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137 5 Problem Mexicans Race, Nationalism, and Their Limits in Contemporary Immigration Policy As elected officials, members of Congress are conscious of the values and traditions of the public they serve, as well as of the society of which they themselves are a product. While it is no longer politically acceptable for immigration policies to single out groups for exclusion based on race or national origin, legislators continue to distinguish between the “right” and “wrong” kinds of immigrants, accomplishing these distinctions through rhetorical devices that forge distinctions between “us” and “them.” This may on its face seem unremarkable since, at its essence, immigration policy is set up to administer the relationship between foreigners and the state. However, discourse that conveys who the problem foreigners are assists in assuring the public that government has narrowed the field and identified target groups needing control and restriction. Whether the policies discussed accomplish their stated goals is immaterial : the public spectacle of immigration control suggests that government attends to sources of economic insecurity and social instability. And yet, the process must be viewed as more than theater, because the emotive appeal rests in the actual accomplishment of social divisions that distribute or deny real benefits to groups and individuals.1 The previous chapters focused on the instrumental nature of social constructions—the representation of target populations in the service of policy choice and policy justification. What follows is a deeper investigation of the language employed to distinguish immigrants for the purposes of public assurance that policies are just and fair in their allocation of benefits and burdens. While it may seem that discourse about immigrants in both policy periods employed “neutral” or descriptive terms (illegal , legal, criminal, guest-worker, etc.), it is easy to uncover the many ways in which these constructions are not neutral at all. The language of deserving and undeserving captures a host of other social divisions, and Newton_pp137-182.indd 137 Newton_pp137-182.indd 137 5/3/08 3:54:56 PM 5/3/08 3:54:56 PM 138 Problem Mexicans it does not simply mark people in terms of their roles as policy target populations, but judges them in terms of their potential to be considered present or future members of the polity. In an era in which overt racism and nativism are discredited as “extreme” and not reflective of the political mainstream, special attention must be paid to ways in which elected officials signal who can and cannot claim to be American. Race and Its Limits in Official Discourse In their attempt to discuss the major political divisions that mark congressional policymaking on immigration, James Gimpel and James Edwards have posited that immigration politics reflect an ideological schism between Democrats and Republicans over redistributive policies.2 Congressional efforts to restrict immigration, according to Gimpel and Edwards , do not reflect racism, and their analysis of public opinion and interviews with members of Congress do not give primacy to race in explaining policy preferences in the public or in legislative outcomes. Instead , they surmise that political divisions on immigration policy simply mirror ideological divisions over the role of the state in redistributive social policy. However, research on welfare policy and state-level tax revolts beginning in the 1970s suggests that ideological divisions over the role of government in redistributive policy have a racial component to them.3 The partisan divide Gimpel and Edwards demonstrate to have overtaken immigration debates can be considered part of a discourse of deserving and undeserving—a shared understanding in both the public and among political elites of who are the recipients of redistributive policies.4 In the United States, race plays a role in solidifying popular conceptions of who deserves and who does not deserve public benefits, and that is why race cannot be sidelined. The discourse of elite racism requires specific attention because it involves a language often obscured by a seemingly neutral rhetoric of fairness , rule of law, and tax redistribution. Such redistributive discourse is a relatively thin mask for a “coded language” of racism.5 Teun van Dijk, who has conducted extensive analyses of media, textbook, and parliamentary debates in the United States and Western Europe, argues that elected officials do not need to make overt references to specific groups in promoting policies that restrict immigrants or undo civil rights policies; instead, Newton_pp137-182.indd 138 Newton_pp137-182.indd 138 5/3/08 3:54:57 PM 5/3/08 3:54:57 PM [18.116.42.208] Project MUSE (2024...

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