Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to move research on racial attitudes away from studying intraindividual attitudes toward studying broader structural factors that contribute to the attitudes and feelings of U.S. citizens. We focus on how interest groups and elite actors play a role in shaping the discourse on immigrants and the immigration debate in the twenty-first century. Herbert Blumer posed that over time, the dominant group develops certain feelings toward subordinate group members and that these feelings form the basis of racial prejudice. These feelings include notions of superiority, the alienation of other groups, proprietary claims over valued resources, and finally, a feeling that resources are threatened. While not dismissing the importance of interpersonal interactions, Blumer posed that elite entities within the dominant group play prominent roles in producing and managing these feelings among the masses because they have access to the public ear. To assess how the elite attempt to manage feelings toward immigration, we use qualitative data from 33 amicus briefs submitted in support of Arizona’s SB 1070 law in the Arizona v. United States case. Findings reveal that each of the feelings was prominently represented in all briefs, which supports the notion that elite entities use arguments that promote feelings Blumer associated with racial prejudice.
Public opinion polling reveals a consistent concern among citizens for immigration flowing into the United States since the 1990s (see ABC/Washington Post 2013; CNN/ORC Poll 2013; Bloomberg National Poll 2013; Gallup Poll 2013; United Technologies Poll 2013, as cited by Polling Report 2014). These polls reveal apprehension among citizens that immigrants are depleting scarce economic and public resources and that immigration translates into higher crime rates (Chavez 2008; Galindo and Vigil 2006; Higham 1955; Jaret 1999). While looking at anti-immigration attitudes and limited support for racial policies among whites, scholars have offered two broad explanations in the literature. The first explanation poses that this negative sentiment may be the result of intraindividual feelings or values developed early in life through social learning. While other explanations will be discussed below, the most common explanation for this anti-immigration sentiment is persistent racial animus (Ayers et al. 2009; Burns and Gimpel 2000).
A second explanation common in the literature holds that anti-immigrant sentiment is not born out of racial animus or any other individual-level factor but rather a collective reaction to threat posed by the out-group to valued resources held by the dominant group (Citrin et al. 1997; Jaret 1999; Quillan 1995). The most common theoretical explanation for this group-level effect is Blumer’s (1958) group position theory. Blumer (1958:5) argued that while individual-level feelings are important, the “substance of racial prejudice” is (1) the historical and collective process of defining and redefining racial groups and their supposed positional arrangements in relation to each other and (2) how the dominant group contributes to that collective process and maintains its dominant position in the hierarchy.
While not discounting interpersonal interactions and discussions, Blumer (1958) argued that the elite with special interests in the matter play a more significant role in producing and reproducing a collective understanding of groups and group positioning. Due in large part to these outside forces, the dominant group develops certain fundamental feelings toward the subordinate group, including the feeling of superiority, feeling that the out-group is alien or different, proprietary claim to valued resources, and feeling that the out-group is threatening those resources (Blumer 1958). These feelings, according to Blumer, are tied to group identity and serve as the basis of racial prejudice.
Accordingly, we take up the call initially made by Blumer (1958) and later by Bobo and Tuan (2006) to study interest groups and elite actors and how they contribute to the understanding of minority groups and possibly encourage a discourse of racial prejudice particularly focused on nonwhite immigrants recently entering the United States. In this vein, this paper moves the research on racial attitudes away from studying intraindividual attitudes toward studying broader structural factors that contribute to the attitudes and feelings of citizens in the United States.
We conducted qualitative and quantitative analyses of public information used by interest entities to set the “lines of discussion” around the issue of immigration: amicus curiae briefs (amicus briefs hereafter) (Blumer 1958:6). We focused this study on amicus briefs presented to the U.S. Supreme Court in relation to the court case Arizona v. United States, which challenged the recent attempts of the state of Arizona to create immigration enforcement legislation (SB 1070) that potentially encourage racial profiling of Latino immigrants and violate the civil rights of U.S. residents (see Sáenz, Menjívar, and Garcia 2011). Research suggests that amicus briefs are used by interest groups and elite actors to persuade litigation that could have profound social consequences via the creation of laws (McAdams and Rasmusen 2007) and through advertisement of propaganda (Caldeira and Wright 1990).
With that said, we assessed whether the four feelings described by Blumer’s (1958) group position theory that serve as primary components of racial prejudice are actively promoted and reinforced by the elite through tools such as amicus briefs. Thus, we are concerned not necessarily with the underlying motives of the amicus brief authors (e.g., whether they stem from racial resentment or a belief that immigration is truly too costly and burdensome to maintain) but rather with how these elite entities contribute to the understanding of immigrants and the immigration debate in general and possibly how they contribute to racial prejudice as outlined by Blumer’s group position theory.
Literature Review
In noting anti-immigration attitudes in public opinion polls, scholars have emphasized two broad explanations for such negative sentiment in the literature. The first explanation poses that individual-level factors, such as racism/nativism (Ayers et al. 2009; Burns and Gimpel 2000; Chacon and Davis 2006; Craig 2007; Haubert and Fussel 2006; Houvouras, 2001; Huber et al. 2008; Lu and Nicholson-Crotty 2010; Romero 2006), self-interest (Fetzer 2000), and principled objections (Sniderman and Carmines 1997), are the prime culprits behind anti-immigration sentiment. This explanation holds that anti-immigration sentiment may simply result from intra-individual feelings or values developed early in life through social learning. Ayers et al. (2009) most poignantly stated that not only does racism impact immigration attitudes, but it may be the most important factor in producing such sentiment.
Other scholars pose that racism may not be the only (or even most significant) factor in producing anti-immigration attitudes. One argument asserts that anti-immigration sentiment may actually find root in simple self-interest, where opposition comes from citizens who have something tangible to lose (Fetzer 2000). Borrowing from the racial prejudice and politics literature, another argument asserts that the lack of support for racial policy may reflect a genuine principled objection among concerned citizens to policies that seem to be unjust, to be too costly and burdensome, or to violate the basic value of individualism (McClendon 1985; Sniderman and Carmines 1997; Sniderman and Piazza 1993). While the debate persists among these scholars as to which factor most prominently explains anti-immigration sentiment, the origin of these differing explanations is invariably tracked back to social learning (Bobo and Tuan 2006).
The second explanation, one widely tested in the field (Ceobanu and Excandell 2010), traces the lack of support in pro-immigration to a collective reaction to the threat posed by the out-group to valued resources and social position held by the in-group (Citrin et al. 1997; Quillan 1995). Many scholars find that such anti-immigration sentiment is rooted in the idea that immigrants challenge the already-strained economic and social resources thought to belong to native-born groups (Chavez 2008; Galindo and Vigil 2006; Higham 1955; Jaret 1999) or that immigration is a threat to national identity, security, or culture (Lahav 2004; Palmer 1996; Sides and Citrin 2007).
The most common theoretical framework used to explain the cause of threat felt by whites toward nonwhites is the group position model developed by Herbert Blumer (1958) and later elaborated on by Lawrence Bobo and colleagues (Bobo 1988, 1999; Bobo and Tuan 2006). The group position model provides a more sociological framework to explain whites’ seeming lack of support for racial policies in general and can assist in explaining American citizen views of immigrants. While the research on individual attitudes often implicates preadult social learning (Burns and Gimpel 2000), the group position model is more interested in (1) the historically derived system of racial inequality of which the current system is characterized and (2) how structural-level factors perpetuate prejudice.
In so doing, the group position model moves the conversation away from intraindividual-level feelings and values toward a more historical and contextual understanding of group relations (Bobo and Tuan 2006). Blumer’s (1958) model poses that racial prejudice is a function of relative group position, where the dominant group develops a particular orientation of where their group should to stand in relation to other groups. This orientation, according to Blumer, is reflected in certain fundamental feelings that the dominant group develops over time. These feelings include (1) the feeling of superiority, (2) a sense that the other group is alien or different, (3) the feeling of proprietary claims over valued resources, and finally, (4) a concern that the out-group seeks to obtain valued resources belonging to the dominant group.
While not discounting the import of interpersonal interactions in fostering prejudice, Blumer (1958) posed that research should focus more on the role societal-level factors, such as interest groups and elite actors, play in creating and recreating abstract meanings of the in- and out-groups. These abstract meanings occur in the distant (not at the interpersonal level) and ultimately (1) allow one group to claim proprietary claim over valued resources and (2) dictate the defining of the arguments for the majority on various social issues (Blumer 1958:6). As Kollman (1998) noted, the orientation of the mass public is rarely spontaneous, and behind movement of individuals to protest are interest groups and elite actors pushing a common message.
Context: SB 1070 and Arizona v. United States
On April 23, 2010, Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed into law the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, or SB 1070. This set forth several provisions in “cracking down” on illegal immigration within Arizona, including making it a misdemeanor to be illegally in the United States within the Arizona state border, authorizing local and state law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws, and issuing heavy fines and penalties for businesses, organizations, and individuals who shelter, hire, or transport illegal immigrants.
Well before SB 1070 passed, many citizens, organizations, and even president Barack Obama expressed concern over SB 1070, posing that such a law would infringe on citizen civil rights and encourage racial profiling (Sáenz et al. 2011). Several civil rights organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that certain clauses requiring law enforcement officials to use racial and ethnic stereotypes to determine whether a person was “suspicious” of being illegal would equate to racial discrimination (Lippard 2011). In response to this law and demonstrations held across America, several organizations and the U.S. Justice Department filed suit to challenge the Arizona legislation in July of 2010.
In April of 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit ruled that certain parts of SB 1070 were unconstitutional; however, Arizona appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. On June 25, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court also ruled that much of the Arizona law was unconstitutional and struck down three of the four provisions of SB 1070 because it preempted federal laws on immigration. These provisions were that (1) legal immigrants carry registration documents at all times, (2) state police can arrest any individual for suspicion of being an illegal immigrant, and (3) it was a crime for an illegal immigrant to search for a job (or to hold one) in the state (Russell 2012). However, some of the provisions were left intact, particularly, that local and state law enforcement could investigate a person’s immigration status. Despite the significant challenge to SB 1070 by the Supreme Court, more states have proposed and passed similar immigration enforcement laws. While these laws have also been challenged, many of them continue to be enforced today.
Purpose
The overall purpose of this project is to assess how interest groups and elite actors contribute to the understanding of minority groups in America in general and how they possibly contribute to racial prejudice in particular. More specifically, the purpose of this project is to assess whether the feelings described by Blumer’s (1958) group position theory that serve as primary components of racial prejudice are actively promoted and reinforced by the elite. It is the purpose of this project not to speak to the intraindividual feelings of the elite (e.g., whether they personally hold racial resentment or whether they simply are simply making a principled objection to immigration) but rather to assess whether these elite entities possibly contribute to racial prejudice as outlined by Blumer’s group position theory.
To do this, we conducted a quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis of amicus briefs submitted to the Supreme Court case Arizona v. United States. Amicus briefs are often used by interest groups and elite actors to persuade litigation that could have profound social consequences (Walker 1991). While literally interpreted as “friends of the court” (Krislov 1996:3), the primary function of amicus briefs is to actively persuade or lobby the court (Corley 2003). Thus, amicus briefs act more like friends of political parties rather than friends of the court (Caldeira and Wright 1990). However, amicus briefs may very well provide novel information or expertise to the court, in essence supplementing legal arguments and keeping the court in touch with current scientific and medical findings (Spriggs and Wahlbeck 1997). Briefs also show how the case fits into the larger social, political, and economic landscape and more poignantly highlight the “constellation of interests” of those involved (Caldeira and Wright 1988:1111).
While we are interested in the manifest functions of amicus briefs discussed above, we are also interested in a latent function of amicus briefs: defining the arguments for the populous. Amicus briefs can impact public opinion indirectly and directly. First, amicus briefs may indirectly impact individual perspective by creating law, which has been argued may impact normative beliefs (McAdams and Rasmusen 2007). Second, through amicus briefs, interests groups are able to construct the argument for or against an issue and submit that argument for public record. When a case is high profile, these documents and parallel media interactions can gain a great deal of attention and directly impact public opinion. This very notion that amicus briefs could be used so publicly was of grave concern to Justice Frankfurter, who stated in 1949, “I do not like to have the Court exploited as a soap box or as advertising medium, or as the target, not of arguments but of mere assertion that this or that group has this or that interest in a question to be decided” (as cited in Caldeira and Wright 1990:784). The use of amicus briefs in this manner was one of the primary reasons the Supreme Court limited the use of briefs for several years (Caldeira and Wright 1990).
While research on the political impact of interest groups and elite actors is quite mixed (Burstein and Linton 2002), research has shown a significant impact of organized interests in government in general (Baumgartner and Leech 2001) and on Supreme Court litigation in particular (Hansford 2004; Spriggs and Wahlbeck 1997). However, the impact of interest groups and the elite on the public does not always exist and may even be quite negative. Citizens may simply be uninterested in the topic or may even be turned off by the tactics and information being levied by interest groups (Bobo and Tuan 2006), which ultimately renders the effect the intrusion quite negligible.
Research Methods
For this analysis, we use qualitative and quantitative analytical techniques to assess the discursive ways in which interest groups define immigrants and the immigration debate in amicus briefs presented to the Supreme Court of the United States. The data for this research came from amicus briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in regard to the Arizona v. United States court case. We first obtained the list of all proceedings, including the list of filed amicus briefs from the official U.S. Supreme Court of the United States website for this particular case (see http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx?FileName=/docketfiles/11-182.htm). We then sampled all 33 amicus briefs that were submitted in support of Arizona (the petitioner). Full text of these amicus briefs was collected via the WestLaw Next online search engine, which includes more than 40,000 databases of case law, state and federal statutes, administrative codes, media items, journals, and law reviews. This database is used by lawyers, legal professionals, and academics to examine various issues of law and is akin to other scholarly search engines, such as LexisNexis Academic. We would like to note that (1) a search in LexisNexis Academic elicited the same briefs as those found in the original search and (2) some briefs were submitted more than once (5 percent) with the only difference being the list of supporters added to the document. While there were 26 more briefs submitted in support of the U.S. Supreme Court decision, we focused only on the 33 that supported Arizona SB 1070. See Table 1 for a list of the briefs sampled.
List of Sampled Briefs in Support of the Petitioner (Arizona v. U.S.).
The reason for focusing only on those briefs that are in support of Arizona SB 1070 is fourfold. First, Blumer (1958) most notably argued that the root of racial prejudice is felt threat to group position. Given the research that supports the notion that illegal immigration is seen by some as quite threatening, we wanted to assess how elite members who support stronger restrictions define immigrants and the immigration debate and whether those definitions could possibly contribute to racial prejudice as described by Blumer’s group position theory. Second, we follow in a long line of race research that assesses dominant group reactions to policies/events that could promote positive outcomes for minorities. While this law does not promote positive outcomes for minorities, the dissolution of this law does. Third, the types and varieties of authors for these amicus briefs suggest a broad range of influences from a number of political and economic arenas. For instance, while there are a number of nonprofit and think tank interest groups that authored these items, over 75 percent of these briefs include individual state and federal politicians, entire state governments, and concerned law enforcement officials (see Table 1). Finally, some argue that Arizona SB 1070 and other U.S. and state immigration policies enacted recently (1) lead to several key civil and international rights violations, including right to form family, right to due process, right to freedom from discrimination, right to freedom from arbitrary detention, and right to not experience cruel and unusual punishment (Golash-Boza 2012), and (2) has a detrimental impact on health-seeking behaviors at the neighborhood level in bordering communities (Hardy et al. 2012; Heyman, Núñez, and Talavera 2009; Núñez and Heyman 2007). Thus, given the concern over these policies and the association they often have with racism, we chose to focus on those briefs that support Arizona’s call for more strict immigration policies.
The quantitative component focused on the frequencies with which elite actors and interest groups made a certain argument or position. By counting certain words or phrases used to describe groups, items, or events, we were able to provide insights into the most and least common arguments made by the actors/groups. For the qualitative analysis, we relied heavily on suggestions made by Maxwell (2005) and Miles and Huberman (1994). Our qualitative data included coding, writing memos, and an overall narrative analysis to bring words and phrases expressed in the litigation to life to represent our overall findings. While we implement an open-coding analytical strategy, we decided to specifically use Blumer’s (1958) four types of feelings to assess whether these briefs promote feelings associated with racial prejudice. These feelings include (1) feeling of superiority, (2) feeling that the other is alien or different, (3) feeling of proprietary claim to valued resources, and (4) feeling that others are threatening those valued resources. Table 2 lists cues we used to guide our coding to see if the amicus briefs used any of the four feelings in their arguments.
Analytical Cues for Blumer’s (1958) Four Types of Feelings Associated with Prejudice.
We want to note that there is overlap in the concepts and themes we find. This overlap was expected due to the nature of qualitative analysis and the discourse associated with such a sensitive and contested issue (see Chavez 2008). As suggested by Strauss and Corbin (1998), discourse analysis does not necessarily produce mutually exhaustive and exclusive concepts, categories, or typologies. More likely, this type of qualitative analysis leads to a rich and interrelated explanation of social phenomena. However, our findings do support the notion made by Blumer (1958) that the four types of prejudice feelings are distinct. To increase reliability, all briefs were coded by the authors separately. Then, we compared our coding to determine if we had consistent findings in identifying various indicators within the data. Less than 5 percent of our separate coding had inconsistencies and were resolved after some review. In the Results section below, we break up the findings by presenting each type of feeling and its use within the briefs.
Results
Using Blumer’s (1958) four basic types of feelings, we find several indicators in the amicus briefs that interest groups and elite actors are promoting both sociopsychological individual-level feelings (feelings 1 and 2) as well as the feelings that promote group position and threat (feelings 3 and 4) toward undocumented Mexican immigrants.
Feelings of Superiority
Blumer (1958) established that for a dominant group to feel prejudice toward an out-group, it first understands itself as being superior to that group. The dominant group can establish this through discourse about how it is “naturally superior or better” than a subordinate group, developing an antithesis to its own identity or social position. Blumer (1958:4) argued that the notion of superiority stems from labeling the other with “condemnatory or debasing traits, such as laziness, dishonesty, greediness, unreliability, stupidity, deceit, and immorality.”
Within the amicus briefs, we find three discursive tools used to suggest that Arizona citizens and Americans in general were “superior” to the more “inferior” undocumented Mexican immigrants both explicitly and implicitly. The first tool is word choices in describing the prominent groups (citizens and immigrants). The second tool is the tone set by abrasive labels. The third tool used by the authors is the nuanced argument of states’ rights.
First, amicus brief authors select certain words to describe and differentiate the two groups identified in these briefs: (1) those negatively impacted by immigration and (2) immigrants themselves. When describing groups who “suffered” from undocumented immigrants, 100 percent of briefs used quite positive labels. These groups were labeled as “citizens,” “the Arizona people,” “American citizens,” “our people,” “the good people of Arizona,” or as the Thomas More Law Center brief described, “America’s Christian heritage.”
Conversely, 85 percent of all briefs use labels to describe immigrants as anything but citizens or Americans, developing a strong dichotomy. Immigrants were labeled in the briefs as “illegals,” “illegal aliens,” “illegal immigrants,” “aliens,” and “those people.” In fact, only 3 of the 33 briefs used more the nuanced liberal characterizations of illegal immigrants as “undocumented” or “unauthorized” immigrants. They solely identified the “immigrant problem in America,” as suggested by the American Unity Legal Defense Fund and Landmark Legal Foundation, as due to “Mexicans,” “illegal border crosser,” or “people south of our border” illegally entering the United States, never mentioning any other foreign-born groups who might be unauthorized. In fact, only 2 of the 33 briefs ever mentioned any other type of immigrant other than “Mexican” in orientation (“African” and “Asian”), suggesting that these two latter groups were secondary concerns.
Second, the idea of superiority and inferiority becomes more explicit through harsh tones in 38 percent of all briefs analyzed. Two briefs, one by Arizona Supreme Court judge Lawrence Joyce and another by Freedom Watch, identified all illegal Mexican immigrants as “illegal invaders” who threaten the lives of Arizona citizens. A brief submitted by the U.S. Border Control et al. also identified the inferior group as “Mexican invasion force,” “occupying force,” and “terrorists” who are akin to “Muslim extremists.” A brief authored by the American Civil Rights Union used the words immigrant horde and terrorist to support their views that Arizona was “ground zero for the illegal immigration tidal wave” facing the United States today. One brief even related illegal Mexican immigrants to “Middle East arms dealers, Hezbollah, and Central American drug traffickers.”
Third, 47 percent of the briefs clearly state that “Arizona citizens” and “Americans” are superior because they have “state sovereignty.” As described by these briefs, the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. federal government has no right to challenge Arizona’s SB 1070 due to the U.S. Constitution’s implications of dual sovereignty in which states can make laws to secure and regulate trade, commerce, and its people without federal intervention. For example, the U.S Border Control et al. brief suggested that Arizona is a “sovereign and independent State” and “has the inherent power to regulate immigration into its own territory [emphasis added].” Another brief by a member of the U.S. Congress stated that Arizona has “inalienable rights” and “inherent sovereignty” to protect its citizens and that the federal government should be committed to the constitutional principles of “federalism and the separation of power.”
On its face, the argument of states’ rights does not appear to directly relate to Blumer’s (1958) characterization of the feeling of superiority because it does not explicitly denigrate immigrants. However, if we consider Bonilla-Silva’s (2014) argument about color-blind racism and rhetoric, what discursively plays out through the neoliberal argument for state rights is a camouflaging of “othering” and the use of a “rhetorical shield” that allows writers to avoid being labeled as blatantly racist or nativist. Moreover, the use of states’ rights props up superiority (citizens’ rights) while in the same breath supporting a controversial law that some say could lead to racial profiling and unjust persecution of undocumented Mexican immigrants (Sáenz et al. 2011). This stance may also signal what Omi and Winant (2015) and Smith and King (2009) suggest as “racial projects” or “racial institutional orders” in which political actors, activist groups, and governing institutions do not couch their continued opposition to racial justice in blatant terms and arguments, as they did for decades. Rather, they continue their agendas through principled objections to support a “just” America that requires, for example, state sovereignty even though this standard may continue to favor white (and American citizen) privilege over all others.
“They Are Not of Our Kind”: Alienation
The next feeling held by the dominant group described by Blumer (1958:4) is the feeling that the subordinate group is “alien and fundamentally different stock,” or “they are not of our kind.” The first finding concerning this type of prejudice is that 85 percent of all briefs blatantly use the word alien to describe the group. This particular word surfaces at least 24 times per amicus brief with a total of over 1,000 uses. Although alien is obviously used, this could be because Arizona’s SB 1070 and U.S. federal immigration laws explicitly use this word to describe immigrants entering the United States. However, it is also evident that the authors do more with this word by the ways they characterize undocumented Mexican immigrants as aliens. We find that when the briefs use the word alien, they provide “cultural” attributes that fundamentally identify the inferior group as different from American citizens. For instance, the brief by several U.S. Congress members et al. stated that Mexican immigrants in comparison to American citizens are the “poorest, sickest, least educated, and most violent citizens.”
The most prevalent of these characterizations is identifying undocumented Mexican immigrants as violent criminals unlike American citizens and even past immigrants.
Twenty-four of the 33 briefs (72 percent) analyzed began their argument supporting Arizona SB 1070 with pointing out the increase in criminal activity due to poor border security or ineffective federal immigration laws. The crimes identified in these briefs included murders, drug and human trafficking, prostitution, kidnapping, and serious traffic violations across Arizona or any state bordering Mexico. For example, a U.S. Border Control et al. brief suggested that drug distribution and drug use were solely due to illegal immigration. Two other briefs (American Civil Rights Union and Cochise County Sherriff) suggested that illegal immigration has increased murders of citizens and “human smuggling.”
A number of word choices used by authors set up this criminal characterization, including calling those who illegally crossed the border as simply “criminals” because they were breaking federal immigration law and specifically identifying them as “gang members,” “armed cartels,” “drug runners,” “organized criminals,” and “murderers.” Even one brief, by Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, called this group “criminal aliens,” and three briefs (American Civil Rights Union, Cochise County Sheriff, and U.S. Border Control) listed crimes reported that included trespassing, assault, and murder involving an undocumented immigrant and an Arizona citizen to make their case for the characterization of undocumented Mexican immigrants as criminals.
The most telling evidence as related to Blumer’s (1958) second type of feeling is the comparison of Americans to illegal immigrants concerning criminality. Eight of the briefs (24 percent) specifically stated that undocumented Mexican immigrants represented a very different type of criminal in comparison to criminals in America. For example, the brief written by the Eagle Forum Foundation suggested that illegal immigration from Mexico is “more sophisticated and dangerous than any other organized criminal enterprise” in America. This brief later alludes to undocumented Mexican immigrants being more vicious than the Italian mob. Two other briefs written by a collection of law enforcement entities and by Arizona House representatives suggested that “Mexican criminals” are “the worst sort” and, as one stated, “present a set of behaviors that go beyond American criminality.”
This alienation of undocumented Mexican immigrants continues by characterizing the act of illegally crossing the border as culturally un-American. The most common suggestion among these briefs (27 percent) was that illegal immigrants would not assimilate into the United States as did past generations of immigrants. For instance, the brief written by State Legislators for Legal Immigration suggested that while the United States “has a rich history of immigrants who have made a positive impact,” it suggests that illegal immigrants would never have a positive impact because they are not law-abiding people. Freedom Watch’s brief also suggests that undocumented “Latino” immigrants are the problem and are not the “right kinds of people” the United States needs since they cannot be law-abiding. Another brief, submitted by the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence et al., suggested that assimilation was impossible because these immigrants have “no respect for American laws.”
“This Is Ours!” Proprietary Claim to Resources
One of the most prominent arguments made in the briefs is the idea that American citizens have proprietary claim to various valued resources. Blumer (1958) argued that the sense of proprietary claim is a key component to racial prejudice, where the dominant group develops a general orientation of where it should stand in relation to the subordinate group. As suggested by several immigration attitude scholars (Chavez 2008; Galindo and Vigil 2006; Higham 1955; Jaret 1999), most anti-immigrant sentiment elaborates how newly arriving immigrants challenge the already-strained economic and social resources thought to solely belong to native-born groups. Overall, these briefs outline several resources reserved for American or Arizona citizens, including (1) economic prosperity (public services), (2) jobs, (3) public safety, (4) public health, and (5) physical space and land. As notably stated in the Mountain States Legal Foundation brief, “the concept of public welfare and rights is broad and inclusive [for Arizona] and [it includes] public safety, public health, morality, peace and quiet, law and order.” These briefs characterize all of these resources as exclusively for Americans or Arizona citizens, suggesting they are inalienable civil rights for citizens and not for undocumented immigrants.
The first and most prominent proprietary claim (85 percent of all briefs) is economic prosperity for American citizens. As described by the brief written by Arizona legislators, there are “significant economic costs” associated with illegal immigration, including those spent on providing public services (education, corrections, and health services). A brief written by several U.S. Congress members stated, “The costs of illegal immigration impedes on American economic prosperity by taking needed jobs and crippling already-strained public services.” Similarly, a brief submitted by the Thomas More Law Center from Justice Brennan expressed concern that the acceptance of illegal aliens to substandard jobs can “seriously depress wage scales and working conditions of citizens and legally admitted aliens” and “ diminish the effectiveness of labor unions.”
The second most-coded proprietary claim (67 percent of all briefs) is claims to jobs for American and Arizona workers. A brief written by the American Unity Legal Defense Fund suggests that the primary purpose of restricting immigration “is to preserve jobs for American workers.” A American Civil Rights Union brief states that “[illegal immigrants] also account for 7.4% of all Arizona workers, depriving American citizens of jobs and driving down wages.” The American Unity Legal Defense Fund brief completely focused on the necessity to create “measures to protect American workers” from illegal immigrant employment. As it quotes from an employment case heard by the Eleventh Circuit, “each time an employer hires an illegal alien, an Arizona citizen loses an employment opportunity.” This brief goes on to suggest that Arizona should protect this “American right to gainful employment.” Moreover, senator Russell Pearce’s brief suggests the federal government should support Arizona’s law because it tackled a real problem of industries offering jobs Americans need to illegal aliens.
The third proprietary claim (52 percent of all briefs) is that Americans should live in a society that is safe, secure, and free of public health risks. Many briefs characterized undocumented Mexican immigrants as criminals, and the criminal activities brought across the border are a “public-safety hazard” due to violent assaults, murders, and drug trafficking due to increases in drug cartel activities (Cochise County Sheriff amicus brief). The Landmark Legal Foundation brief states illegal immigration is “inextricably connected to the trafficking of human beings, illicit drugs, weapons and currency. It is connected to some of the most violent criminal organizations in the world.” An American Civil Rights Union brief points out that crime, economic costs, and public safety go hand in hand: “[Illegal immigration] presents serious threats to public safety from violent crime, particularly involving human and drug smuggling. The resulting law enforcement costs and costs of providing education and health care to illegal aliens are costing Arizona close to a billion dollars each year.” Interestingly, there is no discussion provided in any of the briefs as to the risks that undocumented immigrants face in these situations because they are seen only as the perpetuators of these problems.
A fourth most common proprietary (24 percent of all briefs) claim emphasizes the issue of public health for American and Arizona citizens. Five briefs note that undocumented immigrants are a threat to citizen health in other ways not related to criminal activity. Several briefs allude to health risks due to the spread of diseases. For instance, the American Civil Rights Union suggests that illegal aliens do not go through appropriate health care checkups to receive necessary vaccinations. In a more implicit manner, the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps implies that illegal aliens are “health risks” because of a twofold threat: being criminals and being undereducated. Interestingly, none of the briefs discuss the potential health risks or problems undocumented immigrants may face due to entering the United States.
The claim least mentioned involves claim to official physical space (19 percent of all briefs), with authors emphasizing border control. Blumer (1958) posed that along with proprietary claim to valued resources, the dominant group also believes it has the ability to exclude or include others from its space. The idea of exclusion of immigrants is clear in these briefs. For example, a number of the briefs stated that Arizona has the sovereign right to “defend our borders,” “secure its lands,” and protect its citizens. A brief written by the American Civil Rights Union and others points out the privileged claim to land with the following:
These invasions have deprived the Arizona public of access to their own land. The federal government has posted signs on public lands as far as 80 miles from the border and within 30 miles of Phoenix reading: “Danger—Public Warning—Travel Not Recommended”—“Active Drug and Human Smuggling Area”—“Visitors May Encounter Armed Criminals and Smuggling Vehicles Traveling at High Rates of Speed.” 5 Private ranchers living near the border suffer heavy property damage and loss of control over their own private property as well due to this smuggling activity.
The Eagle Forum Foundation amicus brief also pointed out that Arizona has the right to “take back its lands” and “protect themselves” from “criminal activity and [bearing] heavy economic burdens.” Or, when briefs equated illegal immigrants with “invaders” or an “invading force,” they would suggest that Arizona should arm and defend the physical borders. As the Freedom Watch brief stated, “they are a threat to our security” and “SHOULD ENGAGE IN WAR AGAINST AN ACTUAL INVASION [original emphasis].”
“Engaging in War”: Threats to Privilege
The final type of feeling expressed by the briefs is the idea that the subordinate groups are vying for the valued resources of the dominant group. Blumer (1958:4) posed that the final key factor for racial prejudice is the feeling that the subordinate group “is threatening, or will threaten, the position of the dominant group.” Certainly, the information provided above concerning proprietary claims suggest that writers of the briefs believe that undocumented Mexican immigrants threaten health and public safety, jobs, and public services. All but three briefs analyzed suggested at least twice in their arguments that illegal immigrants threaten all of these resources for Americans. As one brief stated, “the American way of life of a good education, a good job, and safety are all in jeopardy without laws explicitly written to address illegal immigration.”
While 100 percent of the briefs state that only illegal aliens threatened American jobs, public services, and safety, the most prolific argument that supports Blumer’s (1958) fourth type comes through with the fact that eight of the briefs (38 percent) note that the current immigration issues in Arizona represented a foreign powers invasion, calling for war. For example, in a brief written by Freedom Watch, they suggest that the U.S. Constitution allows any state in the United States to declare war. It states,
This prohibition on states engaging in war has two exceptions. The first allows for a state to act on its own when “actually invaded.” The mass migration of illegal immigrants from another country amounts to nothing short of an invasion. There are an estimated ten to twelve million illegal immigrants that are currently residing within the United States. Some of them are armed and have fired upon and even killed Border Patrol agents, law enforcement officers, and citizens of the border states. Arizona, located at the border of the United States and Mexico, accounts for a large number of those who have crossed over. Such a large scale invasion by the citizens of any other country surely demonstrates the need of the state to protect itself and its border and would fulfill the constitutional prerequisite for engaging in a war.
To further support its argument, it discursively relates illegal immigration and the crimes that have been brought to Arizona (drug cartels, human trafficking) to the terrorist acts of September 11th in New York City:
Other states have gone to further extremes to protect their citizens. In the city of New York, for example, the New York Police Department’s commissioner recently announced that the police department—the NYPD—has the authority to shoot down airplanes in order to prevent future 9/11 type attacks from occurring. This type of action is approved of and even applauded because the threat of terrorism is a real one. But the action of shooting down an airplane is surely more an “act of war” than inquiring about the immigration status of people within Arizona. And, it is well known that terrorists, bent on harming the nation and its 50 states, have and continue to cross U.S. borders with near impunity given the lax immigration checks and controls of the federal government.
Probably one of the most powerful arguments these briefs use about “engaging in war” comes from a brief written by the U.S. Border Control et al. Their entire brief focuses on the issues of state sovereignty and that Arizona has been forced into “a ‘war of attrition’ against invading legal [sic] aliens residing inside Arizona’s borders, a strategy well within Arizona’s right of self-defense secured by Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 [of the U.S. Constitution].” They also lament that “Arizona has been ‘actually invaded’” by illegal aliens threatening the safety, property, and employment opportunities of Arizona citizens. They go on to socially construct undocumented Mexican immigrants as an “occupying force” working in concert with suspected terrorist organizations, for instance,
There even have been reports of Muslim extremists and others suspected of “terrorism” having used the Mexican border to gain illegal entry into this country. In 2010, the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning to Texas law enforcement to be on the lookout for Somali men alleged to have been linked to “terrorist” organizations. The Department of Homeland Security has a term for such aliens—“Special Interest Aliens.” In 2010, these Special Interest Aliens included dozens upon dozens of persons from nations that are considered to be “state sponsors of terrorism,” including Iran, Syria, Sudan, and Somalia.
In short, this brief suggests that undocumented Mexican immigrants are at least aiding terrorists and are particularly coming to Arizona to threaten the livelihoods and safety of its citizens.
Chavez’s (2008) work on documenting the growing anti-immigrant sentiment toward Latino immigrants suggests that this is a particularly salient theme throughout; undocumented immigrants are national threat to security. In fact, Chavez noted that many of the anti-immigrant surveillance groups, like the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, often suggested that securing the borders meant keeping out terrorists. Moreover, he found that many of these groups suggested that undocumented Mexican immigrants were employed by the Mexican government to take back conquered territories in the United States. A brief by the U.S. Border Control et al. suggests this as well by stating, “One might believe that illegal aliens are unlike an invading force because they have no desire to conquer the invaded territory. Such a view would be mistaken.” Another brief by several state representatives states, “While the intent of illegal immigration may be to find a better life, the realities are that all of services and goods they get without being a citizen become treasures for the Mexican government and any other foreign lands.”
Conclusions
The purpose of this paper was to assess how elite actors and interest groups actively set the “lines of discussion” surrounding immigrants and immigration through amicus briefs (Blumer 1958:6). Blumer (1958) posed that groups of interest and elite actors are powerful because they have the ear of the public and, thus, can dictate the positions they want the majority to have. This paper assesses how these groups define immigrants and the immigration debate and how they possibly contribute to racial prejudice as outlined by Blumer’s group position theory. We focused primarily on amicus briefs, which are used by elite actors and groups to persuade litigation (Walker 1991). It has been argued that these litigation techniques can impact public opinion indirectly and directly (Caldeira and Wright 1990). First, they can operate to impact justice opinions and thus law, which some argue indirectly affects normative beliefs (McAdams and Rasmusen 2007). Second, elite actors and interest groups can use litigation at the level of the Supreme Court to advertise their position and try to manipulate public opinion that way (Caldeira and Wright 1990).
Blumer (1958:4) specifically argued that over time, dominant group members develop the following feelings: (1) a feeling of superiority, (2) a feeling that the subordinate race/group in question is intrinsically different and alien, (3) a feeling of proprietary claim to certain areas of privilege and advantage, and (4) a fear and suspicion that the subordinate race/group harbors designs on the prerogatives of the dominant race/group. While transmission of these beliefs occur at the individual level, Blumer argued that the elite have more power to impact because they have the resources to reach the ear of the masses. With that said, we assess whether elite entities reinforced these feelings in their arguments in amicus briefs.
While the first two feelings (superiority and alien) noted above reflect the sociopsychological components of prejudice, the sense of group position and threat (proprietary claim and threat) provides the bite to racial prejudice (Bobo and Tuan 2006). And it is clear for our analysis that not only did the briefs advance beliefs in superiority and “otherness”; the data demonstrate these elite actors and groups attempted to set the argument that gives proprietary claim over resources to the dominant group (American and Arizona citizens) at the expense of the subordinate group (undocumented Mexican immigrants). The briefs also set up the idea that these valued resources are at risk. In this light, these briefs actively assist in (1) producing feelings of group position and (2) fostering the sense that the value resources held by the dominant group are being threatened by a subordinate group. Accordingly, we argue that elite actors and groups are complicit in creating and recreating feelings associated with racial prejudice as described by Blumer (1958).
We would also like to note that there were other more nuanced tactics used in briefs that led us to believe the writers wanted to develop a sense of group position—what the dominant group thinks it ought to have in comparison to the subordinate group or, as Blumer (1958:4) states, “what ought to be rather than what is.” First, none of the briefs ever talked about the rights and resources that should be appropriated for undocumented Mexican immigrants. None of them considered the safety and health issues that faced this group, regardless of how dangerous they presented the situation.
Second, these briefs provided several indicators that clearly labeled undocumented Mexican immigrants as the cause of all of social problems at least within the state of Arizona. For example, this group composed the only criminals of concern, and never once did the briefs suggest, for instance, that the reason the drug cartels were the problem was the high demand for drugs in the United States. They also saw undocumented Mexican immigrants as the only group burdening the education system and not the fact that the public education system has had several budget cuts and problems in recent years despite population growth (Rau, Pitzel, and Sanchez 2014). There was also no discussion on how the Arizona and American economy may have something to do with the loss of jobs citizens face, but rather, they blamed illegal aliens for taking jobs that were offered to them above American workers (Nowrasteh 2012).
Third, Blumer (1958) points out that the feeling of threat is a key component in prejudice among the dominant group. Here the emphasis on feeling is important to our discoveries because Blumer understood that feelings are subjective by nature and, thus, may be impacted by persuasive arguments not necessarily backed up by research. Indeed, these briefs rarely use any research or evidence to support their claims of endangerment. At best, some briefs used news reports from local media to talk about citizen deaths and drug busts. Mostly, their arguments were built arguing that inherently states and citizens by law had a right to negatively act and report undocumented Mexican immigrants. Nothing else mattered.
While many of the indicators discussed above are explicit examples of Blumer’s (1958) types of feelings, we would like to note that the briefs also used other subtle tactics to present their arguments for Arizona’s SB 1070. The first technique used by two thirds of the briefs clearly attempted to shadow their negative views of “illegal aliens” with the notion that any striking down of state law is an infringement on state sovereignty. These briefs suggested in several instances that any discrimination or problems brought on by SB 1070 were minimal in comparison to the federal government’s intervention on state laws. The second discursive cloak used in these briefs was to suggest that Arizona’s SB 1070 was a necessary evil to protect the “inalienable” rights of its citizens. These rights included making sure American and Arizona citizens had jobs, good schools, and above all, safety from criminals and terrorists. Again, two thirds of the briefs wanted it to be clear that any challenge to these resources for Americans and Arizona citizens allowed Arizona to do what was best to protect its citizens and their interests. Moreover, a third of the briefs actually argued that Arizona had a right by constitutional law to engage in war against “invaders” who threatened the public safety of Arizona residents.
In short, this study reveals a great deal about the objectives and the messages of these elite actors and interest groups. It seemed clear that the authors of the briefs wanted to instill certain feelings regarding immigrants and the immigration debate. More research is needed to see how these groups are structured and what messages they are getting out to the public through various social media outlets. There should also be some investigation of how other groups, possibly those that supported the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision against Arizona, to see how they characterize immigrants and the immigration debate. As Blumer (1958) suggested, we must understand the power and structure of all involved groups to understand how they create and recreate the racial status quo in the United States, intentionally or unintentionally.