Fresh Look
A Nation of
Emigrants:
How Mexico Manages
Its Migration
David Fitzgerald
Blockading
The Border and
Human Rights:
The El Paso Operation
that Remade Immigration
Enforcement
University of California Press,
2009, Softcover, 180 pages
Timothy J. Dunn
University of Texas Press, 2009,
Softcover, 227 pages
Illegal, Alien,
or Immigrant:
The Politics of
Immigration Reform
Keeping Out
The Other:
A Critical Introduction
to Immigration
Enforcement Today
Lina Newton
New York University Press,
2008, Softcover, 181 pages
David C. Brotherton and
Philip Kretsedemas (Eds.)
Columbia University Press,
2008, Softcover, 373 pages
Obama’s Enforcement:
What Now for Immigration?
by Julia Preston
Last December, the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) published an end-of-the-year fact sheet in which it
listed its successes under then-President George W. Bush in advancing a
number of strategic goals, the first of
which was entitled “Protecting Our
Nation from Dangerous People.” The
first achievement cited under this
rubric was that it had “turned the
tide against illegal migration to the
United States,” by building fencing
along the southern border, expanding the Border Patrol and carrying
out “unprecedented” immigration
enforcement operations.
Also under the “Dangerous People” heading, the department reported that U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services had “
completed more than 1. 1 million naturalization applications,” and that
customs and border agents had “
apprehended more than 1,020,438 people [sic], including 200 people with
serious criminal records.”
This summation of the Bush administration’s accomplishments concisely expresses the transformation
since the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks of the federal government’s
paradigm for immigration. U.S. immigration authorities no longer employ any terms invoking the American Dream, that narrative of striving
newcomers who bring unique talents
and boundless enterprise to the national mix. Instead, even successful naturalization applicants now
come under the category of “
dangerous people,” who presumably have
been neutralized as threats to national security by being converted
into U.S. citizens.
After September 11, Bush subsumed immigration under his coun-ter-terrorism strategy and, in his final two years, adopted an approach
that rested primarily on enforcement against illegal immigration.
The crackdown started in 2006, but
it became the leading edge of the
Bush policy after his bill for comprehensive immigration reform
crashed in Congress in June 2007.
With at least 323,000 foreigners deported last year, according to official
figures, the crackdown became the
most intense immigration enforcement since the mass expulsions of
Operation Wetback in 1954.
Yet despite the counterterrorism
emphasis and the enforcement campaign, the number of undocumented
immigrants in the country did not
substantially decline. According to
DHS’s estimate, in January 2007 there
were about 11. 8 million illegal immigrants in the United States.* Jeffrey
S. Passel, senior demographer at the
Pe w Hispanic Center, reached almost
exactly the same estimate.
Now come four books, written
or edited by scholars, that provide
a wealth of history about the ups
and downs of U.S. immigration enforcement; about the brisk evolution
of the terms used to demonize immigrants in political debates over
* The editorial policy of Americas Quarterly is to refer to immigrants
without valid immigration status as undocumented. This review uses the
term illegal immigrants to be consistent with the author’s other works.
