Latino immigrant rights in the shadow of the national security state: responses to domestic preemptive strikes.

• Date: 22 March 2004
• Author: Jonas, Susanne,Tactaquin, Catherine
• Published date: 22 March 2004
• Author: Jonas, Susanne

Introduction

THIS ARTICLE GREW OUT OF A JOINT PROJECT ON LEGALIZATION STRATEGIES FOR undocumented immigrants, undertaken by the authors in early 2001--before September 11, 2001. It is part of an ongoing project, and thus hot a finished document; the topic is a "moving target" and key events are changing very rapidly (e.g., the Patriot Act and other legislation affecting migrants). Although the article focuses on Latino immigrants, other immigrant groups also share the conditions and responses described here. We hope that these reflections will stimulate further interest and activism, particularly in the context of the 2004 election in the U.S.

Central to out argument is the notion that the rate of immigrants is key to the future of democracy in the U.S. and the Americas as a hemisphere. Following the passage of Proposition 187 in California and at the height of the immigrant-bashing laws of the mid-1990s in the U.S. Congress, we characterized U.S. immigration policy as being dominated by a national security regime (Jonas, 1999). In the wake of September 11, 2001, with U.S. military action abroad in the name of "fighting terrorism," and the creation of new "national security" laws and infrastructures within the U.S., we are witnessing the establishment of a national security state apparatus that threatens to undermine democracy within the U.S. and abroad. That is the larger backdrop for this article, which aims to reframe the issues and struggles for immigrant rights outside (in opposition to) the U.S.-centric "national security" mentality. We shall examine the following aspects:

* The history of anti-immigrant measures since the mid-1990s and the brief "political opening" for legalization just before September 11, 2001;

* The effects of September 11 on immigrant rights--hence the title, "in the shadow of the national security state." We emphasize the effects of the "Patriot" Act(s) and associated legislation for Latinos, although several other immigrant/non-citizen communities (Arabs, South Asians) were much more heavily affected. That is precisely our point: once the government begins to strip away the rights of the most vulnerable (Arab and Arab-American communities), the "spillover" effect is very rapid and dangerous for all immigrants and other noncitizens--and eventually for U.S. citizens as well;

* Defensive and proactive immigrant rights organizing and legalization strategies within the "spaces" that still exist, from the viewpoint of immigrants themselves;

* Longer-range prospects for issues of immigrant rights, legalization, and citizenship. We shall argue that however bleak their prospects--now and for the immediate future--immigrant rights, legalization, and citizenship are issues that will not disappear. They will remain on the national and hemispheric agendas for reasons having to do with three major factors: immigrant organizing ("agency"), long-range structural considerations in the Americas, and the gradual construction of "international immigrant rights regimes";

* Long-range implications of immigrant rights issues for U.S. society and democracy; in this context, we suggest directions for reconceptualizing full citizenship (including the problem of second-class citizenship) that might guide research and organizing during this difficult and fundamentally anti-immigrant period.

Backdrop: Brief History Since the mid-1990s:

Our starting point is 1996, one of the major turning points in U.S. immigrant regimes in the 20th century. The previous turning points were the 1920s, with their racially driven immigrant quota laws, and the more immigrant-friendly law of 1965, which abolished quotas and instituted family reunification as a major criterion. Signaling concern over the growing presence of undocumented immigrants, Congress passed the Immigrant Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986, after more than a decade of political wrangling and the deliberations of a national commission on sweeping immigration reform. IRCA included a legalization program, but also sanctions for employers who hired undocumented workers, effectively "criminalizing" the workers. A decade later, in 1996, following the 1994 passage and subsequent overturn of Proposition 187 in California (which would have denied all public services to undocumented immigrants), Congress passed a trio of three laws that went far beyond Proposition 187 in their attack on immigrants:

* The Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) stripped immigrants and asylum seekers of many basic legal rights (including due process rights), and facilitated and stepped up proceedings for exclusion and deportation by eliminating the right of appeal and judicial review of decisions made by one INS agent. In short, the measure's "court-stripping" provisions overhauled the entire infrastructure of immigration proceedings. In addition, it significantly expanded the list of crimes defined as "aggravated felonies" that made legal permanent residents and undocumented immigrants deportable, and in numerous other ways stipulated new grounds for exclusion and deportation ("removal").

* The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996 was initially adopted to commemorate the victims of the April 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City's Federal Building by a right-wing, native-born Angio-American. Although the bombing was totally unrelated to immigrants, the law, as it emerged from the (Republican-dominated) House-Senate Conference Committee, contained seriously punitive anti-immigrant provisions. President Clinton signed that bill, promising to repeal its anti-immigrant provisions, but never did so. These provisions stipulated mandatory detention of any immigrant--legal or undocumented--who had ever committed a crime (including petty offenses such as minor drug convictions and shoplifting, as well as major felonies) for which the penalty was one year in jail. Worse yet was the law's retroactivity: even if the offense had been committed 15 to 20 years earlier and the immigrant had subsequently lived an exemplary life as a legal resident, (s)he now became deportable. Similarly, noncitizens who had ever supported a group that had at one or another time been on the attorney general's list of "terrorist groups" (e.g., El Salvador's FMLN) now became deportable. In practice, this meant that when any legal permanent resident who had ever violated the law went to the INS to file naturalization papers, (s)he could find him/herself deported instead--a rights denial featured on Ted Koppel's "Nightline," in a program called "Man Without a Country" (November 25, 1998). Beyond the retroactivity, particularly disturbing was the use of secret evidence and the fact that deportation could be automatic--the immigrant would have no hearing or recourse to review the deportation decision, and would not be eligible for release.

* The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (PRWOA, more commonly known as the Welfare Reform Act) of 1996 denied public services and benefits to all noncitizens--that is, to long-term legal permanent residents (LPRs) and undocumented immigrants. In this sense, it moved the line far beyond California's Proposition 187, which aimed to deny services "only" to undocumented immigrants, this time excluding all noncitizens.

Other measures accompanied these three bills: militarization of the border with Mexico, curtailment of the definition of "refugee," harsher attitudes against legalization programs, and even such extreme proposals as repeal of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which gives citizenship to all who are born on U.S. soil. (In the late 1990s, this last campaign was unsuccessful, but it reappeared in 2003.) Taken together, these bills created a national security regime for immigrants, stripping away their rights punitively and arbitrarily.

The redefinition of immigrants as a "national security threat" went far beyond anti-Communist Cold War definitions and was far more exclusionary, as it included "soft security issues" such as cultural differences, social instability, environmental degradation, population growth, social service cutbacks, and loss of jobs. In short, "national security" was being redefined to include freedom not only from external threats, but also from fear or anxiety concerning perceived economic and/or cultural damage (e.g., job competition) (see Jonas, 1999). Racializing, cultural anti-immigrant arguments (particularly against Mexicans) are being revived in 2004, most notably in the new book by Samuel Huntington, Harvard's leading political scientist, entitled Who Are We?

Social-economic maladies and insecurities have affected the lives of the U.S. population, due mainly to the restructuring and neoliberalization of the U.S. economy since the 1980s ("Reaganomics") and 1990s--i.e., privatization, corporate downsizing, and "outsourcing" of jobs to low-wage labor havens. The end of the Cold War also cost many defense industry workers their jobs. Such middle-class, professional jobs are seldom if ever held by Latino immigrants. California Governor Pete Wilson's successful use of Proposition 187 in his 1994 reelection bid led other politicians to reproduce his message, blaming immigrants for economic and social insecurities, for the loss of jobs and services to native-born Americans. This politically expedient winning strategy is a well-established pattern that has been repeated many times in U.S. history. Hence was (re)born the social construction of undocumented immigrants as "illegal aliens," as if foreign invaders from another planet.

These measures occurred against the background of two realities that contradicted the stated purposes of the anti-immigrant legislation. First, even during recessionary periods, there remained an ongoing (indeed, permanent) need for immigrants as low-wage labor for agriculture, industry, and services; in fact, major business interests had never...