In these opening remarks to a hearing on federal border control efforts, immigrants appear simultaneously as villainous invaders of the nation and as its heroic founders. That Americans view and treat the immigrant population with both veneration and fear is an accepted peculiarity of the nation’s history. However, Congressman Horn’s remarks also reveal four themes that have become the hallmarks of contemporary discourse on immigration policy, which blends old and new sensibilities about the benefits and harms of immigration to the nation. For example, Mr. Horn reminds his audience that the only entity with the power to engage in national...

This is a study of the public face of congressional lawmaking that focuses on the official function of imagery, stories, and symbolism in the policy process. It employs specific methods of discourse analysis and Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram’s social constructions of target populations theory to explore how public officials use these stories and images in defending legislative solutions to immigration problems.¹ The research focused on two policy periods (1981 – 1986 and 1994 – 1996) characterized by significant policy changes. Such significant policy changes include alterations in approaches to dealing with a problem (mechanisms referred to as policy tools) and redefinitions...

As the statements above demonstrate, legislators are quite aware that they are not simply writing laws, but communicating values to a broader audience. The quotations reveal two very different definitions of the illegal immigration issue. Senator Simpson, who was an original force driving the bill that would become the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), defines illegal immigration as a dynamic process involving both domestic forces (employers) and international problems (poor economic policies and conditions abroad). Solutions to illegal immigration, according to Simpson, would need to address conditions in the United States and abroad. A decade later, House Speaker...

In August of 1984, an in-depth article on immigration reform appeared inNewsweekalong with a poll of American opinion on immigration and aspects of the proposed reforms. The results showed that Americans had “mixed feelings” about the policy proposals and revealed “ambivalence about all immigration, legal as well as illegal.”¹ The poll had asked Americans to rank issues according to their perceived importance: unemployment ranked highest (84 percent), inflation was second (73 percent), and threat of nuclear war was third (70 percent). A majority of Americans (55 percent) also ranked immigration as a “very important” issue; still,Newsweekdeduced...

At 8 p.m. on Tuesday, November 8, voting booths across California shut down, but the 1994 general election would resonate long after wards. Even after its passage, Proposition 187 would linger in the headlines as both supporters and opponents awaited a final decision from ensuing court challenges to the law.¹ Pete Wilson hung onto the governorship by talking tough about illegal immigrants and hitching his ailing re-election campaign to the popular measure. The California election, while significant, did not occur in a vacuum. California’s initiative process provided evidence that illegal immigrants remained an unpopular group of people, and that immigration...

As elected officials, members of Congress are conscious of the values and traditions of the public they serve, as well as of the society of which they themselves are a product. While it is no longer politically acceptable for immigration policies to single out groups for exclusion based on race or national origin, legislators continue to distinguish between the “right” and “wrong” kinds of immigrants, accomplishing these distinctions through rhetorical devices that forge distinctions between “us” and “ them.” This may on its face seem unremarkable since, at its essence, immigration policy is set up to administer the relationship between...

We typically study public policy as a mechanism for problem-solving and expect that research, deliberation, and rationality are applied to solving social problems. Likewise, when public policies fail, analysts quickly attribute these failures to factors such as budget inadequacies, illogical mandates, poor administration, and unanticipated consequences. However, if we consider immigration policy not simply as problem-solving mechanism but as an opportunity to structure and manage claims on the state, we can more easily understand why these policies appear on their surface to be contradictory or designed to fail.

The conflict over immigration is not about differences in research, pilot program...

As I complete this book, the nation is once again embroiled in a bitter debate over immigration control, how best to accomplish it, and what course to pursue in dealing with the resident unauthorized population, whose size is currently estimated to lie somewhere between 10 and 12 million people. Each chamber of Congress has pursued solutions (either singly or in combination) that follow four general formats: criminalization of the act of illegal immigration and unauthorized presence in the United States; extension and expansion of southern border control efforts, including limited or no due-process procedures for those people apprehended there; expansive...