{"id":2411,"date":"2015-08-17T12:48:44","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T17:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ssn\/?p=2411"},"modified":"2015-08-17T12:50:29","modified_gmt":"2015-08-17T17:50:29","slug":"separating-good-and-bad-undocumented-immigrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ssn\/2015\/08\/17\/separating-good-and-bad-undocumented-immigrants\/","title":{"rendered":"The Downside of Separating “Good” Undocumented Immigrants from “Bad” Criminals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"usdeportations\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In recent decades, the United States has seen a spectacular rise in deportations, with local police forces authorized by the federal government to identify undocumented immigrants for summary removal. More than 11 million undocumented people across the country \u2013 including up to one in ten adult workers in the state of California \u2013 faced this threat in their daily lives.<\/p>\n

To assuage the human costs, President Barack Obama outlined a plan in November 2014 to provide temporary protection to many undocumented migrants. Building on his earlier efforts to set priorities, the President specified that officials would henceforth seek to deport \u201cfelons, not families,\u201d \u201ccriminals, not children,\u201d \u201cgang members, not a mom who\u2019s working hard to provide for her kids.\u201d In short, under the new policy, various kinds of immigrants deemed good would be protected from deportation. Well-intentioned city leaders, bureaucrats, and police would need to sort out the good immigrants from those vilified as criminals.<\/p>\n

<\/div>These well-intended steps are meant to alleviate the trauma that the threat of deportation has imposed on millions of law-abiding migrants. But how do the binary divisions work out in practice? My research, based on a year of observations in southern California plus 75 in-depth interviews with undocumented Mexican migrants, suggests that efforts to divide good from bad people in migrant communities can have pernicious as well as helpful effects.Efforts to divide good from bad people in migrant communities can have pernicious effects.<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cGood Immigrant\u201d Solution in Practice<\/h3>\n

A growing chorus of experts argues that U.S. deportation policies in the 2000s have had many harmful effects. After September 11, 2001, most undocumented migrants came to be regarded as criminals and local police got more involved in immigration control. With more than 400,000 people deported each year, families have lived with the daily threat of captures and removals of adults doing jobs or errands. Many have hesitated to seek out social services, report crimes to the police, or even leave their homes. Along with documented family members and friends, undocumented immigrants have become increasingly socially isolated and subject to labor abuses \u2013 turning them into what some scholars call an underclass.<\/p>\n

<\/div>In relatively immigrant friendly cities, states, and institutions, authorities have tried to ease omnipresent deportation threats by redefining many undocumented migrants as \u201cgood\u201d residents to be left alone while deportation efforts focus on criminals. My research among undocumented groups in Southern California compares how migrants have fared in the city of Los Angeles, where such divisions occur, versus how they have fared in Escondido, where all migrants have been treated as illegitimate. I discovered that when immigrants believed the police were making distinctions, they saw deportation and public services as conditional punishments versus rewards. In the words of \u201cMaria,\u201d a 36-year-old garment worker who had been living in the United States for about 15 years, \u201cas long as we [undocumented migrants] follow the law, stay under the speed limit, do the steps they ask for, not wander around here and there, not drink, not do drugs \u2013 I say that as long as one is doing what the law asks, paying your insurance, paying your tickets, then everything is OK. But if you go around messing here, messing there, or not paying your tickets, then [it\u2019s not].\u201d As this quote suggests, most of the migrants I interviewed in LA believed that they needed to go beyond just obeying the law to display deference, stoicism at work, and self-sufficiency.Since 9\/11, undocumented immigrants have become increasingly socially isolated and subject to labor abuses \u2013 turning them into what some scholars call an underclass.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fears were indeed reduced for many Los Angeles migrants. To the extent that they associated deportation with criminal conviction, they were able to move about their jobs and cities and access public services. In contrast, respondents in Escondido, where authorities did not try to treat non-criminals differently, were often unwilling to report domestic violence or labor abuses to the police. More than two-thirds of Escondido\u2019s undocumented migrants felt afraid to go about their daily lives, while this was true for only one in ten in Los Angeles, where migrants were more willing to go to the police or contact the local labor commissioner.<\/p>\n

<\/div>Logically, one might assume alleviating fears for undocumented migrants would open the door for them to become civically active. In practice, however, many adhered to a \u201cgood immigrant\u201d ethic well beyond simply following the law, and they took pride in being stoic even when they faced abuses at work. For example, \u201cJuan,\u201d a 55-year-old construction worker, explained why he held back from demonstrations on behalf of immigrant rights. \u201cWhy am I going to go make a lot of noise where it\u2019s not my home? It\u2019s not my city. I\u2019ll tell you again. I\u2019m an immigrant, and I don\u2019t forget that. \u2026 As an immigrant I start thinking, and I ask myself, \u2018What am I contributing to this nation?\u2019 What am I contributing? Well, being a good worker, paying my taxes, not owing the government anything, and obeying \u2013 respecting the laws. That\u2019s all for me.\u201dMost of the migrants I interviewed in LA believed they needed to go beyond just obeying the law to display deference, stoicism at work, and self-sufficiency if they were to be viewed as “good.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea that deportation was conditional on behavior also encouraged respondents to believe deportation was the fault of those removed. At times, people even suggested that deporting \u201cbad\u201d immigrants was fair. According to \u201cMaria\u201d (whom I also quoted earlier), if the police \u201csee people drunk, or drugged, if they see them making a mess and a half, then let them take them [out of the country] as they should. That doesn\u2019t bother me.\u201d In short, when deportation comes to be seen as due to the misbehavior of those who are removed, then authorities are not blamed, which further discourages protests against the deportation system as a whole.<\/p>\n

Toward Uniform Treatment<\/h3>\n

Protection from deportation helps alleviate fear \u2013 as well as psychological trauma, social isolation, and exclusion from services. Yet as long as protection seems conditional<\/i> on quiet and deferential personal conduct, any approach that divides undocumented migrants into good versus bad categories tends to reinforce secondary status for all of them. Current presidential policies and Congressional bills are premised on continuing \u2013 indeed reinforcing \u2013 the good versus bad distinctions among undocumented migrants. As my work shows, this approach is bound to have unintended marginalizing implications even for migrants classified as legitimate residents. Deportation relief is a first step. But more substantive reform requires doing away with the second-class \u201ccriminal migrant\u201d category of people subject to summary deportation, and instead treating all<\/i> migrants as worthy of universal rights and protections. That uniform approach is the only way to fully integrate migrants into American communities.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

This brief was prepared for the Scholars Strategy Network<\/a> by Abigail Andrews<\/a>, UCSD. Andrews is a sociologist who studies\u00a0globalization, migration, gender, and politics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In recent decades, the United States has seen a spectacular rise in deportations, with local police forces authorized by the federal government to identify undocumented immigrants for summary removal. More than 11 million undocumented people across the country \u2013 including up to one in ten adult workers in the state of California \u2013 faced this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":495,"featured_media":1904,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[124,89,13,321,85],"class_list":["post-2411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crime","tag-immigration","tag-inequality","tag-law","tag-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ssn\/files\/2014\/06\/usdeportations.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ssn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ssn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ssn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ssn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/495"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ssn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2411"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ssn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2414,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ssn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411\/revisions\/2414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ssn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ssn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ssn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ssn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}