‘They come here to work’: an evaluation of the economic argument in favor of immigrant rights

Abstract

Advocates commonly highlight the exploitation that hard-working undocumented immigrants commonly suffer at the hands of employers, the important contribution they make to the US economy, and the fiscal folly of border militarization and enhanced immigration enforcement policies. In this paper, I unpack these economic rationales for expanding immigrant rights, and examine the nuanced ways in which advocates deploy this frame. To do so, I rely on statements issued by publicly present immigrant rights groups in six places: California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Texas, and Washington, DC. I also draw on interviews with immigrant advocates in San Jose, CA and Houston, TX, press releases from two alternative national immigrant rights organizations, and an ethnographic photo-documentation of immigrant rights mobilizations in 2012–2014. Economic rationales, I emphasize, can be found in each of these contexts, but are not mutually exclusive to other justifications, including narratives about civil, human, and family rights for immigrants. However, I argue that an economic framing of immigrant rights nonetheless runs the risk reifying work over conventional understandings of criminality, often relies on a narrow definition of economic worth, and could have negative consequences for coalition building.

Keywords::

• social movement
• framing
• rights
• market citizenship
• work

Notes

^1. This paper further examines key questions posed at the 2008 ASA Thematic Session on ‘Citizenship, Immigration, and Work’ and a workshop at the 2011 Law and Society Meetings entitled ‘Towards a More Transformative Vision of Immigration Reform: Navigating the Realms of the ‘Ideal’ and ‘Non-Ideal.’ I would also like to thank the members of the Framing Immigrant Rights workshop at UC Berkeley for insight and suggestions in the development of this manuscript, including: Irene Bloemraad, Kim Voss, Kathryn Abrams, Catherine Albiston, Patricia Baquedano-López, Nils Gilman, Taeku Lee, Sarah Song, Veronica Terriquez, and Leti Volpp.

^2. For example, when social movements choose to pursue the courts as a central strategy for social change, they are necessarily making a choice to frame an issue through particular legal reasoning. Cause lawyers and other movement actors are neither naïve nor ambivalent about the implications of this approach (Jones 2006).

^3. Following the creation of employer sanctions under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, the Department of Justice created the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices, whose primary role was to ensure that workers would not be subject to discrimination on the basis of national origin or citizenship by employers seeking to avoid hiring immigrants.

^4. Similarly, a free-market rationale and an emphasis on individualism have been foundational to the configuration of US citizenship and the decline of the US social safety net (Katz 2008).

^5. I searched both a 2009 database of 501(c)3 organizations purchased from the National Center for Charitable Statistics (a program of the Urban Institute) – http://nccs.urban.org/, as well as keyword searches through the philanthropic database GuideStar – http://www.guidestar.org/.

^6. These include: refugee, ethnic, latin, hispan, chican, mexi, colomb, dominican, puerto ric, boricua, hait, jamaic, caribb, central americ, salvador, guatem, hondur, cuba, asia, chin, viet, korea, india, filip, philipp, and human rights.

^7. Here I draw on the definition provided by Fine (2006), who distinguishes between direct service to individuals, (2) collective organizing with workers, and (3) policy advocacy on behalf of workers.

^8. Though organizations are certain to shift their language over time, a longitudinal analysis of shifting frames was not the goal of this research.

^9. A list of organization names is available upon request to the author.

^10. These include 2010 (3), 2011 (9), 2012 (7), 2013 (47), and 2014 (20).

^11. For this analysis, I examined the press statements of the following six prominent anti-immigrant organizations: the Center for Immigration Studies http://www.cis.org/, Federation for American Immigration Reform http://www.fairus.org/about, NumbersUSA https://www.numbersusa.com/content/, the Immigration Reform Law Institute http://www.irli.org/, and State Legislators for Legal Immigration http://www.statelegislatorsforlegalimmigration.com/. (See also Center for New Community for more detailed profiles of who these groups are 2011, 2013.)

^12. See for example the mission of the group NumbersUSA, whose key goals include stabilizing the US population via immigration restriction in order to address the ‘deteriorating quality of life due to sprawl, congestion, overcrowded schools, lost open spaces and increasing restrictions on their individual liberty caused by the new population explosion!’ https://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/about/what-numbersusa-all-about.html.

^13. Several of these groups have been designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. See: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map.

^14. United Farm Workers, UFW Praises Federal Judge for Blocking Key Parts of SB 1070, Arizona's Anti-Immigrant Bill – United Farm Workers, 28 July 2010.

^15. Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, MALDEF Opposes Proposal In Virginia's Prince William County To Check Immigration And Citizenship Status – Provisions targeting undocumented immigrants would lead to local immigration enforcement, 10 July 2007.

^16. Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Fifth Circuit Affirms Farmers Branch Housing Ordinance As Unconstitutional Targeting of Undocumented Immigrants – Ruling caps five-year legal battle over latest unlawful ordinance enacted by the City of Farmer's Branch, costing taxpayers millions, 21 March 2012.

^17. American Immigration Council, President Declares Ongoing Commitment to Immigration Reform, 27 January 2010.

^18. California Immigrant Policy Center, Looking Forward, Immigrant Contributions to the Golden State, 2010, http://www.clca.us/immigration/moreinfoDocs/ALLCAPages.pdf.

^19. Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, NEWS RELEASE – LIRS Welcomes US Chamber of Commerce and IPC Recognition of Refugee Resettlement's Economic Benefits, 29 February 2012.

^20. Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, STATEMENT – LIRS Statement for Hearing: ‘H.R. 2164, the Legal Workforce Act,’ 15 June 2011.

^21. America Immigration Lawyers Association, AILA Responds to House Worksite Enforcement Hearing, AILA InfoNet Doc. No. 11012662, 26 January 2011.

^22. National Immigrant Justice Center, Senate holds first-ever hearing on the DREAM Act, 28 June 2011.

^23. National Immigration Law Center, As Deferred Action Becomes DREAMers’ Reality, National Immigration Law Center Joins New Campaign to Help Thousands of Immigrants Who Arrived as Children, 8/7/12.

^24. National Immigration Forum, Attention Super Committee: Help Reduce Deficit by Prioritizing Immigration Enforcement Spending, 15 November 2011.

^25. Border Action Network, Border Residents Oppose Calls for Deployment of the Nat'l Guard to US-Mexico Border, 5/27/10. Letter also co-signed by: American Friends Service Committee (CA); San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium (CA); San Diego Foundation for Change (CA); Border Action Network (AZ); First Christian Church of Tucson (AZ); ACLU Regional Center for Border Rights (NM); Border Network for Human Rights (TX); Immigrant Justice Alliance (TX); Freedom Ambassadors (TX); US-Mexico Border and Immigration Task Force; Casa de Proyecto Libertad (TX); and Project Puente (TX).

^26. National Immigration Forum, Effective Visa System Would Boost American Economy, 29 January 2012.

^27. Border Action Network, Arizona Senate Committee Wastes Time and Resources on Misguided Legislation, 2/23/11.

^28. American Immigration Council, Missouri State Legislature Pursing Budget Busting Solutions to Immigration Anti-Immigrant Bill SB590 Will Cost the State Millions, 31 January 2012.

^29. AAJC, Press Release, AAJC Leads Amicus Brief Challenging South Carolina's ‘Arizona SB 1070’ Copycat Law, 24 November 2011.

^30. American Immigration Council, State Legislators Attack Fundamental Constitutional Values – State Legislators Attempt to Turn Back Clock to Pre-Civil War Era, 5 January 2011.

^31. Mar Muñoz-Visoso, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, USCCB Chairman Calls Senate Vote On Dream Act ‘A Setback, Not A Defeat’, 21 December 2010.

^32. Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, ANTI-IMMIGRANT HEARING CUNNING AND DECEITFUL: Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) holds anti-immigrant hearing titled ‘Holiday on ICE,’ 27 March 2012.

^33. Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, ICIRR Praises White House Action to Keep Families Together, 6 January 2012.

^34. National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Obama Administration Proposes Sensible Changes That Will Let Many Families Avoid Prolonged Separation, 12 January 2012.

^35. American Immigration Lawyers Association, Administration Misses Opportunity to Protect Immigrants Held in Detention, AILA InfoNet Doc. No. 12051860, 18 May 2012.

^36. California Immigrant Policy Center, Federal Immigration Enforcement Practices Harmful to California, 30 March 2009.

^37. Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Clinic Commends DHS Office for Report on Removal of Aliens, 2005.

^38. CultureStrike, http://culturestrike.net/festival/culturestrike-coalition-kicks-off-national-campaign

^39. Similar assessments have been offered in other social movement arenas, such as challenges to the unilateral focus of the LGBT movement for traditional marriage equality (Andersen 2009), the feminist critique of the civil rights movement (Robnett 1996), and the failure of ‘the war on trafficking’ to address the structural basis of sex work here and abroad (Parreñas 2011).

^40. Statement issued by the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC), National Immigration Forum, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Sojourners, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on Migration (27 May 2014).

^41. ‘Ayotte on Immigration Reform Bill: ‘It's Important for the Country’ 5/1/14. CNS News. http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/ayotte-immigration-reform-bill-its-important-country

^42. ‘House Majority Leader Eric Cantor: “Immigration Reform Could Be an Economic Boon”’ Think Progress. 1/10/14. http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2014/01/10/3145601/cantor-goodlatte-reform-momentum-2014/

^43. ‘Conservatives Need to Fix the Broken US Immigration System | Commentary’ Roll Call. 5/14/14. http://www.rollcall.com/news/conservatives_need_to_fix_the_broken_us_immigration_system_commentary-232970-1.html?pg = 2&dczone = opinion