Table Of ContentHidden Lives and Human
Rights in the United States
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Hidden Lives and Human
Rights in the United States
Understanding the Controversies and
Tragedies of Undocumented Immigration
Volume 1: History, Theories,
and Legislation
Lois Ann Lorentzen, Editor
Copyright 2014 by Lois Ann Lorentzen
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior
permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hidden lives and human rights in the United States : understanding the controversies and
tragedies of undocumented immigration / Lois Ann Lorentzen, editor.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-4408-2847-8 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-4408-2848-5 (ebook) 1. Illegal
aliens—United States. 2. Human rights—United States. 3. United States—Emigration and
immigration—Government policy. I. Lorentzen, Lois Ann, 1952– , editor of compilation.
JV6465.H54 2014
325.73—dc23 2013047739
ISBN: 978-1-4408-2847-8
EISBN: 978-1-4408-2848-5
18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5
This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook.
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Contents
Introduction vii
Lois Ann Lorentzen
1 Undocumented Migration to the United States: A History 1
Mae M. Ngai
2 Undocumented Migration: Magnitude and Characteristics 25
Karen A. Woodrow-Lafield
3 Why Migrate? Theorizing Undocumented Migration 53
Douglas S. Massey
4 The Dangerous Journey: Migrant Smuggling from Mexico
and Central America, Asia, and the Caribbean 71
Robert Donnelly and Jacqueline Maria Hagan
5 Globalization and Undocumented Migration: Examining
the Politics of Emigration 107
Valerie Francisco and Robyn Magalit Rodriguez
6 International Law and Undocumented Migration 123
Beth Lyon
7 With the Stroke of a Bureaucrat’s Pen: U.S. State
“Reforms” to Manage Its Undocumented Immigrant
Population, 1920–2013 157
Christine Wheatley and Nestor P. Rodriguez
vi • Contents
8 Implementing a Multilayered Immigration System:
The Case of Arizona 179
Cecilia Menjívar
9 The Power of the Latino Vote: Instant History,
Media Narratives, and Policy Frameworks 205
Roberto Suro
10 Amnesty in Immigration: Forgetting, Forgiving, Freedom 225
Linda Bosniak
11 Outlawing Transnational Sexualities: Mexican Women,
U.S. Immigration Policy, and National Security 249
Luz María Gordillo
12 A Matter of Life and Death: Human Rights at
the Boundaries of Immigration Control 275
Joseph Nevins
Index 301
About the Editor and Contributors 323
Introduction
Lois Ann Lorentzen
Few of their children in the country learn English. . . . The signs in our
streets have inscriptions in both languages. . . . Unless their importation
could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages
we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our govern-
ment will become precarious.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1753 (cited in Nevins 2008, 111)
As I write this introduction, Congress debates immigration reform. A series
on undocumented immigrants1 seems timely. Yet the national debate is not
new, but merely the latest version of a deep societal ambivalence toward
immigrants. Although on the one hand the United States prides itself on
being a “nation of immigrants,” on the other the “illegal alien” has loomed
large in immigration laws and public opinion throughout U.S. history (Ngai
2004). Benjamin Franklin’s remarks about German immigrants sound surpris-
ingly “modern.” Few today would question whether or not people of German
ancestry are fully “American.” Yet some, similar to Franklin centuries ago,
question whether the foreign born, especially the undocumented, should be
full members of the country, fearful of what a “new American nation” might
look like (Resnick 2013).
Thirteen percent (40.4 million people) of the U.S. population in 2011 was
foreign born (Batalova and Lee 2012). Four percent (roughly 11.2 million) of
the country is unauthorized. The unauthorized make up nearly 5.5 percent of
viii • Introduction
the U.S. workforce (Pew Hispanic Center 2013). Two-thirds have lived in the
United States for over a decade; 46 percent are parents of minor children
(Taylor et al. 2011). Contrary to the stereotype of a migrant as a single male,
the unauthorized are “families with children” (Passel, quoted in Resnick
2013). Whereas 21 percent of nonmigrant households are couples with chil-
dren, 47 percent of undocumented households are (Resnick 2013).
The undocumented are for the most part working people with children
who have lived in the United States for a decade or longer. Yet public debates
on immigration reform emphasize national security, border control, amnesty,
English competency, economic impact, and the need to punish “law breakers.”
Missing is a discussion of basic rights denied to people, based on their legal
status, who live here. Unauthorized immigrants are here; they are neighbors,
workers, and parents, part of the fabric of our life together.
I recently returned from the Nogales, Arizona/Nogales, Mexico border,
where I interviewed migrants who had been deported from the United States.
Many had spent time in detention centers, one of four adults were parents of
U.S. citizen children, and most had lived in the United States for many years.
They told heartbreaking stories of dangerous desert crossings, sexual abuse in
detention centers, lack of legal assistance, verbal and physical abuse by
authorities, and great sadness at being separated from loved ones. As we left a
shelter run by Catholic priests and nuns on the Mexican side of the border, a
young woman, her husband, and their six-month-old baby were about to
cross the desert in 104-degree heat to join family members in the United
States. The price many migrants pay to reside in the United States is often
high, and I worried about this young family’s ability to survive the dangerous
journey ahead of them.
Many don’t survive. Earlier this year I listened to Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith’s
chilling account of the unidentified remains of migrants in south-central
Arizona. Between 1990 and 2012, 2,238 bodies were found in this corner of
the United States, a period coinciding with increased border security: fences
and walls as well as more Border Patrol. The actual number of deaths is “cer-
tainly higher than the numbers based on actually recovered bodies and official
counts” (Nevins 2008, 22). The Pima County Office of the Medical Exam-
iner in Tucson, which “handles more unidentified remains per capita than
any other medical examiner’s office in the United States,” has been unable to
identify a third of the bodies recovered (Mello 2013; Binational Migration
Institute 2013). Heat exposure from traveling through the desert is the most
likely cause of death. Joseph Nevins and Luis Alberto Urrea graphically
describe the deaths, and compassionately tell the life stories of people who
have died crossing the desert (Nevins 2008; Urrea 2004). Many of those who
have died were crossing for the second or third time, attempting to rejoin
Introduction • ix
families after deportation. Deportation as a strategy for immigration control
is rarely “voluntary,” but involves involuntary, painful family separations and
the willingness to again attempt dangerous desert crossings.
Few seem to think that deportation of all unauthorized immigrants is either
desirable or feasible. Yet deportation of migrants has increased during the
Obama administration. A record 400,000 people were deported in 2012, a
not insignificant portion of the estimated 11.2 to 11.5 million unauthorized
immigrants in the United States. Tanya Golash-Boza (2013) makes the
remarkable claim that “by 2014 President Obama will have deported over
2 million people—more in six years than all people deported before 1997.”
Some 23 percent of “criminal deportees” were deported after traffic violations,
and 20 percent for immigration crimes such as illegal entry or reentry. Similar
to what I discovered through my informal interviews in Nogales, Mexico, the
study found that from July 2010 to December 30, 2012, one-quarter of all
deportations were of parents with U.S. citizen children living in the United
States (Golash-Boza 2013).
No matter what type of immigration reform one favors (or doesn’t), the
question of how people are treated must be asked. Separation of young
children from their parents and death in the desert don’t fit a national image
of welcome, fair treatment, equal protection, and human rights.
WHoSe RIgHTS?
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, with-
out distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or
other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore,
no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or interna-
tional status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be
independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
(Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 2)
The United Nations General Assembly passed the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights in 1948. The declaration defined a wide range of rights,
including civil rights (protection from discrimination and freedom of expres-
sion, speech, religion, assembly, the press, movement), political rights (right to
a fair trial, due process, assembly, vote, petition, self-defense, and freedom of
association), and social and economic rights (i.e., the right to equal pay, the
right to work, the right to education, food, housing, medical care). Article 2,
quoted above, affirmed the idea that governments were not justified in exclud-
ing groups of people from rights, based on (among other things) national
or social origin or status of a country to which a person belongs. Yet for
