U.S. Immigration Policy: Sustaining Racialized Inequalities Through “Illegality” and Education

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Description
Through an interdisciplinary American Studies approach, this thesis examines access to education and immigrant “illegality” as tools of racial domination by investigating colonial legacies and structural inequalities linked with immigration policy. Providing a background on the political formation of immigrant…

Through an interdisciplinary American Studies approach, this thesis examines access to education and immigrant “illegality” as tools of racial domination by investigating colonial legacies and structural inequalities linked with immigration policy. Providing a background on the political formation of immigrant “illegality”, this research focuses on how race relations have influenced immigration policies, as well as political efforts to exclude racialized and minoritized groups from lawful immigration, naturalization, and national belonging. These historic texts shed light on overarching connections between the racialized policy construction of immigrant “illegality” and the role of education in nation building and class conservation. Comprising three analytic chapters; the first historicizes how education was used as a tool of the nation-state in the early formation of U.S. territories, the second chapter applies discourse analysis to link contemporary political rhetoric with color-blind ideologies. The third analytic chapter is a critical review of existing quantitative findings on the effects of legal status on educational attainment for Mexican and Central American immigrants and their descendants living in the United States. Challenging the dominant narrative around immigrant “illegality”, this work highlights the racist formation and continued application of unequal access (to both education and citizenship), further demonstrating how structural inequalities remain racialized.
Date Created
2021
Agent

Paving the Way for America's Dreamers: The Economic and Social Implications of the DACA Program

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Description

Immigration, especially unauthorized immigration, is a timely and a hotly debated issue. One of the issues that continues to challenge policy makers is what kind relief should be granted to unauthorized immigrants who entered the country as children. A few…

Immigration, especially unauthorized immigration, is a timely and a hotly debated issue. One of the issues that continues to challenge policy makers is what kind relief should be granted to unauthorized immigrants who entered the country as children. A few solutions have been proposed, including the 2001 Development, Relief, and Education of Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. This bill provided a path to gaining permanent legal residence and eventually naturalization for these young immigrants. The bill failed to pass, but inspired a wave of similar legislation, to no avail. The issue remains. In 2012, however, the Obama Administration announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, in which childhood immigrants could apply to defer any action to deport or expel them from the country. DACA enabled nearly 800,000 eligible young adults to work lawfully, enroll in higher education, and plan their lives without the constant threat of deportation. However, on September 5th, 2017, the Trump Administration announced the gradual termination of the program. This decision was challenged in federal courts and heard in the U.S. Supreme Court in November 2019. At the time of this study, a decision had yet to be made. This study provides an analysis of the DACA program, including the issues associated with its implementation. Furthermore, it examines the economic costs and benefits of revoking DACA and provides evidence of American public support for the program. Finally, it discusses the future implications of a Supreme Court decision, and the ways in which states and universities should respond. Future studies should examine deeper the human rights crisis created by the program’s termination. Ultimately, this study provides rationale for passing permanent legislation to significantly reform our immigration policy.

Date Created
2019-12
Agent

Identity Development, Interfamilial Relationships, and Future Plans Among Arizona DACA Recipients

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Description
In 2012, President Obama presented an executive order, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which primarily defers the deportation of unauthorized immigrants who are under the age of 31 and who arrived to the US before the age 16, among…

In 2012, President Obama presented an executive order, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which primarily defers the deportation of unauthorized immigrants who are under the age of 31 and who arrived to the US before the age 16, among other things. This study examines the impact DACA has had on the identity formation, interfamilial relationships, and future plans of 15 Mexican-origin adults (18-27 years old, 47% female) who were approved for DACA in Arizona. Participants were recruited using flyers and the snowball sampling method. Interviews were conducted using a semi-structured interview guide by a bilingual, culturally competent interviewer. The interviews were recorded and then a transcript-based pragmatic, thematic analysis of the interviews was conducted. Findings show that participants who arrive to the U.S. at a younger age (under 5) identify as American, while those who arrive at an older age (over 8) do not feel like they can identify as an American because they spent more time in Mexico and are more attached to their home culture. Physical characteristics also played a factor in whether or not participants felt like they could identify as American. Participants describe their financial responsibility in their families increasing since receiving DACA. They also describe how they are now seen as role models to other undocumented youth in their families. Despite the uncertain future of DACA, these participants continued to have ambitious goals such as becoming lawyers and working at robotics companies. Future studies should include larger sample sizes and formally test theories of identity.
Date Created
2016-05
Agent

The Media Construction of Undocumented Immigration as a National Crisis

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Description
Mass media has played a central role in the construction of "illegal" immigration as a crisis, despite demographic trends suggesting otherwise, resulting in public concern and extreme policies. Additional coverage by local news has brought the issue closer to home,…

Mass media has played a central role in the construction of "illegal" immigration as a crisis, despite demographic trends suggesting otherwise, resulting in public concern and extreme policies. Additional coverage by local news has brought the issue closer to home, leading state legislatures to action. This project analyzes trends in a 10 year period in local news articles and state-level legislation about undocumented immigration in Arizona and Alabama. The representation of immigration as a threat has consequences for the lives of immigrants and what it means to be an American.
Date Created
2014-05
Agent

The Social Construction of the United States-Mexican Border: A Content Analysis of Two Newspapers

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Description
This study examines the social construction of the border by researching how frequently select issues are written about by the media of both countries, and in what light two different groups of actors (Mexico and the US) are portrayed. The…

This study examines the social construction of the border by researching how frequently select issues are written about by the media of both countries, and in what light two different groups of actors (Mexico and the US) are portrayed. The Dallas-based The Dallas Morning News, and the Monterrey-based, El Norte are the two newspapers chosen to perform the content analysis. Furthermore, this study seeks to examine differences in the way both newspapers portray the US-Mexico border in 1994, or the year NAFTA began, and 2012, the most recent year for which data is available. A major find of this study is the discovery of how even though the frequency that select issues are brought up in the border vary drastically by year and newspaper, portrayals of the actors around the border stay fairly consistent. More specifically, with the exception of NAFTA in 1994, border issues outside of crime, illegal immigration, drug violence, and the economy, are rarely mentioned by the two selected newspapers a significant amount of the time. Also, issues at the border such as crime, drug violence, and national security are often portrayed as the fault of Mexico and Mexican actors, while immigration issues at the border are often blamed exclusively on each newspaper's host countries.
Date Created
2014-05
Agent

Racial and ethnic differences in marriage: the importance of metropolitan context

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Description
Racial and ethnic differences in marriage outcomes are well established in the previous literature. In addition, variation in the social structure in which individuals reside has an impact on the context in which mate selection and marriage occur. The purpose…

Racial and ethnic differences in marriage outcomes are well established in the previous literature. In addition, variation in the social structure in which individuals reside has an impact on the context in which mate selection and marriage occur. The purpose of this dissertation is to determine how these variations shape marriage outcomes for Non-Hispanic Whites, Non-Hispanic Blacks, Hispanics and Non-Hispanic Asians. Beyond racial and ethnic characteristics, this series of studies take into account temporal metropolitan characteristics. Study 1 uses U.S. Census and American Community Survey data to predict metropolitan marriage prevalence at three time points: 1990, 2000 and 2010. Study 2 predicts the odds that individuals across the four racial/ethnic groups have never married, taking into account structural characteristics including region of residence. Study 3 predicts the odds that currently married women are racially or ethnically intermarried, with emphasis on race/ethnicity and region of residence. The results suggest that metropolitan structural characteristics matter somewhat, but individuals' race/ethnicity is the strongest predictor of both the odds of having never married and intermarriage. There is also evidence that region serves as a moderator impacting the overall marriage outcomes of racial/ethnic minority groups to a greater extent in comparison to Non-Hispanic Whites.
Date Created
2016
Agent
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