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... Border Patrol now numbers more than 18,000 agents, a doubling since January 2001 that delivered on the Bush administration's promise. The FY 2009 budget adds another 2,000 agents, continuing a trend of sustained and significant land-border enforcement staffing increases that date back to FY 1995 (see Figure 2). FY 1986FY , 1990FY , 1994FY , 1998FY , 2002FY , 2006 Notes: Full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) for 1991 to 2002 include a proportional amount of FTEs assigned to construction, data, and communications activities that supported Border Patrol efforts. ...
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... An effect of PTD is that migrant death is obfuscated and attributed to the natural environment (Alonso and Nienass 2016;Soto and Mart ınez 2018). Some CBP and GAO reports acknowledge migrant death as a consequence of policy and recognize that PTD could lead to more death (U.S. CBP 1994;U.S. GAO 2006;Meissner and Kerwin 2009). Other researchers aver that CBP considers "migrant death rates as a measure of success" (De Le on 2015; Alonso and Nienass 2016, 423). ...
There has been a proliferation of geographic literature exploring the fatal effects of immigration policy since the early 2000s. Studies have used geographic information systems (GIS) and predictive modeling to explore potential relationships between border protection infrastructure, environment, and migrant death. Although some studies have used GIS to determine the probable effects of heat stress, none have included the potential perspiration as a limiting factor to pedestrian travel in an arid environment during daylight hours. Heat exposure is the leading cause of mortality for migrants in the desert regions of the U.S.–Mexico border, and humans rely on water to regulate temperature. For a more systematic methodology and higher precision, we calculated the maximum distances a person could walk in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert accounting for sweat rate. The locations of recovered human remains (RHR) correlate with water usage and increased difficulty of pedestrian travel. Further, our results showed at higher precision a significant correlation of mortality and spatial rates of dehydration and demonstrate that sweat rate is a better predictor of RHR location than heat or slope alone and will be more informative for search and relief operations in the region.
... In 1990, another amendment to the Immigration and National Act facilitated the unification of many separated families, thus advancing even further immigration. 6 From 1990 to 2002, the budget for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)-now known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)-more than quintupled, whereupon funds could be allocated toward building a fence along the Mexico/US border, increased Border Patrol presence, and technology for monitoring immigrant status (Meissner and Kerwin, 2009). Funds could also be applied to the construction of private for-profit detention centers like those of the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), whose first contract was with INS in 1983(CCA, 2013. ...
Historical events in Arizona, including very recent ones, are eerily similar to those of Rwanda. In this article, stories of Arizona’s political history are relayed while recalling those leading to Rwanda’s genocide. The stories include references to key roles education policy has played in the oppression of students labeled Tutsi and students labeled Mexican. These stories are then mapped with respect to Barbara Harff and Ted Gurr’s checklist evaluating conditions that may portend impending oppression. Conclusions derived from the stories and the mapping suggest that Arizona’s phenomena extend beyond its borders and into a Trump presidency, necessitating our obligation to be leaders by extending cur- rent technical conversations supporting multiculturalism to boisterous multilingual advo- cacy regarding any dehumanization of oppressed communities.
... Another important factor is that in the neo-liberal era of reduced support from the US federal government, incarceration and immigration detention have come to be seen as viable sources of funding for many state and local governments (Bonds, 2006;Davis, 2003;Gilmore, 2007). ICE now relies on approximately 200 facilities of varying models of ownership, including ICE-owned, privately owned contract detention facilities, and state and county jails (Doty & Wheatley, 2013;DWN, nd;Meissner & Kerwin, 2009). A further iteration of the public-private relationships that develop is the 'revolving door' of personnel who hold public office and subsequently work for private corporations such as CCA and GEO Group. ...
Beyond privatization: bureaucratization and the spatialities of immigration detention expansion. Territory, Politics, Governance. Immigration detention has become central to models of immigration enforcement in the United States and globally. This paper elaborates a conceptual framework to facilitate critical understanding of detention’s proliferation that goes beyond the role of privatization as well as beyond public–private sector relationships. It draws on a study of immigration detention in Essex County, New Jersey, with a focus on the contractual arrangements delineating detention between public and private entities and actors. Our conceptual framework posits processes of bureaucratization as central to the growth in immigration detention. We understand bureaucratization as a spatialized process of obfuscation that both builds multidimensional webs of interdependence between public and private actors and flattens these relationships into one-dimensional rational economic decisions and exchanges. Through this framework, we see contractual agreements that are remarkable for fostering overlapping, snowballing relationships in the operation of facilities, while they simultaneously conceal powerful influences behind detention’s expansion, mask human rights abuses of detained migrants, and filter out moral concerns from decision-making regarding detention.
... 11 Similarly, Border Patrol spokesperson Salvador Zamora explains that ''our goal is to plant a seed of doubt so people are fully informed about the dangers, pause for a moment and really think about what they are doing before they go into the desert or climb into the back of a car'' (Elsworth 2005). However, migrants ''are well aware that border crossings are treacherous and deadly'' -knowledge that has been shown to have little effect on the choice to migrate (Jimenez 2009, 32-33;Meissner and Kerwin 2009 We're as much law enforcers as we're rescuers and medical providers…The purpose of these songs is to educate and save lives'' (New York Daily News 2009). Journalists from national and international news outlets who have written about the migra corridos have often taken these claims at face value and celebrated the ''humanitarian'' motivations of the songs' sponsors and creators (Capitol Communicator 2011; New York Daily News 2009). ...
Since 2005 the US Border Patrol has distributed musical propaganda mimicking the structure of traditional Mexican ballads (corridos) to dissuade undocumented migrants from crossing the US border. These songs, referred to as migra corridos, have been distributed through radio stations in Mexico and Central America and in US cities with large Spanish-speaking communities and played continuously for some detainees at Border Patrol field offices and headquarters in Arizona. Brutal tales of migrant pain and suffering, the migra corridos naturalize dangerous conditions along the US–Mexico border while eclipsing both the socioeconomic realities that impel migrants to attempt the perilous border crossing and the role US foreign policy and border escalation have played in creating dangerous conditions along the border. Ultimately, the migra corridos legitimize the Border Patrol’s self-representation as a humanitarian agency that, as the instrument of a benevolent nation-state, saves migrant lives.
... The backlogs in the family-based immigrant program, which seem inherent to the system, have merely contributed to illegal immigration. According to Meissner and Kerwin (2009), the U.S. government estimated in 2007 that 3.5 million to 4 million people had been approved for family-based immigrant visas but had not yet received them as a result of annual statutory limits on visa issuance. In 2009, these estimates were revised to 4.9 million, among whom 2.7 million were awaiting consular processing outside the United States and an estimated 2.2 million were already in the United States, many on temporary visas but waiting for permanent ones. ...
... These do not include those who have subsequently immigrated through another channel or have decided not to pursue their cases. Meissner and Kerwin believe that a high percentage of persons who have been approved for visas wait in the United States (often with unauthorized status) with their sponsoring family members until their visa numbers become current (Meissner & Kerwin, 2009 ...
This article explains the dilemmas facing Japan and the United States in undertaking immigration policy reform. For the Japanese, the main dilemma is how to confront the inevitable consequences of a rapidly aging population and declining workforce on Japan’s ability to maintain its competitive edge in the global market and to sustain its social security system without increasing immigration, which is still viewed by many as socially disruptive. The U.S. immigration dilemma is of a totally different nature, since it is about a broken migration system that continues to produce half a million undocumented migrants every year. On one hand, granting amnesty or an easy path to regularization to millions already in the country via irregular means is widely seen to be unfair and a strategy that will only undermine the established procedures for legal admissions. On the other hand, mass expatriation is not an option since labor shortages are still experienced by many American industries even at the height of unemployment. Moreover, the continued employment of Mexican migrants is important to Mexico’s economic development, which in the end is the key to solving the U.S. dilemma.
... The dramatic increase in arrests and deportations has been accompanied by a steep rise in detention, largely because 1996 federal legislation created mandatory detention without bond for certain categories of immigrants. Between FY2003 and FY2007, the total number of noncitizens detained by ICE per year increased from 231,500 to 311,213 (Meissner & Kerwin, 2009). The intensified surveillance of Mexican and Central American immigrants over the past decade makes them more susceptible to detention than many other nationalities. ...
Contemporary policy responses to unauthorized immigration, we argue, reinforce racialized anxieties by (a) focusing attention on physically distinctive and economically marginalized minorities who are defined as the nation’s immigration“threat,” (b) creating new spaces of enforcement within which racial anxieties flourish and become institutionalized; and thereby (c) racializing immigrant bodies. We examine three federal enforcement policies: (a) the physical border buildup that began in the 1990s, (b) partnerships with local police, and (c) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) initiatives to enhance interior enforcement. The result has been the construction of a landscape of institutionalized racial violence embedded in our current immigration regime.
... But this makes no provision for the fact that large numbers of skilled workers abroad who would prefer to change their citizenship are forcibly prevented from doing so. In 2008, the waiting list for naturalization applications to the United States stood at over 2.5 million people (Meissner and Kerwin 2009: 62). It is likely that hundreds of thousands of these people are skilled workers who would like to become US citizens but cannot. ...
Large numbers of doctors, engineers, and other skilled workers from developing counties choose to move to other countries. Do their choices threaten development? The answer appears so obvious that their movement is most commonly known by the pejorative term “brain drain”. This paper reconsiders the question starting from the most mainstream, explicit definitions of “development”. Under these definitions, it is only possible to advance development by regulating skilled workers’ choices if that regulation greatly expands the substantive freedoms of others to meet their basic needs and live the lives they wish. Much existing evidence and some new evidence suggests that regulating skilled-worker mobility itself does nothing to address the underlying causes of skilled migrants’ choices, generally brings few benefits to others, and instead brings diverse unintended harm. The paper concludes with examples of effective ways that developing countries can build a skill base for development without regulating human movement. The mental shift required to take these policies seriously would be aided by dropping the sententious term “brain drain” in favor of the neutral, accurate, and concise term “skill flow”.
... Asian Americans generally utilize almost 40 percent of family-based visas available for issuance in the United States in one fiscal year. There are more than four million individuals in the family-based immigration backlog, with two million of them representing spouses and children of lawful permanent residents (Meissner and Kerwin 2009). Changes to the architecture of the family immigration system will impact a significant portion of the Asian American community eligible to vote and waiting for family members to join them. ...
