Model Immigrants and Undesirable Aliens: The Cost of Immigration Reform in the 1990s

Conclusion: Legacies of Failed Reform

235 Conclusion Legacies of Failed Reform Fifteen years after the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), it is difficult to ignore the fact that it never achieved the goals outlined by politicians in the mid-s. Most notably, the IIRIRA has failed to reduce the population of undocumented immigrants residing in the United States. Quite to the contrary, the approximate number of undocumented persons has more than doubled over the last decade and a half. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) estimates indicate that the unauthorized resident population was roughly . million as of October  and growing by about three hundred thousand persons a year. By October , when the IIRIRA was signed into law, there were approximately five million unauthorized immigrants present in the United States. According to the Department of Homeland Security, this number grew at an unprecedented rate to an alltime high in , when the unauthorized immigrant population reached . million. Mostly due to the economic recession, estimates indicate a slightly lower total of . million undocumented persons as of October  (Hoefer, Retina, and Baker , ). The vast majority of these people entered the United States more than ten years ago ( percent), and . million ( percent) have called the United States home for more than twenty years (Hoefer, Retina, and Baker , ). This increase is a direct result of the policies that were set into place in the mid-s. Instead of deterring undocumented migrants from entering the United States in the first place, increased border-patrol measures have discouraged return migration. Militarizing the border means that migrants have to take greater risks and pay more money to human smugglers . As a result, undocumented Mexicans, in particular, are no longer engaging in the same pattern of back and forth migration that has been characteristic of that population for decades; they are more likely to stay in the United States permanently to avoid costly and dangerous border crossings. Even more important, the IIRIRA did nothing to prevent 236 · CONCLUSION people from overstaying their temporary visas. Since there is little risk of detection and since many businesses continue to overlook the fact that these individuals have no work permits or, in many cases, fraudulent documents , the number of immigrants living in the United States on expired visas has increased consistently. I believe, however, that this remarkable difference between proclaimed goals and actual effects should not be interpreted as a sign that the IIRIRA is a failed policy. Instead, the IIRIRA has furthered neoliberal objectives , and its consequences have been highly advantageous for politicians, business owners, and at least to a certain extent, the U.S. welfare state. In the course of the discourse, it has become a widely accepted “truth” that increased expenditures for border-patrol measures are a necessary and rational response to the threat posed by undocumented workers and, even more so, by terrorists and other “criminal aliens.” Especially after the tragic events on September , , it has become almost impossible for politicians to speak out against border fences and other border-patrol measures. While there is no evidence that these costly enforcementonly policies have lowered the number of undocumented immigrants or have led to the apprehension of any terrorists, they fulfill an important function within the discourse. By advocating for more border patrol, politicians show that they are committed to homeland security and keeping Americans safe. Not surprisingly, many politicians are still trying to pass measures that would militarize the U.S.–Mexico border even further. As previous chapters have demonstrated, congressional debates (and to a lesser extent media representations) from the mid-s constructed undocumented immigrants as an undesirable underclass of lawbreakers that are uneducated, unskilled, low-wage laborers. In other words, undocumented workers were commonly portrayed as “anticitizens,” who needed to be policed, detained, and if necessary deported. For the most part, politicians and the media have framed their concerns in neoliberal terms. They argue that, due to their lack of education and marketable skills, undocumented immigrants have no potential to develop into responsible neoliberal subjects and will likely represent a permanent unassimilable underclass. Building border fences and equipping border-patrol officers with high-tech gear thus seems to be a reasonable response to this threat. In many cases, this neoliberal cost–benefit analysis was explicitly connected to anxieties about crime and terrorism. Based on the fact that many immigrants resided in the United States without proper paper work, CONCLUSION · 237 the discourse frequently categorized...