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1 Introduction The Power of a Good Story Let me state the following premise about which there is little disagreement. It is the obligation of the Federal Government to secure the borders of the Nation from illegal entry and unauthorized invasion. . . . It is not a question of being anti-immigration. This country was founded by immigrants. I am the son of one of them. —Rep. Steven Horn (R-CA), August 9, 1996 In these opening remarks to a hearing on federal border control efforts, immigrants appear simultaneously as villainous invaders of the nation and as its heroic founders. That Americans view and treat the immigrant population with both veneration and fear is an accepted peculiarity of the nation’s history. However, Congressman Horn’s remarks also reveal four themes that have become the hallmarks of contemporary discourse on immigration policy, which blends old and new sensibilities about the benefits and harms of immigration to the nation. For example, Mr. Horn reminds his audience that the only entity with the power to engage in national defense is the federal government. This first theme, the tendency in political discourse to describe immigration with the crisis language of “war” and “invasion,” is as old as the immigration phenomenon.1 Similarly, the congressman’s reminder that the federal government has a responsibility to control immigration alludes to another historical theme, the dispute over state versus federal fiscal responsibilities in immigration administration and settlement. State and local governments have periodically complained that they bear the costs of large-scale immigration policies that they do not design, but are mandated to implement. In 1882, Newton_pp001-066.indd 1 Newton_pp001-066.indd 1 5/3/08 4:12:38 PM 5/3/08 4:12:38 PM 2 Introduction for example, the city of New York threatened to close down immigrant processing centers at Castle Garden (where immigrants were processed prior to Ellis Island) until the federal government made funds available to cover administrative costs of immigration. Over one hundred years later, in 1994, the governors of Arizona, California, and Florida appealed to Congress to reimburse their states for the fiscal costs of immigration.2 Concern about un-funded federal mandates and the fiscal burdens of immigration even led states to take matters into their own hands: in 1994 California voters passed Proposition 187, designed in part to limit illegal immigrant access to state-funded social services, and in part to send a clear message about California’s unwillingness to follow in lock-step with policy devised in Washington, D.C.3 Since the passage of Proposition 187, a growing number of states and cities has legislated responses to what they perceive as failure of control at the federal level.4 The third and fourth themes in the congressman’s statement are modern . The desire to avoid appearing anti-immigrant and, perhaps inadvertently , appearing racist, reflects the constraints lawmakers feel when embarking on immigration reform in a post–Civil Rights era. Mr. Horn tries to assure his audience that asserting control over immigrant invasions and unauthorized entries is not “anti-immigration.” He simply wishes to keep out the unauthorized, the invaders—the bad kinds of immigrants. To further the distinction, he alludes to his own immigrant past: clearly, there are good immigrants out there; in fact, he is the product of such good immigrants who “founded this nation”—the son of the right kind of immigrants. While it may not be his intent to do this, Congressman Horn’s statement also reveals the fourth theme of contemporary immigration debates: the privileging of the European immigrant experience. The congressman appeals to his own European (white) heritage, credits European immigration with the founding of the nation, and in so doing, engages in modern American mythmaking at the expense of American history. Although immigration from Latin America and Asia is not new to the United States, this immigration (which is presently dominated by immigrants from Mexico) is sidelined in favor of stories that establish European immigration of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the “immigration experience.” With the so-called First and Second Wave immigrants (mainly Europeans arriving between 1840 to 1880, and 1900 to 1920, respectively) having supposedly become fully assimilated, the question of whether current immigrants have what it takes to assimilate and be as successful as those who came before has become common. Newton_pp001-066.indd 2 Newton_pp001-066.indd 2 5/3/08 4:12:39 PM 5/3/08 4:12:39 PM [3...

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