed, but his or her home country did not agree to the repatriation. In Zadvydas, the alien was “deportable,” meaning he had been legally permitted to enter the United States but violated the terms of his stay. In Clark, the alien had never legally entered the United States, so was thus termed “excludable.” Using the canon, the court becomes more engaged in determining legal issues that PPD sought to exclude from judicial review in the past.50 Employing the canon, the court sends a message to Congress on how to draft statutory provisions, makes a statutory determination contrary to executive claims, and finds a way to protect alien rights without a constitutional determination. In other words, the court is not exercising a “hands-off ” position or deferring to the political branches of government. Conclusion Border control policy and domestic enforcement of immigration law are both ineffective. Federal immigration policy continues to narrate plenary power in immigration regulation and national security doctrine. City and states are now claiming their sovereign right to contribute to the narrative of control as well. Yet despite these policy and legal expressions of sovereign authority to curtail migration, there is fluidity across national borders. Many sectors of the U.S. economy are dependent on migrant labor. Migration places downward pressure on wages. As Massey and Cornelius suggest, despite heavy-handed border policies and vocal claims to sovereign authority, economics, social forces, and culture cross political borders. Taking a cue from this resistance to the narrative of sovereign authority and immigration control, this chapter has viewed sovereignty as a socially constructed concept. Its meaning changes over time and is constantly contested. The chapter has also sought to identify “qualitative changes or variation in operational meaning” of sovereignty to find how its meaning has changed.51 Its definition and application changes are contests between “powerful agents and resistances to [their actions].”52 This chapter’s principal argument is that recent applications of PPD and NIV suggest a partial reinterpretation of traditional legal sovereignty concepts because limits have been applied to sovereign authority over migration. Traditionally, this authority was characterized as absolute and complete. Sovereignty was expressed in absolute and exclusive terms in NIV and PPD for Mexican and U.S. law. In


its international and historic design, sovereign authority could not be shared or subject to foreign influence. From this traditional line, Mexico had a foreign relations policy of “no policy” on migrants in the United States, premised on the doctrinal view of U.S. jurisdiction as exclusive over migrants. Interpretations of NIV since the mid-1990s illustrate important steps reinterpreting this traditional application. On the U.S. side, traditionally PPD excluded the judiciary from most migration issues. This effectively made migrants “Strangers to the Constitution.”53 In Zadvydas, the court states that there are constitutional limitations to PPD and uses a variety of judicial measures to limit PPD authority, all of which go against the judicial immunity that PPD aims to safeguard. With these small steps, the great expanse of traditional sovereignty in PPD has lost some its strength. It is to be hoped that the agents of law (legislators, diplomats, and judges) in Mexico and the United States who face a grande or bravo international border will take their cues from the ways in which migrants cross national borders. In doing this, legal reasoning may migrate over traditional and conceptual borders such as “absolute sovereignty.” Notes 1. Research for this chapter was generously supported by a faculty research stipend from the Chapman University School of Law. Ms. Christine Ludwiczak provided valuable research assistance. 2. This chapter uses F. H. Hinsley’s definition of sovereignty as “the idea that there is a final and absolute political authority in the political community; and everything that needs to be added to complete the definition is added if this statement is continued in the following words: ‘and no final and absolute authority exists elsewhere.’” See F. H. Hinsley, Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University. Press., 1986), 25–26. 3. Tom Farer, Beyond Sovereignty: Collectively Defending Democracy in the Americas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 1–25; and Michael Scaperlanda, “Polishing the Tarnished Golden Door,” Wisconsin Law Review (1993): 1002–10. 4. Louis Henkin, “The Constitution and United States Sovereignty: A Century of Chinese Exclusion and Its Progeny,” Harvard Law Review 100 (1987): 853; and Amos S. Hershey, “The Calvo and Drago Doctrines,” American Journal of International Law 1 (1907): 27. 5. Marc R. Rosenblum, “Moving Beyond the Policy of No Policy: Emigration from Mexico and Central America,” Latin American Politics and Society 46, no. 4 (2004): 91–126. In México the “policy of no-policy” has been called the “política de la omission,” see Rodolfo Turián, “México y el debate migratorio en Estados Unidos,” Foreign Affairs en Español (October–December 2006), http://www.foreignaffairs-esp.org. 6. See Kleindienst v. Mandel, U.S. Vol. 408 (1972): 753, (1972) (referring to the decision’s citation located in the U.S. Supreme Court reporter named “U.S.”) describing this power as “plenary”; and Fiallo v. Bello U.S. Vol. 430 (1977): 787, 792; ( stating “over no conceivable subject is the legislative power of Congress more complete than it is over” the admission of aliens). 7. Wayne A. Cornelius, Takeyuki Tsuda, Philip L. Martin, and James F. Hollifield, ed., Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective (Stanford, CA: Stanford University.


Press, 2004); and Douglas S. Massey, Joaquin Arango, Graeme Hugo, Ali Kouaouci, Adela Pellegrino, and J. Edward Taylor, eds., Worlds in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millennium (London: Oxford University. Press, 2005). 8. Cornelius et al., Controlling Immigration, 4. 9. Ibid., 4–11 10. Ibid., 41. 11. Massey et al., Worlds in Motion, 287. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 277. 14. Wayne A. Cornelius, “Controlling ‘Unwanted’ Immigration: Lessons from the United States, 1993–2004,” Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies 31 (2005): 775–94. 15. Ibid., 776; referring to J. Passel et al., “Undocumented Immigrants: Facts and Figures,” Urban Institute Immigration Studies Program, January 12, 2004. 16. Philip C. Jessup, “The Estrada Doctrine,” American Journal of International Law 25 (1931): 719–23, 720. 17. Ibid., 729. 18. Alonso Gómez-Robledo Verduzco, “Mexican Foreign Policy: Its Fundamental Principals,” Mexican Law Review 3 (2005). 19. Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Ley del Servicio Exterior Mexicano, ch. VIII, article 46:I, January 4, 1994. 20. Jessup, “The Estrada Doctrine,” 719–23, 720. 21. Jorge Chabat provides this translation of the Estrada Doctrine: “Mexico is not inclined to express recognition because it considers this a denigrating practice which, besides hurting the sovereignty of other nations, places them in a position in which their internal matters can lead to remarks by other governments, who have already assumed a critical attitude as they decided, favorably or unfavorably, to judge the legal status of foreign governments.” See Jorge Chabat, “Mexico’s Foreign Policy after NAFTA: The Tools of Interdependence,” in Bridging the Border: Transforming MexicoU.S. Relations, eds. Rodolfo O. de la Garza and Jorge Velasco (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 35. 22. Ibid., 35. 23. Carlos Rico, “The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and Mexican Perceptions of Bilateral Approaches to Immigration Issues,” in Immigration and International Relations: Proceedings of a Conference on the International Effects of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), ed. George Vernez (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1990), 90–100. 24. Richard W. Day, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration and Refugee Affairs Keynote Address, in George Vernez, Immigration and International Relations, 19. 25. Ibid. 26. The comprehensive bill contained provisions that created three- and ten-year bars to re-entry for aliens who were “unlawfully present,” “expedited removals,” a one-year filing deadline for asylum applications, changes to eligibility for suspension of deportation, increasing removability classification for alien-criminals, mandatory detention for immigrants convicted of certain crimes, and statutory limitations to judicial review over immigration law claims. See T. Alexander Aleinikoff et al., Immigration


and Citizenship: Process and Policy, 5th ed. (New York: West Publications, 2003), 440–42, 446–51, 529–33, 609–16; and Nancy Morawetz, “Understanding the Impact of the 1996 Deportation Laws and the Limited Scope of Proposed Reforms,” Harvard Law Review 113 (1999): 1936. 27. Rosenblum, “Moving Beyond,” 111. 28. Carlos González Guitiérrez, “Fostering Identities: Mexico’s Relations with Its Diaspora,” Journal of American History 86 (1999): 545–46. 29. Ibid. 30. Carlos González Guitiérrez, “Decentralized Diplomacy: The Role of Consular Offices in Mexico’s Relations with its Diaspora,” in Bridging the Border: Transforming Mexico-U.S. Relations, eds. Rodolfo O. de la Garza and Jorge Velasco (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 50. 31. Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Reglamento Interior de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, reported in the Diario Oficial, August 26, 2004. 32. In Mexico, “nationality” and “citizenship” are governed by Articles XXX, XXXVII, and XXVIII of the constitution and the Ley de Nacionalidad enacted in 1993. Mexican nationality is provided for before citizenship, which a Mexican national may only attain at the age of eighteen, providing the right to vote. Before this age, an individual may be a national but not a citizen; see Jorge A. Vargas, “Dual Nationality for Mexicans,” San Diego Law Review 35 (1998): 823, 839–42. 33. David Fitzgerald, “Rethinking Emigrant Citizenship,” New York University Law Review 81 (2006): 95. 34. Kim Barry, “Home and Away: The Construction of Citizenship in an Emigration Context,” New York University Law Review 81 (2006): 45–47; Alfredo Corchado, “Zedillo Seeking Closer Ties with Mexican-Americans,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1995; Mark Fineman, “Mexican Citizens May Gain Right to Dual Nationality,” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1995; and Staff Writer “Mexico Passes Law on DualCitizenship,” New York Times, December. 12, 1996. 35. Pamela Starr, “U.S.-Mexico Relations,” in Hemisphere Focus (Washington, DC: CSIS, 2004); and Rafael Fernández de Castro, “La Migración Sobre la Mesa de Negociación,” in Cambio y Continuidad en la Política Exterior de México: México en el Mundo, ed. Rafael Fernández de Castro (Mexico City: ITAM, 2002), 113. 36. For a policy perspective, which this author does not agree with, that a migration agreement with Mexico unwisely limits U.S. authority, see Robert S. Leiken, “Enchilada Lite: A Post-9/11 Mexican Migration Agreement,” Center for Immigration Studies, March 2002, http://www.cis.org/articles/2002/leiken.html. 37. Mexico, Mexico and the Migration Phenomenon, February 16, 2006, http://www .embassyofmexico.org/images/pdfs/Mexico%20and%20the%20Migration%20Phen omenon%20%2002%2003%202006.pdf. 38. Ibid. 39. Chinese Exclusion Case, 130 U.S., Vol. 130, p. 604. 40. Ibid., quoting Schooner Exch. v. McFadden, 11 U.S. Vol. 11 (1812), pp. 116, 136. 41. U.S. Vol. 533 (2001), Zadvydas, 678; hereafter Zadvydas. 42. This chapter does not examine how plenary power reasoning is applied to the exclusion settings of removal, such as expedited removal. It is generally understood that traditional applications of plenary power reasoning persist in exclusion determinations. 43. Zadvydas, 682; and David A. Martin, “Graduated Application of Constitutional Protections for Aliens: The Real Meaning of Zadvydas v. Davis,” Supreme Court Review (2001): 46, 76.


44. Peter Spiro explains that traditionally foreign relations deference to the political branches was provided since the judiciary was not versed in foreign affairs and the international context required action by the political branches. Globalization decreases these risks in international relations, and the judiciary is more versed in these issues than traditionally. See Peter Spirto, “Globalization and the (Foreign Affairs) Constitution,” Ohio State Law Journal 63 (2002): 682. 45. Zadvydas, 695. 46. Ibid., 695–96, 692–94, 689–90. 47. Ibid., 695, referring to INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 941 (1983). 48. Ibid., 700, emphasizing courts are required to “listen with care” to the executive’s foreign policy judgments including the “status of repatriation negotiations” and to grant “appropriate leeway” when the government’s judgements rest on foreign policy expertise. 49. The “canon of avoidance” has its birth in Justice Brandeis’s opinion in Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority. See 297 U.S. 288, 347 (1936). 50. Justice Kennedy’s dissenting opinion stating that the court “assumes a role in foreign relations which is unprecedented, unfortunate, and unwise” (Zadvydas, 718). 51. Thomas J. Biersteker, “State, Sovereignty, and Territory,” Handbook of International Relations, ed. Walter Carlsnaes (New York: Sage, 2002), 157–75, 167. 52. Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber, Sovereignty as a Social Construct (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996), 1–21. 53. Gerald L. Neuman, Strangers to the Constitution: Immigrants, Borders, and Fundamental Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).

Contributors

María Adela Angoa Pérez is a research assistant at El Colegio de Mexico. Edward Ashbee is associate professor at the Center for the Study of the Americas, Copenhagen Business School. His publications include The Bush Administration, Sex and the Moral Agenda (2007), and articles about elections, immigration, conservatism, and parties. Magdalena Barros Nock is a social anthropologist with a PhD in development studies from the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Netherlands. She is a full time professor and researcher at the Center for Research and Postgraduate Studies in Social Anthropology, Mexico City. Her interests lie in international migration, transborder relations, rural development, gender relations, and the ethnic economy. Helene Balslev Clausen is completing her PhD dissertation at the Center for the Study of the Americas at Copenhagen Business School. The dissertation considers North American migration to Mexico. Clausen has been an assistant professor at El Colegio de Sonora in Mexico. She has published a number of articles about transnationalism, Mexican politics, and national identity. At present, she is working on an anthology, Utopia and Globalization in Contemporary Latin America (edited by Jan Gustafsson and Mario Alberto Velázquez). Megan Davy is a research assistant on Western Hemisphere issues at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI). Selene Gaspar Olvera is a research assistant at El Colegio de Mexico. Silvia E. Giorguli Saucedo is an associate professor at El Colegio de Mexico. She has a PhD from Brown University and has published widely in the field of migration studies. Her publications include “Immigrant Incorporation and Racial Identity” (coauthored with José Iztigsohn) in Silvia E. Giorguli Saucedo’a Ethnic and Racial Studies (2005) and “Immigrant Incorporation and Trasnational Participation as Gendered Processes,” in International Migration Review (2005).

318 • Contributors

Raphael Gomez is a professor of Spanish, chair of the School of World Languages and Cultures at California State University Monterey Bay, and visiting professor for the Maestría en Estudios para la Paz y Desarrollo at the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México. He is the author of “El latino dentro de la fuerza laboral de los Estados Unidos” in Literature and Business Reader (2007) and the coauthor of Rumbos (2006) and Con destinos a la comunicación (1998). His research interests include Latinos in the United States and Latin American literatures and cultures. Jan Gustafsson holds a PhD from Copenhagen Business School. He is an associate professor at the Center for the Study of the Americas. His main research areas are Latin American social and cultural identities, Latin American politics, and inter-American relations. His publications include Intercultural Alternatives (edited with Maribel Blasco [2004]). At present, he is working on an anthology, Utopia and Globalization in Contemporary Latin America (edited with Helene Balslev Clausen and Mario Alberto Velázquez). Ken Henriksen is an assistant professor at the University of Aarhus. He holds a PhD from Copenhagen Business School. His academic interests include Latin America, development studies, and globalization. His publications include an essay with Ann Marie Jeppesen, “Studies of Postcolonialism and the Latin American Tradition” (2004). Ernesto Hernández-López is an assistant professor of law at the Chapman University School of Law and a research fellow at the university’s Center for Global Trade and Development. He has taught international relations at the Universidad del Rosario and political science at the Universidad Javeriana, both in Santa Fé de Bogóta, Colombia. His research work on Latin American issues and law has been published in journals such as the California Western Law Review. Elena Labastida-Tovar is completing a doctoral dissertation on the costs of antidumping and countervailing duties in the NAFTA countries and the European Union at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She holds master’s degrees in international relations from the Graduate Institute of International Studies and in European economic studies from the University of Geneva. Elaine Levine is a researcher and professor at the Centro de Investigaciones sobre América del Norte (CISAN) of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Anne Magnussen is an associate professor at the Institute of History and Civilization, University of Southern Denmark. She has written several articles about the use of history, popular culture, and semiotics. Cristóbal Mendoza Pérez received his PhD from King’s College London and is a lecturer and researcher at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa

Contributors • 319

(Mexico City). His current interests include U.S.-Mexican transnational migration and comparative international migration. He is the author of Labour Immigration in Southern Europe: African Employment in Iberian Labour Markets (2003). Pia Møller is a PhD student in cultural studies at George Mason University. Her work focuses on anti-immigration movements in northern Virginia. Her articles have appeared in Global Tryst, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, and the Danish newspaper Information. Carl Pedersen is an adjunct professor of American studies at the Copenhagen Business School. He has written widely in the fields of African American studies and American history and politics. His latest book (in Danish) is The Wrong War: The United States and the New World Order (2006). Mario Alberto Velázquez is an associate professor at the Program for Public Policy at El Colegio de Sonora, Mexico. He holds a PhD in sociology from El Colegio de Mexico. His current interests include the social construction of reality, risk theory, and migration. He has published widely on social movements and politics in Latin America. At present, he is working on an anthology, Utopia and Globalization in Contemporary Latin America (edited with Jan Gustafsson and Mario Alberto Velázquez). Mario Villarreal, a former Fulbright scholar, is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC where he researches health economics, Social Security, and international political economy issues. He received his PhD in economics and political science from Claremont Graduate University. Alex Waddan is a lecturer in American politics and American foreign policy and a member of the Centre for American Studies at the University of Leicester (UK). He is the author of Clinton’s Legacy? A New Democrat in Governance (2002).


Index American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 273 amnesty, 41, 58, 136, 143, 175, 207, 237–38, 240–41, 250–51, 262 Arizona, 12, 109, 113, 162, 170, 234, 237, 239–40, 243–45, 250, 252, 261, 271, 273, 275–76, 283–84, 288–92 Aryan Nations, 277 Baca, Judith, 189–90, 193–96, 199, 200 Baldwin Park, 189–200 Bloomberg, Michael, 248 Borjas, George, 131, 259, 268 Bracero, 32, 37, 118, 122–23, 127, 143, 167, 296 Breyer, Stephen, 310 Brimelow, Peter, 15 Buchanan, Patrick J., 11, 14–15, 17, 22–23, 131, 278, 289–90, 293 Bush, George W., 9–10, 15, 21–23, 72, 233, 236, 238, 240–41, 248–49, 251–52, 261, 274, 279, 282–83 Calderón, Felipe, 21, 33, 228, 292 California, 12, 17, 36, 57, 59, 89, 106, 109, 112–13, 115, 117, 133, 135–36, 139, 143, 146, 156, 162, 170, 174, 177, 178, 185, 190–92, 194, 198, 200, 212, 215, 216, 220–24, 226–27, 229, 236, 238, 240–41, 243, 246, 248, 254, 260–61, 263, 270, 271–72, 279, 284, 286, 291, 295 Center for Immigration Studies, 23, 90, 237, 244, 250, 268

Chae Chan Ping v. United States (1889), 310 Cheney, Dick, 251, 281 Chicago, 23, 33, 60, 169, 235, 297 Ciudad Juárez, 151, 168 Clinton, Bill, 65, 127, 171, 250 Clinton, Hillary, 283 Colorado, 15, 234, 239, 244, 250–61, 267, 270, 279, 284 Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, 234 Cuba, 167, 268 Cunningham, 238 Dances with Wolves, 186 Day without a Mexican, A, 177, 185, 187 Delay, Tom, 279 dime novels, 166–67 ejidatarios, 133 Ellis Island, 10, 221 European Union, 65, 107, 131, 168 Farmingville, 235, 252 Fong Yue Ting v. United States (1893), 310 Fox, Vicente, 25, 32–33, 35, 37, 241, 298–99, 309 Fox News, 278, 282 Gallegly Amendment, 308 gender, 40, 44, 47–48, 50, 55–57, 74–75, 96, 155 godparentship, 138–39, 144 Graf, Randy, 239, 245, 250 Hagel, Chuck, 262 Hannity & Colmes, 278, 282, 291–92

322 • Index

Home Town Associations, 32 Homeland Security, 64, 134, 236, 240, 244, 251, 279–80 House of Representatives, 10, 201, 216, 233–34, 237, 251, 256, 261, 269 Huntington, Samuel, 11, 13–17, 19–20, 23–24, 174–75, 196–97, 200–201, 209, 211, 214–20, 222–24, 226–28, 264–65, 269 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 236, 253 Immigration and Nationality Act (1965), 168 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) (1986), 41, 58, 61, 64, 123, 175, 236, 287, 308, 314 Jacoby, Tamar, 20, 24, 242, 254, 279, 291 Kallen, Horace, 16 Kennedy, Edward, 12, 241, 261, 283, 316 Kyl, Jon, 240, 243, 249, 254 Ley del Servicio Exterior Mexicano, 308, 314 Lone Star, 17, 24, 179, 188 Los Angeles, 11, 33, 59, 113, 133–46, 169, 173, 189–90, 198–200, 219, 235, 255, 270–72, 274–75, 279, 288–89, 294, 297, 315 Martinez, Mel, 212, 214, 262, 312 McCain, John, 241, 252, 261, 279, 292 Medicare, 257, 266 mestizo, 22, 25–28, 30, 32–33, 35 Minuteman Project, 15, 23, 191, 196, 200, 253, 271–74, 277–81, 285, 287–90, 292 Monterey, 215–16, 219–22, 224–29 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 32, 64–66, 89, 107–9, 111–16, 118–32, 137, 171, 298, 308, 314 Napolitano, Janet, 273, 283 National Council of La Raza, 19, 90, 252, 297 National Review, 244, 252, 255, 278–79, 291

national security, 172, 202–3, 206–7, 210–11, 223, 244, 251, 312 New York, 11–12, 17, 20, 22–24, 35, 59, 90, 160–61, 175, 188, 201–14, 226, 236, 239, 248, 251, 253–56, 263, 268–70, 286, 288–89, 315–16 New York Times, 11–13, 17–18, 20, 22–24, 35, 57–59, 72, 90, 109, 131, 160–62, 169, 175, 188, 199–214, 226–27, 236, 239, 248, 251, 253–56, 263, 267–70, 274, 283, 286, 288–89, 291–94, 297, 300, 315–16 Nishimura-Ekiu v. United States (1892), 310 non-intervention doctrine (NIV), 305–9, 312–13 North Carolina, 240, 245, 261, 269, 286 Nuestro Himno, 11 Nuevo Laredo, 112, 151 Operation Gatekeeper, 250 Otherness, 165–66 Pacino, Al, 171 Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), 25, 32–33, 297–98, 300–301 Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), 25–28, 30–33, 35, 122, 296–301 Pew Hispanic Center, 89, 105, 227, 234–35, 249, 255, 266–67, 269–70 plenary power doctrine (PPD), 305–7, 310–13, 315 poverty, 33, 43, 45, 51–53, 56, 61, 81, 88, 97–98, 101, 118–19, 121–22, 151, 170, 266–67, 306 Proposition 187, 12, 241, 243, 246, 248, 254, 260–61 Reagan, Ronald, 14 reconquista, 17, 196 Rector, Robert, 262, 266, 269 Republican Party, 170, 241, 244, 248, 252, 278, 281, 283–84 Rice, Condoleezza, 10, 22 risk, 164–65, 167, 171, 173–74, 212 Robinson, Vernon, 240, 245, 261 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 167 Salinas, 215–16, 219, 221–26, 229 Salinas, Carlos, 31, 65, 67

Index • 323

San Diego, 106, 113, 135, 145, 160, 162, 174, 206, 212, 239, 250, 272, 294, 315 Santorum, Rick, 281 Sassen, Saskia, 20, 24, 48, 58–59, 151, 161 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 243, 248, 279 Secure Fence Act, 15, 21, 201, 243, 250, 282–83 Senate, 239–43, 247, 249–52, 254–56, 261–62, 279–80, 284, 292, 314 Sensenbrenner, James, 10, 15, 162, 224 Social Security, 234, 257, 265–66, 270 SOS (Save our State), 189–98 Southern Poverty Law Center, 19, 24, 117, 136, 156, 217, 273, 289–91 Supplemental Security, 257, 260 Tancredo, Tom, 10, 15, 19, 23–24, 234, 239, 250, 279, 282–84, 292–93 Texas, 12, 17, 36, 109, 113, 128–29, 133, 145, 161, 166, 168, 170, 178–80, 185–86, 188, 192, 194, 199–200, 211, 214, 241, 250, 254, 261, 263–64, 269, 270–71, 273, 289, 306

Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The, 177–78, 180, 185–88 Tijuana, 111–12, 133–46, 151, 168, 250 transnational social spaces, 149–50, 152, 157 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), 35, 166 Turner, Frederick Jackson,166 Virginia, 235, 251, 261, 263, 284, 286, 294 Wall Street Journal, 243 Washington Post, 10, 22, 24, 227, 233, 235, 245, 252–55, 273, 288–89, 292, 293–94 Weekly Standard, 279, 291 welfare, 33, 49, 51–53, 61, 108, 124, 127, 171, 224, 246, 251, 257–63, 266–68, 284 Wilson, Pete, 241, 243, 261 Zadvydas v. Davis (2001), 306, 310, 311–13, 315–16

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