America's Immigration Policy Fiasco: Learning from Past Mistakes

Activity at the border has increased in the past 30 years and it is a direct albeit unintended consequence of "failed" U.S. immigration and other policies, argues Princeton sociologist Douglas S. Massey in America's Immigration policy Fiasco: Learning from Past Mistakes. Massey chronicles the recent history of U.S. immigration policies and tactics to restrict unauthorized immigration. These actions, Massey argues, were political rather than prudent and paradoxically led to an upsurge in the country's undocumented population. In 1980, for instance, the Border Patrol comprised 2,500 officers with an $83 million budget.

Today, the immigration enforcement industry costs $18 billion per year and employs more than 20,000 officers. The militarization of the border disrupted traditional cyclical movements of Mexican workers across the border.  Not only did undocumented workers decide to stay in the U.S., rather than risk the hazardous and increasingly costly border crossing, they brought their families as well. Even legal Mexican immigrants rushed to become naturalized, so that they could bring their spouses and minor children to the country and avoid the stigma of second-class status. 

As a result, the undocumented population rose from a few thousand in 1970 to 11 million by 2010, and legal immigration from Mexico increased from an average of 63,000 per year in the 1970s to 170,000 in the first decade of the new century. Mexican immigrants also fanned out to new destinations. The U.S.-Contra intervention in Central America, too, precipitated mass migration of displaced immigrants from Nicaragua, El Salvador and surrounding countries.  

Massey concludes that shifting from "a goal of immigration suppression to one of immigration management" with an emphasis on integration and legalization of workers and residents is the only way to "break with the failed policies of the past."

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