Immigration wars
By
Max J. Castro Read Spanish Version
majcastro@gmail.com
In
recent years, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency
has been waging an undeclared war that has wrought terror among
immigrants, divided families, and disrupted communities. Now, thanks
to a new report by the Migration Policy Institute and the Cardozo
School of Law, we know more about the dimensions and dynamics of that
war. (1)
The
numbers tell the tale. From 2003 to 2008, arrests by the National
Fugitive Operations Program increased from 1,900 to 33,997 — a
seventeen fold increase. How was this gigantic increase in arrests
accomplished?
First,
the budget for the program increased dramatically, going from $9
million in 2003 to $219 in 2008. Second, during the same period, the
number of enforcement teams swelled from eight to 104. Lastly, in
January 2006, amid a growing chorus of anti-immigrant rhetoric among
Republicans in Congress and right-wing media pundits, the Bush
administration changed the focus of the fugitive apprehension program
by encouraging a shotgun approach that would ensnare workers and
their families much more often than actual criminals.
In
practical terms, this was done by a) removing the requirement that 75
percent of those arrested under the program be criminals and b)
raising the quota of arrests required to be carried out by each ICE
team from 125 to 1,000. The war was on.
Thus
between 2003 and 2007, 67 percent of arrests under the program were
of non-criminal aliens. But in 2007, after the quota had been raised
and the 75 percent rule dropped, the figure of non-criminals arrested
was 91 percent. Most of the 9 percent of criminals arrested had
committed minor crimes. Indeed, in 2007, just 2 percent of those
arrested were serious criminal offenders. The report concludes that
“the program has apprehended the easiest targets, not the most
dangerous ones.”
In
2004, George W. Bush was able to win reelection with a record number
of Latino votes. Only two years later, unable to convince fellow
Republicans to back humane immigration reform, the Bush
administration unleashed a weapon of mass intimidation against the
Latino and other immigrant communities. We now know how that campaign
was carried out, namely through a policy decision based on a
political calculation aimed at satisfying xenophobic tendencies in
the Republican Party. But the political calculus backfired: the huge
Latino vote for Barack Obama and the Democrats was, in part, payback
for Bush’s betrayal.
Historically,
each wave of new immigrants to the United States has produced a
nativist backlash, and this time has been no exception. (2) To be
fair, the United States still maintains one of the most open
immigration policies in the world. For instance, in 2007, the last
year for which complete data are available, this nation welcomed a
total of 1,052,415 legal immigrants, almost exactly twice the number
(524,295) admitted in 1980. At the same time, 319,382 undocumented
immigrants were deported from the United States in 2007 — eighteen
times the number (18,013) removed in 1980. The reality is that in
recent years, arrests and deportations have been increasing much more
rapidly than immigrant admissions.
The
good news is that now the pendulum may be shifting under the Obama
administration. Janet Napolitano, the new Secretary of Homeland
Security, has ordered a review of the immigrant arrest policy. And,
while CNN’s Lou Dobbs and other media pundits continue to whip up
anti-immigrant sentiment, immigrants continue to pursue their own
path to power. In 2007, a near-record 1.3 million naturalization
petitions were filed. This figure — and the 2008 elections — shows
that immigrant-bashing has become a losing political proposition.
(1)
http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/NFOP_Feb09.pdf
(2) For an exposé
of today’s nativist movement, see:
http://americasvoiceonline.org/page/content/wolves/).
