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4183940
Consider the Relationship Between The War on Terror and The War on Drugs and Mexican Immigration in the post-9/11 United
States
Nicholas Thompson
ID Number: 4183940
Single Honours American & Canadian Studies
Supervisor: Dr Bevan Sewell
Dissertation (Q43128)
Contents Page Number
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Introduction
1. Context
Nixon’s War on Drugs
Racism Behind Drug Law
Mexican Immigration
The Border
2. Mexican Immigration and The War on Terror
US-Mexican Relations
USA PATRIOT Act
The Homeland Security Act
3. Arizona SB1070- The impact of The War on Drugs on Immigration Policy in the Borderlands
Calderon’s War
Arizona SB1070
The Role of the media
4. A Liberalising of Policies: Obama’s Approach Toward Drugs and Immigration
Exile Nation: The Plastic People
Executive Action: Reprieve for Immigrants
Legalisation
Conclusion
Abstract
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This dissertation focuses on the impact the War on Terror and War on Drugs
have had on Mexican immigration. War on Terror legislation; specifically the
USA PATRIOT Act and The Homeland Security Act- are analysed in terms of
how they have damaged the liberties of Mexican immigrants in the US and led
to them being perceived as security threats. The Mexican War on Drugs under
President Felipe Calderon led to a massive amount of violence and death in
Mexico, which fuelled the push for state level draconian immigration reform in
Arizona. Arizona SB1070 has targeted Mexican undocumented immigrants by
giving police powers to harass those suspected of being undocumented, using
the overall strategy of attrition to make life so unpleasant for them that they
leave on their own accord. The media creates a ‘spectacle of violence’ about the
border and the threat of ‘spill over violence’ in its erroneous reporting of the
issue. This dissertation argues that the ‘New Racism’ allows politicians and the
media to overstate the threat of ‘spill over violence’ whilst maintaining
democratic principles and respectability. Furthermore, any critique in film of
the War on Drugs and the War on Terror is seriously limited by the ‘wartime
epistemology’, by creating a binary ‘with us/ against us’ code of signification.
Under President Barack Obama, there has been a liberalising of drug and
immigration policy. Several states have decriminalised marijuana and the
President has issued an Executive Action deferring the deportation of up to 5
million undocumented immigrants, with many of these being Mexican. It is
argued that these developments are progressive and stand to lower
undocumented Mexican immigration to the US, as the moves toward the
legalisation of marijuana will diminish the Mexican drug wars, with America
the major consumer of the narcotics that fuel the violence.
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Key WordsProhibition, Immigration, Moral Panic, Folk Devil, Securitising, Spectacle of Violence, Wartime Epistemology, New Racism, Executive Action, Decriminalisation, legalisation
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Introduction
In the post 9/11 era, the issue of immigration has been a major concern for many
Americans. This was reflected in political discourse as numerous Bills were
presented to enact measures of reform at the state and federal level, whilst at the
international level US-Mexican attempts at immigration reform was unproductive.
The debate around immigration and undocumented immigrants has been greatly
affected by both the War on Terror and the War on Drugs. In the wake of 9/11,
multiple Acts were enacted in order to better ensure American national security.
This dissertation will focus on the USA PATRIOT and the Homeland Security Act,
focusing on their impact on the treatment of Mexican immigration in the US.
The War on Terror influenced US opinion on immigrants and scuppered any
chance for reform between the US and Mexico, as immigrants became ‘folk devils’
in what Samantha Hauptman has characterised as a ‘moral panic’ that has
continued since the passing of the American War on Terror laws.1 The moral panic
will be used to analyse the effects of these anti terror laws on Mexican immigration.
The strengthening of law enforcement powers and border policing that came with
these laws have led to what Rodriguez describes as the ‘securitization’ of
immigration.2 This paper shall use these arguments to frame the issue of terror
laws and their effects on immigration, however it will further the contention that
these laws have unduly targeted Mexican immigration and that racism plays a
major role in the treatment of immigrants in the post 9/11 era.
1 Samantha Hauptman, The Criminalization of Immigration: The Post 9/11 Moral Panic, (El Paso, LFP Scholarly Publishing LLC, 2013) p162 Robyn M. Rodriguez, ‘(Dis) unity and Diversity in Post-9/11 America’, Sociological Forum, Vol. 23, No. 2, (Jun., 2008), p381
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The focus will then shift to how these anti-immigrant feelings in the US during the
post 9/11 period combined with fear over escalating violence in the Mexican drug
war and how this impacted on state level immigration policy. Specifically looking at
the example of Arizona SB1070. This law is rooted in racism, the War on Drugs and
a fear of immigrants exacerbated by Acts such as the PATRIOT Act and Homeland
Security Act.
President Felipe Calderon’s war against the Mexican cartels led to many areas of
Mexico near the border and on the trafficking route from the south descend into
chaos as cartels fought against the Mexican army and each other for control of key
transit points. During this time, the media inflated fear of spill over violence as
sections of the media and politicians painted the issue as a threat to American
national security.3 Correa- Cabrera argues the media creates a ‘spectacle of
violence’ as theories and statistics are used in an alarmist manner to enact policy
change.4 This paper will further this argument by suggesting there is an element of
racism inherent behind this spectacle, which has been propagated and justified by
the anti-Terror laws.
Under the presidency of Barack Obama, there has been a general liberalising of
state level drug laws coupled with a recent alteration in immigration policy. Taken
3 Tony, Payan, Kruszewski, Staudt, Z. Anthony, (eds.) A War That Can’t Be Won: Binational Perspectives On The War On Drugs (Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 2013) p193
4 Guadalupe Correa- Cabrera, ‘The Spectacle of Drug Violence: American Public Discourse, Media, and Border Enforcement in the Texas-Tamaulipas Border Region During Drug-War Times’, Norteamérica vol.7 no.2 México (July/ December 2012)
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as a whole, Obama’s progressive moves may go some way in limiting the impact of
terror and drug policies on Mexican immigration.
Obama’s Executive Action, the Immigration Accountability Executive Action, will
revise some U.S. immigration policies and initiate several programs. The most
controversial among these provisions would grant deferred action to as many as 5
million unauthorized aliens.5 A focus will be placed on the revised border security
policy, the deferred action for unauthorized immigrants and the revised interior
enforcement priorities, specifically the ending of the Secure Communities
program.6 Also examined will be the contradiction in federalist and anti federalist
drug policy in relation to liberal and conservative politics, as has been seen during
Obama’s presidency. The issue of drug decriminalisation and legalisation will be
examined from this viewpoint, as well as what this means for Mexican immigration.
No works address the effect of both wars on Mexican immigration, though several
address one or the other. This paper will argue that the heightened sense of fear
about immigrants due to the anti-Terror laws has merged with the fear of drug
violence to form a distinct racism that seeks to limit Mexican immigration and end
undocumented Mexican immigration.
5 Congressional Research Service, The President’s Immigration Accountability Executive Action Of November 20, 2014: Overview and Issues, (02, 24, 2015) p26 Ibid, p15
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Context
Nixon’s War on Drugs
Nixon’s explicit use of the term ‘War on Drugs’ came in an announcement to the
press on the 17th of June 1971.7 However In 1969 Nixon had already established the
Presidential Task Force Relating to Narcotics, Marijuana and Dangerous Drugs
known as Task Force One.8 Task Force One’s report submitted in June 1969 argued
that the main priority should be “an eradication of the production and refinement
in Mexico of opium poppies and marijuana.”9 US-directed “chemical crop
destruction” followed causing a strain to US-Mexican relations.10
In 1973 Nixon authorized the formation of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA),
which “combined the narcotics agents from various departments to make a single
federal entity responsible for the enforcement of drug laws.”11 Nixon’s anti drug
measures were comparatively progressive. Two thirds of the allotted anti-drug
money was spent on treatment, whilst there is evidence that privately Nixon
understood he’d been far more successful with drug treatment than with law
enforcement.12 However the political benefit of appearing tough on crime was
irresistible, with the 1972 election Nixon used “simple, crime fighting rhetoric that
had worked for him before.”13 Crucially, Nixon’s approach to drug policy set the
agenda for other politicians to get right with drugs as it were, “As Nixon’s tough
7 Ted Galen Carpenter, Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington’s Futile War on Drugs in Latin America, (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) p118 Ibid9 Ibid, p1210 Ibid, p1311 Ibid, p1512 Eugene Jarecki (dir.), The House I live in (New York, BBC, 2012)13 Jarecki, op. cit.
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talk proved a recipe for electoral success, states across the country began passing
tough new laws.”14
The drug war waned domestically under Carter and Ford, with Carter having to
deal with allegation that his Administration harboured illicit drug users. Neither
administration let up on the international facet of the drug war; with the US still
applying significant pressure on Mexico to eradicate it’s marijuana and opium
crops.15
These efforts would “pale in comparison to the policies Washington would adopt in
the 1980’s and 1990’s.”16 President Ronald Reagan continued to intervene in
source countries, i.e. where the drugs are created, but “the trend toward a more
tolerant domestic attitude on drug use reversed dramatically… as actions taken by
the administration created an unprecedented hysteria.”17 Under Reagan, the new
cocaine derivative crack cocaine hit the streets of America and seemed to threaten
the moral fabric of American society. There was a perception that the drug was a
black vice, the media fostered this view as it presented images of poor blacks
smoking crack on the streets in the nightly news. This was despite the fact that
13% of the US was comprised of blacks and the number of crack users equalled this
figure.18
14 Jarecki, op. cit.15 Carpenter, op. cit., p1716 Carpenter, op. cit., p1817 Ibid18 Jarecki, op. cit.
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Reagan signed an unprecedented array of mandatory sentences for drug crimes,
with crack receiving the worst of them. The possession and selling of Crack was
made 100 times more punitive than powder cocaine.19 Crucially during the 1980’s
powder cocaine was seen as a white drug, even a white-collar white drug. In
comparison crack was demonised as being much worse, and of course, a black
drug. It is worth noting crack cocaine is powder cocaine mixed with baking soda
and then heated- essentially the same.20
The unparalleled hysteria around drugs at the time is shown in a 1985 poll, which
showed just 2-6% of the American population saw drugs as the nations “number
one problem”, however this number jumped to 64% in September 1989. Within a
year, this number had dropped to below 10% as the media lost interest.21 President
George H W Bush continued to escalate the drug, as did Bill Clinton during his time
in office. Clinton rejected a US Sentencing Commission recommendation to
eliminate the disparity between crack and power cocaine sentences.22
Racism Behind Drug Law
American prohibitionist drug policy can be traced back to The Hague Opium
Convention of 1912, which stated medical need as the sole criterion for opiate
production.23 In 1914 the US introduced the Harrison Act, “ostensibly a taxation
measure but in reality designed to restrict the consumption of opiates by limiting
19 Jarecki, op. cit20 Ibid21 Drug Policy Alliance, http://www.drugpolicy.org/new-solutions-drug-policy/brief-history-drug-war (26, 04, 2015)22 Ibid23 Nigel, Inkster, Virginia Comolli, Drugs, Insecurity and Failed States- The Problems of Prohibition (New York, Routledge, 2012) p39
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access to them.”24 Various international conventions followed on the
manufacturing and sale of illicit drugs, by 1930 America had its own enforcement
agency in the form of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, whose commissioner Harry
J. Anslinger became a driving force shaping both his own national and the
international narcotics agenda until his retirement in 1962.25 Anslinger “waged an
implacable campaign against drugs, emphasizing a supposed nexus between drug
consumption and violent criminality.”26 Furthermore Aslinger was a “skilled and
cynical bureaucrat who manipulated statistics on consumption and arrests to
sustain and bolster the status of his bureau.”27 He is perhaps best known in the US
for launching a “one man crusade against marijuana, a drug he variously portrayed,
on the basis of no real evidence, as promoting violence and as a gateway drug
which initiated the user to stronger substances.”28
It can be argued racism has historically informed drug laws. After taking part in the
construction of the pacific transcontinental railroad, many Chinese settled on the
west coast. Efforts driven by US labour unions to discourage this community from
settling and continuing to take jobs - led in 1875 to San Francisco’s ordinance
banning the smoking of opium, seen as a quintessentially Chinese vice (laudanum,
or tincture of opium, widely used for self medication by whites, were not included
in the ban).29
24 Inkster, op. cit., p4025 Ibid, p4126 Ibid27 Inkster, op. cit., p4128 Ibid29 Ibid, p38
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Marijuana laws in the southwest also had racial underpinnings, in relation to
Mexicans.30 Mexicans in the southwest border region worked hard and for cheap,
potentially endangering white jobs. They smoked Marijuana, so the name for the
plant came from this association, as prior to this ‘hemp’ had been seen as
something of a miracle crop for all kinds of purposes.31 As was seen with opium,
marijuana use among Mexicans was sensationalized as a cause of Mexican
lawlessness. This is seen in the following remark from a Texas police captain,
“Under marijuana Mexicans (become) very violent… they seem to have no fear….
under the influence of this weed they have enormous strength and it will take
several men to handle one man.”32
It was the Mexican association and demonization that led to law being enacted,
with El Paso in Texas being the first municipality to illegalize marijuana in 1914,
California prohibiting its use in 1915 and the rest of Texas following suit in 1919.33
Similar laws came into being around the southwest and across the nation in the
subsequent years. This kind of symbiosis of racism and drug law as racial control
can be seen in action in much more recent years. In 1980, the American Coalition-
an anti-immigration group claimed, “Marihuana (sic), perhaps now the most
insidious of narcotics, is a direct by-product of unrestricted Mexican
immigration.”34 Here we can see how the racial fallout from drug laws has
persevered.35 Furthermore the explicit connection between Mexican immigration 30 Jarecki, op. cit.31 Ibid32 Frederick Block, ‘Racism’s Hidden History In The War On Drugs’, Huffington Post, (2013), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judge-frederic-block/war-on-drugs_b_2384624.html, (08. 04, 2015)
33 Ibid34 Ibid35 Ibid
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and marijuana use demonstrates the interconnected nature of immigration and the
War on Drugs in America, and the racism that sustains it.
Mexican Immigration
Mexican migration to the US began with the formalisation of the border in 1848
with the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo following the US-Mexico war.36 Immigration
policy in the US has moved through stages, from virtually no restrictions on the
number and types of people immigrating until the 1920’s to a national origin quota
system.37 More recently, deferral controls have readjusted the immigration strategy
to decrease the family sponsored backlog and accommodate more highly skilled
workers, increasing per country limits of immigrants and expanding work based
categories of immigrants admitted.38 The Bracero Program was launched in 1942
to address US labour shortages during World War 2, and continued until 1964,
however in 1954, approximately 1 million Mexicans were deported during
Operation Wetback.39
The Immigration Act of 1965 brought a quota for western hemispheric migration
of 120,000 per year. This impacted on Mexican migrants, as the migration in the
subsequent years was now primarily illegal. It was not until 1986 when the
Immigration Reform and Control Act was implemented that US immigration law
36 Deborah W. Meyers, ‘US Border Enforcement: From Horseback to High-Tech’, Migration Policy Institute, (2005) http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/horseback-high-tech-us-border-enforcement (20, 11, 2014)37 Hauptman, op. cit., p2638 Ibid39 Stephen Castles, Mark J. Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements In The Modern World, (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) p182
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was “specifically targeted toward the undocumented.”40 The IRCA, characterized as
an amnesty program, was designed and enacted as means to deduce the backlog of
family sponsored applicants and give legal status to the undocumented
immigrants.41 It also made the hiring of undocumented immigrants a punishable
offence. However the enforcement of the system failed as many unauthorised
workers could simply forge the necessary documents and present them to
employers.42 Also noteworthy is the level of subversion among employers, who felt
the law would disrupt whole industries and burden businesses, particularly the
labour intensive agricultural sector.43 The rejection of the law by those involved
with Mexican labourers suggests there was an accepted role for the undocumented
in the wider economic system, perhaps an important one.
The Immigration Act of 1990 and the illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration
Responsibility Act of 1996 increased the per country limits of immigrants, number
of visas issues and funding for border control and illegal immigrant apprehension
efforts.44 The 1996 laws marked the last series of major changes to the US federal
immigration policy, which greatly affected the rights and privileges afforded to
both legal and illegal immigrants entering the US and the number and types of
immigrants admitted, until 9/11.45
40 Hauptman, op. cit., p2641 Hauptman, op. cit., p2742 Castles, op. cit., p18343 Ibid44 Hauptman, op. cit., p2745 Hauptman, op cit., p28
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The Border
The enforcement of the US-Mexican border has generally reflected the political
priorities, legislative changes and context of the broader economic and political
environment.46 Enforcing the border is typically directly linked with immigration
reform. The prevailing notion spanning the decades has been that a more secure,
less porous border would mean less illegal migrants and greater national security.
The Border became much more militarized in the 1990’s, with the construction of a
10 feet high wall between San Diego and Tijuana in 1991 that has eventually been
expanded to cover many of the key areas related to drug smuggling and human
trafficking.47 In the 1990’s, Operation Hold the Line was implemented using a new
style of policing, where the border agents would be placed forward at the border
proper as opposed to apprehending illegal immigrants once they had made their
way into the country in the El Paso-Tijuana border area.48 Similar tactics were
implemented in Operation Gatekeeper and Operation Safeguard in California and
Arizona respectively. California
New laws have seen the commitment of more border agents and resources, leading
to a highly militarised border. The importance of the border, as the physical
representation of American sovereignty and security will continue indefinitely. Its
enforcement has been the main pillar on which US migration management has
rested in the last decades and will continue to be.49
46 Meyers, op. cit.47 Ibid48 Ibid49 Florian K. Kaufmann, Mexican Labor Migrants and U.S. Immigration Policies: From Sojourner to Emigrant? (El Paso, LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC, 2011) p138
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Mexican Immigration and The War on Terror
“We had to find the terrorists hiding in America and across the world before they were able to strike our country again.”50
George W. Bush
50 ‘President Bush’s Speech on Terrorism’, The New York Times, (2006), http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/washington/06bush_transcript.html?, (22, 04, 2015)
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Immigration reform had been a major concern for both America and Mexico for a
number of years prior to Fox and Bush’s presidencies. Numerous acts were passed
in the 1990’s as Clinton sought to create a better system, yet undocumented
Mexican immigration remained a large issue in America. The 9/11 terrorist attacks
disrupted the chance for reform as several reactionary Acts were passed that
changed the very concept of immigrants in America, notably the USA PATRIOT Act
and the Homeland Security Act. In the post 9/11 era and due to these acts,
immigrants became ‘folk devils’ in what was a ‘moral panic’ that continues today.
The term moral panic implies that an “occurrence, perceived as a threat to society,
has the potential to critically change social values, norms, and regulations and that
its occasion may vitally disrupt the sanctity of society.”51 Finally, “‘as the
occurrence of a moral panic causes an unexpected, fundamental change at the very
essence of society, it is also likely that what results are a demand for greater social
regulation or control and a demand for a return to ‘traditional’ values.’”52 Crucial to
the perpetuation of a moral panic is the ‘folk devil’, that is an identifiable person or
group of people to concentrate upon, in this case, immigrants.53 The Acts have
exacerbated existing tensions and have produced new sets of racialised and ethnic
conflicts in the US.54 Ultimately both acts have targeted Mexican immigrants and
hindered Mexican immigration reform.
US-Mexican Relations
The election of Vicente Fox in 2000 “ended seven decades of PRI domination of the
presidency” and signalled to the US clear Mexican commitment to democratic
51 Hauptman, op. cit., p1252 Ibid53 Hauptman, op.cit., p1354 Rodriguez, op. cit., p379
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principles that had been lacking with the decidedly corrupt and antidemocratic
ethos of the PRI.55 The stage was set for bilateral talks on comprehensive
immigration reform in the US to deal with the question of Mexican migration,
whilst the legacy of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) suggested
such bilateral talks could be fruitful in an age of liberalizing cooperation and trade
across the border. At the meeting between the presidents on the 16 th of February
2001, both Fox and Bush pledged to work together to address the question of
Mexican migration to the US, however with the terrorist attacks of September 11 th
any hope of progress was railroaded by American preoccupation with the War on
Terror.56 9/11 changed the structure of the international system, with the US
government increasingly ‘“looking at the world through the prism of the security
concerns of terrorism, ‘securitizing’ its policies with regard to the movement of
goods and people and the management of border issues, thus narrowing its
international agenda.”’57 This would cause a strain in US-Mexican relations as
America increasingly sought to stretch its power and burden the good will of other
nations in its prosecuting of the War on Terror.58
During the Fox-Bush presidencies, transnational processes set the agenda for
bilateral relations, as drug use in America remained high whilst no real demand
reduction programs were in place. Whilst paradoxically, in the post 9/11 period
“Undocumented migration continued, overcome by security fears, the US reduced
the number of authorized lawful Mexican immigrants, inducing even more to
55 Payan, op. cit., p3956 Jorge I. Dominguez, Rafael, Fernandez de Castro, Contemporary US-Latin American Relations: Cooperation or Conflict in the 21st Century? (New York, Routledge, 2010) p1757 Dominguez, op. cit., p1758 Dominguez, op. cit., p17
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choose illegal migration.”59 Clearly there was some oversight in American political
discourse in the post 9/11 period as many Mexican immigrants were targeted in
the name of security. Despite the real fear being that of Islamic terrorists. During
this time, despite greater bilateral activity, there was actually a ‘deliberalization’ of
the border as it was further militarised. The unparalleled effort to police the border
came at the same time as both countries were embracing a shared vision of a
“border free North American economic space.”60 Mexican immigration suffered as a
result of the ‘securitizing’ of immigration, as did many immigrant groups in the US
at this time.
USA PATRIOT ACT
Central to the US response to 9/11 was the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act
(Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to
Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001).61 The Act enhanced the surveillance
of immigrants living in the United States and allowed officials to track down and
deport those suspected of having terrorist links; furthermore, the Act exempts
these cases of deportation from processes of judicial review.62 Though Mexicans
were not involved in 9/11 and the terrorists did not use the US-Mexican border,
the majority of undocumented immigrants come from Mexico so when America’s
spotlight focused on immigration enforcement, it focused on them.63
59 Ibid60 Nik Theodore, ‘Policing Borders: Unauthorized Immigration and The Pernicious Politics of Attrition’, Social Justice Vol. 38, Nos. 1-2, (2011) p10261 USA PATRIOT Act, 200162 Rodriguez, op. cit., p38163 Mallie Jane Kim, ‘After 9/11, Immigration Became About Homeland Security’, US News, (2011), http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/09/08/after-911-immigration-became-about-homeland-security-attacks-shifted-the-conversation-heavily-toward-terrorism-and-enforcement? , (12, 02, 2015)
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The Act’s primary focus was to vastly increase funding to all aspects of law
enforcement to further enhance the ability of the U.S. government to “prevent,
investigate, and prosecute acts of terror”.64 The increased authority raised the
awareness of terrorism and imposed increased government enforcement,
surveillance and suspicion against virtually all segments of society.65 Due to the
federal governments firm stance on homeland security and the varied group of
challengers that were critical of the new immigration restrictions, the Act became a
well-publicized subject of debate among the general public.66 With an increased
awareness of the flaws in the federal immigration system and subsequent national
security issues, the PATRIOT Act’s legally imposed restrictions on immigrants and
visitors to America caused, Hauptman argues “a moral panic, inadvertently leading
to the criminalization of immigrants in the post-September 11 the era.”67 Despite
having no role in the attacks and presenting no real threat to American national
security, Mexican immigrants felt the brunt of the increased fear of immigrants the
PATRIOT Act created.
The final and most important component of the moral panic is the role of the
media, which has “habitually played an active role in promoting moral panics.
Adding to the fury and proliferation, the media are capable of presenting seemingly
small events or episodes and thrusting them into an individual’s consciousness, by
means of a reinterpretation of seemingly mundane behavior or actions, which are
64 USA PATRIOT Act, 200165 Hauptman, op. cit., p366 Ibid67 Ibid
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then abruptly deemed deviant.”68 Kellner contends that the "the corporate media
(in the US) has been exploiting fear for decades in their excessive presentation of
murder and violence and dramatization of a wide range of threats from foreign
enemies and within everyday life", however this tendency has seemingly
intensified post 9/11.69
The perception of the existence of a continuing terrorist threat after these events,
and the incorporation of this idea into public discourse and as a staple for mass
media, both as news and entertainment- have created a media spectacle and
stirred up significant levels of fear among the US population.70 Although the
PATRIOT Act was not drafted as an immigration policy, its main focus is
immigration with much of the new legislation and changes in strategy attributed to
increased national security concerns.71 Ultimately laws such as the PATRIOT Act
have aided in stereotyping all immigrants and by extension Mexican immigrants as
potential deviants, as “there is often a slippage between the categories of illegal
immigrant and legal immigrant. Both get constructed as ‘other’ to those who
naturally belong and became associated with a host of social dangers and disorders
such as crime, drug trafficking and terrorism.”72
The Homeland Security Act
The Homeland Security Act was passed on the 25th of November 2002 in order to
strengthen national security post 9/11. It led to the dissolution of the Immigration
68 Hauptman, op. cit., p1469 Correa- Cabrera, op. cit.70 Ibid71 Hauptman, op. cit., p2672 Hauptman, op. cit., p29
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and Naturalization Service (INS), replacing it with the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS).73 Notably, under the new DHS, the policing and enforcement
functions of immigration authorities, both external and internal, were increased.
For instance, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was established to
handle immigration enforcement at U.S. borders.74
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office was created to deal
with the enforcement of immigration policy within the interior United States.
Moreover, local police units could now be forced to cooperate with federal agencies
in immigration enforcement, further extending the government's policing
apparatuses.75 Robyn M. Rodriguez argues these changes made US national security
policy increasingly interiorized and localized, marking a trend toward
‘securitization’ of migration in the US.76
Thomas Faist defines the securitisation of migration as the construction of
"security, the collective management of subnational or transnational threats and
the policing of borders and internal realm, rather than just the defense of territory
against external attack."77 Faist contends that the depiction in the West of
migration as a security threat post 9/11 has contributed to what American political
scientist Samuel Huntington termed the ‘clash of civilisations.’ In that “Securitizing
migration reinforces the very stereotypes about cultural fears and clashes that
politicians publicly deny.”78 This is debateable in terms of US foreign policy, as 73 Rodriguez, op. cit., p38174 Ibid75 Ibid76 Rodriguez, op. cit., p38177 Rodriguez, op. cit., p38178 Thomas Faist ‘“Extension du domaine de la lutte”: International Migration und Security before and after September 11’, International
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often strategic interests predominate civilizational conflict, however in terms of US
War on Terror policies, Faist’s argument is convincing given the American public
and media perceive threats posed by foreign immigrants post 9/11 through a War
on Terror lens.
Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis argued that conflicts would be driven
increasingly more by differences between civilisations and less by “political
ideology and economics.”79 It is irrefutable that the “mainstream media in the USA
automatically, implicitly and unanimously adopted Huntington’s paradigm to
explain September 11.”80 However as Abrahamian states, “Paradigms do not have
to be true to become conventional wisdom.”81 Faist agrees with Huntington in that
the end of the Cold War has enabled cultures or Huntington’s broad and somewhat
antiquated “civilizations” to be central to the structure of the new international
system. Faist writes:
In recent times, migration as a security threat has emerged with the end of the Cold War… the end of the Cold War has been the most recent development, which favored the spread of objectless fear. This historical divide not only meant the disappearance of a powerful external threat to the security of the West but also the loss of an important source of cohesion between the diverse groups, which constitute them.82
Something that seems clear given Faist’s view that the end of the Cold War led to
migration being the new threat to western cohesion, is that perhaps it is the loss of
cultural identity that Americans are so afraid of and this is reflected in the anti-
Terror laws. Huntington, viewing the world in a somewhat primitive way with his
Migration Review, Vol. 36 No. 1 (Spring 2002): 7-14 (2002) p879 Samuel P. Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3, (1993)80 Ervand Abrahamian, ‘The US media, Huntington and September 11’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 3 (2003) p52981 Ibid82 Faist, op. cit., p8
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work on civilisations, suggests that Mexican migrants have always been viewed as
a cultural threat to Americans.83 Arguably then this has always been the case, as
can be seen with the marijuana laws of the mid twentieth century and the sporadic
deportations like Operation Wetback. However 9/11 and the resulting anti-Terror
laws have allowed a legitimised framework for the ‘securitization’ of immigration
that can help allay these fears.
Rodriguez argues that with the securitization of migration, immigrants have
become the subject of state surveillance. National security or, in its more recent
designation, ‘homeland security’, is not merely concerned with securing national
borders against external threats; it is aimed at the perceived threat posed by
noncitizens living within U.S. national borders.84 Peter Andreas states “take the
word 'terrorism' and put in the words 'drug trafficking' or 'illegal immigration' and
the new discourse of border security is remarkably similar to the older discourse
that has defined U.S. border relations with Mexico"85 Perhaps the fact that the
discourse is so interchangeable is due to the fact that the true underlying source of
fear remains the same, racism. T. A Van Dijk has written on the ‘New Racism’,
arguing:
Many forms of new racism are discursive: they are expressed, enacted and confirmed by everyday text and talk… policies, laws… TV programs and news reports… they appear mere talk… yet they may be just as effective to marginalize and exclude minorities. They may hurt even more, especially when they seem so ‘normal’… to those who engage in such discourse.86
83 Castles, op. cit., p21284 Rodriguez, op. cit., p38185 Rodriguez, op. cit., p38186 Adrian Holliday, Martin Hyde, John Kullman, Inter-Cultural Communication: An Advanced Resource Book (Abingdon, Routledge, 2004) p122
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One must argue the desire for immigration reform stems from this ‘New Racism’.
As will be discussed in the next chapter, many conservatives have sought to enact
immigration policy built on racist sentiment, which is justified through a labyrinth
of media support and policy precedence that seems to normalise it. One can even
point to Huntington’s views, as normalising what is essentially racism as something
scholarly and sincere.
Rodriguez makes the astute point that the “securitization of migration also
describes the process by which the work of national security is normalized and
taken up by ordinary US citizens. For instance, the DHS actively encourages
individuals to report "suspicious activity," while state and local authorities ask that
"if you see something, say something."”87 The veracity with which citizens have
helped securitize migration can be seen with the ““Minute Men”, who pledge to
"use every legal means at our disposal to assist law enforcement authorities in
identifying and apprehending those who violate our borders.”"88 Interestingly, Faist
notes:
The links between international migration and security threats are inconclusive. These two phenomena only superficially share the fact that border crossings are involved.... the link between migration and increases in other phenomena, such as drug trafficking and crime, is vastly overstated.89
From Faist’s remark here, one is reminded of Abrahamian’s quote on page 19, a
supposed link doesn’t have to causal for it to be common knowledge and part of the
political discourse.90 For example, it is common practice in America to clamour for
a more secure border in times of perceived insecurity such as in the post 9/11 era,
87 Rodriguez, op. cit., p 38188 Rodrgiuez, op. cit., p38189 Faist, op. cit., p1090 Abrahamian, op. cit., p529
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as most proposals to U.S. Congress to ““revamp the U.S. immigration system” call to
expand border enforcement activities further””91, yet the reality is that stricter
““U.S. border enforcement leads to higher migration intensity, which in turn leads
to an increase in the volume of undocumented Mexican migration, presumably due
to the reduced transfer-incomes of “stayers.””92 As the deterrence effect of U.S.
border enforcement is negligible, the net effect of increased U.S. border
enforcement is to spur more undocumented Mexican migration.””93
To explain problems without actually having to give concrete evidence, politicians
can use immigration. This is because the effects of immigration are empirically
hard to establish.94 Faist argues that ‘securitizing’ migration is part of elevating
migration to a ‘meta issue’, that is the way in which “international migration,
immigration and emigration can be conveniently connected to a host of other
issues, especially danger and threat, military - but above all social, economic,
political and cultural.”95 Threats to security in immigration countries are without
any real-world foundation. What is true however is that through meta-politics, low-
level threats usually gain out-of-proportion significance.96 In essence, small things
can be blown out of proportion.
Meta-politics unsettles the balance between the material and symbolic content of
politics in connecting substantive issues such as unemployment and security to
91 Kaufmann, op. cit., p592 Ibid93 Kaufmann, op. cit., p694 Kaufmann, op. cit., p1295 Kaufmann, op. cit., p1296 Ibid
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symbols, which signify threats in factually incorrect ways.97 One could even argue
the USA PATRIOT Act and the Homeland Security Act are in a sense Meta-politics.
As despite the fact that the 9/11 hijackers all arrived in America with visas, the
perceived threat of undocumented immigrants- a reality- has been lumped in with
the idea of the undocumented immigrant turned terrorist- which is as of 2015 a
myth. The true failing with 9/11 was with the US embassies overseas seeing as
they are the ones that permitted the terrorist’s entry. Nevertheless, many Mexicans
have been detained and deported en masse across the United States.98 Rodriguez
writes, “Indeed, if 9/11 produced public anxieties toward Arabs and Muslims, it
also exacerbated already existing tensions around Mexican immigration...”99
Targeted by groups such as ICE, Mexican immigrants have become victims of the
post 9/11 War on Terror era. The plans of reform at the start of the decade were
seriously scuppered with the passing of Bush’s anti-Terror laws.
97 Ibid98 Rodriguez, op. cit., p38399 Ibid
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Arizona SB1070- The impact of the War on Drugs on Immigration Policy in the Borderlands
“Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.”100 Porfirio Diaz
The Passing of Arizona SB1070 on April 32rd, 2010 signified a move toward state
level immigration reform due to a perceived “broken immigration system.”101
Although ostensibly implemented to decrease the number of unauthorized
immigrants, the law finds its roots in a definitive fear of perceived Mexican drug
war spill over violence.102 The Arizona-Sonora part of the US-Mexican border has
perennially been the most active part for unauthorized crossings and marijuana
seizures, with the two existing separately, however Calderon’s war against the
cartels dramatically increased violence and instability in Mexico, leading to
theories of ‘spill over violence’ as American media and politicians alike painted the
issue as a threat to American national security.103
The Media creates a ‘spectacle of violence’ about the border as theories and
statistics are used in an alarmist manner to enact policy change. Using the concept
of the ‘media spectacle’, taken from Guy Debord’s 1967 book Society of the
Spectacle and Douglas Kellner’s extensions of the ‘spectacle’, Correa-Cabrera
contends that the perceived threat posed by the Mexican drug war has been
fabricated and overstated by the media, with these inaccurate statements then
100 Sandy Goodman, ‘“Poor Mexico, So Far from God, So Close To The United States”’, Huffington Post, (2009), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sandy-goodman/poor-mexico-so-far-from-g_b_170899.html, (24, 04, 2015)101 Theodore, op. cit., p90102 Ruben Navarrette Jr, ‘Drug cartels: Bogeymen in Arizona Law’, CNN (2010), http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/08/09/navarrette.arizona.immigration/ (20/04/2015)103 Payan, op. cit., p193
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used by politicians.104 The ‘Wartime Epistemology” refers to the way in which all
cultural productions are constrained by “an either/ or regime of signification.”
Meaning all representation and debate in times of war (drug/terror) is reduced to
Manichean wartime logic of “you are either with us or against us” binaries.105
Calderon’s war
On December 1st, 2006, newly elected PAN President Felipe Calderon declared “his
determination to oppose the cartels with the full force of his government.” 106 The
United States fully supported the strategy, in keeping with its long-standing
confidence in the “efficacy of force”.107 Calderon would eventually deploy more
than 50,000 military personnel to areas known for cartel activity as part of a
progressive increase of resources enabled in large part by what would become
known as the Merida initiative.108 The American assistance package pledged $1.6
Billion “to be dispersed over three years, to pay for military and law enforcement
equipment, technical and tactical training, upgrading of intelligence capability,
hardware such as helicopters and surveillance aircraft and special equipment to
detect drugs at border crossings.”109
Calderon was able to claim several early wins in his war, with the arrest of
thousands of suspects- most of whom were released without being prosecuted,
seizure of tons of drugs with an estimated street value in the billions and the
104 Payan, op. cit., p193105 Andrew Schopp, Mathew B. Hill, (eds.) The War on Terror and American Popular Culture: September 11 and Beyond (New Jersey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009) p220
106 Payan, op. cit., p40107 Payan, op. cit., p40108 Inkster, op. cit., p93109 Payan, op. cit., p40
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extradition to the United States of several high-level drug traffickers.110 The killing
of Arturo Beltran Leyva in December 2009 and the subsequent arrest of his two
brothers and another key leader left the Beltran Leyva cartel defunct.111 The
resulting violence however offset the gains in a horrendous manner. Many
Mexicans became disillusioned as talk turned to the possibility of Mexico becoming
a “failed state”.112 In June 2010 the major newspaper, El Universal, observed that
the chaos spreading through the country “requires us to change our view of the
problem, that it is no longer a matter of organized crime but rather of the loss of
the state.” Calderón himself acknowledged, “This criminal behavior . . . has become
a challenge to the state, an attempt to replace the state.”113
Paradoxically, it appears that once the military arrives in a city, violence has
typically lessened, however this drop is then followed by a “notable and prolonged
increase.”114 Professor Denise Dresser contends that when the military have
entered troubled cities; they usually removed local police forces, regarding them as
under control of the cartels.115 Without denying high levels of corruption among
local police, Dresser contends that they know their cities and are better equipped
to deal with violence. The military lack the knowledge and experience with police
work.116 The result is a climate of lawlessness in which not just drug traffickers but
all sorts of criminals and people whose violence had been kept in check are able to
operate with impunity.117
110 Payan, op. cit., p40111 Ibid, p51112 Ibid, p41113 Payan, op. cit., p41114 Payan, op. cit., p46115 Ibid116 Ibid117 Payan, op. cit., p46
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A 2010 poll showed that 50% felt that security had worsened and only 21%
believed the country was safer under Calderon, showing support for the war was in
decline. Furthermore, the year 2010 saw the highest level of cartel related killings-
15,273- a 60% increase on the previous year.118 During his presidency, Calderon
repeatedly stated that over 90% of those killed in cartel related violence were
criminals, implying that the gangs were killing each other off in a kind of
cannibalistic path of destruction serving the greater good of the nation.119 Officials,
agents and the mainstream media have generally accepted this message in the
US.120 Perhaps as it’s much easier to see the war in ‘good’ versus ‘evil’ terms which
confusingly fractured conflicts often boil down to in American discourse. The film
maker Adam Curtis spoke about this tactic of western politicians in the film Bitter
lake, arguing western politicians often make complex issues a case of ‘good’ versus
‘evil’ to avoid any true critique of Western actions and complicity in international
traumas.121 The reality is many innocent Mexicans are dying as result of American
drug consumption.
However it is true that most of the violence has been “Internecine between cartels,
factions therein, or opportunistic small gangs seeking to carve out a piece of the
lucrative pie. The gangs have used violence as a way to taunt and terrorize,
beheading their victims… and posting videos of their grisly deeds on YouTube…”122
Although the dead may be rival gang members, they may also be kidnap victims,
118 Inkster et al, op. cit., p94119 Payan, op. cit., p44120 Ibid121 Adam Curtis (dir.), Bitter Lake (London, BBC, 2015)122 Payan, op. cit., p44
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migrants who had paid the gangs to help them cross the border, innocents caught
in the crossfire, or others deemed disposable.123 In 2012 the government
acknowledged that at least 47,515 people had been killed in ‘drug-war related’
incidents between December 2006 and September 2011. However other estimates
have been much less conservative, with figures exceeding 100,000.124 The horrors
of Calderon’s war have negatively impacted on Mexican immigration as Border
States began to cite the threat of ‘spill over violence’ as a threat to national security.
Arizona SB1070
Officially named the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighbourhoods Act,
but better known as SB1070, the stated purpose of the law is “to discourage and
deter any unlawful entry and presence of aliens and economic activity by persons
unlawfully present in the United States.”125 There is something to be said about the
name, as illegals have surely never lived in safe neighbourhoods. They have lived in
the crime-ridden areas and always have. It seems to be about control, as
realistically none of the act actually makes neighbourhoods safer. What it does
allow is legalised harassment of Mexican immigrants. Its key provisions include:
(1) requirements that Police Officers investigate the immigration status of all
individuals they stop, if the officers suspect that they are in the country unlawfully;
(2) mandatory detention of individuals who are arrested, even for minor offenses
that would normally result in a ticket, if they cannot prove they are authorized to
be in the United States; and (3) stipulations that allow law enforcement officers to
arrest a person without a warrant if the officer has probable cause to believe that
123 Ibid124 Ibid125 Arizona Senate Bill 1070, 2010
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the person has committed an offense that makes him/her removable from the
United States.126
Although by far the most divisive, SB1070 is “just one of hundreds of state and local
immigration laws that have been enacted in recent years, and it is just one of
dozens of illegal-immigration relief acts that have been signed into law since
2008.”127 A major driving issue behind the law has been the perceived threat of spill
over violence from the Mexican cartels. Jay Heiler, a high level political and public
affairs consultant whom counsels Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, has been a vocal
defender of SB1070.128 In an interview with CNN contributor Ruben Navarrette Jr,
Heiler demonstrated the perceived significance of the cartel threat, saying “If
you're going to write about this issue with credibility… you have to acknowledge
the reality of the violence caused by the Mexican drug cartels and the inability of
the Mexican government to contain it."129 As Naverrette Jr writes, “The cartels are
their strong card; why not play it?”130
An argument advanced by supporters of the law, and by Governor Brewer, is that
most illegal immigrants act as drug mules for the cartels.131 This kind of assertion is
troubling for a number of reasons. Firstly, the fact that undocumented migration
and drug smuggling has become intermingled, and at the Arizona border in
particular is a response to the heightened level of border enforcement.132 Through
126 Theodore, op. cit., p90127 Theodore, op. cit., p95128 Navarrette Jr, op. cit.129 Ibid130 Ibid131 Navarrette Jr, op. cit.132 Payan, op. cit., P195
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strengthening the border patrol, it simply creates a more profitable market for
smugglers of people and drugs.133 Furthermore the crackdown on cartels in Mexico
under Calderon has led to more violence and more pressure for cartels to maintain
profits in what is a competitive market of cartels versus cartels versus the state.
Thus they move into the realm of migration.134 So from the outset the threat posed
by undocumented migrants smuggling drugs stems from war on drugs policies and
is not an organic issue as Heiler portrays it.
Second, is the fact that other significant Republican Arizona politicians do not agree
with Heiler. Arizona senator John McCain said he doesn't believe that most illegal
immigrants are used as drug traffickers. Neither does T.J. Bonner, head of the
labour union representing border patrol agents, the National Border Patrol
Council. Bonner said Brewer's claims are "clearly not the case" and "don't comport
with reality."135 Indeed, irrespective of what public officials claim, equally or likely
more important is what the public thinks about the issue. Heiler submits that most
of the support for the measure- polls showed that about 55 percent of Arizonans
backed the law in August 2010, down from 70 percent when Brewer signed it in
April- is coming from people who are sincerely afraid that Mexico is spinning out of
control because of the drug war and that the chaos is spilling into Arizona in the
form of kidnappings and other lawlessness.136
The notion of spill over violence is a something of a fallacy, as the number of
violent crimes has fallen every year in Phoenix since 2006, the FBI reports. It's part
133 Ibid, p208134 Ibid, p205135 Navarrette Jr, op. cit.136 Navarrette Jr, op. cit.
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of an overall trend in which, according to the Federal Bureau of Instigations, crime
rates are actually going down in cities that have large immigrant populations.137
Furthermore, the ‘media spectacle’ about the border and perceived lawlessness
often generates fear over ill explained issues. For example, according to law
enforcement authorities, in 2008, nearly 400 kidnappings happened in Phoenix.
However these kidnappings are not usually for ransom, rather, they are an
extension of the human smuggling industry, in which rival coyotes raid each
other's “drop houses” and steal the cargo. A serious crime, yet it's probably not
what most people think about when they hear the word "kidnapping."138
In America there have been routine pronouncements across the political spectrum
that the US immigration system is “broken”, lawmakers promoting a restrictionist
agenda have sought to enact a range of punitive policies aimed at disrupting the
lives of unauthorized immigrants amid the desire for reform.139 Nik Theodore
contends that these lawmakers have exploited:
Vague generalizations concerning the “broken immigration system”- an abstraction around which a (false) consensus has formed. For when people agree to the proposition that the system is broken, they often mean very different things. Some favour a broad legalization program that grants amnesty to undocumented immigrants, while others openly call for stiffer border enforcement and harsher penalties for unauthorized migration.140
Lawmakers seeking to enact stiffer immigration laws have shifted their focus from
national level policymaking to state arenas in the wake of failed attempts to
overhaul the US immigration system in 2005, 2006 and 2008.141 As, although the
Supreme Court and lower courts have consistently reaffirmed the federal
137 Navarrette Jr, op. cit.138 Ibid139 Theodore, op. cit., p90140 Ibid141 Theodore, op. cit., p90
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government’s exclusive authority over immigration policy, state and local
governments are able to enact legislation that relates to immigrants and their
incorporation. Varsanyi sees this rescaling of immigration policy as an attempt “to
wrest immigration power… from the federal government.”142
However to what extent is SB1070 the result of the cartels in Mexico, or something
rather more sinister, the result of fear over change of demographics and even
racism? Navarrette Jr writes:
Although Heiler doesn't deny that some of the folks who have rallied around the law are motivated by anxiety over changing demographics, he wouldn't admit that this has anything to do with race and ethnicity. But isn't that obvious? For the past two decades, there has been a loud chorus of worry about how Latino immigrants are changing Phoenix -- and, according to some, not for the better.143
Navarrette is right to assume such sentiment does not just go away, and that these
people are supporters of SB1070. The contention that “Not everyone who wants to
get rid of illegal immigrants does so because he or she sees a connection to the
drug cartels…. Most people just want to preserve the America they grew up with” is
not hard to imagine being true.144 In fact it seems to support what Arizona state
senator Russell Pearce, the chief sponsor of SB1070 argued:
It will do no good to forgive them because millions more will come behind them, and we will be over run to the point that there will no longer be a United States of America but, a North American Union of open borders… How long will it be before we will be just like Mexico? We have already lost our history … we have lost our borders.145
Ultimately one must argue the cultural threat Mexican immigration represents
seriously fuels these statements and the Arizona law. The above quote from Russell
142 Ibid143 Navarrette Jr, op. cit.144 Ibid145 Theodore, op. cit., p90
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Pearce seems entirely in keeping the concept of the ‘New Racism”. The ‘New
Racism’, which is contrary to the old forms of racism such as slavery, “wants to be
democratic and respectable, and hence first denies that it is racism. Real racism, in
this framework of though, only exists among the extreme Right. In the New Racism,
minorities are not biologically inferior, but different. They have a different culture,
although in many respects there are ‘deficiencies’, such as single-parent families,
drug abuse…”’146Consider Pearce’s statement and the other draconian views
presented in this paper on immigration and its clear that what is essentially a
shared goal in Europe- open borders- one that has been realised, is the antithesis of
progress to many conservative America politicians.
Although SB1070 was amended to prohibit the investigation of “complaints based
on race, color, or national origin,” the larger context of the bill’s passage makes
clear that Arizona legislators are prepared and willing to use racial profiling tactics
as instruments of policing and social control.147 SB1070 certainly arrived on the
back of the violent coattails of the Mexican drug war, but whether this is a
smokescreen for underlying racism is not out of the question. Of course,
generalisations cannot be made; many will fear the threat of spill over violence. A
fear fanned by alarmist messages, which are “given a certain truth-value through
their fervent reiteration.”148 Ultimately the mechanism of Arizona SB1070 is that of
attrition. It attempts to enlist undocumented immigrants in their own removal
from the US by degrading the daily life of undocumented immigrants to the extent
that they leave.149 Clearly as a law it stands to lower the number of illegal Mexican
146 Holliday, op. cit., p122147 Ibid, p94148 Theodore, op. cit., p97149 Theodore, op. cit., p96
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immigrants as they are increasingly harassed, hampering any chance of liberal
immigration policy in Arizona.
The Role of The Media
The ways in which the media can influence and manipulate public opinion are well
known. Leo R Chavez suggests that media images not only reflect the national
mood, but also play a powerful role in shaping national discourse. Furthermore,
media images influence the creation of social identities and public policy design, as
well as social, economic and political relations. 150 In the US, War on Terror related
fear of a terrorist attack has combined with the drug violence in Mexico and the
perception that this violence might spill over the US-Mexico border, forming
Correa-Cabrera’s ‘spectacle of violence’. Exaggerated and frequently inaccurate
statements about the situation in Mexico feed this spectacle. Correa-Cabrea uses
the example of a recent statement made by George W. Grayson on the Zetas cartel,
a professor of government at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, in which
Grayson refers to the group as a "bloodthirsty sadistic organization" that serves the
"lowest rungs of hell.”151 This simply isn’t useful in understanding the group’s
practices, motivation, and origins and importantly from a US standpoint,
limitations.152 To speak in biblical terms is much too subjective and can only further
misunderstanding, help foster a ‘moral panic’ and fuel reactionary immigration
policies like Arizona SB1070. But the reality is this is the way of operating for many
conservatives, these references will continue.
150 Correa- Cabrera, op. cit.151 Correa-Cabrera, op. cit., 152 Correa- Cabrera, op. cit.
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The genuine threat of “spill over violence” is negligible; one may look at the
contrast between Mexico’s most dangerous city, Juarez, and the safe US sister city
El Paso for confirmation of this.153 Yet there is general concern about the
phenomenon, one that barely exists. US intelligence and security officials have even
suggested plausible ties between the cartels and Al Qaeda and its affiliates.154 DHS
Secretary Janet Napolitano described this possibility in testimony before a
congressional committee in February 2011. Notably, she expressed Washington's
concern about an eventual alliance between Al Qaeda and the Zetas.155 A cursory
glance at the modus operandi of the cartels in Mexico would quickly tell us this
could never be. They are simply distinctly different in character, in model and in
existence for wildly different ends. The suggestion that the most insurgent like Los
Zetas could team up with Al Qaeda glosses over their striking differences.
Noam Chomsky has written on the erroneous information and views Americans
receive, arguing the news provides us with “a very narrow, very tightly constrained
and grotesquely inaccurate account of the world in which we live”156 It is not purely
sensationalist conservative media that portrays the threat of spill over violence as
an inevitable threat to US national security. Consider, for example, the piece
written in the Business Insider, in which the title reads, The Mexican Drug Cartels
Are A National Security Issue. Journalist, Grace Wyler frames her argument in
favour of striking the cartels at the source, as, in her view “The drug trade- and the
powerful criminal organizations that control it- has become a national security
153 Correa-Cabrera, op. cit154 Ibid155 Ibid156 Holliday, op. cit., p120
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problem, and needs to be dealt with as such.”157 She mounts her argument in
response to the 2011 Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy.
Signed by various luminaries such as Kofi Annan, Richard Branson and George
Schultz, the Report gives a comprehensive look into the pitfalls of current drug
policy globally. It encourages, among other things- Governments around the world
to experiment with models of legal regulation of drugs to undermine the power of
organized crime and to safeguard the health and security of the citizens. Whilst
also arguing for a focus on repressive actions on violent criminal organizations in
ways that undermine their power and reach while prioritizing the reduction of
violence and intimidation.158
Forgoing the underlying theme of legalization or decriminalization, Wyler concurs
with the US and Mexican rejection of the document, due to the “vast scope of
Mexican cartel networks…” and its narrow purview.159 Although ultimately Wyler
concludes that the documents argument is correct, in that the drug war has failed,
she argues, “The U.S. needs a new approach that treats illegal drug trafficking and
abuse not as a moral issue, but as a significant threat to domestic security and
regional stability.”160 There is an obvious tension in her argument, primarily her
advocating of firmer intervention in the Mexican drug war even though when
Mexican armed forces went after the cartels the violence increased exponentially,
157 Grace Wyler, ‘The Mexican Drug Cartels Are A National Security Issue’, Business Insider, (2011)http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-us-needs-to-stop-fighting-the-drug-war-and-start-fighting-the-cartels-2011-6#ixzz3XUhx2ZhI, (05, 11, 2014)158 Kofi Annan et al, War on Drugs- Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, Global Commission on Drug Policy, June 2011159 Wyler, op. cit.160 Ibid
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further US involvement- and there has already been some level of US complicity in
the Mexican war- won’t necessarily aid the situation. Here we can see the ‘media
spectacle’ in full view, the writer assumes the horrendous violence witnessed in
Mexico has the potential to spill over, arguing in favour of a stronger response-
however the claim is not substantiated by evidence. It is indisputable that fear
mongering like this has enabled laws such as Arizona SB1070 to be passed into
state law. It is not within doubt that the violence in Mexico, particularly during the
Calderon era has destabilized Mexico, however it is not clear that the threats to the
United States from Mexico's violence are of the magnitude that U.S. media,
politicians, and officials have sometimes alleged.161
Todd Schack alleges the ‘Wartime Epistemology’ restricts cultural representations
of both the War on Terror and the War on Drugs. First advanced by Maurizio Viano
the ‘Wartime Epistemology’ refers to the way in which all cultural productions are
constrained by “an either/ or regime of signification.”162 This has been particularly
pronounced in the post 9/11 era. It is clear that the inability to genuinely evaluate
the fundamentals of either but particularly the war on drugs will inevitably lead to
a continuation of draconian immigration policies in the US, as Mexican legal and
illegal migrants continue to be portrayed as part of the chaos south of the border.
As a result of the terrors unfolding due to Mexico’s war on the Cartels, “The US
media, while at times granting Mexico’s anti drug program its dues, tend to
highlight the negative, the sensational. As a result, the American public, never one
for in depth knowledge of things Mexican… has synthesised a New Mexican
stereotype…” the stereotype of the illegal immigrant and the drug trafficker, or the
161 Correa- Cabrera, op. cit.162 Schopp, op. cit, p221
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‘narco’.163 However if one considers the racism underpinning drug laws and
immigration policy historically, this is hardly a new concoction. Simply more
heightened in the post 9/11 age of anxiety.
163 Guadalupe, Gonzalez, Marta, Tienda (eds.), The Drug Connection in US Mexican Relations, (San Diego, University of California, 1989) p84
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A Liberalising of Policies: Obama’s Approach Toward Drugs and Immigration
“The Prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and
the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.”164
Albert Einstein
As President of the US, Barack Obama has overseen a general liberalising of drug
laws in certain states coupled with a much more recent alteration in immigration
policy. With the Immigration Accountability Executive Action, America would
revise some U.S. immigration policies and initiate several programs, including a
revised border security policy for the Southwest border; deferred action programs
for some unauthorized aliens; revised interior enforcement priorities; changes to
aid the entry of skilled workers; promoting immigrant integration and
naturalization; and several other initiatives the President indicated would improve
the U.S. immigration system.165 The most controversial among these provisions
would grant deferred action to as many as 5 million unauthorized aliens.166 This
chapter will focus on the revised border security policy, the deferred action for
unauthorized immigrants and the revised interior enforcement priorities,
specifically the ending of the Secure Communities program.167 The strain this
particular program was placing on Mexican immigrant families is told in the
Charles Shaw film Exile Nation: Plastic People, where deported Mexicans find
themselves disenfranchised in a Tijuana holding area known as ‘Zona Norte’.168
Under Obama’s presidency, numerous states have enacted marijuana legalisation
164 Austin Sarat, Law and the Stranger (Stanford, 2010, Stanford University Press) p222165 Congressional Research Service, op. cit., p2166 Ibid167 Ibid, p15168 Charles Shaw (dir.), Exile Nation: The Plastic People (Los Angeles, Devolver Digital Films, 2014)
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policies, demonstrating the anti federalist tradition Democrat presidents have
pursued in the drug war years, contrary to the federalist approach Republican
presidents have taken. This is contradictory to the usual maxim of either party and
so the issues of legalisation/ decriminalisation will be explored in relation to this.
This chapter will conclude with how these changes under Obama have led to an
altering in the direction of the War on Drugs, and how these changes have come to
be reflected in film.
Exile Nation: The Plastic People
Charles Shaw’s 2014 film Exile Nation: The Plastic People follows the lives of
Mexicans deported from the US during Obama’s Administration. The film states
that in the decade following 9/11, the US began a program of mass deportation,
with a total of 4-6 million deported. 97% of these have been Mexicans.169 Many of
these, up to 400 a day end up in ‘Zona Norte’. An enclave in Tijuana described as a
“closed community of drug addicts, homeless, sex workers and deportees.” 170
Although they are Mexican, many have lived in America their entire lives, their
family will live in the US but they were illegal. The title derives from the name
Mexicans give to these people, not Mexican and not American- hence, ‘the plastic
people’.171 The film notes the enormous hysteria around immigration in the US, as
has been described previously, as a major reason for the trend in increasingly
damaging punishment for those found to be undocumented.172 Central to the film is
the ‘Secure Communities’ program, enforced by ICE. The program has seen the
169 Shaw, op. cit.170 Ibid171 Ibid172 Ibid
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deportation of 200,000 parents as of 2014. Those deported are faced with being
barred from the nation if they try to enter again. 173
Further proving the assertion that immigrants are precipitously being treated as
threats post 9/11 is the ‘California Street Terrorism Enforcement & Prevention Act’
or ‘STEP Act’. Under this Act, ‘gang enhancement’ and ‘street terrorism’; elevated
criminal charges reserved for their namesakes, are increasingly being aimed at
minority groups by ICE, leading in deportations for those who have not partaken in
such activity.174 Under the Obama administration, total deportations have risen to
over 1 million a year, yet as the film notes “Migration is a core human urge… that
core urge is gonna (sic) trump all efforts to keep people out.”175 With recent
presidential authority, president Obama will potentially limit this practice,
however those already on the wrong side of the border do not stand to gain from
the Executive Action.
Executive Action: Reprieve for Immigrants
On the 20th November 2014, Obama issued the Immigration Accountability
Executive Action. In his address to the nation on the Action, Obama echoed the
well-worn sound bite, acknowledging, “Today our immigration system is
broken.”176 Such a view is repeated by the Congressional Research Initiative, which
claims that “”Major U.S. Immigration Policy Issues Policymakers and immigration
173 Shaw, op. cit.174 Shaw, op. cit.175 Ibid176 Barack Obama, 2014. Address to the Nation on Immigration, (Online), 20 November, White House, Washington DC (16, 04, 2015), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wejt939QXko
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observers widely agree that the U.S. immigration system is “broken,””177 however
the initiative also acknowledges the reality that generalisation around a broken
system has invariably led to differing conceptions of what may fix it as has been
argued by Theodore in the previous chapter.178
The Congressional report argues, “Underlying these different views are broader
and more fundamental debates about how many temporary and permanent
immigrants should be admitted into the United States, how those immigrants
should be selected for admission.”179 The most fundamentally radical and
progressive aspect of the Executive Action is the “relief for undocumented
immigrants, which could lead to millions of people being shielded from deportation
and made eligible to work. About 5 million will likely be eligible for a new policy
that allows undocumented parents of U.S. citizen and legal permanent children to
stay in the country and work legally, if they have been in the U.S. for five years or
more and pass a background check.”180
The Executive Action as a whole has caused uproar among Republicans, as many
questioned the legality of it, with others arguing it was largely for political
purposes and that once granted the temporary measures it encompasses would be
difficult to revoke.181 The Administration has made sure to point out that the
Executive Action takes a precedent, with Republican presidents no less:
177 Congressional Research Service, op. cit. p3178 Theodore, op. cit., p90179 Congressional Research Service, op. cit.180 Elise Foley, ‘Obama Moves To Protect Millions From Deportation’, Huffington Post, (2014), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/20/obama-immigration-plan_n_6178774.html, (16, 04, 2015)181 Congressional Research Service, op. cit.
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A form of administrative relief similar to deferred action, known then as "indefinite voluntary departure," was originally authorized by the Reagan and Bush Administrations to defer the deportations of an estimated 1.5 million undocumented spouses and minor children who did not qualify for legalization under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.182
Similar rhetoric can be found in Obama’s speech to the nation on the issue. Mexican
counterpart Enrique Pena Nieto has praised the executive action as “very
intelligent” and “an act of justice” considering the high number of Mexicans
affected by the Action.183 Obama felt compelled to enact such legislation without
congressional support because the Republican majority Congress has been unable
to pass immigration reform. In his speech on the issue, Obama showed his
frustration, responding “And to those members of Congress who question my
authority to make our immigration system work better… I have one answer: pass a
bill.”184
Supporters of the action have said it will keep millions of families from being
separated. The disastrous effects separation of parents from children is well
known; this Action will help to diminish the shear scale of economic migrants stuck
in perpetual limbo in Mexican border cities such as Tijuana. The deferred removal
of millions is undoubtedly a progressive move, however it is also temporary,
similar policies in previous decades tell us such policies do not end the issue of
undocumented immigration in the long term. Furthermore, the fact that similar
182 US Department of Homeland Security, Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion with Respect to Individuals Who Came to the United States as Children and with Respect to Certain Individuals Who Are the Parents of U.S. Citizens or Permanent Residents, (11, 20, 2014) p2183 Fred Lucas, ‘Mexican President Calls Obama Immigration Action an Act of Justice’, The Blaze (2015), http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/01/06/mexican-president-calls-obama-immigration-action-an-act-of-justice/ (18, 04, 2015)184 Barack Obama, 2014. Address to the Nation on Immigration, op. cit.
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policies have been enacted suggests the move is not the major progressive change
in the Action, rather just the most contentious. Other facets of the Action have more
of a bearing on how US immigration policy will be carried out in the long term.
One element of the Action is border security reform. The Obama Administration
has argued that the US-Mexican border is more secure than ever. Yet some
Members of Congress have called on the Administration to do more.185 As part of
the Action, three task forces will be created from the current DHS organizations to
better tackle the issue of illegal crossings. The number of border patrolmen is at its
highest ever argues Obama in his announcement of the Action. With the overall
number of people trying to cross illegally at it’s lowest since the 1970’s. 186 The
trouble with such claims is that they rely on apprehension rates. Since the border
has become much more militarised in the past couple of decades, the number of
those apprehended has gone down.187 Either this is a success or a failure. Possibly
the increase in policing has acted as a deterrent or the resources spent has been
ineffectual in forcing any kind of successful outcome. Kossoudji suggests these
figures simply show the reality that “once a Mexican enters the migrant stream, the
deterrence effect (of border enforcement) disappears and in fact becomes
perverse: migrants return to the United States more quickly, and if not
subsequently apprehended will stay here longer than if they had not been
apprehended previously.”188 Such moves to tighten the border are rhetorically
impressive but realistically flawed, as Kaufmann shows, many Mexicans have
become dependent on migration for income, as:
185 Congressional Research Service, op. cit., P9186 Obama, op. cit.187 Kaufmann, op. cit., p92188 Kaufmann, op. cit., p93
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Mexican migration to the U. S. has reached such levels that many Mexican regions depend on international migration and the resulting foreign transfers. If these remittances were to diminish other Mexicans would be forced into migration to balance the income losses. Tightening border controls is likely to lead to such a suppression of remittances, as migrants’ intensify their migration strategies in order to adapt to the new constraints imposed on their work and private lives.189
Thus the migration-security nexus is far from simple and seemingly impossible to
stop given the common consensus that has formed around tightening the border.
As Kaufman and others have argued, the only way to end the stream of
undocumented Mexican immigrants would be to ensure Mexican wages rise.190
Legalisation
An interesting feature of drug liberalisation in the US has been the fact that
Republicans have clamoured to have more federal power given to the DEA and
other entities to uphold the nationwide prohibition, while Democrats have moved
toward a position that favours states’ rights on drug policy.191 This is despite the
opposite ringing true of liberals and conservatives in general politics. States that
have relaxed their position on the sale of marijuana recently include Colorado,
California, Oregon and Washington DC. One might argue the relatively low number
of immigrants in these states bar California are illuminating. As perhaps it’s the fact
that these are predominantly white states that marijuana is seen as a white vice.
Contrast this with a place like Arizona or Texas, where there are considerable
Mexican immigrant numbers but marijuana decriminalisation is not a realistic
scenario. Arguably parallels can be drawn with the selective banning of opium and
the disproportionately harsh treatment of crack cocaine users to spare the white
189 Kaufmann, op. cit., p131190 Ibid, p135191 Payan, op. cit., p174
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users of other drug forms. Furthermore proposals to decriminalise marijuana in
California in the past have been knocked back, conforming this line of argument.
However we must not forget the traditionally conservative make up of these states.
Jose D. Vilalobos argues there is a distinct lack of attention to questions of
Federalism with respect to U.S. drug policy than there is with other issue. For
example George W. Bush was said to have committed an act of “socialism” with his
bailouts of the banks by the Far Right.192 Then Governor of Texas Bush told the
Dallas Morning News in October 1999 that he felt the federal government should
let each state, “choose that decision as they so choose.”193 Once Bush became
president however he fell in line with his Republican predecessors in continuing
the war on drugs by using federal laws to push back against state level efforts to
legalize marijuana use.194 In so doing, as Vilabolos surmises- “Bush demonstrated a
high level of responsiveness to his base of social conservative supporters, as well as
to his own social policy preferences, though at the expense of his states’ rights
values.”195 President Obama however took the opposite approach, calling on the
DEA and other forces to pull back and allow states to continue the process of
decriminalising the sale and consumption of medicinal marijuana.196 Despite this,
Obama has remained publically opposed to marijuana legalisation- and other drugs
for that matter, thus in keeping with the typical Democrat-Federalist approach.
This may be proof that the US government is still viewing marijuana as a moral
panic at the federal level.
192 Payan, op. cit., p177193 Payan, op. cit., p175194 Ibid195 Ibid196 Ibid
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The Obama administration released its initial National Drug Control Strategy in
May 2010, in it, Obama was supportive of state- level drug decriminalization efforts
but also concerned about the health issues related to drug use and determined to
uphold federal law when it comes to perceived abuse by medicinal marijuana
providers.197 This seemingly contradictory approach has characterised Obama’s
drug policy, suggesting Obama may be performing a juggling act between his
personal policy preferences and his Federalist philosophies in dealing with the
issue of drugs.198
The move away from prohibition of marijuana can only be a good thing for the long
term in reducing the cartel war in Mexico as the market becomes less lucrative,
however one might expect an initial intensification in violence as cartels seek to
maintain profits. Furthermore, as has been discussed previously, the cartels may
broaden their portfolio in search for profit, which could mean more adventurous
ventures such as more extensive human trafficking. The recent surge in child
refugees from Central and South American nations fleeing gang related conflict
might be an area of Mexican cartel control for example. This may mean the war on
drugs- immigration reform link shall continue in public discourse though perhaps
not as its been playing out in the post 9/11 period.
It is largely accepted now that the War on Drugs has failed. The various policies the
US has pursued in order to prohibit the production, sale and use of various drugs
has largely been ineffectual, imprisoned those in need of help and caused human
197 National Drug Control Strategy, 2010, Washington DC198 Payan, op. cit., p176
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suffering within the US and its South American neighbour nations. The American
prohibition era stands as testament to the futility in restricting the supply of
substances to the people, as such a market will exist irrespective of the legal status
of said substance. Ultimately, the prohibitionist approach is an attempt to repeal
the economic law of supply and demand, and therefore it is fated to fail.199
However the prison industrial complex will be a stumbling block toward any kind
of liberalising of policy on a federal scale. The US holds 25% of the world’s
prisoners despite only having 5% of the world’s population. With over 500,000
people incarcerated for non-violent drug charges.200 How it got to this stage is
multi faceted and gradual. Many of the prisons in the US are privately owned,
meaning there is money to be lost if there is an empty cell. The Field of Dreams line
“if you build it, he will come” seems apt here.201 There is a paradox with the private
prison system, as although these prisons are there to house criminals, they help
perpetuate high rates of criminality as police are paid for each drug arrest. 202 Once
someone has a criminal record they are seriously limited in options in their life and
are more likely to offend again due to a myriad of reasons; the area they are likely
to live in, the people around them as well as the difficulty finding a job with ticking
the ‘criminal record’ box.203 As stated in the film, “there are so many people
involved in the prisons, making money… though their intentions are honest- taken
199 Carpenter, op. cit., p8200 Jarecki, op. cit.201 Phil Alden Robinson (dir.), Field of Dreams, (Fort Lauderdale, Gordon Company, 1989)202 Jarecki, op. cit.203 Jarecki, op. cit.
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as a collective, they keep the War on Drugs working and make sure the hard parts
of it are ticking over.”204
Films such as The House I Live In show that the course of the drug war in America is
altering, there are numerous documentaries that praise the medicinal advantages
of marijuana and several documentaries have focused on the new millionaires of
the marijuana industry. Films such as Exile Nation: The Plastic People help highlight
how millions of undocumented immigrants are churned out of America on a yearly
basis all for the promise of a better life. The only kind of real respite from such
phenomena is higher wages and a better living standard south of the border.
Intrinsically however, the cartel warfare that destabilises Mexico helps keep the
nation in a bind with poverty and destruction. The enforcement of prohibition is
normally the catalyst, which enables a parasitic relationship between criminal
groups and the state.205 We are seeing this in Mexico, where concurrently the
exported American drug war and Americas drug lust has enabled a parasitic cartel
network to gorge on the primary transit state for its narcotics.
The levels of experimentation with decriminalisation of drugs and the liberalising
of immigration policy under Obama seem to be a redeeming turn in the drug and
terror fuelled racism that informs US immigration policy. Films such as The House I
Live In and Exile Nation: The Plastic People suggests there are swathes of Americans
who care and this is being reflected in the increasingly liberal cultural mediums
forcing an end to the status quo. Furthermore Jarecki’s film demonstrates that, by
204 Jarecki, op. cit.205 Inkster, op. cit., p30
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focusing on the harsh realities of the drug war, as other films have, there is
potential to outmanoeuvre Schack’s ‘wartime epistemology’.
Real change in the commonly held belief of drug prohibition is still a way off
however, as “the political establishment is so wedded to the political status quo, its
thoughts are on the next election.”206 Mexican immigration stands to gain from the
gradual liberalising of drug laws in the US, as it will diminish the Mexican drug war,
which shall then aid in changing perceptions about Mexicans in the US. This would
then lead to more liberal immigration policies. However as has been proven in this
paper, the ‘securitizing’ of immigration has seriously damaged the popular view of
immigrants and by extension Mexican immigrants. It is possible racism will fuel a
new fear in the future about Mexican immigration.
Conclusion
With an increased awareness of the flaws in the federal immigration system and
subsequent national security issues, the PATRIOT Act’s legally imposed restrictions
on immigrants and visitors to America have caused a ‘moral panic’ about
206 Jarecki, op. cit.
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immigrants, who were the ‘folk devils’. This negatively impacted on Mexican
immigrants as the spotlight was on undocumented immigrants, despite the fact
that immigrants with documentation perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. The powers
vested in Homeland Security with the passing of the Homeland Security Act made
US national security policy increasingly interiorized and localized, marking a trend
toward ‘securitization’ of migration in the US.207 The securitization of migration
also, as Rodriguez argued, describes the process by which the work of national
security is normalized and taken up by ordinary US citizens, with examples of the
border militias and the ‘Minute Men’. This is despite the link between international
migration and terrorism being inconclusive, sharing, as Faist argued “only
superficially… the fact that border crossings are involved.”208
There also appears to be a genuine perceived threat to the cultural fabric of
American society by Mexican immigration, as there has always been, however the
Homeland Security Act and the strengthening of the border has, in its ‘securitizing’
of immigration, made the issue of immigration and by extension Mexican
immigration a ‘meta-issue’ that can be used by politicians to explain many issues,
be them social, economic, cultural or political factors. This is all possible because
the effects of immigration are empirically hard to establish.209 Thus I have found
the heightened levels of anxiety toward American national security and cultural
identity have negatively impacted on Mexican immigrants with the passage of
these laws and on the potential for immigration reform. Furthermore, many have
been detained and deported en masse as a result of these anti- Terror laws.210
207 Rodriguez, op. cit., p381208 Faist, op. cit., p10209 Faist, op. cit., p12210 Rodriguez, op. cit., p383
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Further studies may wish to observe whether immigration continues to become
more ‘securitized’ in the future.
Following on from the immediate post 9/11 moment; a time in which racist
sentiment was legitimised by anti-Terror laws, the media and political discourse, I
have found that local level immigration policy such as Arizona SB1070 was driven
by a perceived threat of spill over Mexican drug violence. This is proven in the
rhetoric of Arizona politicians who argue the threat is serious, whilst the media has
helped portray the need for action as imperative in order to secure American
national security in what was a ‘spectacle of violence’. My research suggests
evidence of spill over violence is negligible, however the role of the media and
alarmist politicians has clearly worked in portraying the issue as essential to
national security. This stems from has been called the ‘New Racism’, which justifies
itself through democratic principles such as politics, democratic principles such as
free speech and freedom from terror. The media is generally controlled by those
likely to harbour these ‘New Racist’ ideas and project them on to the viewership,
who then assume this view of immigration is the accepted and rational view and
adhere to it. The lack of Mexican control of the mainstream media means any kind
of counterbalance in the media apart from Mexican rights groups are drowned out.
The threat of violence has been used as a catalyst for the many immigration
reformers seeking to fix the “broken” system; only to promote draconian policies
as can be seen with Arizona SB1070. Further study may focus around the number
of undocumented Mexican immigrants in Arizona in the following years.
Additionally, the notion that SB1070 is actually the result of perceived federal
failing needs to be studied.
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There is a truly restrictive level of control that comes with declaring war on what is
essentially tactics and behaviour. The War on Drugs, as well as the War on Terror
create a ‘wartime epistemology’ which seriously limits the ability in which cultural
mediums can critique either war without being seen as pro drug/terror, whilst
critics are unable to remove themselves from the binary restrictions placed upon
them when critiquing such artefacts. However I argue a certain degree of racism
fuelled by a fear of a loss of cultural identity also informed the law, as can be seen
by the strong desire for immigration reform in Arizona for the past two decades as
well as historical drug and immigration laws that have purposefully targeted
Mexicans. Nevertheless, it was the perceived threat of drug related violence that
was the spark for passing of the law. A crucial aspect of immigration reform is the
closely related security of the border. I have found that the strengthening of the US-
Mexican border has been a common desire for many US citizens and politicians
alike, without much consideration of what the implications might be. Tightening
the border actually has the unintended consequence of ensuring undocumented
Mexican immigrants stay in the US once they are in, with less chance of a return
back to Mexico like Mexican migration patterns in the 1970’s.
Finally I have discussed how under Obama there has been a liberalising of drug
policy and immigration reform. Prior to this however, the deportation of Mexican
immigrants without documentation had rose to 1 million a year.211 This was made
possible in the beginning of the War on Terror by the powers bestowed in the DHS
and its subdivisions, namely ICE and the ‘Secure Communities’ program it
211 Shaw, op. cit.
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enforced. Despite this, there appears to be some semblance of respite from this
cycle of post 9/11 anxieties, with the Immigrant Accountability Executive Action
deferring the deportation of up 5 million immigrants as well as other progressive
features. Furthermore, under Obama, certain states have set in the motion the
process of decriminalization of marijuana. The sort of action necessary to help
dampen the narcotics wars in Mexico and should decrease the need for Mexicans to
migrate in the first instance and also be less stigmatised when they do. The
liberalising of policies represents a major shift in the War on Drugs, with this shift
becoming progressively more visible in film and other cultural media. Further lines
of study could observe the number of Mexican immigrants that arrive in the US
following Obama’s Executive Action and the proportion of those who are
undocumented.
Ultimately, the War on Terror policies heightened a sense of fear and distrust of
immigrants, introducing a legalised framework with which to persecute them.
Mexican immigrants were affected by these measures, as, as a nationality, they
were the main source of undocumented immigrants. The Mexican War on Drugs
then reinforced the sense of fear as theories of spill over violence were portrayed
in the media and in national discourse. In this context Arizona SB1070 was able to
pass, however I have argued there was already latent racism around the issue of
Mexican immigration and that both the Terror and Drug wars have become easy
excuses for those who wish to appear democratic, whilst persecuting Mexican
immigrants. Under Obama there has been a liberalising of policies which if
continued stand to weaken the role of racism in affecting Mexican immigration.
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