The Paradoxical Origins and Radical Consequences of America's War on Immigrants

In a very real way, the rise of undocumented migration and the growth of America's undocumented population are a product of poorly conceived immigration and border policies, which in the course of a few decades transformed Mexico-U.S. migration from a stable, circular flow of male Mexican workers going to three states into a much larger settled population of Mexican families living in 50 states. During the late 1950s the United States was providing opportunities for half a million Mexican migrants to enter the United States legally each year, 450,000 as temporary workers and 50,000 as permanent residents. In 1965, however, the temporary worker program was eliminated and permanent resident visas were capped, ultimately at just 20,000 per year by 1976. The resultant rise of illegal migration offered political and bureaucratic entrepreneurs an opportunity to frame Mexican migration as a threat to American society and the immigrants themselves as lawbreakers, criminals, and most recently terrorists. The demonization of Mexican immigrants set off a chain reaction of events that ultimately yielded a massive increase in both border and internal enforcement, which transformed the circularity, demography, and geography of Mexico-U.S. migration.