Since the 1970s, the United States began to realize the significant amount of undocumented migrants within its border. Millions of refugees under Cuban and Soviet-Union-supported communist revolutions during the Cold War and much more resulted from Central American civil wars all sought sanctuary in the United States because the US had once supported their anti-communist movements. Furthermore, the Bracero Program since 1942 that welcomed Mexican agricultural workers, though ended in 1964, had created a massive origin of undocumented migrants. Many simply stayed after the program was over; others risked their lives to cross the border again because they had love ones already living in the US. It was impossible to stop the endless waves of undocumented migrants. Being the only few countries that weren’t devastated after WWII, the United States and its leading technological advances constructed a paradise that was, and still is, longed by millions of displaced dreamers looking for economic opportunities or a home free from dictators and civil wars. The path to the US, however, became not as friendly as it was stated in the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, especially during the structural changes of the global economy after 1965.

 

Along with the rise of information technology industries and the automation of production after 1980, the American government realized that they were in shortage of highly-skilled workers and in significant excess of unskilled immigrant workers. This wasn’t a favorable trend for the US to maintain its position as the world’s leading superpower. As a result, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) and the Immigration Act of 1990 filtered out poor migrants and facilitated the employment and migration of the rich. However, this was simply not enough to shape America into a country of wealth. Americans were eventually in a state of “compassion fatigue” as they took in more migrants. They thought these migrants were too expensive: they consumed welfare expenses, and it’s just too pricey to incarcerate tens of thousands of undocumented criminals. They concluded that sending them back to where they were from would best eliminate the costs. Therefore, the subsequent immigration rules and policies stretched from local, state, and federal levels had carved the circumstances for millions of migrants living in the United States so unfavorable that, as Mitt Romney reassured, “they would self-deport,” if not already deported.

 

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 and Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) dramatically increased the number of immigrants subject to removal. They militarized the Southern border with more guns and walls, required the mandatory detention of non-citizens convicted of aggravated felonies or moral turpitudes, and combined “deportation proceeding” and “exclusion proceeding” into “removal proceeding” to aid the efficiency of the whole process.  They even built more detention facilities to incarcerate more and to keep more family members apart. Before 1996, most deportees were connected to serious criminal convictions; after 1996, the United States government did not seem to care whether the deportee has family members or anyone that may suffer if the deportee was to never come back. In fact, many immigrant families in the United States were “mixed status,” where an undocumented migrant may have American citizen spouses. As a result, they often became “shattered families”; children and parents were separated because some papers said so. 

 

Despite all the eagerness to torn families apart, some unintended consequences of these policies were uncalculated. While the United States declared war on drugs, many of the convicted undocumented migrants deported to Central American countries joined local gangs or criminal organizations to survive. Many of these organizations made their fortune by smuggling firearms, drugs, and sometimes even people through and under, if not over, the Southern border. The United States cannot practically close the Southern border, nor was it in a convenient position to end the mass deportation. For this reason, all the US government was capable to do was to make the lives of immigrants, legal or illegal, even harsher.

 

Rules and policies had been very unsympathetic to undocumented workers, even when they were victims under employers who broke federal labor laws. In a 2002 case, despite the federal labor laws that guarantee workers’ right to join labor unions, the Supreme Court, citing the IRCA of 1986 that barred undocumented workers from employment, ruled that undocumented workers had no right for a collective bargain or a recovery against employers who caused their deportation. The federal labor laws simply were not applicable to undocumented workers. Originally aimed to discourage illegal job-seeking migrations, IRCA of 1986 had, however, provided a greater incentive for employers to use undocumented workers, for they cannot complain about or report severe and unhealthy working conditions. As a result of undocumented workers left unprotected in the labor law, it became more common for immigrant workers to work in worse laboring conditions in North Carolina, Arkansas, Nebraska, New York, Illinois, and California after 1986. Many of these workers face hyper-exploitation while their employers ignored minimum wage rules; many of the undocumented workers were stuck in the poverty cycle.

 

One of the few ways to break the poverty cycle — education — was also confiscated. In 1984, California Attorney General John Van de Kamp made clear that Plyer shouldn’t apply to higher education, that universities should charge out-of-state tuition for those who couldn’t prove legal residency. Appellate decisions in 1990 and 1995 followed. The IIRIRA of 1996, signed by Clinton and sponsored by Representative Christopher Cox, further made in-state tuition impossible in every state for those out-of-status, despite whether they went to public middle schools. Although Texas and California had offer in-state tuition to undocumented students through Texas DREAM Act (HB1403) and AB540 later, many in most states still had to pay higher out-of-state tuition or simply were barred from attending top state universities while being ineligible to state and federal financial aid. For many poor immigrant families, $40,000 ~ $50,000 dollars a year would provide them much more than a college education. Why bother to receive expensive college education when the degree cannot even promise a healthy working environment? High education, being a norm to the privileged migrants, was considered a luxury for the undocumented migrants. Even when many undocumented parents were paying federal and state income taxes and property taxes, and it’s clear that the state was depriving them of a benefit they had financed, many teenagers were “awakening to a nightmare” to realize that they were ineligible for a driver license and a college education. They had no choice but to accept that they didn’t born to deserve a US passport this lifetime.

 

In schools, out-of-status immigrants were portrayed as lawbreakers and ought to be removed. After 2005, entire states moved towards enforcement of the federal immigration acts; local legislators became more hostile to immigrants. When Sheriff Joe Arpaio from Maricopa County, Arizona send his men for an “immigration sweep” and arrested anyone who looked “illegal,” many local residents supported his action for defending the immigration laws. This eventually led to SB1070 in Arizona that require local and state law enforcement officers to check for immigration status whenever they had a “reasonable suspicion” that the person was out of status. It also established new penalties for anyone who sheltered, hired, or transported “illegal immigrants.” While critics said that Arizona was legalizing racial profiling, one may notice the resemblance to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1980, where unnaturalized and naturalized blacks were subject to segregation by race; this time, it’s by immigration status. 

 

Right after this provision survived the Arizona v. US (2012), Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, and Utah immediately followed with similar rules, except Alabama, who expanded it further. The 2011 version in Alabama signed by Governor Robert Bentley also barred undocumented students from attending public colleges and universities. Moreover, it required schools to track the students’ immigration status and report the number of unlawful students to the state while allowing them to matriculate at public schools. Namely, any undocumented students seeking a middle school education would risk their whole family breaking apart, if not all deported, since now the state knows who and where you were. This was not all. Although already provided in the IRCA of 1986, the Alabama version forbade renting and employment from illegal immigrants, putting the federal laws into stricter enforcement.

 

The immigrants weren’t just unwelcomed by federal and state laws. Many local and state jurisdictions had referred the illegal immigrants to “public nuisance,” whose conditions led to exploitation, low wages, and lower quality of life for all residents. As several new large-scale industries were inviting many immigrant workers to the area of Hazelton, Pennsylvania, rapidly changing local demographics, residents were reporting higher crime rates. Many were complaining that they experienced a lower quality of life with more people they couldn’t relate to and more children in the school who didn’t speak English. This was why the City Council passed the Illegal Immigration Relief Act in 2006, requiring all businesses and property owners to check for the employees’ and tenants’ immigration status and intimating that local police would detain anyone they suspected of being out of status. Although this act didn’t survive the lawsuit filed by local Hispanic residents, it had become a major trend where citizens were blaming the federal government for not enforcing the immigration rules. It’s just as Councilwoman Marie Waldron from Escondido put it, “Our nation is under siege. Our own federal government has abandoned its constitutional duty, resulting in treason.” Just as how Lou Barletta, the Mayor of Hazelton, became a Representative in 2010 and Marie Waldron became a Senate in 2012, voters across the country preferred anti-immigrant politicians more.

 

Under the hands of President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, the federal government shifted its tendency towards immigration laws by a lot since 2005. Other than the Real ID Act in 2005 that provided for new penalties for forging identity documents and the Secure Fence Act in 2006 that increased funding of physical obstacles across Southern border to reduce illegal residents, the Patriot Act in 2001 signed by Bush brought removal to the next level. It allowed all law enforcement agencies across federal, state, and local organizations to share intelligence through a common database. As the Secure Communities Program was launched in 2008, state and local officials could receive training from federal agencies and utilize the latest techniques to identify persons eligible for removal. When Obama was in office, he hoped for a comprehensive immigration reform that could result in less deportation and more adjustment, as those that were adjusted had actually turned states like California from deep red to blue, but he was forced to do otherwise. Republicans demanded to remove more illegal immigrants, particularly those with criminal records: more enforcement was a prerequisite for further discussions on immigration reform. Hence, Obama had no choice but to expand the Secure Communities Program to gain support for future immigration reform. 

Americans, however, were not buying the whole “amnesty” idea, considering the last time it happened with Reagan legalizing 1~3 million people, immigration problems remained unsolved, and more still coming. This could be seen in the 2014 midterm election when several Tea Party Caucus members entered the House, pulling amnesty reform off the table. Despite what the Republicans had promised to Obama, they, feared that the adjusted migrants could vote Republicans out of Washington, had more reasons to never adjust now. Thus, in spite of the executive orders of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents that Obama signed to ease his failure in passing a comprehensive immigration bill, Obama had become the greatest Deporter in Chief in the United States history with over 3.2 million immigrants removed.

 

After 1996, the United States had transformed itself into a “deportation nation.” While 20,000~40,000 were deported each year from 1980 to 1990, there were 200,000 deportations every year during 1998~2004 and 400,000 from 2008 to 2012. This was nothing new. From the Bracero Program in 1942 to IRCA of 1986, from Operation Wetback in 1954 to the Act of 1990, the US government had been hand-picking “useful assets” that could help secure its place at the world’s elite party and evicting “worthless assets” that they simply disliked, which were mostly the poor. Waves of deported poor migrants had since caused economic and social problems in the host country, which consequently induced more illegal immigrants coming to the United States — endless cycles of illegal immigration, but in greater numbers, deported and trespassed, every time. Those who managed to stay hidden in the US experienced a great divide between the rich immigrants of the knowledge class and the poor immigrants of the service class. Long-term investments such as college education seemed pointless when any officers would come knocking on their doors at any time. We began to realize that the poor immigrants live in a borderless world where they could be dumped in another country overnight but do not belong anywhere.