Susanne Jonas "Latino Immigrant Rights, Legalization Strategies and Citizenship in the Shadow of the National Security State: Responses to Domestic Preemptive Strikes" April 12, 2004

Professor Susanne Jonas of UC-Santa Cruz (at left, being introduced by Professor Beatriz Manz) spoke about the changing nature of immigration and legalization requirements in the United States. She argued that while responses to the September 11 attacks have dramatically changed the nature of the debate about immigration, the trend toward more restrictive policies actually began in the mid-1990s.

In the Shadow of the National Security State
By Jason Cato

Anti-immigrant sentiment and policy surged onto the social and political landscape of the United States during the first half of the 1990s. Amid a rapidly transforming context of economic integration, neoliberals extolled the benefits of free trade. But the darker side of economic restructuring was a political resurgence of divisive class and race relations. Rather than interrogate the structural processes driving job loss, a citizenry faltering under the new flexible capitalism increasingly scapegoated immigrants for their travails. Immigrants were blamed for threatening the social and racial unity of the American nation, stealing much-needed jobs and draining public resources supported by tax-paying U.S. citizens. Latinos, particularly the undocumented, became unwittingly ensnared in the racist immigrant-bashing that dominated a host of policy initiatives at local, state and national levels. Such anti-immigrant hysteria forcefully melded a politics of citizenship with deep-seated anxieties over the racial and ethnic diversity of the nation.

However, the political opportunity for a more open immigration policy materialized in the late 1990s and the first years of the new millennium. In 2000 and 2001, Mexico’s then Minister of Foreign Affairs Jorge Castañeda lobbied the U.S. Congress to demand what he called “the whole enchilada,” a far-reaching immigration reform that would include regularization and a guest worker program. Newly elected President of Mexico Vicente Fox also campaigned in the U.S., calling for policies that addressed the binational significance of immigration for both the U.S. and Mexico. These Bush–Fox talks increased expectations among immigrant communities and immigrant rights organizations. Despite anxiety over the potential absence of provisions protecting immigrants living and working in the U.S., the Bush-Fox talks seemed to mark a departure from the hysteria of the early 1990s and an opening for more progressive, bilateral negotiations on immigration.

The September 11th terrorist attacks braked this forward momentum. The U.S. unilaterally closed down its borders and stopped talking of immigration reform. National security overwhelmed all other concerns, including immigration, in the U.S. administration’s list of priorities, resulting in the indefinite closure of all new policy initiatives and bilateral negotiations on immigration. In this new security climate, the alchemy of nation reshaped the historical legacies of anti-immigrant sentiment into a discourse on terror. All of a sudden, the figure of the immigrant metamorphosed into that of the terrorist.

In the wake of September 11th, the national policy agenda, particularly immigration policy, has become dominated by the new national security regime and its political discourse. During her presentation at CLAS, Susanne Jonas, Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the UC Santa Cruz, argued that the fate of immigrants is key to the future of democracy in the U.S. Once the government attacks the rights of the most vulnerable, the potential for a “spill-over effect” endangers the civil and human rights of both long-term immigrants and U.S. citizens.

The response to September 11, Professor Jonas contended, has accelerated trends toward more restrictive immigration policies, especially towards Arabs and Arab-Americans, but also spilling over onto other immigrants of color. The strongest countervailing force against these limits, producers who rely on cheap immigrant and migrant labor, limit their support to policies that supply that labor, such as guest worker programs.

Jonas argues that a series of immigration-related legislation passed in 1996 represents a crucial turning point, alongside the restrictive and race-based policies of the 1920s and the loosening of restrictions in 1965. After the overturning of Proposition 187, Congress passed three laws that have had dire consequences for immigrants. The Illegal Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 stripped away basic rights and facilitated deportation proceedings by eliminating the rights of appeal, a process commonly referred to as “court stripping.” Additionally, the Welfare Act of 1996 denied all rights and benefits to all noncitizens, including long-term legal and undocumented immigrants. Finally, the Antiterrorism and Affective Death Penalty Act of 1996 came to bear upon immigrants in particular. A House–Senate conference stipulated the addition of a Republican-led provision, which required mandatory detention of immigrants who had (a) ever committed a crime for which the penalty was one year in jail, or (b) supported a group listed on the Attorney General’s list of terrorist organizations. The net effect, Jonas argues, is that many more immigrants went to deportation hearings rather than citizenship proceedings.

But the political pendulum soon swung back towards the center in the later years of the Clinton administration, a trend which continued in the early part of George W. Bush’s term. A new political climate fostered opportunities for opening immigration policy under an important AFL-CIO alliance with corporations in a collective push for an amnesty for undocumented workers. According to Jonas, the Bush–Fox talks that transpired in this context signaled a climate “less unfavorable” than had been the case in the previous decade.

After the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington D.C., and the ensuing sense of national emergency, Congress passed without public hearing the U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001. In terms of legislation relating to immigration, Jonas argues that the Patriot Act clearly reverses the progress made prior to September 11. Both reflecting and facilitating a conflation of terrorism with immigration, the controversial Act enables detention up to seven days — without access to a lawyer — of immigrants suspected of having terrorist ties. It also makes legal and undocumented residents subject to preventive holdings.

These provisions, according to Jonas, made legal residents as vulnerable as the undocumented, an effect that indicates how the dividing line in the immigration debate shifted from legal versus undocumented to citizen versus noncitizen status.

What have been the effects of these transformations for immigrant communities in the U.S.? Jonas argues that September 11th and the ensuing legislation has produced a real change in how the U.S. public views immigrants. Citing a 2003 Univision poll, 60 percent of those survey viewed noncitizens as a national security threat. The new security context has created tremendous fear among immigrant communities and posed numerous problems for traveling domestically and abroad. New background checks and all immigrant proceedings have slowed down, while the pace of detentions and deportations has stepped up, with no appeal process. Immigrants are also more likely to be held for reasons unrelated to terror. All these conditions nullify the possibility of new legislation for legalization in the future, argued Jonas.

While the political transformations in the wake of September 11th seem to signal the bleakest of prospects for progress on immigration policy, immigrants have not been passive subjects in this process. Highlighting the increase in immigrant rights organizing, Jonas suggested immigrant rights, legalization and citizenship would remain on the national political agenda for several reasons. First, immigrant rights groups have been pivotal at national and international levels. For example, immigrants have been working hard to establish ongoing coalitions between immigrant rights groups and labor. More immigrants are pressuring their home governments to issue matriculas consulares, identification cards which can be used to open a bank account. And immigrant rights organizations in the U.S. have been building ties with counterpart organizations in other countries, facilitating and strengthening transnational ties. Such activism has led to the gradual construction of a transnational immigrant rights regime that will continue to push for international initiatives on immigration.

Long-term structural considerations also prevent the disappearance of immigrant rights issues. Foremost is the general importance of immigrants in the U.S. economy and the permanent need for immigrants as cheap labor. Second, the proposals for earned legalization entertained during the Bush–Fox talks permanently altered the immigration agenda. Third, the increasing importance of the Latino vote will continue to place immigration issues as a high priority, especially for first time voters, said Jonas. Lastly, the intensification of economic integration, manifest in extensions of free trade policy represented by the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and Plan Puebla Panama, will inevitably facilitate population movement.

The issue of immigrant rights affects all residents of the U.S., particularly as government willingness to attack the most vulnerable affects the quality of democracy for present and future generations. In “the shadow of the national security state,” Jonas predicted the activism of immigrant rights organizations would be central to safeguarding the future of U.S. democracy.

Susanne Jonas teaches Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She presented her paper “Latino Immigrant Rights, Legislation Strategies, and the Shadow of the National Security State,” at CLAS on April 12, 2004.

Jason Cato is a doctoral student in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley.

Professor Jonas speaks with a graduate student after the talk.