Arizona: National Tea Party Headquarters—A comparative review of three books

Kris Kobach, author of SB 1070

The populist Tea Party script contends that the Federal government does nothing to stem migration, but facts speak otherwise. McDowell and Provine (2013: 56) wrote that “the ‘frustration’ framing is loaded with assumptions, some of which are clearly wrong”. In 1996, the Illegal Immigration and Reform Act was passed by Congress that “established restrictions on legal immigrants from receiving social services, denying some from using food stamps and social security.” The act also implemented a policy known as 287(g) which allowed the Federal government to work with local law enforcement to enforce immigration laws (Magana and Lee, 2013: 20). McDowell and Provine point out that the “budget of the Border Patrol is larger than it has ever been” and that the number of deportations “is at an all-time high.” Deportations under the Obama administration have never been higher averaging 400,000 annually so much for an inactive government.

However, it is one thing to demand policies dressed in populist language; it is another to justify policies legally. Russell Pearce may have been the sponsor of SB 1070, but it was Kris Kobach who served as the principle author. Much of the material included here comes from Plascencia’s chapter, Attrition Through Enforcement and the Elimination of a Dangerous Class (Magana and Lee, 2013: 93–127). The bill included the central ideas that Kobach first formulated in 2002 while he served as Counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI). Kobach, as Plascencia recounts, was “formerly a law professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City [and eventually elected Kansas Secretary of State in 2010],” and assisted the Department of Justice and Attorney General Ashcroft in writing a policy brief on “formulations of federal policy.” Kobach was the central author in that policy brief in which he corrected an earlier brief that “restricted state and local law enforcement entities from enforcing civil immigration violations.” Kobach underscored right of states and local communities to enforce immigration law (Plascencia, 2013: 105). Kobach’s expertise in enforcement of migration law assisted the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice and Attorney General Aschroft when he made public the Special Registration Program requiring visitors from 24 nations of the Middle East and Africa to register upon entering the US. Plascencia notes that in his remarks Ashcroft

drew upon a point elaborated by Kobach and CIS, the idea that the existence of “65,000 police officers” in the nation could contribute to the identification of “aliens” who had violated the mandated Registration. In other words, local police officers working independently or in partnership with ICE through the 287(g) program, would allow the substantial expansion of personnel tracking individuals suspected of violating Special Registration Requirements as well as other immigration laws. (Plascencia, 2013: 110)

Kobach’s writings did not stop there and in 2004 he “wrote a brief policy brief” for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a right wing think tank. In his brief, Kobach makes the case that state and local police “possess the inherent authority to arrest aliens” for civil and criminal violations of Federal migration law. Kobach followed his initial forays into immigration law with several more publications which continued the discussion of the “inherent arrest authority” of states regarding immigration law. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center the CIS, FAIR, ILRI and a host of other anti-immigrant groups champion the right of states and local governments to enforce the “attrition through enforcement” argument that Kobach put forward in 2002 and 2004. Plascencia summed the argument:

Attrition through enforcement encompasses a set of political positions and policy prescriptions aimed at eliminating the presence of migrants perceived to be a danger to the United States economy and society, particularly to states and local communities. (Plascencia, 2013: 107)

Kobach was no novice when it came to the legal arguments for “inherent authority;” however, Ashcroft maintained that the authority of local entities to arrest was aimed at exclusively at foreign terrorists and not at migrants. Nonetheless, Kobach continued to uphold the right to arrest migrants particularly with the recession in full swing connected with the contention that migrants threatened the economic well-being of the people of the United States. Kobach held that SB 1070 opened the door to jobs “for U.S. citizens the very next day”(Plascencia, 2013: 111). The author of SB 1070 earned his colors as an honored authority among the anti-immigrant organizations across the United States and should be recognized as the author of SB 1070. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney recognized Kobach’s “expertise” and brought Kobach into his campaign as his “immigration policy advisor” (Biggers, 2012: 167).

Lawsuits filed against SB 1070 made their way to the Supreme Court which struck down 3 of the 4 provisions but allowed a key provision to remain. Arizona was left with the right to inquire for papers of persons stopped for violations or arrested for a criminal act. Twenty states filed amicus briefs in support of SB 1070 (Biggers, 2012: 229).

Educational Reforms: HB 2187

A month after SB 1070 was passed, the legislature approved HB 2187 authored by Arizona Superintendent of Schools, Tom Horne, which aimed at eliminating ethnic studies programs that

promote the overthrowing of the government;

(Ochoa O’Leary et al., 2012: 104)

If any district violated the law they would automatically lose 10% of state funding. Horne conceived of the bill as means of stopping the Tucson School District’s high school Mexican-American Studies Program. Anna Ochoa Leary, et al. (2012: 100) wrote that the law was clearly set within the “state’s and nation’s immigration policy debate.” John Huppenthal succeeded Horne and continued along the same pathway and shortly after HB 2187 was passed he declared the Tucson Mexican-American Studies Program in violation of the law. He then ordered the elimination of the program to “Stop la Raza.” In a chapter titled, “Outlawing History: The Second Showdown,” Biggers notes that Horne in support of Huppenthal insisted that the program, tainted by “radical teachers, anti-capitalists, anti-Western civilization, anti-free enterprise” deserved elimination (Biggers, 2012: 179).

However, HB 2187 required an independent audit if violations were uncovered and the audit, contracted by Huppenthal, found no violations of the law whatsoever. The audit found the MAS program to meet the standards and recommended the program continue. None of the accusations aimed at the Tucson Mexican-American Studies Program were faintly true. Huppenthal contended that despite the audit’s findings the program “promoted resentment” and focused on only one race and “advocated ethnic solidarity” (Biggers, 2012: 205). Teaching the history and contemporary experiences of the Mexican community could no longer be tolerated. Horne called it a “dysfunctional education” even though students in the MAS program succeeded at a 90% graduation rate, much higher than the national average, even though the vast majority of the students were from low income families. Given that 20% of the students attending the classes were not Mexican-American demonstrated the open enrollment that Horne and Huppenthal denied existed. Success meant little if Mexican-Americans shaped an educational program that mirrored their historical and contemporary experiences. Consequently, books were banned—even the likes of Shakespeare and a host of others none of which urged the overthrow of the government. Even the books on classroom shelves were removed—a form of ethnic cleansing reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

The Tucson Board of Education led by Superintendent Pedicone succumbed to the decision rather than lose 10% of the district’s budget. Pedicone, as Jeff Biggers explains, essentially embraced Horne and Huppenthal’s “Stop La Raza” campaign. The Director of the Program, Sean Arce, was fired. Such decisions and rantings did not go without consequences as the students, teachers, parents, and interested came together to protest. Students organized UNIDOS for peaceful protests at Board meetings which were met with armed guards that “padded down and wanded” those entering meetings. A federal lawsuit was filed but the final decision has not been reached. Across the US actions against the decision began and students, particularly Latinos, organized and traveled to Arizona to demonstrate their support for MAS. One approach was to gather copies of censored books and establish an underground library in Tucson. On campuses across the nation teach-ins used MAS lesson plans. Things were on the move. A federal lawsuit was filed and 26 “civil rights and educational organizations filed amicus court briefs” in support of the lawsuit challenging “a harrowing crackdown on intellectual freedom,” as Biggers put it (Biggers, 2012: 230).

Globalization

Globalization (which may include a role played by NAFTA) provides the next approach to explaining migration among the authors. Lara-Valencia and Fisher offer an globalization in their chapter, Immigrant Informal Labor in Times of Anti-Immigrant Rage:

The increasing mobility of capital affects the formation of labor markets and the regulation of the global labor force. The employment of immigration workers is a component of capital mobility. In general, capital mobility contributes to the formation of an international labor market. (Valencia and Fisher, 2013: 131)

It appears then that globalization is a universal phenomenon into which all nations are pulled into as equal participants and the outcome affects in various ways. Immigration is a global phenomenon and must be understood in that context. Santa Ana and Gonzalez de Bustamante, in a chapter interestingly titled Can American Learn to Think Globally? situates the role played by NAFTA in the globalizing context:

NAFTA’s unintended consequences are also lessons for future immigration policy negotiations. It increased immigration…when Mexico opened its markets to corn…Mexican subsistence farmers could not compete, lost the ability to provide for their families, ad millions were forced to migrate. (Santa Ana and Gonzalez de Bustamante, 2012b: 282)

For Mexico, the consequences have not been positive, but on the other hand a transnational labor market has emerged which solves the economic problems of Mexico and the labor needs of the economically developed world. All nations apparently benefit in one way or another. Suarez-Orozco and Suarez-Orozco explain migration in this manner:

Synergetic “push” and “pull” factors coalesce, luring immigrants away from familiar but relatively scarce surroundings to an alluring unknown. Immigrant optimism springs eternal. (Suarez-Orozco and Suarez-Orozco, 2012: 264)

The authors describe a woman named Sonia who found herself in perilous Mexico but worked her way out in a post-NAFTA Mexican economy with promised jobs that simply never materialized and in an unforgiving economy for poorly educated, unskilled, rural workers. Plentiful jobs… [and] an extremely advantageous wage differential proved irresistible (Suarez-Orozco and Suarez-Orozco, 2012: 261).

As a factor within globalizing economic trends NAFTA did not muster the goals that the proponents contended would eventually arrive. Nonetheless, the two countries exist independently, the good and the bad are a consequence of negotiated policy decisions and migration is maintained as a consequence of two conditions: poverty, the push, and jobs, the pull.

NAFTA: The Washington consensus

An approach to explaining Mexican migration, past and present, not found within the books under review, does not view the US as a nation that respects the sovereignty of Latin America. But in research conducted by a host of scholars such interpretations are not merited by the evidence. I too argue that the US has historically utilized an imperial agenda to enlarge its political and economic power in the region and later across the world. It is this display and utilization of power that has played the key role in creating the conditions leading to a hundred years of Mexican and Central American migration. As mentioned earlier Aguila and Lee maintain that the Mexican Revolution pushed a wave of migration across the border, a point of view that has become a widely accepted fact. I was taught that in graduate school and I generally applied it in my early work. However, as I was to find out, the evidence speaks otherwise.

The United States has been the central factor in creating three phases of Mexican migration. Ernesto Galarza, a civil rights activists and unionist, migrated with his family as a young man and knew first hand why migration proceeded in such high numbers. In 1949, he wrote that the Mexican migrant is

forced to seek better conditions north of the border by the slow but relentless pressure of United States agricultural, financial and oil corporate interests on the entire economic and social evolution of the Mexican nation. (Galarza, 1949)

Later he would add “To ignore this basic premise is to overlook the roots of the problem”. The root of the problem is the economic action undertaken by US corporations creating social conditions leading to three phases of migration. The initial phase begins in the first decade of the 20th century and ends in late 1920s, bringing in approximately 750,000 migrants. The second begins with the Bracero Program in 1942 which institutionalizes working in the US and when the Program ended in 1964 an untold number of one-time braceros continued to migrate without contracts, as undocumented. The third phase, massive undocumented migration, is initiated by the neoliberal free trade policies, General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) in the mid-1980s and the classical expression of neoliberal economics, the NAFTA in 1994. I will review each of these phases.

In the work I co-authored with Raul Fernandez (Gonzalez and Fernandez, 2003), we found that Mexican migration began in mid-first decade before the outbreak of the revolution and reached 70,000 by 1910. Rather than promoting migration the Revolution stopped migration which continued after the warring factions laid down their arms. And what caused this migration? First the doors were opened in the 1870s to US investors: railroads, mining operations, and oil explorations by the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship, an ally of the US. A total of one billion dollars were invested by 1910, half on railroads which allowed the construction of the 15,000 mile Mexican rail system and the remainder in nearly 300 mines, oil explorations and agriculture, in that order. What is not well known is that the railroad construction went through the central valley of Mexico, populated by peasants, which led to the forced uprooting of 300,000 peasants from traditional self-subsistence rural villages. They were then sent on a migratory trail within Mexico, emerging as a surplus labor supply and by the first decade formed one-half of the population of Mexico City. The uprooted became the main labor supply recruited for the emerging modern production systems to become the main force of railroad maintenance workers, miners, and laborers in oil explorations. Since the railroads were constructed on a north south basis and extensions of the US system, the labor supply which numbered around 40,000 migrated northward and housed in company camps. The same occurred with mining and oil operations which were primarily established in the northern area. Approximately 140,000 men were employed in the mines and 7000 in the Tampico oil fields. They went northward and housed in company managed villages as well. According to Mexican demographer and historian, Moises Gonzalez Navarro, 300,000 Mexicans were redistributed northward, many if not most to live in mining, railroad, and oil camps, a radical redistribution of the Mexican population (Gonzalez Navarro, 1957: 25).

The first migration did not stop in Mexico as the same railroad and mining operations then pulled the workers across the border to work on railroads and mining operations. Recruiters on the El Paso border area working for the corporate operations brought thousands of workers into the southwest. A study conducted by the US Department of Commerce and Labor in 1908 found that

[e]ntire villages have migrated to other parts of Mexico, where employment has been found in the mines or on the railways…[t]his has carried the central villager a thousand miles from his home and to within a few miles of the border, and American employers, with a golden wage, have had little difficulty in attracting him across that not so formidable line. (Clark, 1908: 470–471)

Eighty-three thousand workers were recruited as temporary workers at the border between 1917 and 1921. Mexico was certainly not a sovereign country; US corporations ran the modern sectors of the economy while the Mexico merely granted concessions. And things did not end with the Mexican Revolution as US investors continued to operate freely. Migration slowed in the late 1920s and finally came to a standstill with the depression. Rather than recruitment the US engaged in a mass deportation campaign and nearly 500,000 citizens as well as non-citizen migrants were returned to Mexico. But the decline was only momentary.

In 1942, the US began the second labor importation program with Mexico, known popularly as the Bracero Program, officially based upon wartime labor shortage that agricultural representatives contended in congressional hearings. However, according to Dionicio Valdez, historian at Michigan State University, there was never any evidence of a labor shortage supplied in the hearings to justify the program which lasted for 22 years, long after the war ended and after importing some five million men to work primarily in agriculture. So, why was the Program implemented? And secondly, why is this temporary labor program a phase of Mexican migration? First, I argue that the number of farmworker strikes to affect California in the 1930s—and there were 140 strikes—led the heads of large scale agricultural corporations to argue the need for labor justified on an alleged labor shortage. And in fact, no strike affected agriculture across the US during the 22 years of the Program. The Bracero Program managed by the Federal government led to a sizable migration in a number of ways. First, it promoted undocumented migration which led to a mass deportation drive known as Operation Wetback in the early 1950s; secondly, many of the men who came as braceros remained or returned to stay. When the program ended many men continued to migrate as undocumented and they too remained and chose to reside in the US In one northern California area an informal census counted 5000 former braceros living in the area in 2010. A former bracero or their offspring are common across the main areas where they were employed.

The other aspect that is not recognized is that most investigators view the Bracero Program as one between two equal partners, Mexico and the US, but I see it differently. Guest worker programs, as they are known, were implemented by Great Britain in India and by France in Algeria during the colonial era in order to gather cheap labor. The question that also needs to be addressed is the availability of labor. The economic policies engendered by Great Britain and France in their colonies uprooted people on a massive scale as did the US in Mexico in the late 19th century. I note this in my study, Guest Workers or Colonized Labor? Mexican Labor Migration to the United States (Gonzalez, 2013). In several talks that I have given in which I address the social consequences of 19th century US economic expansion into Mexico comments have been raised that what I’ve told is identical to what happened in their native India. The comments struck me, I hadn’t thought of such similarity, which led me to write the book.

Again, I point out that the Bracero Program was a labor migration program implemented by the Federal government and served the interests of corporate agriculture above all. The United States fostered the recruiting of men from peasant villages to serve as temporary labor which promoted a northward migration within Mexico and into the US—replicating the social consequences of the economic expansion of the late 19th century. The peasant villages served as labor pools accessed when the need arises, and deportable if need disappears. I remind the reader of Ernesto Galarza’s illumination on the central role played by the US in creating the social conditions leading to Mexican migration.

Neoliberal free trade agreements and the social conditions created by free trade in Mexico would undoubtedly provoke Galarza to apply the same terms to explaining the last 20 years of Mexican migration. The trade agreement did more than seriously threaten peasant production. Mexico’s economy underwent a “catastrophic devaluation of the national currency” and underwent a “deindustrialization” process that left 600,000 unemployed in the first two months of 1995. Meanwhile, maquiladoras (assembly plants), began to grow into the largest industrial employer by 2000 (and Walmart became the largest single employer). Between 1981 and 1997 manufacturing employment fell by nearly 14%. From 1995 to 1997 36% of capital goods plants closed down. Raul Fernandez and I write that “In all, 17,000 enterprises of all kinds went bankrupt shortly after the crisis exploded” (Gonzalez and Fernandez, 2003: 57). But, that was not all.

The negotiated trade agreement reduced subsidies to Mexican peasants but left Cargill and its competitors free to continue receiving US government subsidies. Nearly two million peasants unable to compete with imported corn, wheat, rice, sorghum, soya, chicken, beef, and pork were uprooted from their subsistence farm lands and sent on a migratory trail. Mexico soon emerged a nation subordinate to the food supply of a foreign country; the nation lost its food sovereignty which is basic to a nation-state. The tortillas are now made of American corn imports, its bread of wheat imports. And the uprooted made their way north within Mexico and across the border to escape the economic disaster and the continued submission of Mexico to the economic power of the US. This was an agreement made between the US and Mexico which made Mexico even more subordinate economically to the US while creating the conditions leading to migration. The role of the US in the economy of Mexico of the late 19th century, the American version of empire, economic imperialism, continues to the present. Applying globalization to explain NAFTA sidesteps the economic domination sought for within US foreign policy and fought for if necessary. The words of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger upon answering a question on a 2004 televised interview speak volumes:

Ben Wattenberg: Let me ask you a couple of final questions. Is America an Empire?

Henry Kissinger: America is the strongest nation in the world. So in this sense, that is an empire, in the sense that whenever it wants to use its force it can impose its will. On the other hand, the problem of foreign policy is not just to impose your will once, but to make it last. In order to make it last you have to build consensus. Just as the Romans governed first with their legions and then Roman Law. And the British did it—governed India with, I think, a maximum of 60,000 people. So, the fact that we are what the Europeans call us a hyperpower, that’s a fact of life, and we have to accept it and act on it (Wattenberg, 2004: 27 January 2004).

A few years after Kissinger described the US global role he was asked to be presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s Foreign Policy Advisor. What is implicit is that the people of the United States are virtually unaware of the reality of their nation, an empire, an imperialistic power, a hyperpower. In Washington DC, globalization remains a preferable general term that incorporates every nation and obfuscates any suspicion of imperial policies, domestic or foreign.

The overall resolution: Reform

The authors who write on a general solution to the immigration issue select a comprehensive approach. To protect against the social consequences of globalization engendered migration the United States should negotiate an immigration reform containing a guest worker program. Alberto Gonzales writes that “As long as federal government avoids taking measures to reform the nation’s immigration system, state and local leaders…will continue to do what they think is necessary” (Gonzalez, 2012: 175). The ultimate solution as framed by Gonzales: “…our immigration policy should include a more robust temporary worker program.” Santa Ana and Gonzalez de Bustamante agree. They write that “…immigration cannot be eliminated, only indirectly managed by legislation…” and that legislation should include a temporary contract labor program. They continue:

transnational agreements should pivot on the human dimension of trade equation, rather than on the economic dimension. The abuses of past guest worker programs must be addressed with strong safeguards that compel both governments and moneyed interests to treat workers on both sides of the border as people—rather than labor pools (Santa Ana and Gonzalez de Bustamante, 2012b: 282).

They are joined by Aguila and Lee who, in addition to praising the policies aimed at expatriates by the Mexican administrations since Porfirio Diaz, strongly recommend Senate Bill 744, Comprehensive Immigration Reform. In addition to a 13 year wait for legalization SB 744 also contains a guest worker agreement, negotiated by US Chamber of Commerce and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) (Aguila and Lee, 2013: 162). It appears that the recommendations for resolving the immigration crisis recommend moving Mexican labor into the second hundred years of meeting the needs of the US corporate economic empire. If the recommendations are legislated, an accessible, temporary, controlled, cheap, and disposable labor will provide principally for unskilled labor categories when it comes to importing labor from Mexico. A guest worker program, H2, currently exists and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s research has shown that the protections written into the contracts are widely violated (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2009: 9).

Research by Milkman, Gonzalez, and Narro, Wage Theft and Workplace Violations in Los Angeles, provides ample evidence demonstrating the “the nation is facing a workplace enforcement crisis, with widespread violations of many long established legal standards” (Milkman, Gonzalez, Narro, 2010: 7). While the focus may have been Los Angeles, other studies have corroborated the work. The National Employment Law Project examined a growing body of research on labor and found “a broad and worsening wage theft crisis in the United States” (National Employment Law Project, 2013: 1). In addition to the above, H2A workers have been used as strikebreakers just as they were during the Bracero Program (Bacon, 2014: 1–7).

Again, can we expect anything less with a new guest worker program? Implementing a guest worker program as a solution for migration merely satisfies the needs of the corporate enterprises reliant upon cheap Mexican labor. There is no basis for expecting that a “robust” guest worker program will be any different from the guest worker programs of the past. More importantly, Mexico’s diminished food sovereignty continues unless NAFTA is so re-negotiated that it ceases being a free trade agreement and returns to Mexico the ability feed itself. Meanwhile, the Latino community must continue the struggle against the anti-immigrant forces and for a truly democratic order that recognizes and honors the social, educational, cultural, labor, and economic interests of the larger Latino community, citizen or non-citizen.