Immigration Law and Immigrants' Lived Experiences

• Author: Leisy J. Abrego
• Pages: 258-273

The Handbook of Law and Society, First Edition. Edited by Austin Sarat and Patricia Ewick.

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Introduction

Rodrigo Laínez had been a manager at a grocery store in San Salvador, El Salvador

for over a decade. He and his wife were saving up to pay for college for their sons.

When Rodrigo unfairly lost his job, he prayed with his congregation and asked his

neighbors for leads to other jobs. Although he was sure he would impress employers

with his loyalty and hard work, after several unsuccessful months and as the family’s

savings dwindled, he decided to migrate to the United States. Mr. Laínez started out

by looking into the possibility of applying for a US tourist visa; but the odds were

against him. Without a steady job or a large bank balance, the chances of being

awarded a visa were slim. So rather than lose the $100 non‐refundable visa applica-

tion fee, he used the money to help secure a trip with a reputable immigrant

smuggler. The family offered their house as collateral for the $6,000 trip to the

United States and hoped for the best. Soon into the trip, however, Mr. Laínez learned

that the smuggler was corrupt. Rodrigo went hungry, had to find lodging on his own

in some towns, and suffered retribution when he blocked the smuggler from sexually

assaulting a fellow migrant.

When Mr. Laínez finally crossed the border into the United States, Border Patrol

agents quickly apprehended him. He spent two months in overcrowded detention

centers in Arizona and California, only to be deported back to El Salvador. After a

couple of months of another unsuccessful job search, Rodrigo migrated again. This

time, he made it to the United States and secured a job at a warehouse in Los Angeles.

His employers never offered proper training, did not provide the necessary safety

equipment, and paid him less than minimum wage. As a result, he worked intensely

and without proper protection, carrying heavy loads until he was severely injured.

Immigration Law and Immigrants’

Lived Experiences

Leisy J. Abrego

17

Immigration Law and Immigrants’ Lived Experiences 259

Rather than aiding him, his employers fired him. Unaware of his rights and worried

about deportation, Mr. Laínez did not file a complaint. Instead, he moved on to

other jobs where his back injury prevented him from performing the strenuous

tasks and he was quickly fired.

Although readers may be inclined to dismiss Mr. Laínez’s experiences as an

example of ongoing bad luck, the study of immigration laws reveals that immigrants’

“misfortune” is frequently the result of structural inequalities produced and

maintained by US immigration policies. In his case, for example, the very policies

that denied him a visa determined his separation from his family and shepherded

him toward a form of travel involving unspeakable violence to get to the United

States. Once in the country, US immigration laws provide only heavily restricted

pathways to legalization that leave millions of people, like Mr. Laínez, outside of the

law. Meanwhile, changing immigration policies at the federal, state, and local levels

and increased enforcement practices create a context of generalized fear and repres-

sion in immigrants’ day‐to‐day lives, even when they are not actually detained. In

the case of Mr. Laínez, it is in this context that he (like millions of other immigrants)

is likely to be exploited and simultaneously prevented from pursuing his rights as a

labo rer.

In this chapter, I examine how immigration laws powerfully structure everything

from the journey of migration to migrants’ daily lives. Indeed, immigration laws

have come to occupy an increasingly prominent place in research on immigrant

integration in the twenty‐first century. Determining who may enter and what rights

migrants may access, these laws are important sites for the study of the production

and maintenance of inequality, providing fruitful ground for the examination of a

variety of empirical and theoretical puzzles in law and society research. Based mostly

on the contemporary United States, this chapter explores the dynamic field of immi-

gration law and society. It examines the key empirical and theoretical contributions

of current scholarship and provides suggestions for future lines of research.

The Work of Immigration Laws

In an effort to control the flow of international migration, nation‐states implement

immigration laws with globally dynamic consequences (Zolberg 1999). At the macro

level, immigration laws determine the number and origin of authorized migrants,

with shifts based purportedly on changing demographic and labor goals (Ngai2004).

Historically, countries around the world have opened doors for certain categories of

migrants, often based on factors that include race, ethnicity, occupation, educational

attainment, or financial resources (FitzGerald and Cook‐Martín 2014). They have

also barred entry to categories of people perceived to be threats according to shifting

social and political prejudices and concerns (Luibhéid 2008). Consequently, as

authorities enforce immigration laws, they also do the work of legitimating the

nation‐state’s boundaries – establishing physical borders and making explicit who is

and who is not to be considered a member of the polity.