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Abstract
Developing literature on late twentieth century U.S. immigration rhetoric has failed to attend adequately to the character of sovereignty claims in contemporary immigration politics. This essay demonstrates the centrality of sovereignty discourse by examining texts created by the state, specifically public affairs videos produced and distributed by a regional Media Services Office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) between 1992 and 2000. The author argues that border imagery featured in INS media functions metonymically as both a symbol and an index of U.S. sovereignty.
Acknowledgments
She thanks Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, the anonymous reviewers, and Bradford Vivian for their generous feedback on earlier versions of this essay.
Notes
1. National Council of La Raza, Mass to Commemorate Immigrants Who Have Died Crossing the Border, June 24, 2004, http://www.nclr.org/content/news/detail/25234/ (accessed August 23, 2005).
2. Archbishop Quinn cited in “Archbishop Urges Circumventing Prop. 187,” The San Francisco Chronicle, December 2, 1994. On the absence of affirmative arguments for undocumented immigrants, see Linda Bosniak, “Opposing Prop. 187: Undocumented Immigrants and the National Imagination,” Connecticut Law Review 28 (1996): 555–619; and Ruben Martinez, “Fighting 187: The Different Opposition Strategies,” NACLA: Report on the Americas (November/December 1995): 32.
3. Bosniak, “Opposing Prop. 187,” 567.
4. On the salience of sovereignty to congressional debates over immigration policy from 1890 to 1990, see Cheryl Shanks, Immigration and the Politics of American Sovereignty, 1890–1990 (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2001). On the importance of sovereignty to immigration control generally, see James Hathaway, “Three Critical Questions about the Study of Immigration Control,” in Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective, eds. Wayne Cornelius, Philip Martin, and James Hollifiend (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 49–51.
5. Robert Chang and Keith Aoki, “Centering the Immigrant in the Inter/National Imagination,” California Law Review 85 (1997): 1398.
6. The most common alarmist motifs addressed by Chavez include (1) directing the movement within an image towards the reader and (2) the use of infinitylines, which Chavez defines as “a line of immigrants with at least one end emerging or disappearing, usually at the edge of the [magazine] cover's border.” Leo Chavez, Covering Immigration: Popular Images and the Politics of the Nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 69. For a summary of both the alarmist modes of depicting immigrants as well as the affirmative modes used to humanize refugees, see Anne Demo, “Policy and Media in Immigration Studies,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 7 (2004): 215–29.
7. The prolonged debate over Proposition 187 prompted numerous popular critiques and interdisciplinary analyses. Although not an exhaustive list, the following provide a systematic analysis of Proposition 187: Kent Ono and John Sloop, Shifting Borders: Rhetoric, Immigration, and California's Proposition 187 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002); Otto Santa Ana, Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002); Marouf Hasian and Fernando Delgado, “The Trials and Tribulations of Racialized Critical Rhetorical Theory: Understanding the Rhetorical Ambiguities of Proposition 187,” Communication Theory 8 (1998): 245–70; K. Johnson, “An Essay on Immigration Politics, Popular Democracy, and California's Proposition 187: The Political Relevance and Legal Irrelevance of Race,” Washington Law Review 70 (1995): 629–73; J. Park, “Race and Discourse and Proposition 187,” Michigan Journal of Race and Law 2 (1996): 175–204; George Sanchez, “Face the Nation: Race, Immigration, and the Rise of Nativism in Late Twentieth Century America,” The International Migration Review 31 (1997): 1009–30; Kitty Calavita, “The New Politics of Immigration: ‘Balanced-Budget Conservatism’ and the Symbolism of Proposition 187,” Social Problems 43 (1996): 284–305; and Dorothee Schneider, “‘I Know All about Emma Lazarus’: Nationalism and Its Contradictions in Congressional Rhetoric of Immigration Restriction,” Cultural Anthropology 13 (1998): 82–99.
8. For overviews of contemporary restrictionist arguments, see Ono and Sloop, Chavez, Hasian and Delgado, and Santa Ana. Lisa Flores introduces an antecedent to contemporary media narratives of illegal immigration in her analysis of press coverage on the U.S. campaign to repatriate Mexicans during the 1930s: see Lisa Flores, “Constructing Rhetorical Borders: Peons, Illegal Aliens, and Competing Narratives of Immigration,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 20 (2003): 362–87.
9. Chavez's discussion of nation-state motifs emphasizes the visual elements, narrative themes, and tropes commonly used to signify the nation in magazine coverage including montage, the Statue of Liberty, the U.S. flag, and border images; see Chavez, Covering Immigration, 53–81. In addition to border and flag imagery, Ono and Sloop also address constitutionality arguments, norms of citizenship, and law enforcement themes; see Ono and Sloop, Shifting Borders, 43–112.
10. On March 1, 2003, the INS became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a unified border agency within DHS, now manages the Border Patrol, which is described “the mobile uniformed law enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) was also established on March 1, 2003 as part of DHS and is responsible for processing immigration applications. CBP, U.S. Border Patrol Overview, February 21, 2003, http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/enforcement/border_patrol/overview.xml (accessed August 23, 2005). The dates and titles of the video examined herein are Border Under Siege (1992), Operation Hold the Line: Changing the Face of the Border (1993), Taking Back the Border (1996), Operation Gatekeeper (1994), Challenge on the Border (1996), 14 Miles on the Brink (1996), Honor on the Line: Border Patrol History (1999), and Inside The Cocaine Corridor (2000).
11. Ron Rogers, Western Region Media Production Specialist, Immigration and Naturalization Service, telephone conversation, November 27, 2002.
12. Peter Andreas cites two of the video produced by the Media Service Office (Border Under Siege and Challenge on the Border) as evidence of the INS image campaign. Peter Andreas, Border Games (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 110, 112. For statistical data on INS budget, see The U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service Budget: 1975–2000, http://www.usdoj.gov/jmd/budgetsummary/btd/1975_2002/btd01ins.htm (accessed May 24, 2003).
13. W. J. T. Mitchell coined the term “imagetext” to denote “composite, synthetic works (or concepts) that combine image and text.” W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 89. See also W. J. T. Mitchell, “Essays into the Imagetext: An Interview with W.J.T. Mitchell,” Mosaic 33 (2000): 1–23.
14. Thomas Biersteker and Cynthia Weber, “The Social Construction of State Sovereignty,” in State Sovereignty as Social Construct, eds. Thomas Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1–21.
15. Roxanne Doty, “Sovereignty and the Nation: Constructing the Boundaries of National Identity,” in State Sovereignty as Social Construct, 142.
16. Doty, “Sovereignty and the Nation,” 142.
17. Michael Ross Fowler and Julie Marie Bunck, Law, Power, and the Sovereign State: The Evolution and Application of the Concept of Sovereignty (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995).
18. Joseph Camilleri and Jim Falk, The End of Sovereignty: The Politics of a Shrinking and Fragmenting World (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1992), 2.
19. Camilleri and Falk, The End of Sovereignty, 236.
20. Camilleri and Falk, The End of Sovereignty, 24.
21. Víctor Zúñiga, “Nations and Borders: Romantic Nationalism and the Project of Modernity,” in The U.S.-Mexico Border: Transcending Divisions, Contesting Identities, eds. David Spener and Kathleen Staudt (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998), 35.
22. Camilleri and Falk, The End of Sovereignty, 17.
23. Joseph H. Carens, “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders,” in Theorizing Citizenship, ed. Ronald Beiner (New York: State University of New York Press, 1995), 229. Also, see Michael Walzer, “Membership,” in Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (Basic Books, 1983), 31–61.
24. A description of Border Patrol efforts in early 1900s featured on the USCBP website, U.S. Border Patrol – Protecting Our Sovereign Borders, http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/toolbox/about/history/bp_historcut.xml (accessed August 23, 2005).
25. For an exhaustive history of the Bracero Program, see Kitty Calavita, Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the INS (New York: Routledge, 1992).
26. Timothy J. Dunn, The Militarization of the U.S.–Mexico Border, 1978–1992: Low-Intensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home (Austin: The Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, 1996), 17.
27. Dunn, Militarization, 17.
28. Dunn, Militarization, 49.
29. U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Building a Comprehensive Southwest Border Enforcement Strategy (Washington, DC: INS Public Affairs, June 1996), 3.
30. Associated Press, “Border Crackdown is Hailed,” Dallas Morning News, September 21, 1993.
31. Maggie Myers, CBP Press Officer, email correspondence, August 2, 2004.
32. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, Follow-Up Report on Border Patrol's Efforts to Improve Northern Border Security, OIG Report No. 1-2002-004, http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/inspection/ins/0204/index.htm (accessed August 3, 2004).
33. Testimony of Michael A. Pearson, Executive Associate Commissioner for Field Operations, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Before the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims Regarding Immigration Enforcement along the Northern Border, April 14, 1999. http://uscis.gov/graphics/aboutus/congress/testimonies/1999/990414b.pdf (accessed August 23, 2005).
34. Department of Justice, Follow up Report, http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/inspection/ins/0204/index.htm (accessed August 3, 2004).
35. W. J. T. Mitchell, “The Surplus Value of Images,” Mosaic 35 (2002): 8.
36. Mitchell, “Surplus Value,” 7, 9.
37. W. J. T. Mitchell, “Interdisciplinarity and Visual Culture,” The Art Bulletin 77 (1995): 544.
38. Immigration and Naturalization Service, “A History of Neglect, Part B,” Operation Gatekeeper Progress Report, 17 October 1997, http://www.ins.usdoj.gov/public_affairs/progress_reports/Gatekeeper/170.htm (accessed November 28, 1998).
39. Border Under Siege. VHS. Produced by Ron Rogers and Virginia Kice (San Diego: Immigration and Naturalization Service Western Region Congressional and Public Affairs Office, 1992).
40. Border Under Siege.
41. H. M. Hintjens, “Immigration and Citizenship Debates: Reflecting on Ten Common Themes,” International Migration 30 (1992): 13.
42. David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 91.
43. On the association between immigration, crime, and social chaos, see Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1990) and Hintjens, “Immigration and Citizenship Debates,” 5–18.
44. Vanessa Bowles Beasley, You, the People: American National Identity in Presidential Rhetoric (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), 68–92.
45. Beasley, You, the People, 74–78.
46. Beasley, You, the People, 80–82.
47. The 1993 INS video, Operational Hold the Line: Changing the Face of the Border, opens by establishing the association between crime and illegal immigration as: “A surge of undocumented immigrants and crime along the border has prompted the U.S. Border Patrol in El Paso to take action.” Operation Hold the Line: Changing the Face of the Border. VHS. Produced by Charles Reed (El Paso: Immigration and Naturalization Service, El Paso Sector Public Information Office, 1993).
48. Operation Hold the Line: Changing the Face of the Border.
49. Operation Hold the Line: Changing the Face of the Border.
50. Operation Hold the Line: Changing the Face of the Border.
51. See Michael Huspek, Roberto Martinez, and Leticia Jimenez, “Violations of Human and Civil Rights on the U.S.–Mexico Border, 1995–1997: A Report,” Social Justice 25 (1998): 110–30.
52. Border Under Siege.
53. According to a 1994 study of the effects of Operation Hold the Line on El Paso and Juarez, “The city's high crime rates are more myth than reality. The city's rates for serious, especially violent crime are relatively low compared to cities of comparable size. El Paso's total crime rate ranks thirtieth among the forty U.S. cities of comparable size in 1992. El Paso ranks thirty-five among the forty cities in motor vehicle theft, and is above the mean for the forty cities only on larceny-theft (ranking thirteenth but within 10 percent of the mean for all cities). The murder rate is little more than one-third of that for all the cities and 12 percent lower than the national average.” Frank Bean, Roland Chanove, Robert Cushing, Rodolfo de la Garza, Gary Freeman, Charles Haynes, and David Spener, Illegal Mexican Migration and the United States/Mexico Border: The Effects of Operation Hold-the-Line on El Paso/Juarez (Austin: Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, 1994), 69.
54. The Bean report further concluded, “If there is anything particularly criminogenic about the border, it is not reflected in the data, and that tells us a great deal about the difficulty of basing understanding purely on local perceptions, myths and impressions, which necessarily have a limited bases for comparisons spatially, if not temporally”; Bean et al., 73.
55. Challenge on the Border. VHS. Produced by Michael Flynn (San Diego: Immigration and Naturalization Service Western Region Congressional and Public Affairs Office, 1996).Operation Hold the Line: Changing the Face of the Border. VHS. Produced by Charles Reed (El Paso: Immigration and Naturalization Service, El Paso Sector Public Information Office, 1993).
56. Challenge on the Border.
57. Camilleri and Faulk, The End of Sovereignty, 2.
58. Nishimura Ekiu v. United States, 142 U.S. 651, 659 (1892). Quoted in Robert Chang, “A Meditation on Borders,” in Immigrants Out! The New Nativism and the Anti-Immigrant Impulse in the United States, ed. Juan F. Perea (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 246.
59. Dunn, Militarization, 73.
60. Dunn, Militarization, 3.
61. Immigration and Naturalization Service, U.S. Border Patrol, Border Patrol Strategic Plan: 1994 and Beyond (Washington, DC: 1994).
62. Dunn, Militarization, 177.
63. Camilleri and Falk, The End of Sovereignty, 11.
64. Gustavo De La Vina, Western Sector Border Patrol Chief, press briefing, February 7, 1995.
65. Karen Brandon, “For U.S., Controlling the Border with Mexico Remains Perplexing,” Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1995, 4.
66. John Hartley, The Politics of Pictures: The Creation of the Public in the Age of Popular Media (London: Routledge, 1992), 30.
67. Quoted in William Booth, “One Nation, Indivisible: Is it History? Soon, No Single Group Will Comprise Majority,” Washington Post, February 22, 1998 A1.
68. Judith Shklar, “Political Theory and the Rule of Law,” in The Rule of Law: Ideal or Ideology, eds. Allan Hutchinson and Patrick Monahan (Toronto: Carswell, 1987), 1.
69. Historically, the rule of law “evolved out of a seventeenth-century idea of limited government and was buttressed by the eighteenth-century republican commitment to the separation of powers among different governmental agencies.” An ideal emerged in the American political system through the 1803 Supreme Court case of Marbury v. Madion that assured the “Court's power to review the constitutional validity of actions taken by other branches of the national government.” Ian Shapiro, “Introduction,” in The Rule of Law, ed. Ian Shapiro (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 1–2.
70. Russell Hardin, ‘‘My University's Yacht: Morality and the Rule of Law,’’ in The Rule of Law, ed. Ian Shapiro (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 209. This view resonates with the theoretical intersections of sovereignty and the rule of law in Thomas Hobbes's theory of political order. On this point, see Russell Hardin, ‘‘Hobbesian Political Order,’’ Political Theory 19 (1991): 156–81.
71. Immigration and Naturalization Service, ‘‘Operation Gatekeeper: Three Years of Results At-a-Glance,’’ 7 October 1997, http://www.ins.usdoj.gov/public_affairs/news_releases/gkbr.html (accessed November 28, 1998).
72. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), 6.
73. Camilleri and Falk, The End of Sovereignty, 11.