Lesser Evil? The Democrats and immigration policy in the era of neoliberalism
During a 2014 interview with a high-profile politician, journalist Christiane Amanpour posed the question of what to do about thousands of undocumented, unaccompanied minors. Unwilling to answer the question, the politician dissembled. Amanpour persisted, and asked point-blank “should they be sent back?” The politician’s nativism-laden response was breathtaking, considering that they were discussing refugee children likely qualifying for asylum:
But we have so to send a clear message, just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay. So, we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws… [1]
This callous statement may seem the domain of reactionary Republicans. Instead it was made by the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential race front runner, Hillary Clinton, whose rhetoric on immigration is frequently inflammatory. While Democrats have traditionally enjoyed support of immigrant rights groups and leadership of those groups, their record on immigration issues is dismal. Additionally, much of the worst modern immigration policies and enforcement have occurred side by side with the rise of neoliberalism. Here we will examine some of the key Democrats, and their roles in imposing draconian immigration enforcement. We will also explore how the demands of neoliberalism drive both harsher and exploitative immigration policies, and exacerbate the necessity of peoples to migrate.
Contours of neoliberalism shape modern immigration policy
“Taking neoliberalism as the modern term describing the “Washington Consensus” policies of deregulation, austerity, and privatization” we have the framework in which to discuss immigration policy for the past several decades. [2] While author Chris Lehmann identifies Jimmy Carter as the first President to adopt neoliberal economic policies, this survey will not go back that far. [3] Moreover, despite neoliberalism being a bipartisan project, our focus is on the Democrats. Border barrier walls, so-called “free trade” agreements, work visa quotas, detention centers, and other such issues surrounding immigration are all interrelated with, and driven by, neoliberal policy. Much immigration itself is driven by neoliberalism, as Justin Akers Chacón writes:
Modern immigration is motivated by the same human desires for sustenance, exacerbated by the destabilizing effects of global capitalism, although the debate is often “nationalized” by immigration opponents to deprive it of this essential context. Corporate capitalism, also called neoliberalism by its detractors, dictates that state policy decisions favor profitability over social sustainability — the interests of corporations and investors over those of workers, indigenous peoples, the world’s poor, and the environment. [4]
We will return to the relationship between neoliberalism and modern immigration policies, but first we will examine policies in action as practiced by Democratic politicians who champion neoliberal ideology. Our narrative begins with 1994, a year when deaths from immigration strategies with “names like Operation Gatekeeper, Operation Safeguard, [and] Operation Blockade” began to skyrocket. [5]
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton became President on the heels of attempts to stem immigration from Mexico through strategies including the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). [6] Ever the opportunist, the new President seized the issue. Corey Robin identifies Clinton as one of the more significant, early Democratic politicians espousing neoliberalism, and Clinton’s right-of-center leanings were clearly on parade with his aggressive anti-immigrant policies. [7] Akers Chacón minces no words discussing this period:
[I]t was the Clinton administration that led the charge from Washington. As previously discussed, Clinton’s Operation Gatekeeper was the most formidable ant-immigrant undertaking ever by the federal government, and is directly responsible for the deaths of over four thousand migrant workers in the last eleven years. Clinton also presided over the passage of the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act… [8]
The rest of the Akers Chacón’s passage cites the expansion of criminal law changes, harsher sentences, and increased causes for removability. [9] Bill Ong Hing discusses the early administration: “[A] year after President Bill Clinton took office, the Board Patrol embarked on a strategy of ‘control through deterrence’ that has proven deadly.” [10] Laying out the history of how Operation Gatekeeper came into being, Hing details how the focus of the efforts was to prevent crossing in high-visibility areas of San Diego, with some 52 miles of fencing stretching from Imperial Beach to the Otay Mountains. This forced migrants to attempt crossing in significantly more dangerous regions. More odious is that guidance for many of these efforts came from The Department of Defense’s Center for Low Intensity Conflicts — in essence, Clinton was waging war on defenseless migrants. [11]
Today the Clintons try to downplay the militarism and sheer aggressiveness of their deterrence strategies, but as Adriana Maestas writes, “[d]uring his re-election campaign against Senator Bob Dole, the Clinton campaign even ran an ad highlighting” the harsh immigration laws of his administration. [12] The human toll of Clinton’s policies cannot be overstated. Hing, after demonstrating that these policies did not reduce the number of undocumented persons entering, makes the following statement before discussing the number of mortalities:
Certainly, southwest border control always had an evil, racist dark side, with its targeting of Mexican migration during a thirty-year period when Mexican made up far less than half the undocumented population in the United States. However, the tragedy of Gatekeeper is the direct link of its prevention through deterrence strategy to an absolutely horrendous rise in the number of deaths among border-crossers who were forced to attempt entry over terrain that even the INS knew to present “mortal dangers” due to extreme weather conditions and rugged terrain. [13]
Hing, whose watershed book is now over a decade old, wrote: “The number of migrant deaths increased 600 times from 1994 to 2000; a number that could be attributed to Operation Gatekeeper…” [14] Maestas, citing a 2014 source, states: “Since Operation Gatekeeper was implemented, it is estimated that over 6,600 migrants have died on the US side of the southern border, and the remains of another 1,000 migrants have been unidentified.” [15]
Clinton’s border policies were only one facet of his administration’s neoliberal approach to immigration. The previously mentioned Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA), were coupled with Clinton’s austerity measures like the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) to make the precarious life of undocumented peoples even more difficult than before. Opal Tometi writes on the former two acts: “As a result of these laws, millions of immigrants have been victims of fast-track deportations and unjust, arbitrary detention; families and communities have been torn apart; and entire generations of immigrants have been criminalized”, while Michelle Alexander writes on the latter: “barred undocumented immigrants from licensed professions”. [16] [17] Taken together these types of policies had a tendency to disproportionately punish the poorest of undocumented immigrants, and opened the door to further racial profiling of peoples, who, as Hing says, “are regarded as outside the construction of real Americans by many in the mainstream.” [18] This last aspect has had lasting consequences as Maestas explains:
“The 287(g) program empowered local law enforcement officials like Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona to engage in racial profiling and to allow local law enforcement agencies to check the immigration status of anyone booked into jail.” [19]
Clinton’s dubious immigration legacy would be built on by his successors from both political parties. Many of his policies, particularly the border enforcement and criminalization focused ones, are still in force today. During the two terms of the Republican administration that followed Clinton there was an explosion of immigrant rights marches, including the largest in history — March 25, 2006 in Los Angeles, in response the racist Sensenbrenner-King Bill (HR 4437) which would have provided $2.2 billion for more border fences, and “would not only make undocumented migration a felony, it would criminalize the very act of associating with undocumented immigrants.” [20] [21] Fortunately the bill never passed, and despite many efforts at similar legislation, including those calling for highly exploitative guest-worker programs, the status of the Clinton laws stayed essentially the same. The election of a Democrat in 2008 saw many immigrant rights groups hopeful for change. The fact that the new President was African-American caused many to think that he would be far more sympathetic to the plight of undocumented peoples than his predecessors. These hopes, it would turn out, were misplaced.
Barack Obama
Many assumed that as a person of color, President Barack Obama would be more sensitive than his counterparts to the racism underlying U.S. immigration policies. Lance Selfa details how Obama played on those expectation while running for office in 2008 by assuring National Council of La Raza (NCLR): “I will be a president who will stand with you, who will fight for you…” [22] What NCLR witnessed Obama do over the next six years saw their leadership taking a bold step. While immigrant rights groups, particularly those comprising the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, have been traditionally afraid to criticize sitting Democratic Presidents, Obama’s propensity for deportations saw NCLR President and CEO Janet Murguía speak out against him during their 2014 awards event: [23]
For us, this president has been the deporter-in-chief.
Any day now, this Administration will reach the two million mark for deportations. It is a staggering number that far outstrips any of his predecessors and leaves behind it a wake of devastation for families across America.
Many groups, including NCLR, have long been calling on the president to mitigate the damage of these record deportations. [24]
Obama earned his “deporter-in-chief” epithet by building on Clinton’s aggressive enforcement apparatus, while simultaneously expanding George W. Bush’s surveillance state, and using this potent combination against immigrants on a scale never before seen. Selfa discusses some of the administration’s policies, during the first term alone:
Under the Department of Homeland Security’s “Secure Communities” program, local police agencies forward the fingerprints of all apprehended people to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The government then orders the deportation of any undocumented arrestees with criminal records. In 2010, the Obama administration increased these “removals” by 71 percent over Bush’s final year in office. Under Obama, the number of local agencies participating in Secure Communities has skyrocketed from fourteen to more than 1,300. In August 2010 Obama signed a six-hundred-million-dollar “border security bill” that includes adding 1,500 more Border Patrol agents, customs inspectors, and other law enforcement officers at the border, as well as unmanned aerial “drones.” By September 2011, the Obama administration had deported more than one million undocumented people, compare to the 1.57 million the Bush administration deported in its full eight-year term. [25]
While the overall figures won’t be available until Obama’s second term ends, the record numbers of removals and returns cited above can be augmented with more recent figures. According to The Washington Post’s Philip Bump “Under Obama, the number of deportations through 2014 hit a new high — while the number of returns is lower than at any point since the Ford administration.” [26] Obama has already exceeded the two million deportation mark that NCLR’s Murguía expressed consternation over, and continues to pad that number as his administration winds down its last year.
Selfa’s mention of the Secure Communities program warrants discussion of another prominent Democratic politician who served as Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security, namely Janet Napolitano. Likely chosen for the post because of her hardline stance on immigration evidenced while she was Governor of Arizona, Napolitano played a key role all of Obama’s draconian enforcement programs, and oversaw the deportations during Obama’s first term. She was rewarded with the University of California (UC) Presidency in 2013, despite having no background in education whatsoever. [27] Old habits seemingly die hard as Napolitano’s UC tenure has been marred by many anti-immigrant incidents. A recent protest against the controversial figure was chronicled in The Daily Bruin: “UCLA students protested against cuts in funding for undocumented student resources and demanded University of California President Janet Napolitano’s resignation as she left a forum at the UCLA School of Law“. One of the students interviewed, Cristian De Nova, had a cogent point: “As the former Secretary of Homeland Security, Napolitano’s involvement in programs that resulted in deportations compromise her ability to represent undocumented students”. [28]
Even the Obama cheerleaders at the New York Times have been critical of his immigration policies. They wrote in regards to how the administration has been so obtuse toward offering protections to those most deserving of asylum:
Instead, it offered Operation Border Guardian, a grossly misnamed immigration-enforcement surge that went after people this country did not need to guard against. It began in January and lasted a month, but its damage is still being felt. Among its tens of thousands of targets were more than 300 recent migrants from Central America, youths who crossed the border without their parents and turned 18 in the United States, thus losing some of the protections granted to unaccompanied minors. After they lost their cases to win asylum or other protection and were ordered deported by immigration courts, Immigration and Customs Enforcement hunted them down. [29]
As abject as the Obama administration has been on immigration, this last issue is very much of interest since many of the children seeking asylum are escaping countries that were destabilized by Obama’s U.S. Department of State. This brings us full circle to the Democrat whose infamous quote heads this essay — Secretary of State Clinton.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Clinton’s long career, and multiple roles in government have afforded her opportunities to affect immigration policy as few others. As such, it is difficult to discuss her impact without a degree of overlap between her roles as First Lady, U.S. Senator, Presidential candidate (twice), and Secretary of State. Moreover, a thorough treatment of all these issues would exceed the scope of this essay. In addition to exploring her positions and policy advocacy, we need to consider her role in facilitating many of the political disasters that have created the humanitarian crises leading to the mass influx of unaccompanied minor aliens.
Clinton’s Liberal supporters frequently chafe against associating her with her husband’s policies, but as Alexander writes “But Hillary wasn’t picking out china while she was first lady. She bravely broke the mold and redefined that job in ways no woman ever had before. She not only campaigned for Bill; she also wielded power and significant influence once he was elected, lobbying for legislation and other measures.” [30] Indeed, if Hillary Clinton didn’t fully support Bill Clinton’s immigration policies, she has had over two decades to demonstrate it one way or another. Rather, her own votes, actions, and policy advocacy indicate that she is even further to the right on immigration than most Democrats. Maestas outlines some fairly common Clinton votes and positions:
As a senator, Hillary Clinton voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which began construction of a wall along the US-Mexico border. In November while campaigning in New Hampshire, Clinton said, “I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in, and I do think that you have to control your borders…
In 2007, Senator Clinton supported then-Governor Eliot Spitzer’s (New York) decision to withdraw his plan to give driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. She then went further, saying that as president she would not support driver’s licenses for undocumented people. [31]
While Clinton frequently modulates her rhetorical positions, it is more than she is generally to the right of most of her fellow Democrats. Instead, she is often to the right of many Republicans on immigration issues. Exemplary is this 2004 newspaper passage: “Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is staking out a position on illegal immigration that is more conservative than President Bush”. [32] This was not a fluke, the self-proclaimed “Goldwater Girl” has consistently held herself out as being tougher than Republicans on immigration and has crafted a message that essentially tars all immigrants as being possible terrorists. Consider the latter part of this passage: “In an interview on WABC radio, she said, ‘I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants,’ and in an interview on Fox News she accused Bush of not doing enough to ‘protect our borders and ports’”. [33] Akers Chacón rightly identifies this strategy — one that Clinton has mastered: “the Democratic Party has not only made ‘winning the war on terrorism’ its clarion call, but it is also responsible for helping to shift the debate to the border.” [34] The unparalleled nexus of domestic law enforcement, barriers, increased border patrol, and so-called “Homeland Security” bound by policies including Secure Communities is something that Clinton has advocated for during her career. Maestas deftly sums this up: “Democrats like the Clintons have championed ‘get tough’ policies that have bolstered bureaucracies and enterprises (private prisons) who have an incentive to maintain the status quo.” [35]
Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State placed her in a unique position where her involvement with the affairs of other states — frequently in Latin America — found her playing a role in creating humanitarian crises that led to influxes of undocumented peoples. The Amanpour question regarding undocumented, unaccompanied minors is particularly distressing when one considers what Hing writes:
Honduras, where the largest numbers of unaccompanied minors are coming from, has become one of the most dangerous countries in the world. In 2011, Honduras became the country with the highest murder rate in the world. Homicide rates in El Salvador are only marginally lower than in Honduras, with 66 individuals killed for every 10,000 inhabitants. [36]
The reason Honduras is as dangerous as Hing frames it is because of the 2009 coup d’état that occurred with material support from Clinton’s State Department. Clinton would then aid and abet the golpistas in consolidating power via a sham election. [37] Clinton now denies her critical role in coup, to the extent that she has had a tacit admission of support for it removed from the paperback version of her memoirs, and recently dissembled about it in an interview with Democracy Now’s Juan Gonzales. Dana Frank, listening to that interview, excoriated Clinton on her revisionism:
I just want to say this is like breathtaking that she’d say these things. I think we’re all kind of reeling that she would both defend the coup and defend her own role in supporting its stabilization in the aftermath. I mean, first of all, the fact that she says that they did it legally, that the Honduras judiciary and Congress did this legally, is like, oh, my god, just mind-boggling. The fact that she then is going to say that it was not an unconstitutional coup is incredible, when she actually had a cable, that we have in the WikiLeaks, in which U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens says it was very clearly an illegal and unconstitutional coup. So she knows this from day one. She even admits in her own statement that it was the Honduran military, that she says, well, this was the only thing that was wrong there, that it was the military that took Zelaya out of the country, as opposed to somehow that it was an illegal thing we did — that the Honduran government did, deposing a president. [38]
The resulting chaos of the coup, which led to an, as Frank says, “almost complete destruction of the rule of law in Honduras”, is a major factor in the influx of undocumented children. [39] Hing provides additional evidence of why so many unaccompanied minor refugees flee: “920 Honduran children were murdered between January and March of 2012”. [40] He then discusses how many Latin American refugee children fall victim to human and drug trafficking rings, and lastly summarizes the findings of a Immigrant Legal Resource Center of immigrant survey:
Twenty-five percent of respondents found that youth come to the U.S. based on a combination of four factors: neglect, abuse, or abandonment, gang violence, drug violence, and poverty. This was followed by 19 percent fleeing gang violence and 16 percent fleeing poverty. In particular, many respondents found that these cases involved youth who faced gang recruitment and threats in their home country. [41]
While Honduras is not the only country Clinton played a role intervening in, it serves as the one most indicative of her hypocrisy in stating these immigrant children should be “sent back.” [42] Hing asserts “Some of the youth may qualify for special immigrant juvenile status, asylum or visas for victims of crime.” [43] Indeed, these unaccompanied minors seemingly meet the four elements for granting asylum under U.S. Immigration Law. They have a well founded fear of persecution; based on past persecution or risk of persecution in the future; because of membership in a particular social group; and the persecution is by the government or a group that the government is unwilling or unable to control. While Ms. Clinton bemoans sending a “message that is contrary to our laws”, perhaps she should be more concerned with our government following those laws instead. [44] At any rate, unaccompanied minors require our protection and assistance, not detention in for-profit prisons while awaiting removal.
Neoliberalism and Immigration
This brief survey of key Democrats and their impact on immigration policy would be incomplete without exploring some of the reasons why these neoliberal policies are favored. Neoliberalism requires the state, among other things, to privatize services once in the domain of the public, to do away with any impediments to so-called “free trade,” and to discipline labor in service to capital. Here we will examine three examples of each, since a comprehensive survey of these topics would likely require an entire volume.
Privatization is the watchword of neoliberal ideology. Only until recently, immigrants being held while their status was being determined, or asylum seekers unable to afford a bond while they awaiting hearing, were kept in facilities maintained by the Board Patrol under the aegis of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). [45] That was until corporations in the for-profit prison business saw “opportunity” in immigrant detentions. With the explosion of deportations under Obama, coupled with the flood of immigrants created by former Secretary Clinton’s Latin American interventions, the number of immigrants being detained while awaiting entry or exit has been staggering and profitable. John Washington writes:
Execs from CCA, GEO Group and the other for-profit corporations involved in family and immigration detention also get their cut. CCA charges the government an estimated $296 dollars a day for each detained woman or child, according to the New York Times. At a capacity of 2,400, that will amount to over $250 million a year to lock up non-criminals: Your tax dollars paying for months of child incarceration. [46]
It is of no small consequence that corporations CCA and GEO mentioned in the Washington piece above both contributed a combined amount of over $130,000 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and her “I’m Ready for Hillary” SuperPAC. [47] Once more Clinton’s name is associated with horrific consequences to persons from Honduras. Washington chronicles one migrant mother’s plight:
The conditions at another family detention center, in Karnes, Texas, drove a 19-year-old woman to cut her wrists on June 4. She had a 4-year-old son with her and wrote in a suicide note that the detention center was “killing me little by little” and that she was “treated worse than an animal.” She survived and, four days later, was deported to Honduras. [48]
Privatization’s proverbial partners in crime are free trade agreements. Unlike workers, who must endure a great number of hurtles to even have a chance of crossing the border with permission to work, transnational corporations rarely face many restrictions relocating their operations other than occasional tariffs, and having to follow a host country’s domestic laws. Corporations find that last part onerous, with labor protections, environmental rules, and rules protecting local markets a barrier to higher profits. Many of these restrictions had already been removed for U.S. firms operating maquiladoras in Mexico under the Border Industrial Program (BIP) as early 1965. [49] The net effect of the highly profitable BIP was hyper-exploitation of workers, and wage depression on both sides of the border. In 1994 Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade agreement, which saw virtually all protections for workers, including agricultural workers and sustenance farmers, eschewed in favor of opening exports to corporate interests. [50] The loss of family farms, in many cases held for generations, was one of the more egregious results, as David Bacon explains:
Corn imports also rose, from 2,014,000 tons to 10,330,000 tons from 1992 to 2008. US producers like Archer Daniels Midland, subsidized by US farm bills, sold corn at artificially low prices to gain control of the Mexican market. Then small farmers in Oaxaca, Chiapas and southern Mexico couldn’t sell their crops at a price high enough to pay the cost of growing them. [51]
Bacon further discusses how post NAFTA migration to the U.S. from Mexico continually increased until it peaked in 2008, and adds: “That too has been a benefit for US employers, who have had access to an enormous pool of displaced people desperate for work.” [52] This combination of trade agreements freeing capital from national confines, while simultaneously controlling the flow of workers via borders is easily seen when viewing immigration through the lens of neoliberalism. It is no coincidence that NAFTA and Operation Gatekeeper came into being the same year. Neither is it a coincidence that Hilary Clinton’s most frequently discussed policy position during the 2016 Democratic primary elections has been her vacillating over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free-trade agreement.
If “offshoring” jobs via free-trade agreements is one way of disciplining labor to the demands of capital, then the politics behind H-1B visas for technology companies represents another. Hing discusses capital’s approach to ensuring no potential shortage of highly skilled workers during the early Clinton administration:
A second solution to the prospect of a future workforce lacking essential skills — one that was increasingly being viewed with enthusiasm by big business interest and government powerbrokers alike — was immigration. That is, the “right” kind of immigration. Leaders saw immigration of ever-larger numbers of highly skilled immigrants as an immediate quick-fix to a thorny situation. [53]
Much of the push for the H-1B work visa category originated with the Atari Democrats, who recognized that they could accomplish several goals by using immigration in a weaponized form against labor. [54] The H-1B program enables employers to ensure that there are always more science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workers available than needed, allowing them to depress prevailing wages and maintain less than optimal working conditions. Ironically, these firms do this while simultaneously claiming they have a shortage of workers to fill available positions — a claim often echoed by the corporate media. In contrast to their narrative, the truth is that there is a glut of qualified workers. These first two points from researcher Hal Salzman’s statement to Senate Committee on the Judiciary are reflective of the actual domestic STEM labor market:
(1) Overall, our colleges and universities graduate twice the number of STEM graduates as find a job each year; that is, only about half of our STEM graduates enter the STEM workforce; (2) Of the entire workforce, only about a third of those with STEM degrees are employed in STEM jobs. [55]
Later Salzman then uses the Atari Democrats’ “free market” logic against them:
If there were truly a tight labor market, with widespread, high demand for IT workers, a free labor market would exhibit increasing wages […] The most rigorous study of the direct impact of H-1B workers was conducted by three researchers with access to actual wage records of firms (using confidential data from the U.S. Department of the Treasury). Their findings are striking:
““H-1Bs substantially crowd out employment of other workers…has an insignificant effect on patenting…[and] H-1Bs lead to lower average employee wages while raising firm profits.” [56]
Salzman’s findings coincide with many others, and the overall goal of using H-1B in service to neoliberal aims has been framed thusly: “The manufactured STEM ‘crises’ has from the onset been a means to drive down the salaries of those professionals who often don’t see themselves as being working class.” [57] More disconcerting is a Mother Jones article discussing how H-1B are now called “outsourcing visas” because they allow technology firms to train workers so that they can return home and do the job for those selfsame firms overseas at a lower wages. [58] Technology firms hope to maintain this status quo as evidenced by: “In her 2016 campaign bid, Hillary Clinton has strengthened these ties, surpassing candidates from both parties in individual donations from employees at the ten highest-grossing companies in Silicon Valley…” [59]
Beyond the Democrats
The demands of neoliberalism drive these and other immigration related policies in service of corporate capital. The human toll of these market-oriented policies is difficult to fathom, but it is clear that physical borders harm workers regardless of which side they find themselves on. That the Democratic Party has been enthusiastic supporters, and, more to the point, extremely effective implementors of neoliberal policies is testament to which class they serve. As such, Democrats should never be considered the lesser evil on immigration issues. We need a party that prioritizes human need over corporate greed, and advocates for the abolishment of borders.
Notes
[1] (Clinton, 2014)
[2] (Skeels, 2015)
[3] (Lehmann, 2014)
[4] (Akers Chacón 89)
[5] (Hing, “Defining America” 2)
[6] (Ibid. 155)
[7] (Robin, 2016)
[8] (Akers Chacón 231)
[9] The modern immigration term (read euphemism) “removable” replaces the older term “deportable” for purposes of immigration law.
[10] (Hing, “Defining America” 184)
[11] (Hing, “Defining America” 187–188)
[12] (Maestas, 2016)
[13] (Hing, “Defining America” 190)
[14] (Ibid. 205)
[15] (Maestas, 2016)
[16] (Tometi, 2016)
[17] (Alexander, 2016)
[18] (Hing, “Defining America” 115)
[19] (Maestas, 2016)
[20] The author participated in nearly all of the major Los Angeles immigrant rights activities at the time, including the March 25th action, as member of several groups. He would later become one of the founding members of the Southern California Immigration Coalition (SCIC), which was created by prominent organizers Professor Jesse Díaz, Carlos Montes, and Gloria Saucedo.
[21] (Akers Chacón 203)
[22] (Selfa 112)
[23] For more on this phrase see: Incite! Women of Color Against Violence (ed.). The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. Cambridge, Mass: South End Press, 2007. Print.
[24] (Murguía, 2014)
[25] (Selfa 113)
[26] (Bump, 2015)
[27] It is with a profound sense of shame that the author discloses that Napolitano’s signature appears on their UCLA diploma, as they were awarded a B.A. on March 21, 2014.
[28] (Pauker, 2016)
[29] (Times Editorial Board, 2016)
[30] (Alexander, 2016)
[31] (Maestas, 2016)
[32] (Washington Times, 2004)
[33] (Akers Chacón 232)
[34] (Ibid.)
[35] (Maestas, 2016)
[36] (Hing,“Playing Politics” 2014)
[37] Golpistas: coup makers.
[38] (Frank, 2016)
[39] (Ibid.)
[40] (Hing,“Playing Politics” 2014)
[41] (Ibid.)
[42] For a comprehensive compendium of Clinton’s interventions see: Grandin, Greg. “A Voter’s Guide to Hillary Clinton’s Policies in Latin America”. The Nation. 15 Apr. 2016. Web. 30 Apr. 2016.
[43] (Hing,“Playing Politics” 2014)
[44] (Clinton, 2014)
[45] Formerly Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)
[46] (Washington, 2016)
[47] (Hamilton, 2015)
[48] (Washington, 2016)
[49] (Akers Chacón 115)
[50] (Ibid. 120)
[51] (Bacon, 2016)
[52] (Ibid.)
[53] (Hing, “Defining America” 106)
[54] For the phrase “Atari Democrats,” and their role in advancing neoliberalism in general, see: Geismer, Lily. “Atari Democrats.” Jacobin., Winter 2016. Web. 30 Apr. 2016.
[55] (Salzman, 2016)
[56] (Ibid. Source footnotes omitted.)
[57] (Skeels, 2013) The same piece contains numerous other studies and articles corroborating Salzman.
[58] (Harkinson, 2013)
[59] (Geismer, 2016)
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