American Immigration After 1996: The Shifting Ground of Political Inclusion

Chapter 2. Enemy Invaders!: Mexican Immigrants and U.S. Wars Against Them

2 enemy invaders! Mexican Immigrants and U.S. Wars Against Them Although U.S. assimilation norms have been historically intolerant of groups who are also the most politically and economically vulnerable, issues of national security, sovereignty, and war time measures today interact with these norms to produce a progressively more hostile context of reception for controversial immigration groups.1 In this chapter and the next, I investigate how poorer Mexican immigrant workers have been increasingly, constructed as threats to American national sovereignty, and thus more as enemies than either “legals” or (criminal) “illegals.” Older discourses and stereotypes about Mexican immigrants resonate with recent national security concerns and the sovereign decision making found in U.S. border patrols, the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and policies related to the wars on terror and drugs.2 But stereotypes, labels, and conventional perspectives of this controversial group, like the gendered and racial meanings that underpin them, are often contradictory. For example, the Mexican immigrant as hardworking and lazy; as a paradigm of family values and yet the cause of overpopulation ; as the exemplar of religious faith but viewed as backward due to his or her religious zeal; or as the ideal worker to support the U.S. economy but also responsible for the lowering of wages and the degradation of work 48 american immigration after 1996 conditions. Often divided along gender lines and racist stereotypes, these oppositions function as binary modes of operation that simultaneously justify hiring preferences for Mexicans in certain industries and their treatment beyond the law—as always potentially criminal.3 I believe that racist discourse and gender splits make sense of these binary modes. So, for example, gender typing explains how Mexicans can be both lazy (men) and hardworking (women); violent or irrational (men) and yet submissive and apathetic (women); job stealers (men) and burdens on the health care and welfare systems (women). Racism intersects with these gendered stereotypes in reference to perceptions of skill levels, reproductive habits, and the ability to think rationally and in a calculated manner. In turn, the sexist and racist stereotypes that have historically intersected with the broader generalizations about Mexicans’ culture and habits are now being linked to concerns about national sovereignty. The connection between race, gender, and sovereignty may not be entirely new— for example, eugenic concerns informed U.S. immigration policy from the 1920s through the early 1950s—but their dynamic interaction is different from the past given that borders today are both tighter since the 1990s4 and yet more permeable, because U.S. wars are conducted beyond borders and global economic activity is far more prevalent.5 For instance, some now view the older stereotype about Mexicans having more children than the average American family as a national security threat.6 Hence protecting borders includes disciplining men and women through gender and reproductive norms as well as racial norms and profiling. These norms are evident in public discourse about “anchor babies”7 and overly high fertility rates, as well that surround hiring preferences and employment conditions. Although gender norms are far more complex and explicit as they relate to women8 —including their reproductive behavior , status as mothers, and job suitability—these norms are also evident with regard to men. Men are the majority of day laborers and fill approximately 80 percent of agricultural positions among Mexican immigrants, both in the guest-worker program and in more informal labor conditions; they are also stereotyped as hypersexual and predatory. Women continue to fill the majority of service positions and, significantly, they are the majority of maquila workers (part of the Border Industrial Program). Indeed, one of the reasons for establishing this program was to ensure that women did not cross the border and give birth in the United States, thereby establishing citizenship for their children.9 Thus, this free zone along the U.S.-Mexican 49 mexican immigrants and u.s. wars against them border must be viewed as an essential part of understanding border issues, efforts at immigration control, matters of global capital, and U.S.-Mexican relations.10 The consequences of the articulation of older racist and gendered stereotypes with sovereign concerns are fairly serious. In essence there is a gendered division of labor connected to and often justified by the intersection of sexism and racism against both groups. While, as I discuss below, Mexicans’ racial status is ambivalent, their often denigrated status...