Alba the Undocumented: Immigration Law and Citizenship Excess in Jane the Virgin

Abstract

The CW’s Jane the Virgin (2014–2019; JTV) is a critically acclaimed, 100-episode US broadcast network television program that featured Latina characters and actors. The series was broadcast through two presidential administrations, Obama and Trump, which marked seemingly different approaches to immigration policy and enforcement. Although other shows have featured undocumented characters, such as Ugly Betty (2006–2010) and the remake One Day At A Time (2017–2019) among others, none (other than JTV) have illustrated the three juridical status changes required to complete an undocumented immigrant’s journey to naturalized citizenship. This article addresses three key moments in Alba Villanueva’s journey to citizenship via a critical textual analysis of select episodes across five seasons through Hector Amaya’s theory of citizenship excess. Alba’s journey to citizenship becomes public pedagogy for understanding the role of immigration law in society. With its push for #IMMIGRATIONREFORM, JTV also draws on the “marriage-for-a-green card” trope through Alba’s marriage to an undocumented Mexican immigrant to subvert and repurpose film and television’s use of this stereotype. This same narrative illustrates Alba’s internalization of the trappings of citizenship including how citizenship excess always distinguishes between citizens and non-citizens to justify legalized inequality.

Keywords:

• Citizenship
• immigration
• Latinx TV representations

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Correction

The CW’s Jane the Virgin (2014–2019; JTV) is a critically acclaimed, 100-episode US broadcast network television program that featured Latina characters and actors (Urman et al., 2014–2019). The series was broadcast through two presidential administrations, Obama and Trump, which marked seemingly different approaches to immigration policy and enforcement. Although other shows have featured undocumented characters, such as Ugly Betty (2006–2010) and the remake of One Day At A Time¹ (2017–2020) among others, none (other than JTV) have illustrated the three juridical status changes required to complete an undocumented immigrant’s journey to naturalized citizenship. This article addresses three key moments in Alba Villanueva’s journey to citizenship via a critical textual analysis of select episodes across five seasons through Hector Amaya’s (2013) theory of citizenship excess. JTV’s ideological legacy is tied to its sustained, though at times contradictory, engagement of immigration and citizenship through two presidential administrations. Alba’s journey to citizenship becomes public pedagogy for understanding the role of immigration law in society. With its push for #IMMIGRATIONREFORM, JTV also draws on the “marriage-for-a-green card” trope through Alba’s marriage to an undocumented Mexican immigrant to subvert and repurpose film and television’s use of this stereotype. This same narrative illustrates Alba’s internalization of the trappings of citizenship including how citizenship always distinguishes between citizens and non-citizens to justify legalized inequality.

The Latinx condition: citizenship excess and the Latino threat narrative

Scholars question the location of Latinxs in the national imaginary and the relationship between media and citizenship that culminate in depictions of Latinxs as “illegal,” immigrant, foreign, exotic, and threatening (Amaya, 2013; Chavez 2013; Molina-Guzmán, 2013; Santa Ana, 2002). Chavez (2013) provides an overview of citizenship defined as: legal status, rights, political activity, and identity/solidarity (pp. 12–16). In the traditional sense, citizenship refers to legal status, or state-sponsored recognition, that allows individuals to partake in the democratic process via political participation. Citing William Flores and Rina Benmayor (1997), Amaya writes that cultural citizenship is defined by activities that allow Latinxs to “‘claim space in society and eventually claim rights’” and “‘create space where the people feel “safe” and “at home,” where they feel a sense of belonging and membership’” (2013, p. 150). Concerns about citizenship, however defined, are rooted in the fact that media portrayals overwhelmingly depict Latinxs as immigrant, foreign, and a demographic threat to the cultural homogeneity of the nation. Santa Ana (2002) Los Angeles Times’ 1990s coverage of immigration concluded that the metaphor of Latinxs as a “rising brown tide will wash away Anglo-American cultural dominance” illustrates that the perceived threat of migration from Latin America is cultural and not economic (p. 78).

Hector Amaya’s (2013) political and media theory of citizenship excess is rooted in critical legal scholarship and acknowledges the legacy of coloniality as described by Quijano (2000, 2007) (p. 61). Quijano (2000) addresses how the coloniality of power relies on the use of race to control labor and places eurocentrism at the core of the colonization of the Americas. Quijano and Wallerstein (1992) argue that the Americas were key to the formation of the capitalist modern world-system (p. 549). They also suggest coloniality led to the use of ethnicity to define social boundaries tied to the division of labor (p. 550). Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (2014) argues that settler colonialism and genocide were foundational to the legitimization of the United States. Dunbar-Ortiz also addresses inequitable relations of power between people who are indigenous to the Americas and European colonizers that have been central to human migration ever since. Cedric Robinson (2000) argues that nationalism and racism were most influential in the historical development of world capitalism. Informed by the ideas addressed above, Amaya concludes that coloniality “explains citizenship excess and locates its most nefarious manifestations in the ethno-racialization of politics and the economy” (p. 63).

As a process, citizenship excess considers the ways in which laws, policies, and political practices generate political capital accumulation for an ethno-racial majority that has, since the nation’s origin, gotten to define and expand citizenship to their advantage. Amaya (2013) says, “citizenship excess is a type of process that legalizes inclusion and exclusion” where alienage is established by law (p. 33). Citizenship should not only be conceptualized as an identity, Amaya says, but also as forms of consciousness and political practices aimed at claiming new rights or expanding existing rights in the political sphere. Latinxs have been on the receiving end, or “citizenship deficit,” of “legal inequality based on ascriptivism, the judicial deficit of nonwhites and women, and the legal privileges of white, propertied men” (Amaya, 2013, p. 27). Like Molina-Guzmán (2013), who addresses how citizenship is always associated with whiteness and non-citizenship is equated with Latinxs in news reporting, Amaya explores how Latinxs’ political capital is diminished even when they are citizens because of citizenship excess for the dominant class in different spheres, including media.

Leo Chavez (2013) presents a systematic analysis of mainstream media coverage of the trinity of fertility, race, and immigration that coalesce into so-called “truths” about Latinxs, or the Latino Threat Narrative (p. 74). This narrative explains how Latinxs, especially those of Mexican ancestry, are marked by the condition of “illegality,” treated as a biological and social reproductive threat to the nation and perceived as incapable of embracing U.S. citizenship (Chavez, 2013, p. 4; 53). Amaya (2013) suggests people conflate the term non-citizen with undocumented, or the pejorative “illegals” (pp. 91–92). Chavez (2013) notes that Mexican immigrants are perceived as “illegal aliens” and have been legally racialized as perpetually foreign (p. 26). “Illegality” is a legal fiction that is politically, culturally, and socially constructed and is a condition that is both produced and experienced (p. 28). Jonathan Gray and Amanda Lotz (2012) concede that issues of nationality are rarely addressed in television or, at least, rarely made explicit. Especially relevant are Gray & Lotz’s questions for programs, like JTV, that do address how “Americans” are defined: “Who is American and who isn’t? Where is America ‘more’ American, or ‘less’ American? And how does America [American citizenship or lack thereof] intersect with other depictions of class, race, gender, and sexuality?” (p. 50).

In analyses of popular culture, it is important to identify which people get to interpret the law, which people get to disobey the law with little to no consequence, and which people are governed by those interpretations of the law. These are the lessons about citizenship that popular culture teaches us. These inequalities are especially important because not all people, even among citizens, are equally franchised or disenfranchized, as the law is not blind to race, sexuality, nationality, and other identity markers (Amaya, 2013; Quijano, 2007, 2000; Robinson, 2000). Robinson (2000) addresses how the Irish, Jews, Roma, Slavs and others were “victims of dispossession (enclosure), colonialism, and slavery” as the first racialized European proletarian subjects (p. xvi). Complex portrayals of Latinxs, U.S. and foreign-born, are necessary to counter media discourses that reify the Latino Threat Narrative. Although JTV’s premise contributes to some taken-for-granted assumptions about Latinxs, including Latina hyperfertility (the “accidental” pregnancy), the show disrupts most of the “truths” associated with the Latino Threat Narrative.

Immigration policy under Trump & Obama eras

The linkage of immigrants to criminality was amped up by the rhetoric of Donald J. Trump, who launched his 2016 presidential campaign by strategically and explicitly drawing on the Latino Threat Narrative and used these so-called “truths” to support his immigration policies. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) campaign, Perez Huber argues, is an articulatory practice of racist nativism that “affords the opportunity for a virulent adherence to white supremacy” (2016, p. 231). “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you,” Trump infamously said, “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people” (Time Staff, 2015). Gonzalez’s content analysis of Trump’s campaign speeches illustrates a reliance on Latinx immigrants as a scapegoat for the nation’s problems (2019, p. 51–53). Trump specifically amplified and recycled existing discourses of Latino violence, criminality, and illegality (p. 47).

In the same speech, Trump said he would “build a great, great wall on our southern border” (Time Staff, 2015). Since then, Trump issued draconian immigration policies that have separated families seeking asylum since 2017 (Blitzer, 2019) and had his “Muslim ban” upheld by the courts (Tsai, 2019). Giroux (Giroux, 2017) connects Trump’s election to white nationalism, armed culture, state violence and neo-fascism targeting immigrants, Muslims, and others (p. 887). Eiermann (2016) contextualizes how Trump’s election fits into the history of populist movements in the United States. Unlike Democrats, Republicans are “fighting over the direction of the political system and the boundaries of political discourse” where Trump’s vitriolic campaign is unique in its “hostility towards established institutions of American politics” including conservative elites (p. 34). Trump also repeatedly voiced support for abolishing birthright citizenship which is guaranteed by the 14^th Amendment (Lyons, 2019).

Characterizations of immigrants by politicians and media contrast strikingly with studies of the lived experience of immigrants in the U.S. A 2018 study conducted by the Cato Institute, which found that the incarceration rate for documented and undocumented immigrants is less than one percent once convictions for immigration offenses are excluded, concluded most immigrants are law-abiding (Chan, 2018). Farris and Silber Mohamed (2018) study of magazine images tied to immigration yielded findings consistent with previous scholarship illustrating the role of media in perpetuating a threat narrative in the text of immigration news stories (p. 820). Farris and Silber Mohamed conclude that the images published by the press feature negative aspects of immigration that are inconsistent with immigrant demographics (p. 819). The Urban Institute published a 2019 study focused on the children of immigrants. The report suggests one in four children, or a total of 18.6 million, have at least one immigrant, or foreign-born, parent. Sixty-one percent of the children’s foreign-born parents are naturalized citizens and 39 percent, or 7.2 million, of the children’s foreign-born parents are non-citizens. This category includes parents who hold green cards, visas, temporary protected status, or are undocumented (Acevedo, 2019). Children with one undocumented parent are part of mixed-status² families.

Brader et al. (2008) studied the effects of public discourses, particularly anxiety, group cues, and immigration threat, on popular opposition to immigration. The study found that “news about immigration increases anxiety and provokes greater opposition among white Americans when it highlights low-skilled Latino migrants and emphasizes the negative consequences of immigration” (2008, p. 975). Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart (2009) found that “the more positively news outlets cover immigrants, the less people are concerned about immigration” (p. 535). Symbolic and material notions of citizenship and belonging might manifest themselves when audiences imbue media with the power “to not only express their place within the nation, but also to potentially gain access to legalization” (Báez, 2014, p. 281). Dávila (2001) argues the Hispanic marketing industry was founded on the notion that Hispanics constitute “a nation within a nation” (p. 83) and that the industry is complicit in depicting Latinxs as predominantly Spanish-speaking, with strong family ties, and as religiously devout Roman Catholics (pp. 65–66). In agreement with Dávila and Rivero (Dávila & Rivero, 2014), Báez cautions that while appeals to the buying power of the Latinx nation might “garner Latina/os more visibility in the public sphere, it does not guarantee social justice and equality for Latina/o communities” (p. 275).

USA Today’s Alan Gomez (2019) reported that the Trump administration’s change in immigration policy priorities at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which controls Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), on mixed-status families with U.S.-born children had profound effects. In December 2016, the last month of Obama’s presidency, 82 percent of undocumented immigrants apprehended by ICE had a criminal record and 18 percent did not. In December 2018, under Trump’s directive to arrest all undocumented immigrants without regard to criminal background, arrests for those without a criminal record increased to 36.5 percent; by this change in policy, then, more immigrants could be classified as “criminals” who have been arrested. Under Trump, 63.5 percent of the undocumented immigrants apprehended in December 2018 had a criminal record thereby setting a record low for the lowest monthly figure since ICE began categorizing arrests in 2012. Obama still holds the record as “deporter-in-chief” given that his administration deported more immigrants than all 20th-century presidents combined (Marshall, 2016) and consequently set the record high for averaging 400,000 deportations a year (Corones, 2015). Bill Ong Hing (2019) suggests U.S. presidents from Carter to Trump have been “kings of deportations” and connects Obama’s immigration policies to violations of human rights, which were expanded upon by Trump.

Although the 2014 premiere of JTV predates the Trump administration and pushed for #IMMIGRATIONREFORM under the Obama era, the series is at its most progressive in representing across five seasons an undocumented non-citizen’s journey toward naturalized citizenship.

Background on Jane the Virgin

JTV was the longest-running US English-language network television program featuring a Latina title character, and since 2014 has engaged with issues relevant to Latinx identity, culture, and citizenship. The show is a loose adaptation of a Venezuelan telenovela, Juana la Virgen (2002), and tells the story of how the accidental artificial insemination of title character Jane Villanueva (portrayed by Gina Rodriguez) alters the course of the lives of the Villanueva women, including Jane’s mother Xiomara (portrayed by Andrea Navedo) and her undocumented grandmother Alba (portrayed by Ivonne Coll). At the start of the series, Jane is dating police detective Michael Cordero Jr. (portrayed by Brett Dier). Due to a medical mix-up, Jane is inseminated with the sperm of Rafael Solano (portrayed by Justin Baldoni) and ends up a pregnant 23-year-old virgin. Solano happens to be Jane’s boss, and soon-to-be owner of the Marbella hotel in Miami, whom she kissed five years prior. Czech immigrant Petra Solano (portrayed by Yael Grobglas) is Rafael’s wife. Solano is depicted scheming with her mother Magda Andel (portrayed by Priscilla Barnes) to prevent Rafael from filing for divorce. Jane’s long-lost father and telenovela star, Rogelio De La Vega (portrayed by Jaime Camil), suddenly reconnects with Xiomara and wants to be in Jane’s life. A Latin lover narrator, (portrayed by Anthony Mendez), helps audiences navigate Jane’s world with telenovela actors, criminal masterminds, characters with amnesia, shifting romances, and plot twists.

Piñón (2017) suggests JTV is emblematic of television texts at the crossroads of industrial, market, and socio-cultural forces surrounding narrative, format, and genre adaptations for U.S. and global audiences (p. 23). JTV has been an important show for the CW network, earning critical acclaim and a Golden Globe in 2015 for Rodriguez’s performance as the title character, in a category in which no other nominee that year came from a broadcast network. The program has also been recognized with a Peabody and an AFI Award (Aupperle, 2018). JTV aired during an important era in the United States concerning immigration, given the program debuted during the Obama administration, and continued through Trump. TV critics raved about JTV’s onscreen diversity (Martinez, 2015) and have lauded the series as a rare gem for empowering portrayals of a matriarchal household (Piwowarski, 2015). Báez (2018) highlights JTV’s intergenerational relationships in her ethnographic analysis of Latina audiences’ critique of media representations (p. 133–136). Galarza’s (2021) autoethnography of first-generation American narratives in JTV addresses the series’ use of Spanish, telenovelas, and citizenship to suggest the Latinx characters hold political and cultural citizenship in the US and the Latinx diaspora. TV critics also focused on Alba’s journey to citizenship and immigration reform (Carlin, 2015; Swann, 2015). The series was ranked as the CW’s top show of all time by TVGuide.com (Thomas, 2017). Piñón suggests the series offers “one of the best efforts to create a space for U.S. Latina/os as full citizens, in which Jane as a new Latina/o bears the balance of the moral and rational universe in the show’s narrative” (2017, p. 26).

Alba is an undocumented non-citizen from Venezuela, but she pursues and obtains naturalized citizenship as the series unfolds. There are three important narrative shifts in JTV that mark Alba’s journey through three juridical statuses: the threat of deportation as an undocumented non-citizen, the labor market protections attached to lawful permanent residency, and the excesses attached to naturalized citizenship. This article focuses on these three important moments, via a textual analysis of key episodes (Table 1) of the series’ five seasons, to explore how JTV disrupts, and sometimes reinforces, existing discourses on immigration and citizenship.

Table 1. Jane the Virgin (2014-2019) episodes analyzed.

Episode Analyzed	Reference
Season 1, Episode 8	(Urman et al., 2014c).
Season 1, Episode 10	(Urman et al., 2014a).
Season 1, Episode 12	(Urman et al., 2014d).
Season 1, Episode 20	(Urman et al., 2014b).
Season 2, Episode 2	(Urman et al., 2015c).
Season 2, Episode 5	(Urman et al., 2015a).
Season 2, Episode 8	(Urman et al., 2015b).
Season 3, Episode 4	(Urman et al., 2016).
Season 3, Episode 17	(Urman et al., 2017b).
Season 4, Episode 15	(Urman et al., 2017a).
Season 4, Episode 17	(Urman et al., 2018).
Season 5, Episode 6	(Urman et al., 2019a).
Season 5, Episode 8	(Urman et al., 2019c).
Season 5, Episode 16	(Urman et al., 2019b).

Undocumented non-citizen: fear of law enforcement and deportation

Jane’s grandmother is afraid of run-ins with the government, particularly, though not exclusively, law enforcement. In a flashback scene, Alba scolds Xiomara for forgetting to pay a parking ticket – “Why are you so reckless? How many times have I told you, it’s not about the parking ticket!” Alba says to Xiomara in Spanish as young Jane (portrayed by Jenna Ortega) listens. Alba explains to Jane that emigrating with her husband Mateo from Venezuela to “Norte America” wasn’t “exactly allowed.” When Jane asks why, Xiomara quips, “stupid immigration laws.” Alba explains to Jane, “I get nervous with things like parking tickets, that people will find out.” The narrator informs viewers at the scene’s end, “That was the last ticket Xiomara ever got.” Early in the series, Jane withdraws the medical malpractice lawsuit against Rafael’s sister Luisa Alver (portrayed by Yara Martinez), the doctor responsible for the artificial insemination, after seeing her grandmother nervous about the civil case (Season 1, Episode 8).

Several examples illustrate the precariousness of the lives of undocumented non-citizens and are ones JTV explicitly foregrounds as an immigration element of life. The first was when Alba is hospitalized because Petra’s mother Magda pushes her down the stairs while a hurricane strikes Miami. Jane’s grandmother is threatened with a specific type of deportation. Alba’s doctor reminds Xiomara that Alba is undocumented and uninsured. He says, “when the hurricane lifts, we will have to notify ICE, and they will deport her to Venezuela, where she can continue to receive care if she needs. It’s called medical repatriation (Season 1, Episode 10). This incident becomes an educational moment, or public pedagogy where the text teaches audiences about social issues (Tillman and Trier, 2007), because not all audiences might be familiar with immigration laws. Katzew (2011) suggests some television shows, specifically Ugly Betty, act as educational agents in offering curriculum about foreignness, race, culture, and ethnicity through the images, ideas, and messages they promote (301–302).

Even Xiomara is unaware of the legality and reality of medical repatriation, saying, “She hasn’t even opened her eyes yet and they want to deport her? I mean, how can they do this?” JTV’s narrative on immigration takes a decisive stance because the narrator says (with on-screen graphics for added emphasis), “YES, THIS REALLY HAPPENS LOOK IT UP! #IMMIGRATIONREFORM!” (Season 1, Episode 10). This episode aired January 19, 2015, on the eve of then-President Obama’s State of the Union Address. The show’s hashtag surged on Twitter following the episode, which drew JTV’s largest audience, 1.4 million viewers, at the time. The subplot where Alba is protected from deportation because she is “a key witness in an ongoing criminal investigation” (Season 1, Episode 12) is “too good to be true” because hospitals have complete discretion in enforcing medical repatriation (Swann, 2015). In this subplot, Alba avoids deportation because of an element most undocumented non-citizens do not have access to –the intervention of an influential authority, Michael, Jane’s romantic partner, and police officer.

Another example involves a subplot where Jane confronts Magda, telling her she knows Magda pushed Alba down the stairs. Magda tells Jane, “Well if that were true, I would be in jail, no? And I am not.” Magda questions whether Alba is undocumented, “I looked your grandmother up on the Internet. No sign of her. That and the fact that she really does not speak English, it just got me thinking. Is your grandmother here legally?” Before Jane can respond, Magda adds, “see, I don’t mind either way, but those immigration authorities sure do. So both of you should maybe back off” (Season 1, Episode 20). This exchange illustrates two important points regarding citizenship and law. First, Magda recognizes English is imbued with linguistic citizenship excess in the U.S. That is, the English language is overvalued by the nation’s political system even though there is no official national language. Through law, languages other than English are politically devalued and culturally perceived as foreign (Amaya, 2013, pp. 123–157). Lozano (2018) says that Spanish is also a European imperial language. Alba certainly benefits from whiteness,³ but her inability to speak, though she clearly understands, English connotes she may be undocumented. Second, this exchange is illustrative of how some people act as interpreters, if not enforcers, of immigration law. The lesson here, as with Ugly Betty, is the law does not apply evenly or equally to everyone. “The law is alive, moldable, and ephemeral. Its substance is not in the words that we sometimes confuse with it (the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or case law),” Amaya (2013) says, “but in the people who believe it is their right to utter the laws, who feel authorized to interpret them, and whose franchise permits them to break them” (p. 175).

When Jane steals an amplifier from her band-practicing “raging neighbors,” Alba’s undocumented non-citizen status is emphasized again. Two police officers show up to the Villanueva home when Jane and Xiomara are gone. As Jane enters the home, the officers ask Alba for her identification. Jane tells Alba to go to her room and get the document. While Alba is gone, Jane apologizes to the officers for stealing her neighbors’ amplifier. Before leaving, the same officer tells Jane to have Alba “sort her papers out” so they will be readily available next time. Jane walks into her Abuela’s room, where Alba is paralyzed by fear and in tears because police officers represent a threat to her wellbeing. Alba is afraid of being identified as undocumented and being turned over to ICE for deportation. These fears are unspoken but ever-present for Alba. After the experience with the police, Alba decides she does not want her undocumented status to loom over the life of her grandson Mateo, as it did for Xiomara and Jane (Season 2, Episode 2). Xiomara says Alba previously did not want to risk deportation by applying for a green card. Her comment suggests the path to legal status, and even naturalized citizenship, is full of uncertainty; in the case of an undocumented non-citizen, it means admitting to being in the country in violation of immigration policies. Once Alba makes this decision, the narrative shifts to illustrate how excited but cautiously nervous the Villanueva women are about the process toward documented non-citizen status.

When the Villanuevas meet with immigration attorney Robert Torres (portrayed by Christopher J. Salazar), the narrative addresses the impossible standards set for sponsors. Alba’s lawyer suggests Xiomara’s criminal record, a felony conviction for shoplifting jewelry in her teens, might complicate Alba’s petition for permanent residency, highlighting again a potential barrier many undocumented non-citizens may face. Mr. Torres says it is possible to have a conviction overturned if the real culprit comes forward. Xiomara’s ex-boyfriend agrees to testify it was him who shoplifted at Jane and Xiomara’s urging. The lawyer also says, “immigration laws are constantly changing” with on-screen graphics, for added emphasis, read, “#VOTE [in red] #VOTE [in white] #VOTE [in blue]” (Season 2, Episode 5). JTV again dives into politics reminding audiences, particularly working-class Latinx women in Miami, of the importance of voting in the 2016 presidential election without explicitly telling them who to vote for. In 2010, Miami led the nation with the largest percentage of immigrants, numbering nearly two million. This episode aired when then-President Obama was making a final effort to push immigration reform through a Republican-controlled Congress (Carlin, 2015). Obama sought to provide deportation relief to millions of undocumented non-citizens via the Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals⁴ (DACA) program in 2012 (De Vogue, 2015).

Once Alba’s request for lawful permanent residency is submitted, the Villanuevas must wait for news from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office. In several episodes, Alba is depicted anxiously checking the mail for an update. Alba gets so anxious she makes another appointment with the lawyer even though Xiomara says he does not know when Alba’s green card will arrive. Alba finally obtains her green card in time to celebrate the family’s first Christmas with Jane’s son Mateo (Season 2, Episode 8).

Documented non-citizen: a green card and labor market protections

JTV also portrays some of the increased agency Alba has with the change in her legal status. Xiomara reminds Alba she too can make changes in her life, saying, “Ma, you do have your green card now. If you hate your job so much, you could make a change” (Season 3, Episode 4). Although the narrative does not explicitly reference labor laws, the implication that Alba is now a different type of non-citizen with newly acquired rights, including legal protections in the labor market, is tremendous. Anyone who obtains permanent residency has the right to “live permanently in the United States provided that [they] do not commit any actions that would make [them] removable under immigration law.” Permanent residents also have the right to “work in the United States at any legal work of [their] qualification and choosing. (Please note that some jobs will be limited to U.S. citizens for security reasons)” (Rights and Responsibilities of a Green Card Holder, 2015). Research on the economic value of citizenship indicates naturalized citizens fare better in the labor market than non-citizens, including lawful permanent residents (Sumption & Flamm, 2012). Naturalized citizens benefit, on average, from higher median earnings, household incomes, and homeownership rates than non-citizens (Blizzard & Batalova, 2019).

In this exchange, Xiomara and Alba are hinting at the fact undocumented non-citizens are, by design, the most vulnerable racialized class of subjects in the labor market because “illegality” has been inscribed in their bodies. Chavez (2013) argues the nation-state is responsible for creating a class of people, undocumented non-citizens, legally devalued, delegitimized, and exploited in the labor market (p. 28). Immigrant labor was an important aspect of modern European history and the United States’ industrial production (Robinson, 2000, p. 23; 210). Racism and ethno-nationalism remain the primary weapons used to oppress specific subcategories of people in dividing the working class (p xiv). The rights enumerated for green card holders on the USCIS website also makes clear permanent residents are also a class apart from citizens. The citizen, U.S.-born or naturalized, is most protected in political and labor markets. Certain jobs are unattainable even for documented non-citizen permanent residents. This is an example of legal inequality where a specific class of people has access to a labor pool isolated from the mainstream. But the shift in legal designations, from undocumented non-citizen to documented non-citizen permanent resident, is still transformative. Alba has been a home healthcare worker since she came to the U.S. because she trained as a nurse in Venezuela (Season 4, Episode 17). The narrative does not comment on how Alba is able to work in the U.S. even though she does not, at the time, have the required documentation. This is a notable omission because employers are rarely held accountable for hiring, and often exploiting, undocumented workers (Sanchez, 2019). After her green card arrives, and at Xiomara’s urging, Alba finally gets a new job with benefits as a shop assistant at Seashells, the Marbella gift shop (Season 3, Episode 4). Through her new job, Alba’s citizenship journey becomes even more nuanced and complex.

During Season 3 (October 2016 to May 2017), Donald Trump becomes president. Due to the new administration, even Alba’s documented non-citizen status – that is, that she is not yet a citizen, despite her green card – remains a source of fear. The Villanueva household institutes a new rule regarding news consumption precisely because of the Trump administration, a rule tied to the anxieties of Alba’s still-precarious legal status during the hostile Trump era. Jane tells Alba, “Abuela, you know the rules. Only 15 minutes of newspapers a day, and never alone in your room.” Alba is reading a newspaper in Spanish and responds, “But did you read this? With the new ICE raids?” (Season 3, Episode 17). Even though Alba is now a documented non-citizen, she remains afraid of ICE. Jane tells Alba she should march in protest.⁵ Alba decisively says she will not march.

An incident at the gift shop later forces Alba to change her mind about protests. When Alba goes to work, she and new coworker and boss Jorge Antonio Garcia, portrayed by Dominican American actor Alfonso DiLuca, witness an act of discrimination against a Spanish-speaking guest when a White woman interjects, “this is America. You should learn how to speak English.” Before Alba and Jorge can respond, the woman leaves. Alba apologizes, saying, “I’m sorry. I should have said something. I was just so shocked.” The narrator interjects, “we all are, Alba. We all are” (Season 3, Episode 17). That the narrator ends the scene with these words clearly directs viewers to not just be upset at this one scene – to not interpret the scene as an isolated incident or an unrealistic situation in a fictional program – but to see it as critical commentary on the general prejudicial and ethnonationalist mood of the U.S. the scene represents. Latinx critical theory “creates a way to understand anti-Latina and Latino racism as more than just perceptions and beliefs about a particular group of people, but also as a systematic effort to maintain white supremacy” (Perez Huber, 2016, p. 242–243). When Alba and Jorge witness this adherence to white supremacy, JTV’s narrative serves a pedagogical function in demonstrating how the characters are empowered to push back against, or challenge, nativist ideology.

Alba highlights the limits of her political agency as a documented non-citizen. Jane asks Alba why she refuses to march, and again Alba says she is concerned about ICE agents, saying “they could take away my green card. For anything.” (Season 3, Episode 17). It may seem illogical Alba would continue to be afraid of law enforcement because permanent residency should guarantee she will “be protected by all laws of the United States, state of residence and local jurisdictions” (“Rights and Responsibilities of a Green Card Holder,” 2015). Permanent residents are not subject to deportation unless they commit serious crimes, and their documented status is revoked. However, Alba’s fear is well-founded, especially in a post-2016 U.S. because permanent residency can be revoked, and the revocation of naturalized citizenship is codified into immigration law.⁶ JTV did not end discussions of the precariousness of non-citizens with Alba’s green card but complicated it.

This precariousness is portrayed in other ways during this storyline. Alba’s boss Jorge reveals he is an undocumented non-citizen when Alba tries to get him to also march. Jorge tells Alba he tried to obtain a green card years ago but was defrauded out of his life’s savings by a lawyer. He admits to using a cousin’s social security card to work and did not tell Alba sooner because her family is close to Rafael, their boss. Alba tells Jorge about the complicated path to her green card and says she will march for them both (Season 3, Episode 17). Due to the mark of “illegality,” Jorge is disadvantaged in society. Jorge is so vulnerable to exploitation, even in seeking to improve his place in society, he is taken advantage of by a lawyer – someone who serves an important function in the judicial system – with impunity. The condition of “illegality” places undocumented immigrants outside of the law and “ultimately intensifies their subjection to quotidian forms of intimidation and harassment” via “everyday forms of surveillance and repression” (De Genova, 2005, p. 178). Jorge also breaks the law by impersonating his cousin to work in the United States. This infraction moves Jorge further away from a path to becoming a documented non-citizen. His immediate concern is not with law enforcement; Jorge is concerned about his boss finding out he is undocumented because employers function as enforcers of immigration and labor law through E-Verify.⁷ Jorge’s self-concept surrounding citizenship recognizes his disadvantage in the public sphere and refuses to march.

Naturalized citizen: internalizing the law and the limits of citizenship excess

Alba’s path to citizenship picks up again the next season when she mistakenly writes down the date of her interview for naturalization and suddenly has less than a week instead of months to prepare. Jane tells Alba she should ask to have the interview rescheduled. But Alba says, “I’d be pushed to the bottom of the list. And with immigration laws changing so quickly … No. I’m taking it” (Season 4, Episode 15). The Villanuevas rush to the USCIS office and audiences witness how an immigration official tries to stump Alba during the citizenship exam. Rafael Agustín, a writer for JTV, recounts drawing on his experiences as an undocumented Ecuadorian immigrant to add depth to the writing for “a more authentic and uniquely American character in Alba” (). By disclosing specifics in the writers’ room, such as “the scary yet laughable experience of an immigration official trying to stump” him during his citizenship test and how moving Fourth of July fireworks had been for him, Agustín (2018) suggests immigrant writers, a rarity in TV writers’ rooms, are key to more fairly and accurately depicting immigrants in television.⁸

Alba emerges into the waiting area and screams “I’m going to be an American citizen!” She hugs Xiomara and Jane as they all scream with joy. Visual effects in the episode reinforce the import of this moment: the stars from the U.S. flags standing in the background emerge around Alba; three of the Founding Fathers in a framed photo come to life and clap; a poster with Lady Liberty joins in and says “Congratulations, Alba. This land is your land,” while lifting her torch in exclamation; and, finally, the framed photo of then-President Trump morphs into that of a smiling-and-winking former-President Obama. During a flashback scene, 23-year-old Alba surprises her husband Mateo with pregnancy news during a Fourth of July fireworks celebration. They decide to let their visas, signaling Alba was once a documented non-citizen, expire and find a path to citizenship later (Season 4, Episode 15). Alba’s citizenship journey lasts over forty years (Carlin, 2015).

Alba gives a speech in English at her surprise citizenship party, a linguistic switch signaling her new political status. She quotes the famous Roman writer Cicero in reciting the motto of the U.S., “E Pluribus Unum,” and highlights the importance of community and relationships to citizenship – including the importance of others while struggling to live as an undocumented non-citizen (Season 4, Episode 17). The U.S. Constitution functions as a covenant where the mantra of the United States as a “nation of immigrants” requires that, in exchange for formal citizenship, immigrants implicitly accept the U.S.’s settler colonialism and genocidal violence that may have caused their need to migrate (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014, p. 51). Alba draws on her newfound citizenship excess to use the existing legal framework for immigration to pursue juridical subjectivity for Jorge. She proposes marriage to Jorge after finding out his mother is dying in Mexico and cannot travel to see her. This important moment signals Alba understands the rights afforded to her as a naturalized citizen and how the legal construct of citizenship is a tool of inclusion and exclusion. Citizens and documented non-citizens are afforded, by law, the ability to sponsor a spouse or immediate relative’s petition for lawful permanent residency.⁹

Alba goes from being a passive character in a position of weakness beyond the protection of the law to an empowered character with the agency to use the law to her advantage. Schueths (2012) argues U.S. native-born partners of undocumented immigrants experience second class citizenship because they are “coming from a position of assumed rights they did not get” (p. 107). Alba’s situation is different. Her journey is that of already being deficient in citizenship. Mixed-status marriages illustrate how citizenship acquisition, the most common of which is citizenship by birth, is typically tied to the role of family as a distinctive and defining conduit of rights (Turner, 2008, p. 46).

One might argue that this sub-plot with Alba and Jorge getting married undermines the series’ progressive depiction of immigration in drawing on the “marriage-for-a-green card” trope. This Hollywood cliché originated with the 1990 film Green Card and undermines “the painful complexity of the immigration process” (Amaya, 2013, p. 174). Ugly Betty’s discourses on immigration, via the sympathetic portrayal of undocumented Mexican immigrant Ignacio Suarez (portrayed by Cuban American Tony Plana), do not offer “clear-cut propositions and proposals about law, citizenship, and labor justice” because the narrative adheres to dramedy genre conventions and plot twists that are comedic and farcical (Amaya, 2013, p. 173). Ignacio’s USCIS caseworker Constance Grady fails to turn in his paperwork for permanent residency suggesting Ignacio must marry her to become a documented non-citizen. Stacey K. Sowards and Richard D. Pineda (2013) suggest Ugly Betty’s individualized narratives contribute to border spectacle and emphasize individualized pursuits of the American Dream that absolve collective responsibility for dehumanizing immigration policy (p. 72). Alba’s journey to citizenship may represent a humanizing individualized pursuit of the American Dream, but JTV does press audiences to mobilize for systemic immigration reform, vote in the 2016 presidential election, and exposes the collective effect of immigration policy and enforcement on communities.

Alba and Jorge get married during Alba’s party (Season 4, Episode 17). They pretend to be marrying out of love to pass a home visit by immigration officials (Season 5, Episode 6) and realize they are in love after a follow-up interview with USCIS (Season 5, Episode 8). Jorge remains a permanent resident at the series’ end. He convinces Alba to let Jane tell her story about migrating from Venezuela and explains to Jane having been undocumented has meant Alba became accustomed to a private life. This moment reflects the totalizing nature of severe citizenship deficit. Jorge says, “Being undocumented for so long, you get used to living with these walls up, keeping things secret. And living like that, it changes you and how you relate to the world. It makes you more closed off.” Alba stops being afraid and confronts Magda, saying, “but I’m not scared of you anymore, because I’m an American now, Bitch!” Alba reminds Magda of the conditions surrounding her parole, including staying away from and not threatening Alba. Magda threatens her anyway, but Alba records their conversation and forces Magda to leave the Marbella (Season 5, Episode 16). Alba learns to protect herself by internalizing, interpreting, and even enforcing the law to her benefit. This episode provides narrative closure for matters concerning Alba’s journey to citizenship.

Conclusion

JTV’s portrayal of how lengthy, uncertain, and arduous the path to documented non-citizenship, let alone naturalization, can be is about the experience of mixed-status families. Although Alba is spared from deportation because Michael intervenes, her journey to citizenship is never trivialized or ridiculed. JTV’s depiction of this journey with evolving juridical statuses for an undocumented immigrant is unprecedented in television and only rivaled by One Day At A Time’s depiction of the naturalization process for two characters who were already permanent residents (Hernandez et al., 2018). Alba’s journey to naturalized citizenship became public pedagogy at a time when immigration reform activists were increasingly critical of then-President Obama’s record as “deporter-in-chief” and failure to deliver comprehensive immigration reform (Corones, 2015; Hicks, 2012, Marshall, 2016).

JTV exposes how citizenship, or lack thereof, shapes one’s relationship to the state and surrounding communities. Alba’s awareness of increasing rights also becomes public pedagogy for thousands undertaking the process of naturalization annually. Though she is not a naturalized citizen yet, Alba changes her mind and marches with Jane, signaling the exercise of a newfound political agency. JTV illustrates how Alba is empowered by the benefits attached to citizenship. This empowerment subverts and repurposes Hollywood’s “marriage-for-a-green card” trope. Alba must buy into the rationale behind citizenship and state-sanctioned inequality to benefit from hegemonic interpretations of the law that franchise some and not others. Alba’s internalization of the law exposes how the “citizen/non-citizen” binary governing our relationship to the nation-state is inherently exclusionary (Amaya, 2013, p. 19). Because the law individualizes, abstracts, racializes, and subjects some more than others, collective responsibility for the dehumanization of undocumented immigrants remains elusive. Future studies should address audience reception of JTV and similar TV shows, during and beyond the Trump era, with increasingly complex narratives of immigration and citizenship for Latinx and non-Latinx communities. These studies should embrace, as Perez Huber (2016) suggests, Latinx critical theory to analyze how Latinxs and other nonwhite people respond to nativist white supremacist ideology often articulated via the mass media.

1. The Netflix/Pop TV/CBS remake of the 1975 CBS sitcom narrates the lives of a multi-generational Cuban American family. Penelope Alvarez, played by Justina Machado, raises two kids with the help of her Cuban mother Lydia Riera, played by Rita Moreno. In the episode “Citizen Lydia,” Lydia and Schneider, their Canadian landlord, undergo the naturalization process (Hernandez et al., 2018).

2. Mixed-status refers to the unique household or family structure of undocumented non-citizens and their children in the United States. A mixed-status household is a home where one of the parents is undocumented and at least one child is a U.S. citizen. According to the Pew Research Center, 37 percent of undocumented adults were part of mixed-status families in 2008. The Pew Research Center estimated, in 2009, that 5.1 million children (both U.S.-born and foreign-born) were part of mixed-status homes (Passel & Taylor, 2010).

3. A thorough interrogation of whiteness and citizenship in JTV is beyond the scope of this article. A future project will address how Petra Solano and her mother Magda’s citizenship is made invisible in JTV.

4. Obama took executive action on DACA on June 15, 2012 to provide relief from deportation proceedings for two years and worker permits for individuals otherwise known as “Dreamers” who met certain criteria (Preston & Cushman Jr., 2012). Since then, the lower courts have taken up DACA many times and ICE has initiated removal proceedings for DACA recipients whose cases were administratively closed (Rappaport, 2019). In November 2019, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments regarding whether the Trump Administration could terminate the program and decided in June 2020 to block the administration from dismantling the program (Totenberg, 2020). DACA currently shields about 700,000 people from deportation (Higgins, 2019). The DACA program is a textbook example of quasi-legal status that further complicates citizenship deficit and legal inequality in the legal system.

5. Although the narrative does not indicate which protest Jane is referring to, the program linked Jane’s activism to real-world activism (while also promoting the program). Producer and showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman tweeted, “Jane Gloriana Villanueva would most certainly be marching #MayDay2017 as you will see on tonight’s all new #JaneTheVirgin” (Urman, 2017). May 1st is recognized as “International Workers’ Day” and immigrants’ rights were a uniting theme of the 2017 May Day protests (Mendoza, 2017).

6. Full citizenship, or citizenship that cannot be revoked, refers to citizenship guaranteed by birth. The excesses of naturalized citizenship are conditional until death. This is yet another example of how citizenship is a technology of control that places one type of citizen closer to the law than others. The number of cases adjudicated regarding denaturalization has grown in the past decade. The Trump administration launched a new initiative, providing staff and resources, to investigate and put into question the naturalization process for thousands of people. Since 2017, the caseload of denaturalization cases has risen by 600 percent (Benner, 2020). See also the Revocation of Naturalization Act of, 1994, 8 U.S.C. § 1451.

7. E-Verify is an employment verification program that screens employees’ eligibility to legally work in the United States. The program was created by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 and operates within the Department of Homeland Security’s USCIS in cooperation with the Social Security Administration. Goldstein and Alonso-Bejarano (2017) address E-Verify’s role in deputizing employers in the private sector as immigration police and argue the technology becomes a form of biopolitical regulation of undocumented non-citizens.

8. A study conducted by Define American, a nonprofit organization founded by Filipino undocumented immigrant Jose Antonio Vargas, and University of Southern California’s Norman Lear Center focused on the portrayal of immigrants in 147 episodes of 47 television shows, including JTV, from the 2017–2018 season. The study concludes immigrant characters continue to be underrepresented in television and are one-dimensionally portrayed when they are on screen. Of the 211 characters identified, 11 percent were immigrant, and, of these, nearly half had less than ten speaking lines. Forty percent of the immigrant characters were Latinx, 24 percent were White, 16 percent were Asian, 11 percent were Middle Eastern, and eight percent were Back. In terms of citizenship status, 41 percent of the immigrants were undocumented, and 36 percent were green card holders. Aside from these markers of citizenship, 34 percent of immigrants were linked to a previous or current crime and eleven percent were tied to previous, current, or future incarcerations (Ramos, 2019).

9. See Immigration and Nationality Act (1965), 8 U.S.C.§ 1151 201(b)(2)(A)(i) -Immediate Relatives.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their contributions to this much improved manuscript. Many thanks to Dr. Matt McAllister for his feedback on earlier drafts and Penn State’s Humanities Institute for their support.