The Dream Deferred MARCELO M. SUÁREZ-OROZCO
New Trends, Old Policies
The rhetoric surrounding immigration in the U.S. does not reflect the recent shifts in the flow of immigrants—namely who and how many are coming, how they are coming, and the nature of their experience after they settle. The debate continues to focus on “illegal immigration.” Indeed, during the boom economic years of the
past two decades, the unauthorized population grew
dramatically from under 1 million in 1980 to a peak of
nearly 12 million in 2000. But in just over a decade, the
trend has reversed—leaving the political rhetoric on
both sides of the spectrum disconnected from reality.
Republican presidential candidates during the primary elections repeatedly warned their base of the
increased “illegal immigrant” threat, while President
Barack Obama has both intensified the Bush-era mass
deportations and stepped up the militarization of the
border. In fact, shortly after the 2008 recession, undocumented immigration to the U. S. had come to a virtual
standstill and unauthorized crossings reversed: there
were more unauthorized immigrants leaving than entering the country. 2
Much of the rhetoric on this issue has focused on the
supposed impact of undocumented immigration on security and public safety. But immigration—including
undocumented immigration—is systemically associated with lower rates of criminality, making the immi-grant-rich cities in border states some of the safest in the
nation. And contrary to claims that immigrants resist
assimilation into American culture, the children of today’s immigrants are learning English faster and better
than previous waves of immigrants, while (sadly) they
are losing their ability to speak their home language
within a couple of generations.
Public concern over immigration is aligned with general discontent with the federal government, which is regarded as bloated, ineffectual, out of touch, and unable
to discharge even its most basic duties. Several states
have exploited this concern by enacting controversial
laws—most notably Arizona, Alabama and Georgia.
These three states experienced a perfect storm of social and economic phenomena that made undocumented
immigration a salient political issue. The reasons were
threefold. First, all three states endured a severe economic shock during the financial crisis. For example,
the real estate sector in Arizona and Georgia, which had
been stimulated by, and benefited from, mass immigrant
144 Americas Quarterly SPRING 2012
labor during the boom years, crashed in 2008. According to the Case-Shiller Index, home prices in the Greater
Phoenix area declined by 55. 9 percent from 2006 to 2011.3
Second, there is a deepening demographic asymmetry
between older, whiter, wealthier, native citizens, and a
rapidly growing younger, darker, poorer, immigrant population. Arizona now has the widest gap in the nation
between its adult population ( 65 percent white) and its
population under the age of 18 ( 58 percent non-white).
Finally, Arizona, Georgia and Alabama were destinations for a steady flow of undocumented immigration.
The Tucson sector of the U. S. border more than doubled
the apprehensions of unauthorized immigrants—from
approximately 300,000 apprehensions in 1998 to over
600,000 by 2005.4
There is nothing unique about states inserting themselves into immigration policy. Before Arizona, there
was California’s Proposition 187 in 1994, also known as
the Save Our State initiative, that proposed a state-run
citizenship screening system to prohibit access by the
undocumented population to public health care, education and other social services. But the underlying impetus for SB 1070 in Arizona, HB 56 in Alabama and HB
87 in Georgia is the belief that more undocumented
immigrants are a strain on the economy and on public resources.
Reducing immigration to labor and economic concerns without considering children in families with
undocumented parents is a counterproductive, mis-
JONATHAN ERNS T/REU TERS
AMERICASQUARTERLY.ORG
