Immigration policy has taken an unprecedented turn in the late 20th to early 21st Century, largely breaking the traditional cycles of acceptance and denial of migrants, redefining the debate over immigration for the 2020 presidential election. Such changes in modern immigration policy can largely be attributed to three causes: modern racial and gender nuances, accelerated apprehensions and deportations, and the effects of COVID-19 on Caribbean and Latin American immigrants. Thus, in order to properly vote in 2020, one must analyze the three aspects in context and how they intertwine.
Historically, migrant workers have proven a quintessential workforce, economically obliging American citizens to accept them during periods of economic prosperity. Nonetheless, as segregated communities, they often serve as scapegoats during economic recessions. A clear example of this cyclical pattern arose in California’s 20th Century citrus industry. 1910’s Orange County flourished upon maintaining a Mexican labor force. The turbulent Mexican Revolution ignited mass migration, and industrialists took advantage. Cooperatives like the California Fruit Growers Exchange advocated for an “open border policy,”[1] in turn instigating the growth of impoverishing zoning and schooling systems, while still fulfilling the labor force’s low standards for perceived economic upward mobility. The following Great Depression deprived American society, as it searched for a group to blame. Deportations grew rampant. The Mexican workforce was again accepted to counteract labor shortages during the war, thus restarting the cycle.
Up to this Bracero Program era, deportations and exclusionary acts were often directed toward women in hopes of hindering the Latino population from growing and thus, supposedly, destabilizing established Anglo-cultural norms. “Men were associated with production”; women, with reproduction[2]. But, heightened fear of foreigners combined with a financial recession in the 2000’s shifted American perspectives. As manufacturer jobs dwindled, migrant men were found “disposable and redundant”[3], leading to the enforcement of several detention-favoring and deportation-accelerating laws (e.g. IIRIRA’s 287[g], which criminalized non-violent migrant tendencies). The shift toward inward apprehension fiscally and legally enabled ICE to lobby bed quotas and discounts. This incentivized the growth of privately run detention centers, expanding a vested interest to detain more migrant men[4]. Accelerated inward (versus border) apprehensions, detentions, and deportations thus have stripped many immigrant men of their often-established lives and families[5]. The fear of losing a partner and its resulting economic instability, coupled with a distrust in police protecting said partner, further explains why Latina women are less likely to report instances of intimate partner violence (IPV)[6]. If Latinas report IPV, they can escape abuse but only at the potential cost of permanent instability. Thus, this modern turn in immigrant policy is a double-bladed sword for Latino communities; the current shift in perspective toward immigrant men negatively affects the entire Latino immigrant community.
These vulnerabilities are heightened by COVID-19. The continued detention of migrants does not allow for the bare necessities to combat the disease, namely social distancing and soap[7]. The community’s experience of this “intentional medical neglect” may explain why many Latino voters advocate for government involvement in healthcare and why Biden shuns his adversary for not supporting Venezuelan refugees enough; Biden’s proposed moratorium on deportation[8] could weaken the spread of COVID into the periphery. It would also ensure immigrants can continue to fight, as they disproportionately have been, against COVID on the frontlines in the healthcare, research, and cleaning industries. Thus, support of the migrant population in all facets leads both indirectly and directly to international aid against the pandemic, which is quintessential to keep in mind when voting in the 2020 presidential elections.
[1] Jesse la Tour, “The Roots of Inequality: The Citrus Industry Prospered on the Back of Segregated Immigrant Labor,” Fullerton Observer, December 17, 2019, https://fullertonobserver.com/2019/12/17/the-roots-of-inequality-the-citrus-industry-prospered-on-the-back-of-segregated-immigrant-labor/?fbclid=IwAR2b0ux5bz0VBN6Ketw8sJR72oTdtPbj_RzgpX3cUd4JLiAPMkA_-srU9RM. [2] Tanya Golash-Boza and Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, “Latino Immigrant Men and the Deportation Crisis: A Gendered Racial Removal Program,” Latino Studies 11, no. 3, 271-292. [3] Ibid, 273. [4] Mary Small, Dawy Rkasnuam and Silky Shah, “A Toxic Relationship: Private Prisons and U.S. Immigration Detention,” Detention Watch Network, 7-10. [5] Golash-Boza, “Latino Immigrant Men,” 277-284. [6] Jill Theresa Messing, et. al., “Latina’s Perceptions of Law Enforcement: Fear of Deportation, Crime Reporting and Trust in the System,” Journal of Women and Social Work 30, no. 3, 328-340. [7] Cat Cardenas, “There’s Been Absolutely No Change in Procedure: ICE Detention Facilities are not Prepared for Coronavirus,” Texas Monthly, March 21, 2020, https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/ice-detention-facilities-not-prepared-coronavirus/. [8] Andres Oppenheimer, “Hispanics will be Hit Hard by Coronavirus Crisis and Could Back Biden Over Trump,” Miami Herald, March 20, 2020, https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andres-oppenheimer/article241381271.html.
