THE US-MEXICAN BORDER

Osvaldo Jordan

December 1, 2009

HISTORICAL BORDERS• Florida, the Louisiana Purchase, Texas, the

Southwest and California were all Spanish colonies at different historical times.

• After US incorporation, all the remaining populations became Spanish-speaking Catholic minorities in a majority English-speaking Protestant country.

• In this regard, the US continental Southern boundary has always been a border between two different cultural areas.

BORDER CHRONOLOGYMassey, Durand, and Malone (2002) define the following historical periods:

1900-1929. The Era of the Enganche.

1929-1941. The Era of Deportations.

1942-1964. The Bracero Era.

1965-1985. The Era of Undocumented Migration.

1986-2000. The Great Divide.

OTHER MIGRATIONS• With the Cold War, a new wave of immigrants

traveled to the US as political refugees – Cubans, Nicaraguans, Salvadorians, and Guatemalans.

• By the 1990s, politics ceased to be the main driver for immigration, and the Clinton administration tried to reverse preferential treatments for refugees and even implement deportations.

• In spite of these efforts, immigrants from new groups increased in numbers, including Colombians, Dominicans, Peruvians, Bolivians, Hondurans, Venezuelans, and Argentineans (as also happened in Europe and even in Japan).

TAMPERING WITH THE MACHINE

• 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). Increased immigration restrictions, such as employer sanctions and strengthening the Border Patrol; yet declared amnesty to long-term undocumented residents (2.3 million Mexicans).

• 1990 Immigration Act. Reinforcing the same restrictive measures of IRCA, especially restrictions on bringing family members.

• “Prevention Through Deterrence”. Operation Blockade (1993) in El Paso/Ciudad Juarez; and Operation Gatekeeper (1994) in Tijuana/San Diego.

TAMPERING WITH THE MACHINE

• Operation Safeguard (1995) in Arizona, and Operation Rio Grande (1997) in Texas.

• 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. Reviving Proposition 187 and extending these measures to legal immigrants.

• Militarization of Border Police Operations has increased the number of illegal immigrants, threatened the security of migrants, and promoted naturalization, and human rights violations.

A NEW BORDER POLICY AND THE WAR ON TERROR

• In 2005, the House passed the Sensenbrenner Bill to criminalize recruitment of illegal immigrants.

• President Bush responded with a proposal to deploy the National Guard, establish a guest worker program, and legalize existing immigrants. This Bill was defeated in 2007.

• Immigrant communities responded with massive demonstrations all over the country.

OPPOSING FORCES ON NORTH AMERICAN INTEGRATION

• 1986. Immigration Control and Reform Act (IRCA).

• 1994. North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA would enable Mexico to export goods and not people?

• Following the Model of the European Union?

US-MEXICO IMMIGRATION

• What are the immigrants: Insurgents, drug traffickers, or terrorists?

• The criminalization of immigration has separated families, indigenous peoples, and natural areas.

• Yet, the Mexican cartels have become increasingly violent, leading to the US acceptance of the Merida Initiative.

MEXICAN MIGRATION• Huntington Thesis. Hispanic (Mexican)

migration represents an unprecedented threat to US national identity.

• Levine Thesis. Immigration has historically transformed the culture of the United States, but migrants have also been transformed by the American experience.The American public is deeply divided about the issue of immigration, and this question has been framed in terms of national security after the start of the War on Terror.