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

3. Dehumanizing the Undocumented: The Legislative Language of Illegality

111  Dehumanizing the Undocumented The Legislative Language of Illegality The previous chapter examined congressional discussions of the legal immigration system. In particular, the analysis focused on one noteworthy discursive strand: the controversy about family reunification. In accordance with a neoliberal project designed to impose economic rationale on governmental policies, many politicians felt that the U.S. immigration system should give preferential treatment to immigrants who had acted like self-sufficient neoliberal subjects and had the potential to develop into “net contributors” to the American economy. At the same time, politicians were also careful to buttress this economically driven logic with a humanistic discourse about heteronormative family values and moral obligations. Family-sponsored immigrants were described as particularly desirable because the nuclear family unit could function as an informal support network and alleviate the financial responsibilities of federal and state governments . Family-values rhetoric was used to both support and humanize the impersonal economic logic that drove the debate and deflect criticisms that dismissed the proposed reform measures as meanspirited and overly punitive. While Congress was eager to portray legal immigrants as responsible, hardworking, community-minded individuals who lived in traditional nuclear family units, they were reluctant to acknowledge that undocumented immigrants were anything but lawbreakers and low-cost laborers. In an effort to justify his reform proposal, Lamar S. Smith (R-TX), for example, admitted that “illegal aliens are not the enemy. . . . Most have good intentions.” However, he quickly added, “We cannot allow the human faces to mask the very real crisis in illegal immigration” (United States Congress, House, March , ). In contrast to the discourse about legal immigration, which weighed humanistic concerns against economic considerations, Congress was quite comfortable to discuss undocumented 112 · DEHUMANIZING THE UNDOCUMENTED immigrants’ economic impact without much regard to the human side of the issue. A comparison of the two Jordan Commission reports to Congress effectively illustrates these dramatic differences between the perception of legal and illegal immigrants. In their  report on the legal immigration system, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform made it clear that “a properly regulated system of legal immigration is in the national interest of the United States” (U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform , i). The committee members emphasized the fact that legal immigrants create new businesses, revive neighborhoods, and “strengthen American scientific , literary, artistic and other cultural resources” (U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform , i). Legal immigrants were desirable not only because of their economic contributions but also because diversity was hailed as an “important [component] of good schools and strong communities ” (U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform , i). Without a doubt, similar arguments could have been made with regard to undocumented workers. However, the Jordan Commission—and, as the following analysis will show, U.S. Congress—failed to acknowledge that unauthorized workers have also made important social and cultural contributions. In those rare instances when the commission recognized that “the presence of illegal aliens in those same communities has not, however, always been of such concern to public officials, employers, or the general public ,” they still claimed that these immigrants were only tolerated because “many private citizens and businesses have taken advantage of the presence of illegal workers and have effectively encouraged their migration by employing them at low wages” (U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform , ). Apparently, undocumented immigrants’ only meaningful contribution to U.S. society was of an economic nature. In contrast to this rather simplistic representation of undocumented immigrants’ positive contributions, the U.S. government had a long list of complaints and concerns about this particular population. As the following analysis will demonstrate, congressional debates tied economic considerations to concerns about national security and crime rates and underlined these arguments with alarmist rhetoric about undocumented immigrants’ “uncontrolled sexuality” and extensive use of public services . Despite the fact that several overriding concerns—such as welfare eligibility and immigrants’ effect on the school system—connected the discourse about undocumented immigrants to the debate about the legal DEHUMANIZING THE UNDOCUMENTED · 113 immigration system, these issues were discussed differently in each context . Whereas politicians were careful to weigh economic considerations against concerns about the well-being of documented immigrants, the discourse about undocumented immigrants was highly unsympathetic and portrayed these people as a threatening, undesirable, and unassimilable underclass. This chapter will provide an analysis of the discourse on undocumented immigrants. I will compare the rhetoric about undocumented immigrants to the way that politicians portrayed legal immigration. The next three...