Last week NPR ran a story about how hard-core hate groups like the KKK are experiencing a resurgence of energy and membership through the issue of illegal immigration. Racist and nationalist groups are rallying around the issue and amping up the extreme rhetoric on illegal immigration. The propaganda we hear blames undocumented immigrants for all of society's problems. While there are legitimate strains on schools and hospitals as a result of illegal immigration, there is simply no rational basis on which to blame immigrants for rising crime rates, unemployment and disease.
According to NPR's report, there has been a 40 percent rise in the number of documented hate groups in the U.S. since 2000. And more than 250 anti-illegal immigration groups have formed in the past two years, representing nothing less than an explosion in anti-immigrant sentiment among the American public.
But what is even scarier than the resurgence of the KKK, is the fact that extreme and irrational rhetoric on illegal immigration has been cropping up in the mainstream media since the immigrant-rights marches of last spring. A jaw-dropping example of this was recently when pundit Lou Dobbs spent time on his CNN program outlining the extremist theory that Mexicans are trying to reconquer the American Southwest through immigration. Dobbs, a real anti-illegal immigration crusader, showed a map of the region of the supposed reconquest credited to the Council of Conservative Citizens, an unabashedly racist organization. Here's an excerpt from their statement of principles on the website:
"We believe that the United States derives from and is an integral part of European civilization and the European people and that the American people and government should remain European in their composition and character. We therefore oppose the massive immigration of non-European and non-Western peoples into the United States that threatens to transform our nation into a non-European majority in our lifetime." -Council of Conservative Citizens
Extreme anti-immigration groups often sum up their hateful and misguided campaigns with a simple question: "Do we want to keep America as it is, or do we want it transformed into a third world country?" For people who claim to be sufficiently informed on the issue of immigration to speak publicly, the ignorance of this rationale boggles the mind.
The flow of migrants from Latin America to the United States used to be circular, and the flow of migrants out of the U.S. to their home countries almost completely offset the flow of migrants into the U.S. However, the beefed-up border security that came with the passage of the Immigration and Reform and Control Act of 1986 utterly failed in its mission to reduce the flow of illegal immigrants. The IRCA-mandated border security made it too difficult and costly for migrants to cross the border multiple times in a year as they had in the past due to the seasonal nature of their work in the U.S. As a result, the circular nature of male labor migration was replaced by the permanent settlement of migrants and an influx of undocumented family members seeking to reunite with their migrant relative. Border security tactics have largely backfired, and we never hear this point of view on the news. Mexican migration to the United States was once limited to a few states with populations of temporary migrant laborers, but now all states are home to significant, permanently settled undocumented immigrant populations, and the U.S. government has only itself to blame.
Reference: Durand, Jorge and Massey, Douglas S., Eds. 2004. Crossing the Border: Research from the Mexican Migration Project. New York: Russell Sage Foundation
