migration

Current pressure for a wall on the United States’ southern border has been a centerpiece in politics and the media, but push for a wall is one recent development in a complex history of border politics. For centuries, the border has been a site for war, conflict, immigration, and trade. A recent article in The Washington Post highlights how these historic events have contributed to defining what the border means today, and how — especially in recent decades — this has led to calls for heightened security and enforcement.

The border itself is a powerful political symbol. According to sociologist Douglas Massey, it is not just

“a border but the border, and its enforcement has become a central means by which politicians signal their concern for citizens’ safety and security in a hostile world.”

Recent work by Massey highlights how throughout history this “hostile” world has been defined and composed of dissident actors — drug traffickers, terrorists, communists, or criminals — with politicians using them as political chips to peddle and spin different narratives on how and why we should protect the border.  

This research demonstrates that whether the southern border is an invisible line, physical fence, or wall, it continues to be a symbolic boundary for people who hold a profound fear of those who are non-white or of different cultural backgrounds. For example, recent political positions towards Central American migration to the United States seem to echo historic anti-immigrant attitudes. During the late 19th century, Chinese laborers were banned for decades from immigrating to the U.S. for their perceived cultural and economic threat to American society.

As debates continue over the construction of a southern wall, it is worthwhile to question if anti-immigrant attitudes and fears are haunting reverberations of the past. Recognition of the complex history of the U.S.-Mexico border and its connection to fear of crime and xenophobic attitudes may be a useful starting point so that today’s politics do not become “another brick in the wall” in the history of the border.

Even after signing a resolution to suspend the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, President Trump remains committed to delivering his long-promised southern border wall. In defense of the wall and the recently failed $5.7 billion Senate proposal, Trump again made comments on national security that contradict numerous studies and immigration scholars. However, the wall is not the only immigration policy proposed by the administration that could have dire social repercussions.

In a recent op-ed for the MinnPost, an interdisciplinary team of expert immigration scholars at the University of Minnesota, including Ryan Allen, Jack DeWaard, Erika Lee, and Chris Levesque, argues that the administrative changes to the ‘public charge’ rule is one such policy. The ‘public charge’ rule is a policy used to evaluate non-U.S. citizen applicants for U.S. residency by how likely they are to become dependent on the government for support. The Trump administration aims to make it easier for government officials to decide an immigrant is ineligible for residency if they are in need of or use government assistance programs. The research team highlights serious consequences of such a policy: in the wake of this announcement, many legal immigrants who are entitled and in need of health and social assistance programs fail to use them out of fear. This could produce detrimental effects on public health by spreading certain diseases across communities and reducing economic productivity.

The research team, which includes community stakeholders and activists, is committed to igniting critical discussions that address these challenges faced by individuals and families who immigrate to U.S. communities. In a sole-authored piece for the Pioneer Press, Jack DeWaard writes,

“…discussions and debates about U.S. immigrants, immigration and immigration policy must start with the very simple recognition that immigrants are people — often facing incredible hardships — seeking to do the best for themselves, their children and their families against a backdrop of widening inequality, both globally and within the U.S. With this as the starting point, say what you will about issues like the economic impacts of immigration…, men and women of character and integrity neither promote nor sit idly by as immigrants, including young children, are…denied their rights…in the process for doing what any person in their position would do — namely, ask for help.”

The current immigration policies and practices of the Trump administration have received significant scrutiny. Many detainees are subjected to inhumane treatment in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities around the nation, demonstrated in recent reports of  sexual assault and the potential death of a migrant child upon release from detention. In a recent article in The Conversation, sociologist Tanya Golash-Boza argues that the criminalization and deportation of immigrants is nothing new, but rather that the Trump administration’s actions are part of a broader pattern of mass deportation.

In 2003, the Department of Homeland Security was created, and upon its inception housed both ICE (which was also formed in 2003) and Customs and Border Protection to enforce immigration laws. According to Golash-Boza, the transferral of immigration law enforcement from the Department of Justice to the Department of Homeland Security served two purposes: changing the tone of immigration enforcement as an issue of national security and a massive cash flow to immigration law enforcement agencies.

Even though immigration is central to Trump’s image and platform, deportations were actually highest under President Obama, with three million people deported during his tenure. Tough immigration enforcement has occurred across party lines and is about more than just ICE. Golash-Boza expands,

“For the past 20 years, aggressive immigration law enforcement has been a constant across Democrat and Republican administrations. Democratic President Bill Clinton signed laws in 1996 that greatly expanded deportations. Republican George Bush created the Department of Homeland Security and, in effect, ICE. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security led to a spike in the number of people deported from the U.S.”

Golash-Boza’s research demonstrates that ending mass deportation in the United States will require more than just standing up to Trump and ICE, but addressing our history of aggressive immigration policies and its connections to the “war on terror.”

Over a million migrants and refugees entered Europe in 2015, leading many to dub this mass migration a “crisis.” Many are seeking asylum, especially those from countries experiencing considerable violence like Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Many Europeans have reacted to the influx with fear, spreading stories that associate refugees and migrants with crime (something social scientists like to call “crimmigration”). In response, two German women created Hoaxmap to track and dispel rumors about refugees in Germany (a country that has been particularly welcoming to immigrants, per its Chancellor Angela Merkel’s directives). Of the 40 types of rumors tracked on Hoaxmap, most pertain to theft or sexual assault.

The discrepancy between documented and rumored crimes may reflect the way rumors spread and their connections to real events that people believe are plausible. Sociologist Gary Alan Fine, recently featured in an Atlantic article, agrees: “Once you have a plausible story then the criteria for information you need in order to believe [a new story] is much lower, because you would say ‘this is like what happened elsewhere.’” In fact, almost half of the rumors about sexual assault and rape associated with the contemporary immigrants cropped up in the two months following reported New Year’s Eve assaults on women in Cologne. Sociologist Mar Warr concurs that “even a small increase in apparent risk (like a locally reported rape or rapes) can generate substantial and widespread fear.” In reality, most crime in destination locations appears to have been directed at asylum seekers, rather than perpetrated by them.

Tonight, we’ll see the 7th GOP Presidential Debate, but how will the public parse truth from fiction? Recently The Conversation asked four scholars to choose and fact-check one statement from the 6th GOP debate. Stealing the show was tonight’s ostensible no-show, The Donald, conflating refugees with immigrants, and both with crime.

To be fair, nearly all the candidates conflate immigrants and refugees, and, in the 6th Debate, they reduced the topics to one: national security. According to sociologist David Cook Martin, refugees are a legal category defined by United Nations, and they undergo an extensive screening process, while immigrant status is determined by U.S. law. The emphasis on immigrants and refugees as a security threat thus leaves no room for acknowledging the ways  migration has helped the U.S.:

To reduce immigration and refugee policy to a matter of national security overlooks the considerable extent to which the cultural, social and economic success of the United States has been linked to migration, including that of the families of five of [the GOP] debate participants. Immigration policy is a complex weighing of security matters, but also of geopolitical interests, economics and the diversity of people and perspectives that have informed U.S. success.

Trump also claimed that migrants coming to the U.S. are primarily “strong, powerful men,” again drawing on stereotypes of immigrants and refugees as threats (previously, he had notoriously said that Mexican immgirants, in particular, were rapists and drug dealers). Hadar Aviram, professor of law, points out that this is plain old wrong. First, of the 1,682 Syrian refugees entering the U.S. last year, 77% were women. And while immigrants are often associated in the popular imagination with criminality, scholars agree—and sociologist Ruben Rumbaut has shown time and time again—that immigrants actually commit less crime than native-born Americans. Aviram argues that Trump is distracting the public from other issues, like the tax breaks for the wealthy he plans to make and that might actually harm middle-class and working-class Americans, by drawing attention to a “demonized ‘other.’”

Today marks the first day that gay couples can legally marry in the states of Rhode Island and Minnesota, the eleventh and thirteenth states respectively to legalize gay marriage. In the wake of  the recent Supreme Court decision on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Prop 8, many gay and lesbian individuals and allies around the country are celebrating advances in the rights and recognition extended to gay couples on a federal level.

However, in the midst of these celebrations, Rick Settersten points out in a recent LA Times article that same-sex couples, who do not reside in the thirteen states and the District of Columbia where gay marriage is legal, continue to be left out by the law. He states,

For those of us trapped elsewhere in the country—even in places we love—the verdict reinforces the fact that the security of our families and our futures rises or falls depending on where we live.

Highlighting the variation and inconsistency by state in legal rights extended to gay and lesbian partnerships, Settersten describes the reality of gay couples that migrate to states with more legal recognition. Settersten, his partner Dan, and their two children moved from Ohio in 2004 when the state banned recognition of any form of same-sex coupling (marriage, civil unions, or domestic partnerships). At the time, their new home state of Oregon enabled them to co-adopt children and register as a domestic partnership. Although they have been together for almost thirty years, their domestic partnership in Oregon will not be federally recognized under the DOMA decision, forcing them to move yet again if they want to benefit from federal recognition of their union.