Immigration and the Politics of Security

by Dave Bennion

Published October 06, 2008 @ 07:51PM PT

U.S. Immigration policy has long been cast in terms of national security for political gain.  The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were an attempt by the governing Federalist Party to squelch public opposition through appeals to national unity and fear of foreigners in a time of undeclared war against France.  After World War One, J. Edgar Hoover spearheaded the Palmer Raids during the first Red Scare, sweeping up citizens and noncitizens alike.  FDR instituted the shameful internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two, following in the footsteps of Woodrow Wilson, who warned in 1915 against:

Hyphenated Americans (who) have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty and anarchy must be crushed out.

Given this history, the politicization of immigration policy after the 9/11 attacks was to be expected.  The U.S. citizenry, having permitted 19 foreign nationals to enter the country who went on to murder thousands of their hosts, felt vulnerable and angry.  Understandably, this had an impact on immigration policy.

But as had happened so often before, the reaction to loss of security went far beyond what was necessary or reasonable. 

Thousands of noncitizen men of Middle Eastern origin were summarily rounded up, jailed, and deported through the NSEERS Special Registration program.  But the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee reports that not a single charge of terrorism was brought against any NSEERS registrant.

As the Bush administration realized the political benefits of adopting a hard-line immigration policy after 9/11, laws passed in the 1990s to increase penalties for minor criminal convictions like shoplifting or possession of marijuana were strictly enforced regardless of the consequences to long-time residents or their (often U.S. citizen) families.  In the past two years, the link between government immigration enforcement and national security has become even more tenuous, with massive workplace raids targeting Latino immigrants justified by creative use of criminal identity theft charges.

Much of this blatantly political approach to immigration policy has gone unchallenged by the opposition political party because of effective framing by the government of immigration as a national security issue.  Uncritical acceptance of the "national security" frame does a disservice to citizens and noncitizens alike by ignoring the long history of political manipulation of immigration policy.

To date, the government has not adequately explained how citizens are made safer by arresting and deporting Caribbean men for smoking pot in the 1970s (so-called "criminal aliens" or "fugitive aliens"), or locking up Guatemalan factory workers for enduring abusive labor conditions without complaint.

If history has shown one thing about immigration politics in time of national stress, it is that such periods are intensely traumatic for the targeted communities and later regretted by the majority.  The current period promises to be no exception.