Borderless Economy, Barricaded Border
Andreas, Peter
The escalating U.S. immigration-control campaign along the southwest border offers a striking contrast to the rhetoric and practice of U.S.Mexican economic integration. The trend, it seems,...
...Past forms of unauthorized entry primarily involved either self-smuggling or limited use of a local smuggler, or coyote...
...The trend, it seems, is toward increasingly restrictive controls over unauthorized immigrant labor flows in the context of a general loosening of controls over cross-border economic activity...
...There are no groups of people milling about on either side of the fence...
...The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996 authorizes hiring a thoub s sand new Border Patrol agents every year until 2001...
...This, in turn, has further reinforced domestic pressures to police the border and project an image of effective control...
...Officials have a frustrating time reconciling two objectives: to facilitate the growing volume of legitimate border crossings at the ports of entry and to simultaneously control the growing volume of illegitimate crossing attempts that result from stepped-up border enforcement between the ports of entry...
...The INS budget has nearly tripled since 1993, to over $4 billion, and much of this growth has been targeted toward beefing up the Border Patrol...
...Timothy Mitchell, "The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics," American Political Science Review, Vol...
...In October 1994, "Operation Gatekeeper" was launched south of San Diego, and "Operation Safeguard" was initiated in Nogales, Arizona...
...When President Bill Clinton first took office, border control was not high on his list of priorities...
...3 Consequently, even though arresting more smugglers provides a "body count" for officials needing to show progress in controlling the border, it has not necessarily curbed smuggling...
...As evident along the U.S.-Mexico border, intensified law enforcement has failed as a major deterrent and has generated a variety of negative consequences, yet it has succeeded in constructing an image of a much more secure and orderly border...
...Thus, in response to an Urban Institute of the illegal immigration problem and as the most study that found that illegal immigrants in California appropriate site of the policing solution...
...Almost every indicator that Administration officials point to as a sign of success can also be read as a sign of failure, and almost every indicator that points to failure is either downplayed or interpreted by Administration officials as a sign of success...
...As the United States and Mexico have grown closer in recent years, the tensions have increased sharply between the economic push to open the border and liberalize markets and the political push to close the border to immigrant labor...
...Another important consequence of the tightening of border controls is a change in the frequency of clandestine entry...
...It seems that the "giant sucking sound" that Ross Perot warned would be produced by NAFTA is in fact the pull of the U.S...
...This neglect of visa overstays is itself a revealing indicator of how the symbolic importance of border control trumps the stated policy goal of reducing the size of the illegal immigrant population...
...The picture taken of the same area after Gatekeeper was initiated, however, shows a sturdy steel wall, backed up by powerful stadium lights and four-wheel drive Border Patrol vehicles alertly monitoring the line...
...The increase in personnel has been matched by an increase in penalties...
...2 3 Even the immigration experts who argue that NAFTA will eventually help to curb illegal immigration point out that it fuels such immigration in the short and Noticeably d medium term...
...5 dehydration, The 1996 immigration control y cars while legislation reinforces an INS border-enforcement strategy i the border...
...At some crossing points, such as Calexico and San Ysidro in California, the number of inspectors has more than doubled...
...As a result, border control strategists hope, many would-be border crossers will be inhibited from trying, and those who try will fail repeatedly, leading them to eventually give up due to frustration and lack of resources...
...Accepting the Immigrant Challenge: The President's Report on Immigration" (Washington D.C., 1994), p. 42...
...Yet only 2% of the INS budget is devoted to enforcement at the workplace...
...Even if left conveniently unmentioned in the official policy debate, illegal immigration has become an increasingly important dimension of U.S.-Mexican interdependence...
...To counter such political pressures to turn to the military for more help, some NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 16REPORT ON THE U.S.-MEXIco BORDER lawmakers and Administration officials have recommended increasing the size of the Border Patrol to 20,000 agents...
...They used it, and it was made available to the INS...
...Tight Borders Keep Immigrants In, Study Says," New York Times, October 12, 1997...
...INS progress reports and press releases are most notable for what they do not say...
...In this case, it seems, "reinventing government" is more about redeploying rather than reducing government...
...Timothy Mitchell has noted how border controls have helped define our conception of the state and have given the state the appearance of autonomy, authority, and power: "By establishing a territorial boundary and exercising absolute control over movement across it, state practices define and help constitute a national entity...
...And in late August 1997 the INS announced the launch of "Operation Rio Grande" in east Texas, which included setting up floodlights along 31 miles of the Rio Grande river...
...Those who attempt entry through fraudulent document use are now being prosecuted for repeat violations, and vehicles may also be confiscated...
...For example, in June 1999 the U.S...
...border-control initiatives reinforce state claims to territorial authority...
...The Border Patrol is applauded for finally securing the border so that it "is no longer an open back door...
...Along the border south of San Diego, for example, Army reservists have constructed a ten-foot high steel wall using 180,000 metal sheets originally designed for temporary landing fields during military operations...
...2 4 This will, of the immigratic course, further enhance the cross-border social networks that provide a critical base and bridge for later immigration flows, meaning that even the hoped for long-term reduction of illegal immigration is not at all assured...
...climate over immigration control, means that appearances matter enormously...
...7 The border strategy, according to INS Commissioner Doris Meissner, is "showing dramatic success...
...As hoped, apprehensions dropped dramatically...
...The integration of the North American market will also create new links of transportation, telecommunication and interpersonal acquaintance, connections that are necessary for the efficient movement of goods, information and capital, but which also encourage and promote the movement of people-students, business executives, tourists and, ultimately, undocumented workers...
...Enhanced border policing has generated substantial rewards for both lawmakers and law enforcers...
...Yet some politicians continue to push for greater military involvement in border control...
...Through more fencing, surveillance equipment, penalties and law enforcement personnel, the objective is to inhibit illegal entry rather than having to apprehend entrants once they have crossed the border...
...Illegal immigrants now account for nearly 2% of the U.S...
...The U.S.-Mexico border consequently has the distinction of being both the busiest land crossing in the world and one of the most heavily fortified...
...Challenge on the Border," the second video, produced in 1996, projects an entirely different message and image...
...Immigration Control in the Post-NAFTA Era, " Political Science Quarterly, Vol...
...113, No...
...The narrator alarmingly describes the border as "less of a boundary than a back door...
...1 4 needs, agency coordination, hiring levels and strategy implementation...
...While the overall deterrent effect has been limited, the U.S border-control strategy has had a profound effect in influencing where, how, and how often illegal immigrants cross the border...
...4 Even as "devolution"-meaning less federal spending and more freedom and responsibility for state governments-has become a popular political theme of the 1990s, current trends in immigration control push in the opposite direction...
...But while failing to significantly deter, the enforcement strategy has influenced where, how, and how often illegal immigrants cross the border...
...he new image of order on the border is power- fully captured by pre- and post-Gatekeeper photographs taken of the same stretch of the border that are displayed at the front entrance of the public affairs office at the Border Patrol sector headquarters south of San Diego...
...In addition, technologies and equipment designed initially for military purposes are increasingly being adapted for border control...
...This partly explains the increased number of high-speed chases and accidents that have resulted when smugglers try to evade highway checkpoints near the border...
...The unquestioned assumption seems to A way from the border, meanwhile, various sec- be that the obstacle to achieving deterrence is technical tors of the U.S...
...By disrupting the traditional routes and methods of clandestine entry, law enforcement has transformed the once relatively simple illegal act of crossing the border into a more complex web of illegal practices...
...He is completing a book on the politics of policing the U.S.-Mexico bor- der, which will be published by Cornell University Press in 2000...
...5 Indeed, in some thorized crossings by local border residents have cerindustries, such reliance has actually increased as bor- tainly been reduced, there is little evidence that deterder controls have tightened...
...Douglas S. Massey and Kristen E. Espinosa, "What's Driving Mexico-U.S...
...In terms of reducing the size of immigrants so long as they can present some form of the unauthorized immigrant population, this outcome documentation-which, not surprisingly, has spurred a is an indicator of a counterproductive policy...
...The INS boasts that "The border is harder to cross now than at any time in history...
...The system, he said, "is a clear example of this administration's initiatives to convert military and intelligence technology to domestic applications...
...In early 1993, for example, he recommended reducing the number of Border Patrol agents to save money...
...Border Patrol agents and technology on the border...
...The illegal aliens have shown that they will destroy or bypass any single measure placed in their path," stated the Sandia study...
...Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization, (New York City: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 59...
...Mexicans who cross the border illegally do not stay in the United States but rather go back and forth almost as a form of cross- difficult to understand why only about 2% of the INS border commuting...
...The increased risk and cost of budget is devoted to enforcement at the workplace...
...The rapid expansion of the INS is particularly remarkable because it has occurred in an era of government downsizing...
...Tightening controls at the ports of entry, however, risks creating delays for the growing volume of legitimate border crossers...
...Most of these immigrants are concentrated in seven states, with California absorbing 40% of the total...
...Michael Gransberry, "INS Investigates Border Patrol Arrest Data," Los Angeles Times, July 6, 1996...
...military has also played an important support role along the border...
...In the case of Gatekeeper, "The game is to try and focus as much attention as possible on one small piece of real estate," explains T.J...
...A three-fence barrier system with vehicle 4 and 1997, patrol roads between the fences rowned, died and lights will provide the necessary discouragement...
...Border officials view the increase in smuggling prices as a sign that the policy is working...
...Some 40 million people and 15 million cars now enter the United States every year through the ports of entry south of San Diego...
...Most simply keep trying-sometimes being apprehended more than once in the same day-until they eventually make it across the line...
...The number of Border Patrol agents stationed along the borderline has doubled since 1993...
...This article is adapted from Peter Andreas, "The Escalation of U.S...
...employers in turn, depend on the cheap labor provided by illegal Mexican workers...
...Overall, there are some 230 million individual crossings by people and 82 million crossings by cars into the United States from Mexico every year...
...In effect, policymakers are simultaneously building a barricaded border and a borderless economy...
...Now, however, the use of a smuggler has become more of a necessity...
...Setting up and policing a frontier involves a variety of fairly modern social practices-continuous barbed-wire fencing, passports, immigration laws, inspectors, currency controls, and so on...
...Sebastian Rotella, "Tough Border Policies a Boon for Smugglers," Los Angeles Times, February 5, 1995...
...New border fencing is going up elsewhere along the border as well...
...According to Robert Bach of the INS, "The technology came out of the CIA and the Department of Defense...
...The border, however, has many back doors...
...Even as the escalating border-control campaign has generated some perverse and counterproductive consequences and has failed to significantly deter illegal immigration, it has been strikingly successful in constructing the appearance of a more secure and orderly border...
...The image is of a chaotic border that is defied, defeated and undefended...
...al., eds., The United States and Latin America in the 1990s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), p. 2 7 4 . 23...
...2 2 NAFTA only deepens and extends this process...
...4 (Winter 1998-99), pp...
...These mundane arrangements, most of them unknown two hundred or even one hundred years ago, help manufacture an almost transcendental entity, the nation state...
...While the first video depicts the border as being overwhelmed by hordes of clandestine crossers, the second video is largely self-congratulatory...
...Commission for Immigration Reform observes that "inspectors are frustrated that they must often choose between a thorough inspection which slows traffic or an expedited one that keeps traffic moving...
...The U.S...
...The results were both immediate and highly visible, making Operation Hold-the-Line very appealing politically...
...In the 1996 electoral race, for example, President Clinton battled Republicans in a war of images over the border and illegal immigration...
...Roughly 150,000 people settle illegally in the United States each year after entering the country legally...
...Put differ- riously weak, poorly designed and minimally enforced...
...Yet higher prices have not been a significant deterrent, given that smuggling fees are often covered by relatives in the United States rather than by the immigrants themselves...
...2 5 And as suggested here, the economic push to open borders and the law enforcement push to close borders generate their own tensions and contradictions ownplayed in n debate is the that further reinforce the trend toward enhanced border policing...
...in California's agricultural industry increased from A failing deterrence strategy, however, can still be a under 10% in 1990 to as high as 40% in 1997.16 political success...
...The main impact of higher smuggling fees is to enrich increasingly sophisticated and well-organized binational smuggling groups...
...Unauthorized crossings are much less visible because they are more dispersed, more remote and more hidden...
...Yet at booming business in phony documents...
...After all, while unaudependent on illegal alien labor...
...The increased use of smugglers, a 1997 report of the Binational Study on Migration concluded, "helps to explain why most migrants attempting unauthorized entry succeed despite significantly more U.S...
...1 9 The game of image management along the border, however, is becoming more difficult for the border enforcers to play, even as they are under intense domestic political pressure to play better and harder...
...It has also changed the border-crossing experience of the immigrants themselves...
...The new law also promotes additional measures to secure the border, such as a sharp increase in penalties against immigrant smugglers and the building of a triple-layered fence along 14 miles south of San Diego...
...This is the less-celebrated, clandestine side of the integration process...
...In the November election, Clinton not only took California but also the conservative stronghold of Orange County...
...5. Systematic Analysis of the Southwest Border, Vol...
...And far from being reversed, this mutual dependence is only being reinforced by the deepening process of economic integration...
...2 0 The tension between facilitation and enforcement is played out on a daily basis at the ports of entry along the border...
...Regardless of stepped-up U.S...
...Magnetic footfall detectors and infrared body sensors, originally used in Vietnam, are deployed along various parts of the border...
...The image is of an orderly border that deters and defends against unauthorized crossings...
...Sam Howe Verhovek, " 'Silent Deaths' Climbing Steadily as Migrants Cross Mexican Border," New York Times, August 24, 1997...
...As sociologist Robert Bach explained before he became a senior INS official (and a key proponent of the Administration's border enforcement effort): "Increased market integration means the sending country's loss of control over its own labor supply...
...Commission on Immigration Reform, "Staff Report on Border Law Enforcement and Removal Initiatives in San Diego, CA" (Washington D.C.: November 1995), p. 14...
...3. Leigh Rivenbark, "Help Wanted," Federal Times, July 28, 1997...
...economy continue to absorb rather than any fundamental flaw in the focus and llegal immigrant labor...
...Foremost, there is no claim or evidence that overall levels of illegal immigration have actually declined as a result of tighter border controls...
...A Theoretical, Empirical, and Policy Analysis," American Journal of Sociology, Vol...
...he U.S...
...21 Operation Gatekeeper has only added to the frustration...
...They simply keep trying-some are apprehended more than once in the same day-until they eventually make it across the line...
...Thus, apprehensions in the El Paso sector remain far below the levels prior to Operation Hold-the-Line, but have skyrocketed to the west in New Mexico and Arizona...
...The ad boasted that Clinton had significantly boosted the size of the Border Patrol, and responded to scenes from the Republican ad with the word "WRONG" stamped in red letters.' 8 Both ads were run most often in California, where public anxiety over illegal immigration has been highest...
...For the INS, the border campaign has brought with it massive organizational expansion and resources to a long-neglected agency...
...85 (March 1991), p. 94...
...Two of the Border Patrol's public affairs videos provide a similar contrast between order and chaos...
...Accepting the Immigration Challenge: The President's Report on Immigration" (Washington D.C., 1994), p. 26...
...Politicians on both sides of the border promised that the trade agreement would help curb immigration, yet as Douglas Massey and Kristin Espinosa explain, "The provisions of NAFTA...help to bring about the social and economic transformations that generate migrants...
...9. Vemrne Kopytoff, "In Tijuana, Border Crackdown Hurts," New York Times, August 28, 1996...
...Even so, there is no shortage of smugglers...
...Commis- nature of the control strategy itself...
...n his January 1996 State of the Union address, President Clinton highlighted his border enforcement record...
...called "prevention through deterrence...
...Closing some of them means that the clandestine population flow has been moved, not removed...
...Tight Borders Keep Immigrants In, Study Says," New York Times, October 12, 1997...
...In this case, the border appears If, as government officials acknowledge, the primary more orderly because much greater control has in fact incentive for illegal immigration is employment, it is been imposed at the major urban crossing points that 1R NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER are most publicly visible...
...In just a few years, the deployment of law enforcement resources and personnel along what were once highly contested secEven as border controls have tightened, the reliance on illegal immigrant labor has increased in many industries...
...Similarly, apprehensions in the Imperial Beach sector south of San Diego, traditionally the single most important gateway for illegal entry, have declined sharply since Gatekeeper began, but arrests have jumped dramatically in the more remote parts of east San Diego county...
...Of the total number of INS port of entry inspectors in the country, 78% are now assigned to the southwest border-an increase from 54% in FY1990...
...Experimental technologies previously off-limits to law enforcement are also being tested...
...ently, as the commute has become more difficult and Since employers are not required to verify the authencostly, the incentive to relocate closer to the work- ticity of documents, they risk little by hiring illegal place has increased...
...The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the parent agency of the Border Patrol, has become one of the fastest-growing federal agencies...
...Not surprisingly, as the demand for smuggling services and the risks of crossing the border have gone up, so too has the price of being smuggled...
...4. Rivenbark, "Help Wanted...
...The first video, titled "Border Under Siege," was made in 1992...
...At the same time, the policy focus on the border has drawn attention away from confronting a long-established and deeply entrenched cross-border labor market that is an integral-though clandestine-dimension of U.S.Mexican interdependence...
...This is illustrated at the port of entry at San Ysidro south of San Diego, the busiest land bordercrossing point in the world...
...A 1997 report by researchers at the University of Houston found that over the previous four years, 1,185 people had drowned, died of exposure or dehydration, or had been hit by automobiles while trying to cross the border.' 0 As law enforcement has concentrated on the easiest and most popular border crossing points, the human traffic has been disrupted and displaced...
...House of Representatives voted to authorize the deployment of thousands of additional soldiers to assist in securing the border against drug trafficking and illegal immigration...
...job market...
...The picture of the border taken before Gatekeeper was launched shows a mangled chain-link fence and crowds of people milling about on both sides, seemingly unaware that the border even exists...
...Controls at the official border ports of entry have also been significantly tightened...
...As the number of crossings continue to increase as a result of deepening cross-border ties, so too do the pressures on law enforcement...
...1 (Sandia National Laboratories, prepared for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, January 1993...
...4 (January 1997), pp...
...As Saskia Sassen notes, despite the relaxation of barriers to the flow of goods, information and capital, when it comes to regulating the movement of people, "the national state claims its old splendor in asserting its sovereign right to control its borders...
...Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1991, rev...
...population...
...102, No...
...2 of exposure or The build-up of policing or were hit along the border quickly emerged as the center- trying to cro piece of the Administration's immigration control policy...
...At the same time, as the risks and penalties for smuggling rise, so does the smuggler's willingness to take more extreme measures to evade law enforcement...
...7. Immigration and Naturalization Service, "Operation Gatekeeper: Two Years of Progress" (Washington D.C., October 1996...
...3 To meet its ambitious hiring targets, the INS has established an around-the-clock hotline for prospective Border Patrol applicants...
...The old border game between law enforcers and law evaders persists as before, but the game strategy of the law enforcers has changed to maximize the appearance of control...
...Other devices include an electronic current that stops a fleeing car, a camera that can see into vehicles for hidden passengers, and a computer that checks commuters by voiceprint...
...The Democratic National Committee quickly went on the offensive with its own ad, which showed what were presumably illegal immigrants being handcuffed...
...6 Defense Department operations along the border came to a halt in May 1997 when a marine shot a Texas man along the border...
...The President's 1994 Report on Immigration observed that "the openness of the world economy requires making commercial travel and tourism easier and friendlier...
...The border were remaining in the state for longer periods of time campaign is carefully scrutinized in congressional heardue to tighter border controls, the INS responded by ings, but these evaluations tend to be narrowly focused asserting, "This is another sign that our efforts to con- on operational concerns-equipment and technology trol the border are working...
...tions of the border has successfully projected a powerful image of control along the border...
...economy clearly benefits from playing an energetic role in encouraging travel...
...officials is that the powerful political imperative to control the border is becoming ever-more complicated in the context of Mexico's deepening market reforms and the broader process of U.S.-Mexican economic integration...
...Noticeably downplayed is the fact that some 40 to 50% of all illegal immigrants in the United States entered the country legally-as tourists or students, for example-and then overstayed their visas...
...But with rising domestic pressures to "do something" about the influx of illegal immigrants, the nearly 2,000 mile U.S.-Mexico border was fast becoming the focal point of political attention, and Clinton soon became an enthusiastic proponent of stricter enforcement in order to stay ahead of Republican initiatives in Congress.' In late July 1993, he announced aggressive new measures against illegal immigration, including the hiring of 600 more Border Patrol agents...
...After years and years of neglect," he said, "this Administration has taken a strong stand to stiffen protection on our borders...
...In March 1995 a Border Research and Technology Center was opened in San Diego to facilitate the conversion of defense technologies for border enforcement...
...Operation Blockade"-which was later given the more diplomatic name, "Operation Hold-the-Line"--deployed 450 agents to cover a 20mile stretch of the border...
...991-2...
...Even while border controls may fail as a serious deterrent, they reinforce territorial identities, symbolize and project an image of state authority, and relegitimize the boundaries of the "imagined community...
...Although political tensions may increase...the demand for labor inside the United States will continue to dominate attempts to regulate the flow of immigrant workers...
...Bonner, the president of the National Border Patrol Council...
...The deployment of new agents has been matched by an infusion of new equipment, including infrared night-vision scopes, low-light TV cameras, ground sensors, helicopters and all-terrain vehicles...
...For Democrats in particular, beefing up border controls has helped inoculate them against Republican attacks that they are "soft on illegals...
...Migration...
...The new fence was first recommended in a study prepared for the INS by Sandia Laboratories, a national weapons lab...
...A Staff Report of the U.S...
...border enforcement, economic trends suggest that "El Norte" will continue to be a favored destination for many Mexican workers...
...the same time, this outcome contributes to the policy While workplace controls remain anemic, the border goal of reducing the number of unauthorized border continues to be conveniently targeted as both the source crossings...
...Even while many states are embracing free-market initiatives that deterritorialize their economies, they are also attempting to reassert their territorial authority over "undesirable" population flows...
...Massive injections of law enforcement resources at the most popular points of unauthorized entry are designed to disrupt the human traffic, forcing crossers to attempt entry in more difficult, remote areas and at official ports of entry that the INS argues are easier to regulate...
...The advertisement then declared that "under President Clinton, spending on illegals has gone up, while wages for the typical worker have gone down...
...The truth, Bonner says, is that "it's bursting out all over-Arizona, New Mexico, parts of Texas...
...An agency hired by the INS has even come up with a slogan to attract new hires: "A career with borders but no boundaries...
...As one senior official from the Border Patrol's anti-smuggling unit put it, the smugglers "just get paid more for taking more risks...
...For example, according to mined long-distance border crossers in search of work one study, the percentage of illegal immigrants working are being seriously discouraged by the show of force...
...Crossers have turned to less visible and more remote entry points away from those urban areas targeted by law enforcement...
...The Border Patrol, for example, is evaluating a photo identification system developed by Hughes Aircraft...
...As the U.S...
...We will make it tougher for illegal aliens to get into our country," Clinton promised...
...Even as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) promotes a deterritorialization of the economy, U.S...
...8. Testimony of Doris Meissner before the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration, October 2, 1996...
...Some of these studies are reviewed in Philip Martin, Trade and Migration: NAFTA and Agriculture, (Washington D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1993...
...The Border Patrol is nowhere in sight...
...2. Fred Barnes, "No Entry: The Republicans' Immigration War," The New Republic, November 8, 1993...
...Despite the cheerful liberal market rhetoric of creating a "borderless world," a number of critical territorial divides are being politically reinforced, particularly those between rich and poor countries...
...In the current restrictionist political climate, officials are scrambling to at least create the appearance of controlling their borders...
...There is a growing tension, for example, between the policy of facilitating increased cross-border travel and enforcing immigration controls...
...Although prohibited from making arrests, the military assists the INS by operating night scopes, motion sensors and communications equipment, as well as building and maintaining roads and fences...
...The dramatic show of force in El Paso captured the attention of Washington, the media and politicians in other border states...
...Dick Kirsschten, "Crossing the Line," National Journal, August 3, 1996...
...The problem facing U.S...
...Such a strategy was first tested in El Paso in September 1993...
...You then hope everyone ignores the fact that we're being totally overrun in the rest of the sector...
...The policy response has been a mixture of tougher penalties for fraudulent document use, a sharp increase in the number of port inspectors, and development of more efficient and technologically sophisticated traffic management procedures...
...At least for now, projecting a "winning image" has provided a politically viable substitute for actually winning the game...
...Further innovations in border-control techniques do little to address the larger economic transformations that are helping to fuel continuing high-levels of illegal immigration...
...9 An evaluation of such upbeat claims of success reveals the peculiar nature of immigration control...
...In the most general sense, reducing the role of the state in the economy reduces the state's ability to withstand market forces-and the strong demand for cheap immigrant labor in the United States is certainly no exception...
...economy continues to provide a powerful magnet for lowskilled immigrant labor...
...As a result, in 1994 the INS announced a much wider adoption of the "prevention through deterrence" strategy to concentrate on the main corridors of illegal entry along the border...
...6. Sandra Dibble, "Star Wars Arrives at the Border: High Tech Developed by the Military, CIA May Aid Enforcement," San Diego Union Tribune, March 18, 1995...
...See Binational Study Migration Between Mexico and the United States (Washington D.C., 1997), p. 28...
...8 Commenting on the results of Operation Gatekeeper, Johnny Williams, the Border Patrol chief for the San Diego sector, states that "this is probably the single largest accomplishment in the Border Patrol's history...
...It's certainly plain to anybody with eyes to see that the Border Patrol is drastically Between 19 understaffed, breathtakingly 1,185 people understaffed...
...Despite the hardening of the border, there is little indication that large numbers of would-be crossers are giving up...
...Saskia Sassen, Losing Control...
...Meanwhile, the U.S...
...The ambiguity of the measures, combined with the heated political Despite the hardening of the border, would-be crossers are not giving up...
...The high-profile display of concentrated force along the border, however, has less to do with actual Peter Andreas is an Academy Scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University...
...Author interview, April 8, 1997...
...In June 1996 a Republican National Committee television ad highlighted a border entry point marked "Mexico" and then showed what were presumably illegal immigrants running into the country under the glare of spotlights...
...An estimated 54% of all illegal immigrants are from Mexico...
...Building bigger and better border barriers helps to deny but not defy this reality...
...Enhanced law enforcement has certainly made the border more dangerous...
...Commission on Immigration Reform, "Staff Report on Border Law Enforcement and Removal Initiatives in San Diego, CA," p. 7. 16...
...As Miguel Vallina, the assistant chief of the Border Patrol in San Diego notes, "The more difficult the crossing, the better the business for the smugglers...
...deterrence and more to do with managing the border's image and coping with the deepening contradictions of economic integration...
...Borderless Economy, Barricaded Border 1. The Immigration and Naturalization Service estimates that there are about five million illegal immigrants living permanently in the United States and that this number is growing by 275,000 per year...
...Robert L. Bach, "Hemispheric Migration in the 1990s," in Jonathan Hartlyn et...
...Similarly, in Nogales, Army engineers in 1994 and 1995 constructed a 15-foot fence that is nearly five miles long, extending from one end of town to the other...
...For elected leaders, the campaign has won votes and provided a politically costless method of signaling that they are "tough" on illegal immigration...
...1 7 crossing the border, however, has also increased the Employer sanctions, created for the first time by the incentive for many illegal immigrants to extend their Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, are notostay and perhaps even remain permanently...
...The positions of "Border Patrol Agent" and "Immigration Inspector" have been listed as two of the top ten jobgrowth areas in the federal government...
...Sharp increases in prosecutions are evident throughout the border region...
...For example, sweeping market reforms in Mexico are, at least in the short and medium term, adding to the incentives for Mexican workers to seek employment in the United States...
...At a time when many other federal agencies have faced sharp budget cuts, the INS has struggled to manage its fast-paced growth...
...Mexico depends on exporting part of its unemployment problem and on simultaneously generating as much as $4 billion in family remittances...
...1 2 The growth of smuggling, not surprisingly, has provided a rationale for tougher laws and tougher enforcement...
...591-615...
...For example, the INS says that the initiation of Gatekeeper sparked a 40% rise in the use of fraudulent documents to cross the border at ports of entry...
...2 6 From this perspective, evaluating border policing solely in terms of the stated policy goal of deterrence misses much of what these state practices are all about...
...This is of critical importance for public relations and for the rewards flowing to law enforcement agencies, elected leaders, and smugglers...
...sion on Immigration Reform noted, "By one measure, Judged solely on its actual deterrent effect, the Operation Gatekeeper appears to have had little enormous political popularity of the border-control effect-the availability of workers in industries that are campaign may seem puzzling...
Vol. 33 • November 1999 • No. 3
