Hegemony In The United States: Criminological Analysis

In order to dehumanize a group of people, there must first be a clear separation between who is the “us” and “them.” The conservative documentary Border War: The Battle Over Illegal Immigration (2006), takes the viewer into the lives of several people who are impacted by the growing issue of undocumented Mexican immigrants crossing the The Mexico–United States border. This film creates a one-dimensional or single conception of undocumented immigrants through the use of language, such as “illegal” or “alien” and various other combinations. Another method is through the imagery it showed while there was dialogue being said. Most of the imagery in this film creates a narrative that undocumented Mexican immigrants are violent and a threat to Americans. Additionally, the sympathizers and protesters against border reform were portrayed as anti-American radicals. The production of this documentary was not only used to direct our view of undocumented immigrants to a single account, but also to establish false truths that turn undocumented immigrants into a “them.”

There are many vulnerable populations within the United States. One of the many vulnerable populations are undocumented immigrants. Undocumented immigrants also known as illegal immigrants according to Wikipedia (2016) is defined as “the migration of people across national boarders in a way that violates the immigration laws of the destination country” (para 1). The United States of America has one of the largest population of immigrants. In this paper, I will be discussing the multiple stressors related to undocumented immigrants as well as the programs that can be used to help alleviate those stressors.

This paper explores the United States, Immigration Policy from an historical, fair and factual perspective. The Immigration Act of 1990 States limited “unskilled workers to 10,000 a year. Skilled labor requirements and immediate family reunification were major goals. The Act continued to promote the nuclear family model, foreign-born in the US was 7%”. This paper will also explore the demographics and diversity, of immigrants, throughout the U.S. This paper includes an article form the website of the Washington, D.C., Immigration Policy Center, and American Immigration Council. This paper will examines significant research data from the Pew Research web site on Hispanic trends and immigration, around the United States. This paper will also cover numbers, facts and trends which shape the immigration policy. This paper will also include five different books written by authors concerning the immigration policy and public issues which most concern Americans. This paper will cover topics of history of social problems and the policies that address immigration, special interest groups advocacy groups, political party and supporters, social justice and ethical issues, policy outcomes of illegal immigrants and how other countries compare to the United States when dealing with immigration.

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, immigration control and national homeland security have been issues of concern for both the national government and private citizens. In the wake of the attacks, a lot of articles were written about what the appropriate response should be to prevent another attack. In 2004, Mark Krikorian wrote an article for the Providence Journal entitled “Safety through Immigration Control” in which he contends that the only means to keep America safe from a follow-up attack is to strengthen and enforce immigration law to prevent terrorists from being able to enter the country. Edwidge Danticat, writing for The Nation in 2005, provides a juxtaposition to Krikorian’s stance in her essay “Not Your Homeland”, in which she describes her witnessing of the inhumane conditions many immigrants are forced to endure in the name of increased security to protect the country. She questions whether the added protections are worth the human cost we are paying by treating immigrants and refugees as guilty until proven innocent. At the crossroads of these two perspectives lies the question: what is the proper balance between national security and the humane treatment of immigrants?

Mai Ngai’s book, Impossible Subjects, powerfully studies the unfortunately understudied period between 1924 and 1965, the lifespan of the national origins quota system. This era begins with the passage of the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act in 1924 and ends with the lifting of national origins quotas through the passage of the Hart-Celler Act of 1965. The era from 1924 to 1965 remapped the nation by developing both a particular racial and ethnic identity and a "new sense of territoriality" (Ngai p.3). This period demonstrates the most widespread immigration restriction in U.S. history that literally "remapped the nation" (Ngai p.3). Ngai argues that widespread immigration exclusion created an intensified sense of national borders as well as increased security on those boarders. This helped produce what is now defined as the illegal alien (Ngai). Impossible Subjects primarily concentrates on immigrants categorized as illegal aliens, alien citizens, colonial subjects, and contract laborers. Because these are immigrants whose experiences are not greatly represented in our national narrative, the regulations that have governed them have never greatly been exposed, resulting in a collective oblivion within United States history. Ngai turns her research to important analytical use. Ngai’s most interesting lines of argument lie within her analysis of the creation of illegal immigration from Mexico and her analysis of Japanese internment during World War II.

The Latino Threat is a concept of an imposing threat of the Latino, whether they be from Mexico or any other Latin country, and how they affect the U.S. and its citizens. This concept is described heavily Leo R. Chavez’ book aptly titled The Latino Threat. In the book, he describes how the Latino threat as a concept has been used routinely to underline the aspect of United States citizenship in a tit for tat manner; that being dehumanizing the Latino to raise the standing of U.S. citizenship. The U.S. as a nation believes it should feel better about itself because it is the one that turns people away rather than being the place where people run from. Over the history of America this isolationist view on illegal immigrants has waned and

In “The Right Road to America?,” Amy Chua informs her audience about the possibility of America’s national identity becoming lost due to the influence of immigrants. Chua’s defines her thesis by stating “Around the world, nations face violence and instability as a result of their increasing pluralism and diversity,” (336). The key points of the text includes Chua explaining why America and other nations could lose their core identities, how the United States could become unglued from its true meaning, and how citizens can fix this imminent problem. The information in this text is significant, especially in today’s society. With all of the issues about immigration coinciding with our current president, this text relates to current subjects

The United States has maintained a tolerate-hate relationship with undocumented immigrants, and really immigrants in general. DeSoto (2016) provides a unique perspective in regards to the system surrounding undocumented immigration, “until the nature of global capital is arranged so that such [economical] asymmetries are less extreme, people will migrate towards money and opportunity and way from poverty and lack of opportunity” (p. 2). As Hilfinger-Messias, McEwen, and Boyle (2015) emphasize, more often then not when immigrants become increasingly visible in society nativism resurfaces exclusionary tendencies, and immigration policies become increasingly prohibitive and strict,

Yee, V., Davis, K., & Patel, J. (2017, March 06). Here’s the Reality About Illegal Immigrants in the United States. Retrieved November 10, 2017, from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/06/us/politics/undocumented-illegal-immigrants.html

Ann Coulter’s book Adios, America! The Lefts Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third Word Hellhole is based on the ever-changing culture that is surrounding the United States. Coulter implies that if immigration is not dealt with head on, the United States will lose their country (Coulter, 2016). In this critical reflection paper, I will discuss and analyze three key issues or themes that were portrayed in Adios, America! and expand on how these concepts merge with those of Governing Immigration through Crime by Dowling and Inda.

Through the past few decades, the rise of illegal immigrants has been both good and bad. The topic of illegal immigration has recently been brought up frequently by politicians, seeing the economic problems that have occurred. An “illegal” immigrant is somebody who enters a country without following the proper legal requirements to make them a citizen. Illegal immigration is not only taking place in the United States, but all over the globe. The United States has seen the most amount of illegal immigrants by far. A 2010 Census reported that there were more than 10 million immigrants living in the United States. Although many disagree, saying that that number is only an estimate, some

In today’s society Immigration is steadily on the rise, in the United States it is believed that there are about 11 million undocumented immigrants (Vargas, 2011). The United States has been welcoming immigration for thousands of years, but it has always feared the consequences of it. The start of a mass wave of immigration similar to immigration today began in the 1800s and the early 1900s. The majority of these immigrants arrived from Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe; they came to America in search of economic opportunity (Staff, 2009). Immigration is what built the America we have today, it industrialized it and allowed it to grow.

Gonzales and Rodriguez writes about how immigrants are degraded and how the hate crimes committed against them are on a disquietly rise. They also share the incident of a South Texas rancher shooting a Mexican immigrant, and being charged with an absurdly minimal amount of four thousand dollars. The writers engage in the use of pathos, and provide a thought provoking and emotional content adroitly, while also juxtaposing it with ethos by providing opinion of credible sources, and using facts for discussing the growth and effect of the

There is a current problem with the way illegal immigration is handled in the United States, the outcome exposes the American people to crime that otherwise could be prevented. Whether or not illegals commit more crime could effortlessly be answered by requiring states to note the number of prisoners who are here illegally. However, any thorough examination disclosing the distribution of illegal aliens participating in unlawful behavior could annihilate American endorsement for reprieve. Since government data covering illegal migrant crime is nearly absent, many keen in determining these facts must turn to supplementary statistics.

As such, immigrants have had to navigate life on margins in the United States as transnational tensions have become tenser. There has been a rise in discourses addressing the issue, leading to immigration taking