Immigration Issues in a Post 9/11 Nation

For our last topic we will explore migration patterns of ethnic Mexicans outside of the Southwest. This blog post will give some context to the migration story in general

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Global immigration is the result of an internationalized economy. Yet, the reaction has been focused on reinforcement of the physical border. It has become a politics of exclusion.

Sociologist Nestor P. Rodriguez stated, “The crisis of the border is not that ‘illegal’ aliens are swarming across the US-Mexico border but that global capitalists growth is overwhelming nation-states as units of socio-economic development.”

US-Mexico Border- Image via www.rsvlts.com

Our immigration policy in the US has really been focused on the politics of exclusion. We have militarized our southern border. During the Reagan era border patrol spending increased 130 percent and our policies have largely focused on the continual growth of this border exclusion industry.

For example, with the 1986 IRCA (Immigration and Reform Control Act), amnesty was granted for undocumented migrants who had been in the US for a period longer than 5 years. It also enforced employer sanctions to those who employed undocumented persons, and increased border enforcement. However, a lesser-known fact is that IRCA linked INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) to the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency). This increased the overall budget towards border enforcement.

Border Patrol funding and staffing increased by 40% between 1986 and 1990. In the decades since passage of IRCA, the Border Patrol’s budget has grown more than 500% and personnel increased over 200%. Despite these increases, it is estimated that 10.3 million unauthorized immigrants now live in the United States, with annual inflows averaging well over half a million a year and perhaps as high as 600,000-700,000 per year.

Clinton and Immigration

Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States- Image via www.biography.com

During the 1990s and a democratic presidency under Bill Clinton did not change federal policies towards the undocumented. Clinton also wanted to follow a hard line on undocumented migration. In 1994 the beginning of a series of operations: Operation Gatekeeper and Operation Hold the Line for example were created to prevent illegal entry into the US. Clinton’s policy set a new standard for border militarization.

In 1996 came the passage of the IRA IRA (Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibiltiy Act). Deportations were now called removals and the act of removal could be associated with criminal behavior making it easier to deport even legal immigrants. But it left an abundance of “gray area.”

Image via www.enlawyers.com

For example in 2001, INS deported Rosario Hernandez, a 39 year-old construction worker who had migrated to the US as a teenager. He lived in Garland, Texas, he was married to a US citizen, and had two children born in the US. He was deported because of a third DUI (Driving Under the Influence) conviction. The first two occurred almost 20 years prior. The third incident under the IRA IRA amounted to an aggravated felony so he was deported. So what happens- Does his family leave with him? Do they stay in the US since they are citizens?

The Impact of 9/11

Image via www.world-visits.com

September 11, 2001 the US suffers attacks against the World Trade Center in New York City at the hands of Islamic extremists. This changes everything. At that moment we as a nation are living in a period of time where we are at war with terrorism. What does that mean?

The terms of this imagined war on an imagined enemy has opened up the possibility for racial nativist discourse, couched in terms of American nationalism, in dangerous ways. 9/11 has allowed for a reinterpretation of race relations. Look at the days/weeks/months following the event. Persons, US citizens of Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern and even Southeast Asian Indian persons were harassed, scrutinized, brutalized and racially profiled.

The conceptual domestic war on terrorism allowed us to bring racial profiling to the forefront. Immigration, therefore, became not just a nuisance, but it is realized as an issue of national security. The discourse about immigration became “secure” our borders from the threat of terrorism. Immigrant containment piggybacks on the war on terrorism.   From 2001 to 2005, the media, along with the increased racial profiling of Arab Americans, also created a discourse that focused in on the US-Mexico border as an unruly, chaotic, and out of control space.

After 9/11 we also see how the conversation around “illegalization” becomes profitable business. Detention centers have increased greatly. On average ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, formerly known as INS) holds around 23,000 detainees a day in over 900 facilities. In 2003 60% of ICE detainees were held in either local prisons or private corporations such as the Corrections Corporation of America (started as a Texas corporation to house undocumented workers). The federal government pays these contracts $65 per detainee per day.

In 2005 we see the passage of HR4437-Border Patrol, Anti Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act. This act called to spend 2.2 billion in the construction/reinforcement of border fences almost exclusively the southern border. It also makes undocumented migration a felony and criminalizes the act of associating with undocumented migrants a crime (in other words if you help someone who is undocumented you can also be prosecuted). This begins an unprecedented level of community policing not seen before.

But the question that our current immigration has continuously failed to answer: approximately 11 million undocumented persons are already here, so what do we do about it now?

El Norte: Chicanas/os in the Midwest

The story of Mexicans in the Midwest introduces us to the concept of the Mexican Diaspora being constructed throughout middle “America.”

Historically in the Midwest, Mexicans were not the majority in any community they inhabited. There is much more diversity in terms of new immigrants, lots of European migration settlement, so the community and cultural production look very different than it does in the Southwest.

Mexican Cherry Pickers, Wisconsin, circa 1930s-source unknown

Labor agents played a primary role in the distribution of Mexicans throughout the Midwest.  The agents recruited ethnic Mexicans to work primarily in agriculture throughout the Midwest states primarily from Texas. Areas such as El Paso, Laredo, San Antonio, and Fort Worth were the staging grounds for the Midwest migration. Agriculture and cotton industry attracted Mexicans to move into Texas to work but the conditions were repressive. Texas was an extremely racially virulent place. Mexicans migrating from Texas to the Midwest region did so consciously to escape both repressive work conditions as well as racial violence.

Labor agents from Midwest urban industrial cities would go into Texas and recruit Mexican workers. Mexican workers would be willing to move to what they called El Norte. Many were curious about the jobs and knew that if the working conditions were not what they wanted they would break the contract and return to Texas to start the process all over again.

Mexican workers who did travel north to these urban opportunities would send word to others about the type of work available and opportunities that were given. This made the labor agents jobs easier because the word of mouth system helped legitimize their recruitment efforts. This system eventually changed the tide of the Southwest monopoly on Mexican workers. Mexican workers no longer only had one option, or a largely rural occupation option, but instead could have choices to move or migrate around to something different.

Early 20^th Century Migration

In this interwar period, post-1917 you see more and more Mexicans moving. By 1927, Mexicans in the Midwest totaled 63,700 and increased to 80,000 by the summer (including some agricultural farming opportunities). Migrant flows followed certain crops (sugar beets), industrial growth, or the railroads. It was a tough trek El Norte, not everyone was ready to live and work that type of distance from the Mexican border. The Southwest, while technically part of the US, had a strong Mexican cultural influence. Further away from the Border States meant also moving further away from the cultural comfort those communities offered.

Michigan Sugar Beet Workers, 1926 via history.fcgov.com

Michigan sugar beet harvest is one of the industries that initially lured Mexicans north. The migration was mostly families, although single male laborers did go as well. Families were seen as desirable because all parties could work, women and children, and often they were paid little or not at all. For the families, working as a unit sometimes provided the extra income that they needed to sustain. So while partially exploitative it was also in some ways welcomed. In the mid 1920s many went this migration through the railroad.

Growers were responsible for the families providing food, housing, and paying for transportation. Beet farms in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, and Michigan were all quite similar in this respect. In 1922 Mexicans totaled 33 % of Michigan’s sugar beet workers but by 1927 they were almost 75%.  

There were standard exploitative practices in the Midwest as well: subpar housing, cheated out of wages, or overworked. However, the situation was still not as severe as what most of them had encountered in Texas.

The other thing to note about this Midwest migration pattern is that when Mexicans moved north, they increasingly created a permanent community. While community permanence was happening in the Southwest there was a culture of seasonal migrant work, which still exists. Meaning that ethnic Mexicans may have had a home base but because of the nature of agricultural work in the Southwest states, many had to travel or follow the crops to maintain employment.

In the Midwest however, there was a movement towards urban centers when the seasonal harvest is done. The migration then to the cities, metropolitan areas, meant different types of employment opportunities. Many ethnic Mexicans began working for urban industrial companies. For example in Chicago they worked for steel and meatpacking and in Detroit, the auto industry. They became comfortable with the city and permanence of this type of work so they wouldn’t necessarily return to farming-agriculture work. Through the 1920s we see this transition of Mexicans in the Midwest from agricultural workers toward urban factory workers. Factory work became more appealing because it was better pay and was not seasonal. This was most attractive for families because this type of work meant that they would be able to stay in one place year round making sufficient wages so the children would not have to work and would instead have the opportunity to go to school. It was a moment to seize upward social mobility.

Working Big Auto: Detroit, Michigan

"The Jewel of Detroit" Mural, Diego Rivera 1933 via Detroit Institute of Arts

Detroit’s auto industry in particular drew Mexicans to work. The auto industry didn’t need to recruit often people moved to Detroit for work. By 1920 there were approximately 3,000 Mexicans in Detroit. The auto industry became a beacon in the North, attracting both African Americans and Mexicans. But Detroit, known as Jim Crow of the North, was a dangerous and racially volatile space, which complicated both work opportunities and housing settlements for communities of color.

In Detroit Mexicans mainly lived in the southwest sector near Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, and Armenian communities. Studies of Detroit’s housing patterns reflect a city that held stringent segregation patterns. African Americans, new immigrant communities, and ethnic Mexicans were kept inside the urban sector while whites fled to the suburbs.

The city itself was not structurally able to house the population. Ethnic Mexicans were caught in this housing density often forced to inhabit hovels where multiple families were forced to live in one dwelling. In 1930 4,500-5,000 Mexicans lived in an area less than one square mile away from Inland steel plant creating a dense population. Despite the issues ethnic Mexicans faced in areas like Detroit, the opportunity to work in the urban factory setting still represented more agency than they found in agriculture work in the Southwest.

San Jose: Multicultural Metropolitan

This week we will be focusing on the local Bay Area communities. This post will focus on San Jose, California, the 10th largest city in the US with a 33% Latina/o population, the majority of which is ethnic Mexican.

Greater San Jose, 1951

film by San Jose Chamber of Commerce

 via YouTube.com

HISTORY

Image via www.vintage-maps-prints.com

San Jose, California was founded in 1777 during the Spanish Colonial period. The city is actually older than Los Angeles and served as the first State capital from 1850-1851.

Santa Clara county and San Jose in particular were coined “Valley of the Hearts Delight” based on the fact that much of the 19^th and early 20^th based on the thriving agricultural production. So while we know San Jose as an urban/suburban center, it was in reality an agricultural space for much of its early development.

Image via lettersfromtheempire.com

Current residents in their 60s and 70s will remember San Jose when much of the area held large fruit orchards. There were canneries, packing plants, and food machinery in spaces where there is now housing developments and urban life. Starting in the 1950s, in the post World War II era, San Jose began to grow in population and size significantly. In the late 1940s over 100,000 acres of land in the valley was devoted to farm production and 90% of California’s canned fruit and vegetables was produced here. During the 1950s and 1960s canneries offered the main source of employment for the ethnic Mexican working class community.

Fruit Cannery, San Jose, CA. Image via Historic Postcard Collection,1925-1930, SJPL.

In San Jose the agriculture industry declines as the population began to grow. Farmlands were sold and real estate began to take over as the pastoral dream shifted into a burgeoning suburbia. By 1990 only 16,300 acres of land in Santa Clara County was used for agricultural production and the cannery industry, which boasted upwards of 50,000 workers in 1950, had less than 4,000 employees by 1992.

The population increase was also rapid in the second half of the 20^th century. In 1940 Santa Clara County had 175,000 residents with 69,000 people in San Jose. In 1990 Santa Clara County had 1,463,530 residents with 803,000 in San Jose.  The most recent population information shows San Jose at 1,015,785 as of 2014.

TECHNOLOGY CAPITAL

Notably, San Jose is part of the globally recognized “Silicon Valley.” The Bay Area has become the epicenter for technology. 1,500 of 2,500 electronic firms in the US are located within 30 miles of downtown San Jose. This shift from agriculture to technology was a major influence on the population increase and growth of the city. It created more jobs and more housing but the technology wave that we are currently riding also created a major division between the haves and have nots in San Jose.

Cesar Chavez at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, East San Jose, circa 1960s

Image via koolturamarketing.com

In the late 20^th century as the city of San Jose was evolving, we began to see a physical division of the population where East San Jose (east of the downtown area) became a concentration for working class and new immigrant communities, the largest being ethnic Mexican/ Chicana/o. Downtown San Jose during the 1980s reflected this shift as it turned from a vibrant social, business, and political space into a decaying eyesore for the city.

Downtown San Jose, First Street, 1970s 

Image source unknown

Since the 1980s more than 1.4 billion dollars have been spent on redeveloping the downtown area. However, this push to revitalize this space has also resulted in pushing out small business owners, many of which at the time were Mexican owned. Ethnic Mexican businesses began to repopulate in East San Jose where there was a larger concentration of ethnic Mexican community. But what this demonstrates is the emergence of San Jose as a dual city. On one side (metaphorically and geographically on the Westside) you have the tech industry, which boasts high-skilled, highly educated workers representing the bulk of the income. On the other side (East San Jose and parts of South San Jose) you have a secondary labor force predominately working-class and specifically racialized Latinas/os (ethnic Mexican), Vietnamese, Filipinas/os, etc.

San Jose presents itself as wealthy with a median income of $80,977 (2013), which is significantly higher than the overall state average. And yet the wealth is not evenly distributed. Approximately 1/3 of the regions Latina/o households are near or below the poverty line. With the current state of the city’s housing costs soaring, along with much of the Bay Area, we can expect to see an exodus of working class communities, largely communities of color. People are having to make decisions about leaving their homes or staying in a place where the rent is skyrocketing to more than 50% of their income. This will definitely impact our overall conversation about what makes a community.