CH ST168B
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CHS168BLecture2_HistoryofBorderPatrolandImmigration.pptx
Chicano Studies 168
Lecture 2
Dr. Raúl Moreno Campos
UCSB
Agenda
Mexican Communities in the U.S. Southwest at the Turn of the 20th Century
Immigration to the U.S.: Then and Now
The History of Illegality, the Racialization of Mexican Labor, and the “Revolving Door” of U.S. Immigration Law and Mexicanos
I.
By the dawn of the 20th century, the once sovereign, and often wealthy, Mexican families and communities of the former Northern Mexican territories had been largely dispossessed, brought under U.S. rule, and placed within the lowest rungs of its racial regimes.
One central dimension of this change, therefore, was the marginal status that Mexicanos had come to occupy in the U.S., and the manner in which, despite being native to these lands, they ultimately became thought of as “foreigners” and “illegal aliens”, to be looked upon with suspicion and subject to various forms of state-sponsored violence.
By the middle of the 20th century, Mexican social segregation and political marginality, and the use of Mexicanos as disposable labor, was firmly entrenched and widespread- indeed, these conditions became some of the central issues of the Chicano Movement in the 1960s.
I.
How did Mexican communities come to be thought of as “foreign”, and what was the historical process by which Mexicanos came to be thought of as “iconic illegal aliens”?
In particular, how did Mexicans become the primary target of U.S. border patrol after its formation in 1924?
In turn, how did this racialized and regionalized method of border enforcement shape race in the U.S.?
I.
Throughout the Southwest, the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo were not kept- in particular guarantees of rights of citizenship and protection of property for Mexicans
Ex. California Land Act of 1851- flagrant violation of Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Led to exhausting and expensive legal battles (land rich, cash poor)
I.
As Lytle Hernandez (2010) points out, a variety of techniques were used to acquire land rights from Mexican landholders
Violence, genocide reservation system- used against indigenous populations by Spaniards (1st conquest)- pg. 22
Fraud, debt payment (legal battles), marriage- used for Mexicans (Ibid.)
The decline in wealth for wealthy Mexicans, led to a decline in political clout, and consequently a marked decline in social status.
Ex of Ventura county- by 1900, 80% of Mexicans were at the bottom of social strata (Cf. Almaguer)
I.
Dramatic shift to agro-industrialist model
1902- Newlands Reclamation Act in the West- funding of irrigation projects made large scale farming possible.
1920- West largest and most profitable agricultural producer in the nation
31 million acres of crops valued at $ 1.7 billion in California and Texas alone.
This rapid expansion depended on a cheap farm hands- where to get them?
I.
The case of CA
Late 1800s- growers relied on Chinese and (to some extent) Indian labor.
Growing nativism (Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882)- limited availability of workers.
Resistance to Black migrant workers
Japanese 1891-1900- resistance in various CA cities, particularly SF.
Gentleman’s agreement (1907)- curtailment of Japanese immigration
Spanish American War (1898)- Filipinos and migration (ended in 1934 Tydings-McDuffie Act)
I.
The case of CA
Growers desired temporary, cheap, and marginalized workers that would come and go with the harvests.
As Lytle Hernandez points out: “It was within this context that California agribusinessmen developed a dependence upon Mexican laborers…”
By the mid 1920s, 80-95 % of 80,000 migrant farm workers in CA were Mexican
I.
Racialized ideas of Mexicans as “docile”, quiet, and diligent.
Similar reliance in Texas (by 1920s, local farmers estimated that 98% of farm workers in South Texas were Mexicans).
Agrobusinessmen sent labor contractors to Mexico in early 1900s to encourage Mexicans to cross into the U.S.
Similar strategy would be later used in the Bracero Program (1942-1964).
Between 1900-1910- over .5 million border crossings
Porfiriato (1876-1911), and then Mexican Revolution (1910-1920)- contributed to migration
I.
By 1920, more than 1 million border crossings by Mexican nationals.
U.S. Congress launches a new era of migration control laws in the U.S.
In is in this context that the tightening of immigration laws, the creation of Border Patrol, and the concept of “illegality” are born.
But first, we turn to a history of immigration to the U.S.
II. Immigration to the U.S.
While immigration to the U.S. today is often racialized and framed by the discourse of criminality, the process of immigration is a long-standing and defining feature of U.S. society and history.
Four main epochs and patterns of immigration in the U.S.
1) 17th to late 18th century (ca. 1600 to 1790s) European colonization
2) 17th to early 19th century (ca. 1620-1808) transatlantic slave trade
3) 19th century to early 20th century (ca. 1830s to 1920) European and Chinese immigration
4) Post 1960-Present (Latin America, SE Asia)
II. Immigration to the U.S.
European immigration to U.S. in 19th to early 20th century driven by a variety of different factors
Famine, war, job scarcity, persecution, economic opportunity
1850-1930: 5 million Germans (1880s)
1840s- 1920s: 4.5 million Irish
1850-1880s over 350,000 Chinese (mostly concentrated in CA, Gold Rush)
1880- 1920s: 25 million immigrants (“Great Flood”) from Eastern and Southern Europe
II. Immigration to the U.S.
The growth of political machines, as well as manufacturing business interests in the expanding industrial centers of the East Coast- and after the 1910s, the Midwest- found in these newly European arrived immigrants an malleable electorate and ideal (tractable) labor pool.
Such a “warm welcome” by political machines and the business sector was not shared by the interests of American labor.
For “white Americans”, these millions upon millions of immigrants represented a threat to the protection of their status and wages.
II. Immigration to the U.S.
Immigration led to multiple anti-immigration laws, the first in the history of the U.S.
But it is important to understand that the concepts of race and citizenship have been historically conflated in the U.S.
1790 Nationality Act:
First statue in the U.S. to codify immigration Law, restricted naturalization out “any alien, being a free white person” (implied that black folk, women, Asian, and any other immigrants deemed “non-white” could not become U.S. citizens.
Racial requirement for citizenship remained firmly in placed until at least the passage of the 14th amendment.
Even Native Americans remained excluded until Indian Citizenship Act of 1924
It was not until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that all racial and gender discrimination in naturalization were explicitly prohibited by federal law.
II. Immigration to the U.S.
By the 1920s, multiple quotes restricting European immigration were instituted in U.S. immigration law.
Sound familiar?
Indeed, David Roediger’s work demonstrates, evidence from laws, court cases, formal racial ideology, social conventions, and popular culture in the late 19th and early 20th century, that these European immigrants were placed “above” Black folk, but “below” White folks in the racial hierarchy.
II. Immigration to the U.S.
Chinese Exclusion Act 1882
Emergency Quota Act of 1921- 3% set the “National Origins Formula”
Immigration Act 1924-
banned immigration from Asia and restricted immigration to an annual quota 2% of foreign born persons of each nationality residing in the U.S. according to the 1910 census.
By 1927, restricted immigration from all countries to 150,000
Explicitly included provisions barring immigrants who by virtue of race could not become naturalized U.S. citizens (aimed specially at Japanese, SE Asians, etc- in effect expanded Chinese Exclusion Act.)
Labor Appropriations Act of 1924-Border patrol established
Emergence of the concept of “illegality”
II. Immigration to the U.S.
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952
Governs immigration and naturalization
Removed racial distinctions by abolishing the “alien ineligible citizen” category from US law
Set up “preference system”
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Cellers Act)
Repealed formulas of 1921 and 1924 Acts
Created the preference system that we are familiar with today (relatives of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, as well as professionals and other individual with specialized skills)
However, at the same time it set up for the first time in U.S. history quotas for immigrants from the Western Hemisphere.
In particular, these changes would affect Latino migrants.
II. Immigration to the U.S.
Why?
While the 1964 Act made it possible for increased “legal” immigration from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, it brought Latino immigration under numerical limits for the first time.
Ex. Set a quota of 20,000 annual for Mexico, although permanent residents seekers from Mexico were at 50,000 annually through the 1950s.
Termination of bracero program (1942-1964), despite the continued reliance on Mexican labor.
Whole groups of migrants from Mexico and Latin America, whose entrance would have been legal prior to 1965, now suddenly became “illegal”
II. Immigration to the U.S.
This would only intensify given what was to come in the 1970s and 1980s.
Why?
Two principal reasons:
1) U.S. direct and indirect military and political interventions in Latin American countries at the onset of the Cold War, and intensifying during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
2) U.S. Economic policies, particularly neoliberal free trade agreements, beginning in the Reagan period.
To these we turn to next…
III.
By 1900, given the growth in nativist sentiment in U.S. Congress, and consequent restrictions in traditional labor pools utilized in agro-production, Mexicans became the primary source of farm labor in the U.S. Southwest.
80-95%+ of farm labor from CA to TX comprised by Mexicans
1910- 500,000 inspected entries
1920- 1 million inspected entries
Mexican government and intellectuals (ex. Manuel Gamio) favored migration-economic, political, and cultural imperatives
1920s- dawn of era of immigration control
Mexican population in U.S. Southwest in the thousands between 1850-1900. By 1930, 1.5 million Mexicans living north of U.S. Mexico border (10% of Mexican population)
III.
1921 and 1924- Quotas
1924 Labor Appropriations- birth of Border Patrol
U.S. Congress had adopted a limited “whites only” policy- National Origins Act (banned all Asians, northern and western Europe, 965 reserved for Europeans)
Southwestern employers fiercely objected- depended on Mexican workers.
Did not want permanent settlement, however. Mexican workers thought of as “Birds of passage “
Notion that Mexicans are impermanent
III.
But by late 1920s, many had bought homes, started families, churches, newspapers, etc.- raising a new generation of Chicanos
Immigration enforcement buttressed ideologically by the concept of “criminality”- racialization of Mexicans, regardless of immigration status, as “illegal”- suspect non-citizens.
Criminalization of Mexicans long standing history dating to Anglo-settlement
III.
III.
1830s-1870s- Mexican resistance to Anglo settlement and violence led to the rise of the “Mexican banditry” discourse.
Hunting down of Mexicans by authorities (e.g. local sheriffs), mobs/posses, gangs, Texas Rangers, and U.S. Army
Ex. Joaquin Murrieta
The “social bandit” emerged both within the context and as a response
Lynching common-place: 1848-1928, 547 recorded cases, but perhaps many more.
Ex. Juana (Josefa) Segovia- 1851, Downieville, CA
III.
From “bandido” to “illegal”: The politics of migration control that emerged in the 1920s created a new category of criminality for Mexicans- that of the “illegal alien”
Immigrant detention- new form of human caging created amidst the anti-Chinese hysteria of the 1880s-1890s- obscure but indisputable white supremacist practice
1896 first migrant detention center – also the year of the Plessy v. Ferguson (The Supreme Court that Gave you Jim Crow, court that gave you immigrant detention)
Today, immigrant detention is the most thriving sector of the carceral landscape in the U.S.)
III.
Example: Overview of incarceration in CA (ca. 1850s-1950s)
1850s-1880- Native Americans (ex. Garbielino nation)
1880-1900- poor white migrants who lived in homosocial communities nearly 100% of prison population in CA
1900-1910 Mexican rebels in exile in U.S.- 1000s of “malos Mejicanos” arrested across the U.S. Mexico borderland- Mexican government in collaboration with U.S. authorities, including LAPD s( 1907Ricardo Flores Magon- Mexican intellectual and organizer- seminal intellectual for the Mexican revolution)
1929-1950s- Mexicanos
1960s- present Black and Brown
III.
Arch of conquest and settler colonialism (extraction, exploitation, but primarily land- new, permanent, reproductive, and racially exclusive society- homogenization- basic thrust of social relations and institutional practices
Incarceration since the early days of U.S. occupation: Criminalizing-caging- Purging , removing, containing, erasing, disappearing- and otherwise containing indigenous peoples and marginalized populations
So not just profiteering and labor control- but elimination.
III.
Settler campaigns to remove Mexicans from the U.S. led to their permanent caging
As Mexican population surge, so too did the politics of incarceration tied to immigration control.
Immigration Act of March 4, 1929
Senator Coleman Livingston Blease
Suggested criminalizing entry.
“Unlawfully entering the U.S. after deportation made a federal felony, punishable by $1000 fine and/or two years in prison
Publicly championed lynchings
Notion of control- crime designed to impact Mexicans in particular
III.
Escalating conflict between nativists in U.S. Congress and agro-businessmen who demanded unfettered access to Mexican labor
1 million lawful entry in 1920.
Many unlawful entrees (kerosene baths, ports of entry far apart)- cross without permission
Rapid criminalization- by the end of the 1930s, 44,000 prosecutions- 85-99% Mexicans
In 1930- federal penal system small (only three federal prisons)- expansion of the penal system.
Creation of new prisons La Tuna- full within 3 months
LA County filled to capacity by mid 1930s
La Tuna, est. 1932
La Tuna, Tucson Az.
Terminal Island, est. 1938 (photo ca. 1955)
III.
From El Paso to LA, federal prison system (and prisons in general) expanded in the 1930s as a result of politics of immigration control designed primarily to cage Mexicans
Forced removals in 1930s- between 600,000- I million Mexicanos taken into Mexico (over 60% U.S. citizens)
Nativist sentiment directed against Mexicans during Great Depression (economic contraction- large labor pool)
III.
WWII- labor shortage due to war effort (expansion of economic production; war effort – shortage in labor supply)
Solution: Bracero Program (1942-1964): joint program U.S. Department o Labor, State Department, INS
Bracero- from Sp. brazos (arms)
5 million contracts in 24 states- largest “guest-worker” program in U.S. history
1948-1964: 200,000 braceros admitted annually
III.
Favored
Utilized by growers to undercut the organizing efforts of farm workers
Maintenance of low wages.
III.
In WWII, used as prisons for Japanese-Americans who refused to go to interment camps- recycling of carceral institutions
Authorized- and presumably controllable pathways-
1954 Operation Wetback- Anti-Mexican sentiment and result of nativist resentment at rampant corruption of growers who bypassed immigration bureaucracy and preferred to hire undocumented workers; Mexican American resentment at migrant laborers,
Official Border Patrol statistics as high as over 1 million removals (figure probably closer to 300,000 Cf. Lyttle Hernandez, 173)- led to the expansion of INS and immigration control (surge in number of hires, etc.)
III.
“Revolving Door” system of immigration and the concept of illegality.
Operation Wetback was about establishing the Border Patrol’s and INS power over immigration control.
Control and consent
Admit controllable labor pool during economic expansion and labor supply, expell labor pool during economic downturns and surplus labor supply.
Illegality utilized as a method of control
