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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 October 2010
The intensity of the recent debate over the presence of an estimated eleven to twelve million unauthorized persons in the United States often creates the impression that the current situation somehow represents a historical anomaly in the long-running debate over US immigration policy and citizenship law. This brief commentary contests that view, suggesting instead that the mass circulation and permanent presence of unauthorized persons has been a normative feature of US economic activity for more than a century and that the exigencies of global economic competition make it likely that this state of affairs will persist into the foreseeable future.
1. See Scruggs, Otey M., Braceros, “Wetbacks,” and the Farm Labor Problem: Mexican Agricultural Labor in the United States, 1942–1954 (New York, 1988)Google Scholar.
2. For a concise analysis of the evolution of such arguments, see Reisler, Mark, By the Sweat of Their Brow: Mexican Immigrant Labor in the United States, 1900–1940 (Westport, CT, 1976)Google Scholar.
3. See, for example, Galarza, Ernesto, Merchants of Labor: The Mexican Bracero Program (Charlotte, NC, 1964)Google Scholar; Samora, Julian, Los Mojados: The Wetback Story (Notre Dame, IN, 1971)Google Scholar; García, Manuel y Griego, , “The Importation of Mexican Contract Laborers to the United States, 1942–1964: Antecedents, Operation, and Legacy,” in The Border That Joins: Mexican Migrants and U.S. Responsibility, ed. Brown, Peter G. and Shue, Henry (Totowa, NJ, 1983), 49–98Google Scholar; Cockcroft, James, Outlaws in the Promised Land: Mexican Immigrant Workers and America's Future (New York, 1986)Google Scholar; De Leon, Arnoldo and del Castillo, Richard Griswold, North to Aztlán: A History of Mexican Americans in the United States, 2nd ed. (Wheeling, IL, 2006)Google Scholar.
4. See Massey, Douglas S., Alarcón, Rafael, Durand, Jorge, and González, Humberto, Return to Aztlán: The Social Process of International Migration from Western Mexico (Berkeley, CA, 1987)Google Scholar; Massey, Douglas S., Durand, Jorge, and Malone, Nolan J., Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration (New York, 2002)Google Scholar.