Those Damned Immigrants: America’s Hysteria over Undocumented Immigration

209 Pages·2013·2.287 MB·English

by  Ediberto Román, Michael A. Olivas

Those Damned Immigrants
CITIZENSHIP AND MIGRATION IN THE AMERICAS
General Editor: Ediberto Román
Tierra y Libertad: Land, Liberty, and Latino Housing
Steven W. Bender
No Undocumented Child Left Behind:
Plyler v. Doe and the Education of Undocumented Schoolchildren
Michael A. Olivas
Marginal Workers: How Legal Fault Lines
Divide Workers and Leave Them without Protection
Ruben J. Garcia
Run for the Border: Vice and Virtue in U.S.-Mexico Border Crossings
Steven W. Bender
Those Damned Immigrants: America’s Hysteria over
Undocumented Immigration
Ediberto Román
Those Damned Immigrants
America’s Hysteria over Undocumented Immigration
Ediberto Román
With a foreword by Michael A. Olivas
a
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2013 by New York University
All rights reserved
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that
may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Román, Ediberto.
Those damned immigrants: America’s hysteria over undocumented immigration /
Ediberto Román; with a foreword by Michael A. Olivas.
pages cm. — (Citizenship and migration in the Americas)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8147-7657-5 (hardback)
1. United States—Emigration and immigration—Government policy.
2. Immigrants—United States. 3. Citizenship—United States. I. Title.
JV6483.R66 2013
364.1'370973—dc23 2013015229
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials
are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible
suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For
Isabella (a.k.a Bella) Soleil Román
Your wondrous eyes and four-tooth smile light up my
world and melt me
&
Felipe Sousa Matos, Juan Jaime Rodriguez, Carlos
Alberto Roa Jr., and Maria Gabriela “Gaby” Pacheco,
a.k.a. the DREAM Walkers
Your tireless struggle for justice has inspired these efforts
&
Professor Derrick A. Bell Jr.
Your iconic work “The Space Traders” ensured I would
become a social justice scholar
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Contents
Foreword ix
Michael A. Olivas
Acknowledgments xiii
1. Introduction 1
2. Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric 17
3. Empirical Data on Immigration 43
4. Immigration’s Effects on State and Local Economies 85
5. The Conflicted United States–Mexico Relationship: 111
Invitation and Exclusion
6. Sociological and Psychological Insights on 125
Anti-Immigrant Bias
7. A Pragmatic Proposal for Immigration Reform 133
Notes 153
Index 181
About the Author 185
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Foreword
Ediberto Román’s Those Damned Immigrants is a classic in the grow-
ing literature on the vast right-wing conspiracy, including the many
exploitative features of capitalism in the postmodern age that attract and
depend upon contingent and undocumented immigrant labor, largely
from third world nations, especially the proximate Mexico, with liminal
workers so desperate that they will risk life and ruin to come to el norte,
even knowing the illegality and structural economic violence they will
encounter for scandalous wages (and all too often the criminal violence
they will encounter in routine hate crimes). Then, instead of rewarding
them with gratitude for doing the work we do not want to do and allow-
ing our economy to restructure at their expense, we turn around and
despise them and often harm them because they are not us. And in the
cruel discourse that marginalizes them as bearing “anchor babies,” being
“illegals,” and possessing other undesirable traits—or worse, coveting
our daughters—we demonize and scapegoat them. Watching these sto-
ries in the public discourse can be a sobering and largely horrific train
wreck, but one that happens with much more frequency. Even the New
York Times, largely sympathetic to immigrants, contributes to this mar-
ginalizing discursive habit by requiring its reporters to employ the term
“illegal immigrant,” its New York Times Manual of Style and Usage ensur-
ing that the terminology is widely repeated and giving veiled support to
nativists and restrictionists.
Because there is so much anti-Mexican animus evident in the quotid-
ian public polity, especially with the escalating drug violence along the
border and interior, fuelled by this country’s prodigious drug appetite, it
>> ix