inspection at the border. Europeans and first-class passengers on ships or trains were not subjected to this treatment.
After 1924, the U.S. government actually encouraged a certain level of migration from Latin America. But Mexicans were wanted only as temporary manual laborers. “A settled resident workforce would have encouraged both labor organization and more stable communities, and all that they imply—higher wages, education, political participation, growth of a middle class,” observes historian Mae Ngai. Restrictions introduced in 1924, including the creation of the Border Patrol and the expanded use of deportation, “ultimately served the interests of agribusiness by creating a vulnerable ‘alien’ workforce,” Ngai notes.12
With the 1924 laws came talk from politicians and the media about the need to expel the newly “illegal” immigrants.13 Deportations expanded, particularly of Mexicans, yet so did labor recruitment, for example through the 1942–64 “bracero” program.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (also known as the Hart-Celler Act) set up new barriers for Latin American migrants. It removed the discriminatory quotas of the 1924 law, but it extended quotas to the Western Hemisphere for the first time, setting the limit at 120,000 a year.14
The 1965 law caused the number of unauthorized immigrants to swell further in the 1970s, and politicians and the media stepped up their scare-mongering about “illegal” immigrants “invading” and “swarming” over the southwestern border. “Illegality” quickly became the charge raised most often by people who opposed immigration. In the past immigration opponents openly expressed prejudices against the Chinese, for example, or Eastern European Jews. Civil rights gains in the 1960s made it less acceptable for public figures to voice prejudiced views, so the idea of illegality gave people holding such beliefs a cover. They could say they weren’t against immigrants (or against Mexicans), they were just against “illegals.”15
How “illegal” is immigration, anyway?
Law is not a neutral force. Throughout history, people at the top have made laws to uphold their power against threats from below. Even acts like robbery and murder, which seem to violate clear and strongly held social norms, have always been treated differently depending on who carries them out against whom and in what context.
Just because something is illegal doesn’t make it harmful. It was illegal for people to flee slavery, and to help others escape; it was illegal for black people to sit at the front of the bus. Yet those were acts of courage that made history and inspired millions.
Laws can change when enough pressure is exerted. What was illegal yesterday may be perfectly legal tomorrow, or vice versa.
In any case, lacking immigration status isn’t necessarily a crime even under our present laws. As of 2015, entering the United States without government permission (by “jumping the border,” for example) is a criminal offense—a minor misdemeanor, with a maximum sentence of six months. Living or working here without permission, regardless of how you entered, is just a civil infraction, not a crime. While some local officials try to claim such “unlawful presence” is like trespassing, it’s more comparable under the law to a ticket for jaywalking.16
Many out-of-status immigrants use false identification documents, usually in order to get legitimate jobs instead of working off the books. Federal law treats this as a crime, with a maximum sentence of five years.17 Working for a living doesn’t harm society, and most people consider it to be a good thing. But immigrants face more public condemnation, and harsher legal consequences, for using fake IDs to seek employment than U.S.-born teenagers do when they use fake IDs, for example, to buy alcohol. Immigration opponents charge that immigrants are committing a serious crime—identity theft—if they unknowingly use a real person’s Social Security number to get a job, but the Supreme Court ruled in May 2009 that this use of false documents doesn’t meet the legal definition for identity theft.18
Why don’t immigrants “follow the rules”?
It’s easy for U.S. citizens to go to most other countries. To enter Mexico as a tourist, for instance, you only need to show your passport, go through customs, and (if traveling beyond the border area) pay a small fee for a tourist card. Gaining permanent residency in Mexico takes more time and requires applicants to prove they can support themselves, but almost all U.S. citizens who apply to settle in Mexico are able to do so.19
Many people in the United States assume that undocumented immigrants could all have come here legally if they’d been willing to “stand in line.” But as the American Immigration Council (AIC) points out, “There is no line available for them, and the ‘regular channels’ do not include them.”20 Otherwise why would so many risk their lives trudging across the desert for days without water, stuffed into sealed train cars or truck beds, stowed away in shipping containers, crawling through sewage tunnels, or floating on inner tubes across polluted rivers or shark-infested oceans?
About one million people manage to become “lawful permanent residents” in the United States each year. This is a large number, but nearly all of these people gain legal residence either because they have close relatives living here (66 percent), meet requirements for a special work visa (16 percent), win a “diversity visa” (5 percent), or qualify as refugees or asylees (12 percent).21
Immigration laws don’t limit the number of refugees, asylees, and members of U.S. citizens’ immediate families (spouses, parents, and minor unmarried children) who can get a green card, but there’s a limit of 675,000 a year on the total granted residency under all the other categories. Because of complicated rules, the annual number of new permanent residents never comes close to this maximum; in fiscal year 2013 it was 430,907, and this was normal. Less than half the people who get permanent status are entering the United States from outside; the majority are already living here. The result is that the number of slots open for people coming from abroad is about 250,000 each year for everyone except refugees, asylees, and members of U.S. citizens’ immediate families.
Within this number there are still more limits. For example, no country gets more than 7 percent of the immigrant visas available in a given year. In 2012, there were 1,316,118 Mexicans on waiting lists for the visas, while the highest number of Mexicans that could be accepted under the 7 percent rule was 47,250.22
Can’t immigrants bring their extended families here?
If you’re a U.S. citizen, you can generally apply to bring your “immediate relatives”—spouses, parents or unmarried children under twenty-one—here as permanent residents, although there are plenty of hoops to jump through, and it’s not always quick or easy. For other types of “family preferences,” an even more complex set of rules lays out “priority” categories and annual caps based on the family relationship and country of origin. Waiting times of ten to twenty years are not uncommon. In February 2015 the government was still processing family visa applications from as far back as August 1991. While they wait, applicants are disqualified from visiting the United States because they have shown “immigrant intent” by applying for immigrant visas.23
Some conservatives now object to the “family preference” system, but it was actually introduced into the 1965 Immigration Act as a concession to conservative politicians who wanted to keep Asians and Africans out of the United States. Family preferences would mean “there will not be, comparatively, many Asians or Africans entering the country,” Representative Emmanuel Celler, a liberal New York Democrat who cosponsored the 1965 law, said in Congress during the final debate on the bill, “Since the people of Africa and Asia have very few relatives here, comparatively few could immigrate from those countries because they have no family ties to the U.S.”24
